Is That True That Online Poker is Rigged?

For some players, the validity of online poker is still up for debate. Nearly two decades after online poker entered the mainstream during the mid-2000s “poker boom” era, many players still favour it over live poker. Throughout the game’s contemporary period, the big “is online poker rigged?” The argument has lingered. How can players be sure that an online poker site isn’t picking particular cards to deal with particular players if there aren’t any real cards or a human dealer involved in the action?

This post is for you if you’ve ever questioned is online poker is rigged.

Is Online Poker Rigged?

Online poker is not rigged, to put it briefly. The businesses that run online poker rooms stand to lose a lot if the games are rigged. Today’s players have access to a wide variety of poker database programs that, at some poker sites, can record every hand played. Assuming a platform (if it’s a respectable site) doesn’t enable tracking software like PokerTracker 4, it will at least offer hand records that can be studied.

The community of poker players can include some of the most meticulous investigators on the planet. If you’ve ever read the threads on the Absolute Poker or Mike Postle cheating scandals on the TwoPlusTwo boards, you know how difficult it is to cheat in poker for an extended period. A rigged online poker site would surely be considered dishonest. While cheats like Postle and Russ Hamilton have effectively been confirmed, the poker industry has yet to produce concrete evidence of a rigged online poker site.

If evidence of a rigged deck surfaced, major operators like PokerStars, GGPoker, and partypoker would suddenly have their reputations destroyed. To demonstrate that their random number generators (RNG) are random, all regulated poker sites employ an outside auditor. By just operating a fair poker site, a website like PokerStars makes more money in the long run.

Why Do Online Poker Bad Beats Happen So Frequently?

This is the inquiry that typically prompts gamers to wonder if a poker website is rigged. Compared to a live poker room, online poker rooms appear to dish out a lot more poor beats.

Online poker rooms can occasionally dish out so many bad beats that it seems like mathematically unlikely situations occur much more frequently than they should. However, because online poker moves along much more quickly than live poker, unlikely things tend to occur far more frequently.

While a 6-max online game can deal roughly 75–100 hands each hour, a full-ring poker game typically deals 25–30 hands per hour. You could see up to 400 hands every hour if you’re playing at four tables at once online. In terms of hands dealt, a four-table online 6-max session is similar to 16 live poker sessions. As a result, you’ll encounter mathematically unlikely events like set-over-set, two-outers, and pocket aces vs pocket kings considerably more frequently when playing online. The more hands you see in an hour, the more improbable events you’ll see, but improbable doesn’t necessarily equal impossible.