we will be naughty and copy and paste the lot to here.
Grab a chair, get a cuppa and some digestives and enjoy!!
RIGGED!
The Real E-Story of How The People Who Make Billions Running
Internet Poker Really Are Out To Get You
and How You Can Fight Back and Win
by Dave F. Beatty
(
davefbeatty@hotmail.com)
copyright 2005, Dave F. Beatty, all rights reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
One ... Who Dun It? The Rigging Of Internet Poker
Two ... Why They Do It
Three ... How They Do It
Four ... How To Beat The Rigging -
Your Guide To Profiting From The Internet Poker Boom
Five ... How To Handle Non-Believers
INTRODUCTION
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
-- John 8:32
You have heard of internet poker. Even chimpanzees screwing in the rainforests
of central Africa are aware of internet poker by now. If you are reading this, you almost
certainly have already tried internet poker and may be well on your way to being a sad
addict. You know the game and think you know how to play. You are wrong.
The truth is that you really don't.
Notwithstanding that you probably understand the rules of the game, are familiar
with how a poker game is run and may even comprehend how the house gets paid , you
really don't know the whole story. The internet has turned the poker game you know
and play totally upside down.
Internet poker is rigged.
RIGGED.
In order to defend yourself, you need to know the truth. You need to know who's
doing it and how you it works. If you don't, you have nobody to blame but yourself when
the system sucks up your entire bankroll and leaves you crying in your beer. Get smart.
Get educated. Maybe even get rich in the process.
This e-book focuses exclusively on hold'em, as it is by far the most popular form
of internet poker. It assumes that you have a general understanding of poker, and that
you have some general familiarity with the internet game and the largest poker sites.
ONE
Who Dun It? The Rigging of Internet Poker
Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will
trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
There you are. Innocently playing a game of online no limit hold'em. You're
dealt what you believe to be a monster hand. You have two aces (denoted here as AA)!
What do you do? Why, raise, of course! That's what you're supposed to do, according
to the book. Some poor sucker calls you! And another! Wow! This is your chance to
triple the size of your stack!
Here's the flop. AK2 of different suits. Sweet! Bet it out!
Even better, both players come along for the ride.
Turn is a 2. Awesome! Top full house! You bet and some poor sucker raises!
And the other joker comes along once again. It doesn't get any better than this.
You smooth call, planning to break both remaining players on the river.
The river is another King. Okay. Nut full house. Heaven help those villains if
they have an ace, a king or a deuce. You bet, they raise, everybody gets all in.
And you have the worst hand of the three as your opponents show KK and 22.
You rebuy and scream in frustration.
Should you be angry when this happens? Hell yes. The odds against one
opponent having a better hand than you in this situation are large. The odds of two
people having better hands are astronomical. The possibility of having two players stay
in and both improve to quads is incredibly slim.
And yet it happens all the time in internet poker. Why? Because it's rigged.
Think about your own play. Haven't you seen more bizarre suckouts online than
you have in a lifetime of home games and casino play? Where else have you seen
people betting confidently with no pair and no draw only to go runner-runner to beat
your solid flopped hand?
Our analysis of dozens of hands clearly proves that this type of action happens
online far more often than it should. That's right, proof that internet poker is rigged.
The largest internet poker room, Party Poker, is believed to hold 55% of the
online poker market and supposedly earned a profit of about $350,000,000 last year.
Other poker sites, including Poker Stars, Prima Poker and Ultimate Bet rake in millions
more. These companies are, by and large, privately held and reluctant to release much
in the way of financial information.
It is safe to say that no business that successful operates alone. Even a mom
and pop backroom game is dependant on others to survive and thrive. In the case of
the world of online gaming, there is an entire web of supporting entities:
No online company could survive without relentless marketing and the muscle provided
by the enforcement arm. The dirty secret, however, of the world wide poker web is its
capitive IT arm. Without the legions of sworn IT agents, the system is vulnerable to
hacks, cheats and crackers. These same IT whiz kids also happen to play offense.
Someone has to write the code that maximizes the company's profits.
So who is it exactly that's responsible for the rigging of internet poker? The
reality is that it's all of these people. So far, they've been remarkably adept at
maintaining an industrywide code of silence, an omerta of sorts.
It's time to bring these people out into the light of day.
TWO
Why They Do It
Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between
obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
Internet gambling is the purest form of capitalism left on earth. With many willing
customers and few laws or regulations, running an online gambling site offers better
profit potential than anything this side of cocaine trafficking, with a markedly lower risk
of death. And yet pure profit potential is rarely enough. The rich never have enough
money -- that's why they are constantly trying to rewrite the tax laws to their benefit.
That's why you find CEOs who've made hundreds of millions indicted for skimming
millions more from the company till.
Machiavelli once noted that power corrrupts and absolute power corrupts
absolutely. Well, a similar thing is true with wealth. Wealth corrupts, and the ability to
achieve astounding wealth results in astounding levels of corruption.
People are greedy. It's one of the laws of nature, hardwired into our DNA
through centuries of deprivation.
In other words, “duh”. You'd do it if you had the opportunity too.
THREE
How They Do It
And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way
that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and
quick defense
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
As any internet or casino poker player knows, the house makes money on a
game by taking a “rake” -- a percentage of each pot. Most rakes are quite steep in
percentage terms – typically ten (10%) percent, but are capped at a certain dollar
amount based on the limits of the game being played.
In order for an internet poker room to maximize profits, it needs to maximize two
things: The number of raked hands, and the amount of rake taken per hand. In order
to maximize raked hands, the poker rooms may employ prop players or shills to boost
the number of games played. These players are paid or employed by the house and
serve to juice the rake. Poker sites also frequently offer deposit bonuses – free money
to players who deposit funds into the site. The catch is that the player has to play a
certain number of hands.
To maximize the rake per hand, a poker website needs to be sure that the pot
reaches a certain size. The best ways to do that, theoretically, would be to manipulate
the “shuffling algorithm” to deal players non-random cards. Ideally there would be
enough “premium” hands to cause sufficient betting and raising to cap the rake. An
alternative is to put out “action flops”, combinations of cards that encourage one or
more players to stay in the hand and bet/raise/call.
How hard do you really think it is to manipulate things in this manner? It doesn't
require rocket science or a Cray Y-MP supercomputer. You could do it on the
computing power contained in a cell phone. All the major sites say that their shuffling
algorithms are audited by major accounting firms. You know what? So was Enron.
Let's say you've survived the props, cleared your bonus and managed to stay on
the good side of the deck manipulations. The last thing an internet poker site wants to
do is to see you withdraw your money. To prevent you from doing that, most sites will
hold your money for a period of hours, days or even weeks. They pick up some extra
interest income, and you're left cashless. To add insult to injury, there is more than just
anecdotal evidence that many systems impose an effective cashout penalty – if and
when you redeposit, you receive inferior cards and your play is disadvantaged to
essentialy punish the withdrawing party.
Our detailed analysis of a number of hands shows a clear propensity toward
statistically unsound card patterns, leading to a conclusion that there is indeed evidence
of rigging.
FOUR
How To Beat The Rigging - Your Guide To Profiting From The Internet
Poker Boom
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
So now that we've covered the who, why and how, let's talk about how to flip the
script. You want to beat the system? You can, if you know how.
For starters, the best way to beat the rigged online poker system is not to play at
all. If you don't play, they can't take your money.
If you insist on playing, the surest way to win is to go against the tide. Be
contrarian. Your opponents will not expect the unexpected. Or the unexpectable. Play
smart, play huge pots, play to win.
The Top Ten Hands in Poker and Basic Winning Theory
A popular poker book by a well-known WSOP champion suggests that beginners
play only those hands that he identifies as the "Top Ten" hands in Hold'em. That
player's list consists of 8 paired hands -- AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88 and 77 -- and two
unpaired hands, AK and AQ.
What rubbish.
The ten best hands in poker are the ten your opponents are least likely to put you
on. You want a hand that will come as a total surprise, and which you can
kneecap your opponents with when it hits. They're playing AA and think top set is
good. If they're playing against typical players, it might well be. But on a board of
A29J5 rainbow, that hand is total garbage against you IF you're the one holding one of
the real top ten hands in hold'em: 4-3. If you're tricky, they might even cap it all the
way down. You'll rake a monster pot, and inevitably put your opponent on massive tilt.
The Real Top 10 Hands in Internet Hold'em are as follows, in order:
1. 7-2
2. 3-2
3. 4-3
4. 5-4
5. 6-5
6. J-7
7. 4-2
8. 5-3
9. 6-4
10. J-4
For an explanation of why these are truly the best hands in hold'em, let's get
theoretical.
The Theory of Live Cards
In order to break your opponent, you need to have better cards. It is well
established that a pair beats a high card and that two pair beats a pair. To maximize
your chances of getting a pair or two, you want “live cards” -- cards your opponent is
not likely to be holding. It is for this reason that lower cards, connected but not paired,
are strong starting hands. If you hold 3-2 and the flop comes 7-3-2, you can break the
will of your opponent holding AA by betting, raising and reraising with a great deal of
confidence that you are way ahead in the hand.
The math geniuses who publish books on traditional poker theory will tell you that
this is the exact opposite of what their math tells them to do. You know what? It is. But
math isn't always right, in part because internet poker isn't random. The bottom line is
you want to lose small pots but win huge ones, and the optimal way to do that is to NOT
play what everybody else is playing, the mathematically correct stuff.
The necessary corollary to this theory is that you have to play a lot of hands. If
the cards placed on the flop are more or less random – and you know with online poker
being rigged, they aren't necessarily random – you want to see if it's likely that you're
ahead or behind, and the only way to do that is to see the flop if it's not too expensive to
do so.
Implied Tilt Odds
Playing the real top ten hands in poker has an additional benefit – they carry high
implied odds of tilting your opponent, especially devotees of math-based systems such
as those advanced by Two Plus Two Publishing and most poker pros. You want to
drive your opponents crazy. You may succeed in getting them to overplay hands such
as K-2 and A-9. They may bet into you when they just know you've flopped a wheel.
Getting your opponents mad, angry and just plain pissed off is a key element of solid
internet poker play.
Playing for The Straight or The Flush
An additional benefit of the system described above is that it offers improved
odds of drawing to a more powerful hand – a straight or a flush – compared to the
holders of pairs or AK.
For this reason, you'll find that many hands – including 43 and even KQ are
stronger than high pocket pairs such as AA. There is a small benefit to the cards being
sooted, but the odds of hitting a flush are small enough that you should play connectors
even without them being sooted.
What Not to Play
In general, you should be very cautious in playing cards with more than a sixcard
gap between them and most pairs. It's acceptable to limp in with any pair, hoping
to hit three of a kind or a strong draw, but be very careful with these trouble hands.
Pre-Flop Raising
A lot of the treatises on poker recommend raising before the flop with strong
hands. This is nonsense. Raising before the flop rarely does anything other than
advertise that you have a monster. Unless you are in an extremely passive game
where you can make most if not all opponents fold with a preflop raise, you should
never raise. Save your ammo for when you're confident you're ahead.
Watching For Patterns
The holy grail of internet poker tools is a pattern mapper – a utility that tracks and
analyzes the pattern of cards dealt on your poker site of choice. This product is not yet
commercially available to the best of my knowledge, so you're reduced to doing a loose
track of what cards are hitting the flop on a regular basis. If low cards keep coming, this
is a sign that you may want to play more aggressively. Think of it as the poker
equivalent of counting cards in blackjack – when the odds of hitting your kind of cards
improve, you want to be in there swinging.
Advanced Play: THE HAMMER
The most powerful hand in internet poker is 7-2 unsuited, known as “the
Hammer”. Although it is mathematically the worst starting hand possible, as it is a low
four-gapper, the implied tilt odds of winning a pot with the Hammer are through the roof.
For that reason alone it is worth always seeing a flop. If you catch any piece – a pair, a
draw, something, play the Hammer aggresively and be sure to show it if your opponents
fold. Remember, to be a winning internet poker player, you need to take advantage of
every edge possible. Tilt is your friend.
Our careful statistical analysis has shown that cards favorable to improving the
Hammer hit the flop/turn/river more often than they should, so there is also evidence
that the inherent rigging of most sites favors this powerful hand.
Additional Resources for the Advanced Player
If you play regularly on most sites, you will frequently see observers pop in to
offer tips in the chat box. Some of these people are selling something, other are just
there to try and piss you off.
Every once in a while someone has a product that's worth checking out. I don't
endorse it, because I haven't read it, but a product called “Party Poker Cracked” has
caught my interest.
Keep an open mind and you might find all of the secrets of winning online play.
FIVE
Handling Non-Believers
Inevitably, you will run into people who do not believe that internet poker is
rigged. They're just wrong, typically because they are uninformed. People do all kinds
of dumb things because of incomplete information. Think about it.
The pool of ignoramuses is divided into two groups -- those who can be lead to
the truth, and those whose mind cannot be changed by anything short of a bolt of
lightning from the blue. The key thing to do, and this will help you in all aspects of life,
is to determine which of these groups anyone who disagrees with you is in. Anyone in
the latter group should just be ignored. You're probably not a deity with control over the
elements, so don't knock yourself out trying to conjure up a thunderstorm.
As for the former group, reason with them. Give them information. Help them
change their mind. Feel free to pass them a copy of this e-book, at least as long as
you're not sitting at the same poker table. You don't want them beating you with your
strategy, do you?
The TRUTH is out there. Don't let the haters tell you otherwise. Good luck, and
hit those tables hard.
The contents of this ebook represent the opinions, more or less, of the author. No endorsement of any product or company is express or implied. By reading the content of this
ebook the user is releasing the author for any responsibility whatsoever, and the user assumes all risk from the use of this information. This ebook may or may not be serious.
Peace out.
Author