I started with a 50$ bankroll and started playing 10/25 cents NL holdem. No way I would start playing 1/2 NL with 50$. I see players at casinos constantly getting cracked when they buy in for the minimum.
I went from 50-100$ and started playing 25-50 cents. When I made 200$ I withdrew 150$. When I played the next day I won 2 hands, and then I started losing hands consistently. Hands that I feel I should have won. I agree with 2 high, the distribution is skewed. I lose more than I win to bad beats. How come every time I flop a full house I get beated by a bigger full house? My two pair constantly loses to a higher two pair on the river. I do blame it on bad players who push you, because they think they have the best hand. But I have seen too many questionable things on full tilt to attribute bad beats just to bad players. Flopped a full house before. 222KK, guy goes all in with K9. Guess what he gets a 9 on the river and I just lost 30$. I cant even protect my hand. I can not make any money on this site anymore. When I do build my money up, I lose it, when I get to the same amount again I lose it. I am forced to withdraw everytime I make 50$.

do Ks EVER hold up on this rigged poker site? Oh yeah they hold up about 1 out of 4 times! What a joke. Full Rigged Tilt joker poker! Played in a ten cent tournie today. Sure enough I get Ks in position and raise PF to 550 (BB = 80). Of course two donks call. One of them has 4s and the other AJ. Wouldn't you know it... the guy hits a 4 on the flop. I know this happens in live games too. Yeah. Of course. But it happens FAR TOO OFTEN on Full RIGGED Tilt

If full tilt had a bad beat jackpot, they would be broke!!!
No matter what you do people can't lay their hands down.
I witnessed the unbelievable yesterday.
I'm in middle position and raise with pocket 88's. The button goes all in for 18.00$, the small blind goes all in for 25.00$, and the big blind goes all in for whatever amount. I am shaking my head, saying what is going on. Now I only have pocket 88's, these people were representing AA or KK. I fold, they show AK, AQ, and KQ. I almost threw my computer out the window. I think you can understand why.
I started playing on pokerstars for money, and there are good players on it. You do get donkeys, and yes, they do draw, and sometimes they hit. But it isnt the CIRCUS that you witness on full tilt. Yes bad beats happen, but full tilt is the extreme!! Comparing the two sites, there is a huge difference.
I was playing a tourney on full tilt and one on pokerstars and the tourney on full tilt was the donkey freeroll! You can raise any amount of money and the entire table will call you.

To my mind every time full tilt does an update it becomes more brazen in how rigged it becomes. Now 3 of suit comes on the flop every 3rd hand.
AA wins about 8% of the time.

kkk777 I've noticed this too actually. The 'ol all-in after the flop on a flush draw. It's the new fad on FTP. And why not? It hits the majority of the time. Also, the number of runner-runner-runner-runner flushes I see is just crazy. When I first signed up on FTP, that move was practically non-existent except for late stages of a tourney where you have to make a stand. Now people will do it at any time - who cares if the blinds are 20/40 and the stacks are 1500 chips - they'll push their entire stack every time - and it pays! You're sitting there with top set thinking "I'm almost a 3:1 favorite at worst... I HAVE to call". And the tears flow as the donkey gets there every time.

And kriskris911, same thing. Used to be that three all-ins after you when you're holding a medium pair was an easy lay down - I mean, one of them has it. Now, K-9 or better and it's going all in, especially if it's sooted. Just a joke.

Is there not something that can be done about this? You would have to have an IQ below 60 to believe these cards are random.
Hand that is behind seems to win about 70% of the time.
Worst hand, dumbest play wins every big pot.
Is almost like Full Tilt has become an encourage the idiot program.

The guys running Full Tilt are scam artists in my opinion! If they were not they would make their dealing system more transparent and visible to players who complain that they rig the deal. But mommie these are "pPro poker players"! Uh, what undergrad or grad school do you need to go to to get a Ph.D. or MBA or MA or even a B.S. in poker? These are gamblers who got lucky and happened to be around when the poker craze took off, and are cashing in. Anyone who thinks that so-called "pro" poker players would not cheat by rigging hands or using shills/house players to make more money (rakes) by action or set-up hands isn't thinking rationally. These guys are not saints. These are not special high integrity people that save people's lives or do good for the world or others! Rather they are mostly (borderline sick) gamblers who probably couldn't make it doing anything else, or didn't have the skill or education or background, and got lucky in the short term. Their true characters are not known to anyone just because a few of them show up on TV. So why wouldn't they cheat if they run an online poker site and could make millions more?!! ANYONE?

I couldn't have put it any better myself.

I have to agree with all the others here. There's something fishy going on at FTP. I don't know how anyone with half a brain can't see the obvious patterns that occur time and time again on the site, as opposed to other poker sites. For example:

-Cards constantly making good hands for more than one player (for example, a low/high straight for 2 or more players on the turn and a "miracle river" flush for another on the river)

-A large number of miracle rivers/ runner runners

-More than one player simultaneously holding similar hole cards (paired- KK, QQ, 99/ connectors- 9c-10d, 9s-10s/ suited- 3s-5s, 4c-9c, 5d, 6d)

-The "Hotseat Phenomenon" (The same player--usually a donk (see below)-- constantly flopping trips or hitting FHs and flushes several times in a row during the hour)

-70-85% of flops coming out in a repetitive pattern during a short period of time, such as JJA, 998, 464, 332 OR... 243, 978, KQJ, 2A3, 756, which results in a high number of big hands--straights, full houses, three of a kinds-- being dealt out like candy from a pez dispenser)

I know you're asking... So what does all of this do? What is the point? It favors GAMBLERS (those who like to make high risk moves on the hopes they will beat the odds) over players who use strategy to make their moves.

For example:

SCENARIO 1:
Gambler bets 1200 preflop with 29o. Players call or reraise with AA, AKs, and KQ. Gambler REFUSES to fold and even reraises. Miracle of miracle: flop comes out 2-9-9. Turn: 6. River: 4.

SCENARIO 2:
Gambler, who's been playing fast and loose all night with low hands (and won) bets 1000 preflop with 23o. Players with AA, QQ, AKs call. Flop: AQ6. Two players have flopped 3 of a kind (AAA, QQQ) and are just pleased as punch to call and reraise gambler, who refuses to fold. Guess what happens? Turn: 5 River: 4.

SCENARIO 3:
Player 1 raises 100 chips preflop with KK, is RERAISED 350 by 3-9. Flop: Q-Q-3. KK keeps raising but 3-9 won't budge AT ALL and in fact reraises in a show of defiance. Turn: 9. River: 9

This type of thing of course can happen in real life. But it happens far too often on FTP to not be by design and usually at the expense of better poker players.

Now before people tell me I'm imagining things, ask yourself this one thing: if FTP isn't rigged, then it would obviously favor good players, right? And keep bad players/ donks to a minimum, since they would lose so much that they would either leave the site altogether or brush up on their playing. But it seems as if with each passing week that I was at FTP there was more and more reckless players at the tables, going hogwild, as if they were being encouraged in their behavior. But of course they are. FTP favors them. Enough said.

One of my last memories of the site-- and what caused me to finally quit-- was watching a complete donk buyin with 1K chips and triumphantly leave 8K richer. His strategy? Bet an insane number of chips preflop, no matter what cards he had, then just reraise on the turn and river to arrogantly challenge other players. And it worked. Raise 1200 chips preflop with 39o, watch him get trips. Get called and reraised by players with KK, AA, AKs, watch him get three of a kind, flush, or straight on the river. You could practically hear him laughing in mockery as he quickly left the table with everyone's winnings to use the same strategy at another.

That's when I said "enough is enough" and left. People who want to put money on that site, feel free to do it. You do it at your own risk-- that is, unless you're a gambler. If you're a gambler, then you might become the richest person there.

In my opinion, the only way we can do anything about the FTP situation is to start playing like a donkey. I know it sounds ridiculous, but if we know that 60% or greater of the time the underdog usually wins, and if we are constantly seeing runner runner flushes, why not go all in when the board has two spades and we have two in our hand. Seems to work for everyone else why not us? Pocket kings never win.?..throw em out!! Start playing junk. I've noticed that if I have hand like 8 3 off and I fold to a raise, I just threw out a full house. If you think someone has a pocket pair and you have AK or any junk ace in your hand and they go all in, CALL. That magic ace always seems to come. We need to adapt our strategy to the strategy of full tilt. If you have a four outer on the flop, and someone is raising, keep calling. I never hit inside straight draws or wheels in real life, but full tilt hands them out like ice cream on a hot day.
The impossible is possible on full tilt, don't play the way you do in a live game.
If you are a table and you see a repetitive pattern try to figure out which hands you can play. Or everyone just boycot full tilt. No ring games and no tourneys.
FTP is a joke I have witnessed the same thing. Every time I have pocket Kings, someone has pocket aces, if I have pocket queens and someone has AK, they always get a straight. When I have 3 6 to complete a straight someone has 4 8 to make a bigger one. I have also been subjected to these players who think even after you re raise and go all in that they still have the better hand, and then catch shit. They don't know how to play poker and they get rewarded! In real life people have to get lucky sometimes, because that is what makes poker go round, but luck happens too many times on full tilt and never to the good players.
I had pocket kings and when someone went all in with 810H and got a flush on the river he wrote "Bam" "Next". They are arrogant and they think they are good, but just wait till they day they play a live game they will be broke in a second.

I'm just going to boycott them cash-wise. To be honest, I _like_ the client software more than other online sites. But they'll not get a penny of real cash from me again, that's for sure. As long as real money isn't involved, I get a good laugh out of the beats. Anyone who actually tried to adapt to the rigging would be in danger of seriously ruining their game I think.

Another FTP story. I was playing a 180-hand freeroll last night, and had actually made it to the final four without doing that stupid all-in every hand strategy everyone uses (aka BINGO night). Just played solid poker and bet the mortal nuts hard (there's always SOMEONE(s) who'll look you up and give you all their chips).

There was a MONSTER big stack who had been the luckbox donkey of the night with ~200,000 chips, the rest of us had about 20,000. So of course he was in every pot, betting every flop, etc. etc. Standard big stack bullying. Anyway, blinds are massive and I was just waiting it out to move in with a decent hand. The donk was to my right, and I got A-A! Hurray! The BB was short stacked badly and would have to call no matter what. Donk just limps, I move all-in, BB calls, and the donk calls. He turns over 8-8 and BB had rags. If I double up, I'll be in a strong second and should be able to take one of the two winner spots. But FTP loves the drama ending hands to clean the table out so they can shuffle us along, so not only does he hit a set - he flops quad-8s. Knocks the both of us out and the tourney ends with the last two standing. LOL. And we all know this is the rule not the exception.

But of course he flopped at least one 8.
AA is almost a guaranteed loser - which is one of my biggest complaints.
AA is about a 7 - 1 underdog vs any random hand.

can someone explain to me what there rake is? How much do they take out of a pot and what is the limit? When do they take the rake?

The rake in cash games seems to not be straightforward. Check out [url]http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rake.php[/url]. Looks like about 5% of the pot typically. In SNGs and MTTs it's just a percentage on top of the entry fee. This also depends on the amount - usually around ~15%. Getting those tourneys finished so that people enter another as soon as possible sounds like a great motivation for setting-up big drama action hands where you have to push all-in or can't possibly get away from a hand once you see the flop. The bigger stack will win these more often then they should in order to get people eliminated.

Here's a series that has been circulating the web from a guy who built a poker bot. It's a multi-part series that isn't done yet, but you can read the first three parts here: [url]http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-poker-bot[/url]. Sweet dreams. This is a seperate issue from rigging, but a big reason to be wary of any online site, including FTP. I'm certain I've seen colluding bots at work before in tourneys. If you're in a big pot with a few others and all of a sudden two start to bet big, most times everyone else is going to get out of the way if they don't have a huge hand. Watch out for cases where one min-bets after the river (like 30 chips into a 10,000 pot) and the other guy folds. The next time, the other guy will fold. Rinse and repeat. But these are the obvious chip dumping strategies - a decent bot (like the one in the above linked article) would be very difficult to identify.

i thought that NBA game in 2002 - Lakers Kings was rigged.
Is everything rigged?
i guess i am naive.

Surely, if FTP is putting its cards on steroids we can do something about it

the only thing to "do about it" (until there is some regulation/jurisdiction within the USA) is to NOT play there OR to play for only minimal monies and not let them "steal" (via various means that have been alluded to here) your cash. I like poker!! It's a grret game. It got comraderie, comepetition and challenge. You can win some money. So recently I have gotten re-motivated to play live games more due to my negative epxeriences with FTP and quesitons about online poker sites in general offering an honest game in which a great, good or better-than- average player can succeed over a longer time. IF I lose consistently in an honest, live game then I will conclude maybe poker (or at least NL poker) is not for me. Until then I consider myself an experienced above average player with a excellent command of human nature and other facets or nuances of this game that make for winning play. I don't beleive these aforesaid aptitudes however can be fully used on FTP since you are not able to play real poker; and thus, you begin to play more defensive with regard to emotions such as "what will FTP's flawed RNG system deal this hand?" and the like. So plays and strategies I or other good players would have normally pursued in live games such as the way you would have bet, bluffed and the like, become distorted due to my (our) fear of being in a rigged system or rigged hand. We begin playing against a system rather than other players!

Ok, so I am on full tilt right now, playing some rigged cash games. What I am noticing right now (at two different tables) is that the name of the table match's the name of one of the players sitting at it.
Table 1 is called Rick the ruler and table 2 is called Stoystar. But the players aren't there, they are reserved for stoystar and rick the ruler.
Anyone know what that is about?

I wanted to make sure that I wasn't being paranoid about FTP being rigged, so I started testing out several other poker sites to see if I would see the same results. After all, if it's true that all the unusual things we see at FTP are just the high # of hands seen per hour, we'd be seeing the same thing everywhere else, right?

Nope. Visited one poker site (which I'll call XYZ Poker Site so I won't come across as a shill). Couldn't have been more different than FTP. 1) There were more bad beats, miracle rivers, and runner runners in 3 hours of play at FTP than in the 2 weeks than I've been playing at XYZ. 2) Donkeys were at a minimum at XYZ, whereas they're the norm at FTP. 3) No wild fluctuations at XYZ in bankroll. At FTP it's normal to triple your bankroll in an hour only to go back down to nothing in about the same time due to a large # of donkey calls being rewarded with miracle rivers. At XYZ, my bankroll has been slowly but steadily increasing. 4) None of this nonsense at XYZ where the flop CONSTANTLY makes a big hand or major draw for more than 2-3 players. So yes, if you flop a big hand, no more second guessing yourself as 3 people call or reraise, because you know your flush, straight, full house, or three of a kind will hold up.

Conclusion? It's 99.99999% certain that FTP is rigged to cater to gamblers, not players. No doubt about it. Don't be impressed by people who claim to have won $$$$ because anyone who gets a feel for how the rigging works can use it to their advantage. Doesn't make them "good players"; just makes them people who know how to game the system.

Even if i just play for play chips it infuriates me. I can't stand the idea that it is rigged and they are making millions of dollars.
8% hands win 80% of the time.
And people are so addicted (as am i LMAO) they continue to play.
My heroin dealer is furious because i never come by any more.

Hi guys,

Well I for one am certainly glad I've found a site where I can share my stories with a bunch of people who can see the same obvious anomalies.
My story is very similar to 2HighistheNutz, where I used to cash regularly in tournaments (approx 20%) and single table Sit'n'Go's (approximately 30%). I had a nice flurry of wins about 3 weeks ago on FT including a nice second in a 200 person tournament. Now, I had already undergone a long period of bad luck a few months ago following a 4th in a large tournament so I was no stranger to the FT 'curse'. That time I tried to deny that something odd was up with the site. This time I cannot, with any kind of logical explanation, make any sense of the bad run of luck I've had over the last few weeks.

I have not made the money in any tournament or SNG for the last 30 games straight on FT. After my spate of good results I started getting bad beat after bad beat. I cannot count the amount of times KK has resulted in me being knocked out. KK should be a wonderfully profitable hand but on FT it is showing a big negative EV for me. AA is a 50-50 at best like someone has already said on this site. In a 50-50 race it is like winning lottery to win the hand. The flop has been atrocious for me in these last few weeks. I cannot seem to flop anything and if I do I get a good, but 2nd best hand. If I am ahead on the flop someone sucks out on the turn or river. I almost cannot win a pot let alone a tourney or a SNG!! I used to win 50% of the hands I played (VPIP). That stat has dropped to under 25% in recent times. Everyone seems to catch their hands against me. It is unbelievable how often a flop of 5-4-4 could come out and I am playing KA or KK and I do a continuation bet and they go all in. I call it and they have A4 in their hand. This had happened so many times it defies general mathematical probability.

My love for poker and the combination of odds, wit and psychology is poisoned by this site. I have lost my confidence for playing good hands aggressively and I am playing as though my main opponent is the site first, opponents second. I’ve stopped thinking mathematically and play like I am treading on eggshells. Full Tilt is blasphemous to everything poker is. It rewards poor play and misplayed hands. It rewards players chasing long shot draws and catching them to beat a solid, smart player maximizing his pot equity edge.

Lately, Full Tilt has been playing even worse than ever. For instance, I had AA, a hand which always makes me think I am about to be knocked out. A player to my right raised and I re-raised with my AA. He called my re-raise. The flop was 9c 9h 2c. The player bet and I went all in. He called. The turn was a Tc. Cards turned over. He had Jc. He had a flush! What was he doing raising with K-7s in the first place and why did he call my raise? It is like he knew that a flush draw and a flush was coming. The chance of a player with suited cards to get their flush by the river is something like 6% but this player played the hand like he had the EV of aces. Within 2 minutes I was again involved in an all in pot. I had KK. I raised and someone re-raised me. Flop was something like 2-4-5. I could see there was a straight draw but who is going to re-raise with 33 or 44. I knew he might have aces but he was playing so loose that I had to play with the 2nd best hand in poker and a shortening stack. I went all in. He called. Cards turned over and he had 88 – a poor hand against such aggression pre-flop. He should have put me on a high pair. The cards came down and by the river he had a straight. A 6 came on the turn and a 7 on the river.
There are an infinite number of other examples I could give but these were two that stuck in my mind because of how poorly my opponents played and yet knocked me out.
For the record I do quite okay in other sites. I am making tidy little profits in CDpoker, Titan and Party Poker and those sites, at least for the moment, appear to be dealing realistic cards. I am doing even better at casinos.

There are a couple of observations I’ve made about the way cards are coming on FT. These are just observations. Is anyone else seeing these patterns?
1 - SB and BB often have big hands at the same time.
2 - Players next to you often have a big hand when you do and it is often the guy to the left who has the bigger hand.
3- Big hands like AA KK come out at the same time a lot.
4-The big stack wins a high % of stacks even when they are behind.
5- The cut off always seems to have a big hand.
6- If I play in more than 1 table at once I get the same luck on all tables.

I could see how these anomalies would support programming designed to create ‘action flops’ and expedite the knockout rate of players. The sites officials and employees and the general body of players often say there is no reason for a site to rig the cards. If using programmed measures to speed up the rate of knock out isn’t beneficial to the profit maximization of the site, then I don’t know what it is.

Welcome to the club, Ant8472. Your story is eerily similar to mine.. I'd even say identical! I even had the same dip before the free-fall which I passed off as bad luck as you did. One thing I did was to step back and take a break to try and mitigate the danger of "playing scared", which can make things worse. Didn't help at all during the free-fall and, like you and others, the worse part was that the money was going in with a dominate hand (70%+) virtually every time. And it's the big stack that does it to you, like you say in Point #4. Many pros advocate getting a little tighter, not looser, when you have the big stack (which is certainly how I play it) and try and pick off players when you have them beat and they're pot-committed. But on FTP the big stacks loosen up to insane levels (VPIP >50%!!!) and just destroy smaller stacks at unreal percentages. In real life, the big stack would turn into a virtual ATM playing like this, but not on FTP. There's the table bully style which is effective as well if you can play it properly, but it requires the discipline to fold when someone is way ahead (which is typically easy to figure out from a short stack). On FTP, the bullies lack this discipline, but manage to catch their miracle card nonetheless.

Many of us have talked about increasing elimination rate as being good for the site's bottom line, but the defenders always fall back to the "why chance rigging it when you can make tons of money not rigging it"? Well, 1) that makes sense if everyone in the world thinks logically and isn't greedy, which we know isn't true, and 2) apparently FTP will not release their RNG for scrunity by a 3rd party (citing trade secrets or some such) as other online sites have done. I've already described how rigging could be done while being undetectable to simple statistical analysis (e.g. merely tabulating the rate of certain cards being dealt is insufficient).

Here's a great web page ([url]http://www.pokerdonkey.com/what-breed-of-poker-donkey-are-you-up-against[/url]) that I read from time to time just to laugh during these frustrating times. All the usual suspects from FTP are listed, but I'd have to say the "Todariverus Donkey" and "Lowpairisamonsterus Donkey" are the ones that infest FTP. LOL. Enjoy. (P.S. None of the advice for dealing with them is going to help on FTP of course.)

Try playing multi-tables on FTP. The hands are unbelievably coordinated. Playing 4 tournaments, approximately a third of the time I will see the same starting hand withing a card at at least three of the four tables (E.G. J2, J2, J3, Q2) What are the odds of getting pocket AA (the same exact AAs, too) at the same time from two non-coordinated RNGs? This happens far in excess of the acutal probability of the event.

Additionally, nearly half of the non-coordinated hands will match a flop on a different table. In fact if I'm dealt hole cards which match the flop on another table I'm playing, 9 times out of 10 I toss them in, because you will not improve them on the table you are at.

I've been tracking this for some time, and I've found the volatility to be far in excess of what you expect from even the rankest amateurs.

It's not that you can never win on the site, it's just that the valatility will usually eat you alive before you get there. I've had a couple of decent cashes in the 24/50 tournaments,

Oddly enough, I've found it much easier to beat
the freerolls and freeplay than cash tournaments on FTP. You have the same volatility and the bad players make plenty of suckouts, but careful play allows the odds to do their job and overcome the luck over time. I detect something more than dumb luck to be in play on the cash side and cannot be convinced to put any additional funds at risk there.

Just throwing this out there, does anyone else believe that the system is setup to fail those who "sit out" for long periods of time in tourneys? Anyone have any experiences with this happening?

I don't think so. Don't see how it could be set up like that. I have a bad modem and played tourneys where the modem has gone out and I was out pretty much whole thing. And have taken 3rd. Blinds will get you every round. but it comes down to how much blinds are and how people are playing. But I don't think its that way.

simo1981, I know what you mean, but I don't really think of it as punishment for sitting out, rather it's just another insane beat. You can't get screwed if you don't play a pot. I've sat card dead for 20+ hands in a row lots of times (stuff like J-2o, the hand I hate the most and see the most) and as soon as I pick up something juicy and hit my hand, I'll get beat bad. Never ceases to amaze me that you can sit that long, and someone will still go to the mat holding junk and river you.

I've been playing high-stakes play money on FTP (lol, I know, but at least the players had to have some skill to build a large-sized play money bankroll), and things have been somewhat reasonable. The problem of the big stacks winning the late-stage push-or-folds in the most unreal ways possible is still pretty apparent, though. The biggest pot in the last one was an FTP bad beat special, that I thankfully wasn't involved in. One guy was pretty good, the other not so much (all-in after the flop quite a bit). Flop comes K-6-3 rainbow. The skill guy makes a pot sized bet, the other guy pushes (as usual), the skill guy calls with K-J or something (which was a solid call against this clown). Donk has Q-10 clubs. Turn and river come runner-runner clubs to make the flush. Classic. The guy had a ~8% to win that hand. That means, on average, I'd have to see that situation another 9 times before that happened again. On FTP, no way. Of the absolutely retarded calls I see, there's no way the guy loses 90%+ of the time... not even close.

I have found if you don't play for a while, when you come back, you have massive good luck.
I find AA to lose about 90% of the time.
I find that there is AA vs KK an inordinant amount and that often, the KK will catch a K on the flop. What better way to increase rake?
3 of a suit on the flop and 4 on the board comes an insane amount.

But can they be sued?
Can they be stopped or forced to become legit?

And I agree with 2High - 8% hands win an awful lot more than 8% of the time.

I had a really nice day yesterday on FTP. I played in the morning and was up some monies. Went to work and all of that, started playing again around 8pm. Everything was fine! I was playing rather well, and making some good calls and my cards were holding up. Then all of a sudden around 11pm, the tide took a drastic change. The classic FTP bullshit started. Flopping set over set, just be sucked out when the guy caught quads on the turn. Flopped top two pair someone gets three of a kind on the river. I have QQ, someone has KK and someone else has JJ, and the flop is 910J. Or I am involved in a huge pot and me and the other player have the same cards! But the best was when I had pocket aces and four people limp in and I make a sizable raise pre-flop, the button calls me with 8 4 offsuit and suckes out a straight!. I REALLY BELIEVE HE KNEW THAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN. Who would even limp in with a hand like that? And even if he thought I was stealing the pot, who is he to contest me with 8 4 offsuit?!?!?!?!?!I am so sick of playing so many hours and making money to losing it to the exact amount that I had when I started.
Its funny, because all of this stuff starts happening when a few recognizable players start playing. You can't win a hand against them, they sit at 16 tables with 100$ a pop and ALWAYS WIN the hand they are involved in. I've learned to not play when they are on the site.
I feel like emailing full tilt and giving them a list of names. I have a list of eight names that I feel are poker bots or work for full tilt. When they are on the site, that is when all this crazy bullshit starts, and you start losing. One of them had pocket tens and raises pre-flop, I have AK and I call. Flop is A 5 J, she bets I call, the turn is 4, she goes all in.....Y with a pair of tens and me calling on the flop. She gets a ten on the river. I feel so paranoid, but I really feel that she knew that was going to happen. SHe never loses a hand, somehow the odds are always in her favor.
KKK777 I don't think they will ever be sued and I don't think they will ever become legit. I don't think there is someone to force them to become legit. Even if there were, FTP would be 'legit' for awhile and then slowly but surely they will go back to how they are now.
Does anyone believe that there is a problem with their card generator? Could we suggest to them to look at that? Or possibly make their soure code available?

I wrote them once and suggested they pole their clients and ask how many people thought the cards were random. They said they had no such plan.

But that 8 - 4 hand - I have seen people I am sure were cheating.
Either people with some kind of program to show cards in advance or they are ftp robots.
I find AA is an absolute guaranteed loser.

It's not just FTP with bots and workers stealing money from innocent people.
It's EVERY online website.

You can play perfect, make every single right move, and yet, lose an inordinate amount of money on HUGE suckouts! This has happened to me on numerous occasions, on numerous sites.

So many times, somebody will hit a one-outer against me on the river, when I've gone all in on the flop. Why that person is even in the hand, to see the river, at that point is beyond me.

So why do we keep playing? Probably because most of us really enjoy the game of poker, and not many of us have a casino close to us.

I also agree with the person above who mentioned, that they were sick of winning a bunch of small pots, only to lose one ridiculousy big one, to put them right back where we started.

I have NO DOUBT, that online poker sites have bots, and employees stealing money from innocent people. The only way that will ever stop, is if people just quit playing online poker, or if all those poker sites are shut down.

I usually play on WSEX, as shitty as that site is, at least it gives you the rake back, at the end of the week. But today I cashed out all of my remaining funds. I built my bankroll up to $300 (starting from $14, after i cashed out a Kyle Busch, NASCARS future). I hadn't played poker at that site in a long time. I've bet on horses, Basketball etc, but hadn't played in the poker room in a long time.
At 1st, I got great cards, and rarely took a bad beat. My aces held up against hands like AK, AQ, JJ etc. If I was a 4:1 favorite. 80% of the time my hand held up. Needless to say, once I got to a certain point, the cards started going against me, EVERY time. I'd have runs where I wouldn't see a face card for dozens of hands at a time. In one stretch I had a 2 or 3 in my hand 13 hands in a row. The last 47 pocket pairs I had, I failed to hit a set. And the odds of hitting a set are 1:6.
Of course, that's not all that happened. The bad beats started to happen incredibly frequently. AA losing to A10. KK losing to A9. My str8's losing to bigger straights, My full houses, losing to bigger full houses etc.
Earlier today, playing on a 100PL Omaha H/L split. I was dealt A99K (Double suited) I raised the pot preflop and had 3 callers (out of 6 players, and I play extremely tight) The flop came 998. Now of course, I have to play this slow. I'm 1st to act so I min bet. I have 2 callers and then the last to act raises the pot. I'm thinking to myself (yes this is what I want) So I min raise the guy back hoping someone else is on a draw and will come along . I get a call, and then, the last player reraises me the pot (which is about $70 at this point). I obviously move all-in (for my last $87) the other guy drops out, now of course I'm thinking this guy has 8's full of nines. The cards are turned over and he has 10 10 A 4 Turn is a 10, River, you guessed it, 10.

Now if this doesn't reek of BS I don't know what does. What posesses someone to raise the pot twice (in omaha no less) when he has no draw and an over pair, to a pair on the board, when someone has raised pre flop and reraised after slow playing the flop? Are you telling me this guy didn't know he was going to hit quad 10's?

That's the last straw for me. I can accept bad beats, I know it's part of poker. But when these kinds of things happen, on a regular basis, it's not even fun anymore. All online poker sites are the same, they'll give you only so much, before they decide it's time to take it away.