The State of Poker: My Assessment (Part 1)

***Since I have once again fallen out of grace with the poker gods, I will be catching up on my posting. Maybe tomorrow will be better.***

Part 1: Online Poker - Is it really rigged or are you just THAT bad?

Tell me if this sounds familiar. You just signed up for a new poker site. Lets call this the Paris Hilton poker site (for no reason other then to boost hits). You start out really well. You are getting paid off on some of your big hands and getting away with a good amount of your bluffs. You are a winning poker player and your confidence is soaring.

Then one week, two weeks, a month into playing on that site you find that you can't win anymore. You aren't getting paid off on your big hands and you aren't getting away with your bluffs. Also, it seems like everyone is outdrawing you. So you get frustrated and wonder if maybe the site is rigged. You do a search online to see if anyone has written about it and find people complaining of similar woes. You also find conspiracy theories about how the poker sites stack the decks against winning players. Supposedly the sites want the fish to get lucky so that they keep playing and the rake keeps on coming.

You become convinced that the site is rigged and move to another site only to find that the same thing happens again. 4-5 sites later and you are ready to swear that all online poker is rigged. Does this sound familiar at all? Well it does to me because it is my story. Only it wasn't a Paris site, it was Full Tilt poker that I first thought was rigged. It took me a long time to realize that Full Tilt isn't rigged. I was just THAT bad.

How do I know that it wasn't rigged? Well I can't prove it. But I can provide some logical reasoning.

First of all, it would be stupid for online poker sites to rig their decks. It just goes against common sense. Like they are really going to risk their multi-million dollar business by dealing out a few (un)favorable river cards. Give me a break.

Secondly, the bad beats are all about perception. It probably seems like people are hitting that river ace or that runner runner flush every time. However, what really is happening is the results are being magnified. 2 examples will be used to illustrate my point.

The first is from when you began playing at the site. You sat down at a $1/$2 no limit table with $100. You got paid off on an overhand and managed to bluff a few small pots to put your chip total at $225. Then you hit top pair but a player with $50 raises allin with a flush draw and hits. You, annoyed and not wanting to tilt, decide to quit for the night up $75.

Now fast forward 3 weeks. You didn't get paid off by American Airlines and your bluffs were foiled by some crafty opponenets. You only have $75 when you hit top pair and a player goes all in with his flush draw. He hits again. You are down to $25.

Nothing about the suck out changed at all. All that changed was what had happened previous to it. It hurts a lot more when you get sucked out on and have to put a red number in the books than it does when you still have a fat black number staring at you at the end of the day.

Finally, and most importantly, there is a very valid and logical reason why you aren't as successful anymore. When you started, no one knew anything about you and how you played. People either gave you the benefit of the doubt because you were unfamiliar (the bluffs that worked) or assumed you were just another fish (the big hands that got paid off).

However, while you were winning, the good players paid attention. They took notes on whether you made a lot of continuation bets. They paid attention to how easily you could lay down a pair of aces with a rag kicker and how often you chased that open ended straight. They especially studied your betting patterns. After two weeks, those good players could probably write a small book on how to play against you. Maybe they noticed that you bet slightly less when you had it than when you were bluffing and therefore were able to pick off your bluffs. Maybe you only raise from early position with one of the top 5 hands and they were able to avoid some of your monsters because of this. It doesn't really matter though. The main point is that the good players start to figure you out and outplay you. This is the real reason why you aren't winning anymore.

To sum, online poker isn't rigged. It would be extemely unintelligent for the owners to jeopardize the cash they are raking in. The reason you win at first but then start to lose after a while is the good players have figured you out. And you seem to be getting bad beat more often because it just hurts more now that you aren't winning.

So what do you do? Well first is admitting that "yes, you are that bad." There are then 3 possible paths to take. The first is to keep doing the same thing until you lose all your money. The second is to just keep switching to a new poker site and then stopping once you aren't winning anymore. You'll make money but you won't get much better. The third is to change things up. This is an invaluable skill both in poker and in life. It's the hardest route but the most rewarding.