Is PokerStars Rigged? Here Are the Facts

 People still ask me all the time if PokerStars is rigged. Or if online poker in general is rigged.

And I have never written an article about it before because I think this just legitimizes what to me seems like a pretty ridiculous question.

But I know that the emails and the comments about online poker being rigged won't stop. And therefore hopefully this article will solve the Great Debate once and for all!

Is online poker rigged? Are we being invaded by Russian bots? Are there mysterious ninjas hired to create another rigged river card just for you right before the final table?

I gotta be honest. I can't possibly answer all of these earth shattering questions in a tiny little blog post like this.

However, a little bit of common sense should tell us that of course there is some nefarious behaviour going on when anything important (such as money) is on the line.

Humans rig the stock market, they rig elections, they lie on their resumes and they cheat on their high school exams as well. Heck a decent chunk of them even end up cheating on the person that they swore their wedding vows to!

So in short, yes of course there are certain poker sites and individuals out there who are trying to rig the system in their favor when it comes to online poker. You would have to be incredibly naive not to realize this.

But is there widespread cheating going on across the entire industry, and specifically at the biggest online poker site in the world, PokerStars?

Probably not. Here are 5 reasons why.

1. PokerStars is a Money Making Machine

The first and most highly obvious reason why PokerStars is probably not rigged is because they are an absolute money making machine.

As I have said many times before on this blog the house is always by far the biggest winner in poker. And PokerStars takes this to an entirely new level.

They are estimated to be bringing in 500 million dollars in pure profit each year. And therefore god only knows how much they were hauling in 5-10 years ago when poker was really booming.

So common sense should once again beg the question: Why on earth would you possibly want to screw that up?

When you are already making absurd amounts of money and dominating the entire industry what possible incentive could you have to want to rig something?

PokerStars is one of the most successful and profitable brands the industry has ever seen. And no matter what you think of their new ownership, they continue to crush it in every possible way from a business point of view.

So there is simply no plausible motive here.

In fact they have every reason in the world NOT to rig it and just keep playing a winning hand over and over again.

 

2. You Can Simply Go Check it For Yourself

The second most important reason why PokerStars is probably not rigged is kind of a biggie as well. And that is that you can actually just go and check it for yourself!

PokerStars is one of the few poker sites out there who are very open about what they do. They will in fact actually send you every single hand history that you have ever played on their site.

I know this because I did it myself once. I requested close to 8 million hands that I had played on PokerStars from them. Within 24 hours I had the links to download them all.

This means that I could then go stick those 8 million hands in a tracking program like PokerTracker and run extensive analysis and tests looking for statistical anomalies.

This is one of the biggest reasons why I am not a big fan of a recent trend in online poker towards anonymous poker sites and/or those who do not provide hand histories.

"Open source" poker sites like PokerStars are much better for the industry in my opinion because they allow us to essentially police the games for ourselves.

 

3. There is No Actual Evidence that PokerStars is Rigged

So given the fact that we can actually run our own tests and search for statical anomalies over massive sample sizes you would think that all the people who are so certain that PokerStars is rigged would have overwhelming evidence to support their claims.

Nope, nada, none.

There has never been one conclusive study that I have ever seen, based on a statistically relevant sample size, which actually proves that there is any rigging going on at PokerStars.

Their standard arguments instead usually go something like this:

"OMG...My AA got cracked 3 times in a row by some stupid fish!!!...I told you JOKERSTARS is rigged, rigged rigged!!!"

The main problem with these "arguments" is that they fail to account for even the most basic variance in poker and they are completely lacking in a statistically significant sample size.

A sample size of 3 hands is completely meaningless in poker. And so is a sample size of 300 hands, 3,000 hands or even 30,000 hands.

You need to be working with millions and millions of hands in order to get to the point where you can mathematically rule out variance. Anyone who has actually played this many hands of poker knows exactly what I mean by this.

I have never seen a real legit study based on this many hands which conclusively proves that there are widespread statistical anomalies going on with the RNG on PokerStars.

Because if such a study like this actually did exist, believe me you would have heard about it by now. And it would be an absolute bombshell within the poker industry.

 

4. Human Bias and Defence Mechanism

The next reason why many people are convinced that online poker is rigged is because most people lose at this game. And that unfortunate little reality isn't likely to change any time soon.

Once the poker sites and the winning poker players take their cut there just isn't much left over for everybody else. In fact I would estimate (conservatively) that 70% of poker players lose over the long run.

And the other thing that we know about poker players is that virtually all of them think they are pretty good, or at least above average. Poker is kind of like driving, nobody will ever admit they are bad at it.

So this naturally leads to a situation where many losing poker players will look to either repress this reality or simply shift the blame to something else for their lack of success.

In fact, Sigmund Freud (the father of modern psychology), even created a name for this very common unconscious process. He called it a defence mechanism.

When you aren't winning at poker the easy solution is just to blame it all on your bad luck or convince yourself that the whole game is rigged against you.

This is an absolutely crucial reason why poker continues to be so profitable.

Losing poker players have an easy out. They can just continually convince themselves that their lack of success is due to some outside force beyond their control.

And therefore, they never even think to address the real reason why they keep losing, which is their own lack of skill and lack of tilt control among other things.

There is no other game on earth that I have ever seen that inspires such incredible levels of self delusion. And quite frankly, it is an absolutely beautiful thing.

 

5. Variance and the Speed of Online Poker

The final reason why many people swear that online poker is rigged is because they don't realize how the speed of the online game changes everything.

A lot of the people who claim that online poker is rigged come from a live poker background. Or they have played a statistically insignificant amount of hands online (less than 100k).

Therefore, they simply do not understand that the speed of online dealing (often 3 times as fast as a live game), coupled with the ability to multi-table, means that bad beats and coolers are simply bound to happen far more often than what they are used to.

This doesn't mean that anything is actually rigged. It just means that you are now experiencing the acceleration of a Ferrari instead of your old Toyota.

Yes it is going to feel weird at first. It won't even seem believable at times in fact.

And if you try your hand at something like Zoom Poker (which deals hands upwards of 10 times as fast as a live poker game), it might just blow your mind completely!

You really have to understand that online poker is a completely different experience from live poker. Yes it is the same game with the same rules, but all of the similarities end there.

The speed at which the online version of the game is dealt means that you are going to get to the long run far quicker than you are used to. This also means that you will see the true depths of statistical variance much more vividly.

And when you add in the ability to multi-table into the mix as well, you better buckle up. Because it is going to be downright crazy and quite simply not believable at times.

 

Final Thoughts

The debate about online poker being rigged or not will rage on no matter what I say here.

And I know a few people will probably even accuse me of being a "shill" for PokerStars even though anyone who reads this blog knows that I have actually been recommending that you DON'T PLAY there for many, many years now.

And that is not because I think there is any rigging going on at PokerStars. It is simply because there are many far easier poker sites (softer games) available to play at in my opinion.

But hopefully some of the points discussed in this article will help bring some sanity back to the discussion. Obviously online poker faces many challenges and the integrity of the games will always be questioned as well.

Humans like to cheat at stuff after all. The sky is blue as well!

But the idea that there is any widespread rigging going on at PokerStars in particular is pretty absurd in my opinion. I have won a lot of money on that site over the years by simply playing a solid fundamental strategy.

Furthermore, they have absolutely no reason whatsoever to risk their enormous cash cow. When you are already making money hand over fist the legit way, you have absolutely no incentive to ever screw that up.

Lastly, since PokerStars is one of the most open and transparent poker sites out there in my experience, you can simply just request the data and determine how rigged they are for yourself!

Source: blackrain79.com