Texas Holdem shootout

Gaahl

Non-Gambler
Joined
Oct 25, 2006
Location
Norway
I was just wondering if this game is supposed to be random? I have played poker for about 3 years, and while playing at Virgingames casino I saw that they had this game called Texas Holdem shootout and I decided to give it a go. Now this is the question, I know nothing about this game, so, Is it supposed to be a random game? Because I have never in my entire life seen sicker things happen in that game. I have played 100s of thousands of ordinary pokerhands, but never has there happened sicker things than my 1.5 hour session on this casinogames. I would loose 4\5 hands (counted) to runner runner quads, runner runner flush, runner 2 pairs, gutshot str8 etc. It was realy a slaughterhouse, Im not complaining about loosing money, but I like to know if I play a fair game or not.

So I am asking you, is this game supposed to be a random dealt game or is it rigged to a certain payout were you can hit streaks etc?
 
Many players have reported that the game does not seem random. One player mentioned losing 48 hands in a row. If you search the forum, you can find a couple related threads.
 
Thanx for the headsup aka. I have now searched and read all the threads. But I still got some questions. Was there ever a answer to wether or not the flop, turn and river are randomly dealt? My experience says that it is impossible for it to be. And I must say I feel cheated. I played this game at Virgingames beliving I played a fair game (with an calculated HA, but randomly dealt cards). After loosing 4\5 hands to the sickest things you can imagine. I mean, what are the odds of loosing to runner runner quads, then a gutshot on the river, then a runner runner flush, and then a 2 outer in a row! I have played well over 200 000 "real" poker hands, and that has NEVER happened before.

It is 110 I wil never see again, I can live with that, but it is a worse when you feel cheated out of them. And I belive I was cheated.
 
Despite this issue being raised before, I have seen nothing from the casino side. Unless it is made ABSOLUTELY CLEAR this is a non random AWP type game, it is cheating, and will erode confidence in the fairness of casino games in general.
To have an experienced poker player cast doubt based on nearly a quarter of a million "real" poker games played means there is definitely something here that needs explaining.
A big enough sample from actual gameplay should be enough to show there is a problem with the game, or not, as the case may be.
 
I my view this game is completely random...
in exactly the same way as a lottery scratchcard is.
You pay your money, some cards turn over, you randomly win or lose.

This game is AWP, and as such it's a pretty funny one. Those ludicrous bad-beats have me splitting my sides!

Here's some from the last few days, for people not familiar:-
(Remember these are 'all-in' before the flop hands)

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The casinos had better come clean about this one. It is a card game, not a slot, and to have it running like one is highly misleading.
Casinos have enough trouble convincing us the other games are really random when we see too many bad beats, but if this is proven to be non-random, then there will be even less confidence in the other games.

The simplest test would be to look at the community cards, as to get this many bad beats, these have to be rigged, rigging the hole cards would not be enough.
 
This is a poorly thought out game but i don't think its a slot or non-random. The problem is (and they do explain this in the rules) is you are playing against 2 bots who know what the final dealt cards will be. The one which will end up with the weaker hand drops out meaning that it is likely the bot that does play will have a strong hand, with the result being that the player sees an awful lot of bad beats when they think its just one-on-one.

It also means that you have to play against your instinct sometimes and it is a difficult game to master the strategy. At the very least read up here (scroll all the way down). It is published by them, but the advice is basically sound.

A far better game to play in my opinion is the Texas Holdem bonus poker as you are genuinely playing against one player and so get less angry!
 
This is a poorly thought out game but i don't think its a slot or non-random. The problem is (and they do explain this in the rules) is you are playing against 2 bots who know what the final dealt cards will be. The one which will end up with the weaker hand drops out meaning that it is likely the bot that does play will have a strong hand, with the result being that the player sees an awful lot of bad beats when they think its just one-on-one.

It also means that you have to play against your instinct sometimes and it is a difficult game to master the strategy. At the very least read up here (scroll all the way down). It is published by them, but the advice is basically sound.

A far better game to play in my opinion is the Texas Holdem bonus poker as you are genuinely playing against one player and so get less angry!

This 2 bot business was brought up before, but the main question was whether the 5 community cards were random. If they are, then it is just a game with an obscure strategy, but if the community cards are rigged to ensure the bots win a certain number of times then the game is unfair (as it is not marked as non-random).
Analysing the 5 community cards alone should give the answer, as it could be compared directly with the chance of a pat hand in 5 card video poker, probabilities for this are extensively calculated & posted on Wizard of odds. Perhaps he will analyse these "shoot out" variants in due course (might have happened already, not looked this month).
 
This is a poorly thought out game but i don't think its a slot or non-random. The problem is (and they do explain this in the rules) is you are playing against 2 bots who know what the final dealt cards will be. The one which will end up with the weaker hand drops out meaning that it is likely the bot that does play will have a strong hand, with the result being that the player sees an awful lot of bad beats when they think its just one-on-one.

It also means that you have to play against your instinct sometimes and it is a difficult game to master the strategy. At the very least read up here (scroll all the way down). It is published by them, but the advice is basically sound.

A far better game to play in my opinion is the Texas Holdem bonus poker as you are genuinely playing against one player and so get less angry!

This is an incorrect analysis. The rules state the stronger of the two hands preflop will continue playing. The bots supposedly have no knowledge of what the board cards will be.

Playing against the better of two bot hands means the player will win less than half the hands, but the ability to move "all in" preflop with strong hands should negate that advantage.

Wagerworks games state the expected return in the rules section and for this game it supposed to be 100% return based on strategy used. The statement is somewhat ambigous but I've always taken it to mean "Played properly the HA for this game is 0%." However from my experience and those of others I've read about this is not the case.
 
one time someone said that the extra value to the player is in the times when both bots call the flop. post flop you can push all in and you're guaranteed one call and one fold, so the pot is simply sweetened by that weaker bot. i've never played the game, but i know dead money is always good. in this game it pumps the pot by about 10% above the maximum if only one bot calls or something, right? but of course if the deck's stacked then even this might not happen to expectation. i like the thinking that the bots know the cards before they come, because that covers the casino for dealing a proper random game with cards behaving as in real life. it was explained quite deeply in this forum about the mechanics of this game, and many bot behaviours were predictable, so knowing that could definitely call for a proper strategy, although again the rigging of cards if proven true sort of mitigates these effects.
 
one time someone said that the extra value to the player is in the times when both bots call the flop. post flop you can push all in and you're guaranteed one call and one fold, so the pot is simply sweetened by that weaker bot. i've never played the game, but i know dead money is always good. in this game it pumps the pot by about 10% above the maximum if only one bot calls or something, right? but of course if the deck's stacked then even this might not happen to expectation. i like the thinking that the bots know the cards before they come, because that covers the casino for dealing a proper random game with cards behaving as in real life. it was explained quite deeply in this forum about the mechanics of this game, and many bot behaviours were predictable, so knowing that could definitely call for a proper strategy, although again the rigging of cards if proven true sort of mitigates these effects.
Just go to any WagerWorks site & you can play for free - no download.
Play exactly as you would if it was your own real money & I guarantee that within 10 minutes you will be shouting 'rigged' at the screen!

I'm 99.9% convinced the cards are not completely randomly drawn from a random deck.
However, knowing this I still enjoy playing the game because it's fun - the return is pretty good (no where near 100% for me) - but I don't think of it as a card game, but as AWP.

My only complaint, as with VWM, is that the rules do not make this clear & give the impression it's a genuine random card game. :mad:

KK
 
i still want a published basic strategy before we say rigged or not. if you make just a couple wrong all-ins, think of how many units per hundred you lose playing this wrong strategy. i played for a while there and i found without going all in each time cuts down variance a lot. i went all in on any king or ace, two paints, or two suited cards if one was paint. i called every other time (and i could be losing value because it must sometimes be appropriate to raise one but not all in nor just call). after the flop if i was paired or had a draw i'd bet, if not just check. i did quite good for a long time. i didn't feel it to be any more variance than a comparable video poker. you can choose to risk more on the hands likely to win, and therein you get more variance. AQ vs 67 is only like 60-40 right? bad beats are going to happen, especially when the other guy never folds (and i never did either). and you're playing your random hand versus the better of two other random hands. imo we need more numbers and a solid play strategy before jumping the gun.
 
This game seems really weird. How can it possibly have any HA at all?
Aas far as I understand the rules and the behaviour of the bot that is described there, a skillful player should have a very significant edge on this game if it was really played fairly.
If the player has a strong starting hand, he is guaranteed to be called with by one bot no matter what it is holding, if he flops a big hand, the bot will pay the player off all the time etc.
On the other side, if the player has a weak hand, the bots will never bet or raise postflop no matter what they hold.

So I rdid some very simple calculations for a very simple strategy:
1. The player goes "all-in" with the best 3rd of starting hand and he is expected to win around 1.1 bet by that.
I simply calculated that by assuming that the bot that doesn't fold is holding one of the best 50% of starting hands on average, since its simply the best of two starting hands. Maybe there is some catch that this is oversimplified in some way? Im not absolutely sure about that.

2. The player just calls every other hand preflop and checks down along with the bot no matter what, he is supposed to lose 0.5 every time on average.

So even with this very simple strategy the player has an edge and I completely left out that the player still has an option to choose whtether to check or bet postflop in the sceond case depending on his hand strength, this should also be a significant advantage for the player.
So I think it's extremely unlikely that the game is really dealt and/or played the way the rules decribe it. Whether the cards are dealt non-randomly or if the bots know all cards that will come doesn't really make difference IMHO, in any case the player is cheated.

PS: In another thread someone mentioned that the rules might be understood in a way that the bots are supposed to know the outcome of a hand. After reading the rhe rules I think this might be true, even though it's quite cryptically written.
 
Yeah it's very subtle but it appears if the bot starting hands fall in a certain range then "the best outcome is used".
Translation it deals the flop and picks the best of the two starting hands to use. So now all of a sudden the all-ins don't look so clever.
If you had AK and bots had J 10 and 8 9 ...........you'll be outdrawn if you were just against J 10 a fair amount of the time but you are all in against two hands effectively it seems. You're not favourite to win the pot anymore.

The other thread about this discusses alot of this. I had come to many of the same conclusions you had but the set of rules I had read for the game was not complete and someone pointed out this thing about the best outcome and that totally changes it.

Whatever the truth is for this game the fact it is so ambiguous means it should certainly be changed so people know exactly what is going on and understand how the game is being operated. The way people are playing it probably results in a massive house edge if they believe everything is random.
We should all moan to the operators and software designers about this.....of course it will no doubt take them 3 years to repsond.
 
Yeah it's very subtle but it appears if the bot starting hands fall in a certain range then "the best outcome is used".
Translation it deals the flop and picks the best of the two starting hands to use. So now all of a sudden the all-ins don't look so clever.
If you had AK and bots had J 10 and 8 9 ...........you'll be outdrawn if you were just against J 10 a fair amount of the time but you are all in against two hands effectively it seems. You're not favourite to win the pot anymore.
Exactly. If you're effectively playing against two hands but will be paid only from one (cause the hand that will lose will be folded) you only have an equity edge with 88+ and AKs.
Since you can win 9 bets and risk only 8 probably some more hands will be profitable as well, but of course it changes the whole game very strongly in favour of the casino.

The way people are playing it probably results in a massive house edge if they believe everything is random.
We should all moan to the operators and software designers about this.....of course it will no doubt take them 3 years to repsond.
I think the main problem is not only that the game has an "unclear" description of the rules. Its if they run somehting that looks like a card game but in reality is not, chances are good that this not the only example where "tweaking" the game to the casinos advantage is happening. At least it shows a strange attitude to what "fairness" in a online game is supposed to mean.
Maybe it's not just paranoia that other "players suite" games like BJ also have a bad rep of not being fully random.
 
Maybe it's not just paranoia that other "players suite" games like BJ also have a bad rep of not being fully random.
Have they? This is the first time I heard this.

If you suspect a game is not random, start collecting data. That's how Casino Bar, Netgaming.com, English Harbour, etc, got busted, not by bitching on message boards. If you have suspicions about Texas Hold'em Shootout, start recording the cards, and I will run a chi-square test for you as a start.
 
Have they? This is the first time I heard this.

i mentioned the ww players suite bj thing here within the last week, and i had read this on aka's site over a month ago, and he likely has this on good authority before making the claim. so this is not just someone crying about a bad session.

as for hold'em shootout, couldn't the reason we see all the bad beats be because neither side can let go of the hand unless the player would fold preflop? two undercards really AIN'T that BAD. :thumbsup:
 
i mentioned the ww players suite bj thing here within the last week, and i had read this on aka's site over a month ago, and he likely has this on good authority before making the claim. so this is not just someone crying about a bad session.
The referred issue relates to the thread at https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/wagerworks-bust-stats.14518/ in which a player writes:

"I have logged 500 (for each senario) hands of BJ for dealer upcard of 3, 4, 5 , and 6 bust % on wagerworks "players suite blackjack"

dealer upcard 3- bust 12%
dealer upcard 4- bust 18%
dealer upcard 5- bust 31%
dealer upcard 6- bust 22%"
 
Nafanny29 simply disappeared after making his allegations without ever providing any evidence for his claims. It looks like he decided to quit and to play a practical joke.
 
Nafanny29 simply disappeared after making his allegations without ever providing any evidence for his claims. It looks like he decided to quit and to play a practical joke.

I do not think we can assume the post is a joke, as Nafanny did not just make the claim out of the blue. He made a few earlier posts about bad BJ results with WW. For example -- https://www.casinomeister.com/forums/threads/skybet-grrrrr.13767/ . He also did not leave immediately after making that post. He made a later post mentioning suspicious results in Texas Hold'em, similar to the comments others in this thread have made. His analysis of the BJ game and loss of nearly 1000GBP in the process may have simply led to him quitting online gambling and quitting the forum. In addition, several other players have claimed similar unusual results on some of the BJ games (but not all). However, none have provided an analysis like the one in Nafanny's post. It would be good for someone to try to repeat the data. I'd do it myself, if I could play there.
 
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If you have suspicions about Texas Hold'em Shootout, start recording the cards, and I will run a chi-square test for you as a start.
I think you have completely missed my point. All I said was that the game pretends to be a card game, but isn't a card game.
If it was one, which would imply that all cards are dealt completely random and are unknown to either side (player AND bots) before they are actually dealt, the game would have a massive player advantage.
I think even my very simple calculations are good enough to prove that.
 
I think you have completely missed my point. All I said was that the game pretends to be a card game, but isn't a card game.
If it was one, which would imply that all cards are dealt completely random and are unknown to either side (player AND bots) before they are actually dealt, the game would have a massive player advantage.
I think even my very simple calculations are good enough to prove that.
It involves cards so it is a card game. The cards may or may not be dealt fairly. Could you show me your calculations?
 

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