[stevethe4th]

EVERYONE READ THIS +++ PAGE ONE OF TWO+++
SEE MY OTHER POST AS WELL..apparently I write too much and needed two posts to write everything I would like to know what you think, so please feel free to write me
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Okay I have really tried to be patient and avoid the rigged talk about Full Tilt, figuring 'oh that's just poker'.....however, I decided to start keeping track of situations where the odds just are not RIGHT!!

Take the time to read this; the first part is a brief background about my playing experience, then a part about the business of online poker, and finally my trial regarding the odds not being correct on FUll TILT.

Playing Experience: a lot of live poker for years now. Also, online at Full Tilt and PokerStars. I have played in thousands of online tourneys..mainly sit-and gos..from 9-45 people..All totaling about 40,000 hands online.

The Business of Poker: This is very straight forwarded. It is all to make more money. How do you do that? 1.) Get more players. 2.) Offer more games. 3.) Use fast moving blinds..in particular turbos. The very simple logic here is items 1..2...and 3 all = more buy ins = more money for the site.

Now, let's imagine this for a while.

How else could you make more money if you owned a poker website?

Easy answer: Keep the action moving. How do you do that? Artificially increase the rank of hands dealt, and or the frequency with which they are dealt.

MY TRIAL:

So here is my trial. I decided to keep track of one very specific situation that comes up all the time in online poker...THE ALL IN SHOVE CONTESTS!!

Here is why I chose to track this data:
1.) It is very easy to calculate the true odds.
2.) It is very easy to calculate the outcome.
3.) Items 1-2 make it very easy to calculate the % at the end.
4.) Easy to keep track of cause it is almost always two people all in (simplifies the math too)
5.) This is where the game can be 'artificially' sped up, and thus offers the window of opportunity if indeed a website does want to RIG THINGS!

So, I set out to track every all in hand that I played, and compare the results to what the mathematical probabilites should be. As you can imagine if you are even GOOGLING for this forum....the results did not look good for FULL TILT!!

Here is what I found in a nut shell:

When I was a favorite 80-20%
I only won about 62%
-18% differential

When I was a favorite 70-30%
I only won about 58%
-12% differential

When I was a 60-40% favorite
I only won about 52%
-8% differential

When I was a 55-45% favorite
I only won about 48%
-7% differential

Finally, in the so called 50-50 coin flips
I only won about 42%
-8% differential

By the way, my study was over hundreds of these ALL IN situations, making it statistically viable.

Conclusions:

1.) I must have really bad luck......??(However, think about this: for me to have bad luck..that means some other players must have good luck..more on this in my next post)

2.) Something else to think about: I do not ever recall once over any period of time 'defying' the odds. By that I mean winning more than I should...ANYONE????

3.) No matter how good of a player you are, there is no way to turn a GOOD profit when the odds aren't correct. (Please note: I actually do turn a profit..about 17% ROI which is considered good) I do believe though if the average player has the same reported odds differential that I do, you will LOSE MONEY!!

++++++I am running out of room here so please see my next post++++++++++