Let me start by saying that this is NOT a whinge or any kind of anti-poker thread, but more my changed view and perspective on things. And I apologise in advance for the long post.

After spending 3 weeks playing at PokerStars and PartyPoker with the occasional dip into PKR, it has become apparent that there are definitely differences in how the games pan out. However, I am becoming ever more convinced that it is indeed the players that are the problem and not the software.

When you play on PokerStars or PartyPoker, there are definitely a lot more good players than bad. PKR has, in my opinion, some of the worst players I have come across. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good players on PKR and there are bad players elsewhere, however there currently seems to be a fair amount of bad players playing PKR. I suppose this was inevitable given the strong advertising on the internet and of course, it’s fantastic 3D interface.

I must hold my hands up and admit that I have been one of the people shouting and whinging about PKR, but now I have had time to reflect and analyse a few things and I have now drawn a different conclusion.

The other day I played solely on PKR and I had a very up and down session and ending up slightly down on the day. It wasn’t because of bad play on my part, but bad play of others. This, as many of you will know, is very very annoying. But I guess we have to live with it, adapt and get on with it.

Let me try and explain some myths as I now see them. And I totally admit to believing some of the myths before I sat down and thought it through.

Playing PKR, there was one player in this particular session who was playing 90% of hands. He didn’t care if you raised or not. He called. And the sad thing is he was actually winning. When questioned about playing any 2 cards, he simply replied “It works for me”. And at that point in time, it was working for him. Now we all know that eventually a guy like this will lose it all, but for now he’s winning. And I will use this guy, and a few others, to try and explain my thoughts.

1. The suck outs don’t happen on other sites
So why does this happen? Is the software better? Well no it isn’t, but the players sometimes are. Let me explain:
DonkFish on PKR has K-3 off suit. MrSolid raises with AK to 4x BB. DonkFish is the only caller. (This actually happened by the way, just the names have been changed). So the flop comes down K-x-x. MrSolid bets out, DonkFish calls. Turn is a 3, river is blank and DonkFish takes down the pot and MrSolid is suitably annoyed.

Now, if this hand was played on PokerStars, MrSolid would raise with AK, but DonkFish wouldn’t be DonkFish there, he would probably be MrSolid2 and would fold his K-3 off suit. No lucky donk suck out is witnessed.

In another hand, DonkFish had 7-6 off suit. Flop was A-3-3. One player bets out and DonkFish calls! (I have no idea why he called. If you do, feel free to fill me in). Turn was 5. Player bets the pot. DonkFish calls again! River is a 4 and DonkFish hits his gut-shot straight to beat trip 3’s. Again, a good player would probably have not gone to the turn and certainly wouldn’t call a 10-1 shot with odds of just even money. So again, a suck out is seen on PKR, but PokerStars would probably not see this at all.

2. Bad play is always rewarded
Really? That’s a useful bit of information. So to win online all we need to do is call constantly with hands like 8-3 off suit and we’ll become rich. Only now the secrets out so everyone will be playing badly to take advantage of the flaw in the software. Damn

3. That 5% chance hits 90% of the time
This is a one sided view. The perception that a long shot hits 90% of the time comes about because you never see all the times it fails. Let’s imagine you are sat heads up with DonkFish. 10 hands in a row DonkFish has a gut-shot straight draw by the river and calls every time. It misses 9 times so he folds to your bet on the river. You never see his hand so you never know he missed the gut-shot. The tenth hand though hits and he takes a large chunk of your stack. When you see his hand you realise he hit a gut-shot on the river and start to fume because he didn’t have odds to call etc etc. So you see it hit once, but you don’t see it miss 9 times. This gives the perception of that long shot hitting far too often.

4. In tournaments, short stacks always win an all-in
This is impossible. If it were true then no one would ever be knocked out of a tournament

5. In tournaments, big stacks always win an all-in
Another complete fallacy. If this were true, you would only have to win one hand to win the tournament. Once you became the ‘big stack’ just keep going all-in and no one could beat you because “the big stack always wins”.

6. The RNG is rigged to help new players win
Oh how I wish this was true. I wouldn’t have lost so much money in my very early days. Also, how do they prioritise these magic winnings with a table full of new players? Let them win one hand each until they get bored? And imagine the software going into overload as 1,000 new members join that day and it is desperately trying to make them all win.

7. The RNG is rigged to juice up the flop and generate maximum rake
This is very risky and would mean immediate boycott and probably closure of any site caught doing this. This is also something that cannot really be viable. If every flop was like this, it would soon be spotted by anyone with half a brain. So to pull this off, surely they would have to throw in some normal flops and of course some flops that generated no rake at all just to avoid suspicion. This means that they would probably generate about the same rake by fixing the RNG as they would by just letting it run its course. Besides, they make so much money from normal rake, why would they want to poison the golden goose?

8. Pocket pairs v pocket pairs happen all the time, like AA v KK
This is selective memory. I have seen it happen many times and on every site I have ever played and it is something that sticks in your mind. The reason it sticks is because it is so easy to remember. If you were asked how many times you had seen K-Q v J-10 for instance you would struggle to recall any hand because it appears normal and yet there is a far larger chance of it happening. AA v KK does not seem normal (especially on a 6 seated table), and so the perception is that is should never happen. So if you see it twice, then it just seems wrong.

9. There is a doomsday switch that they use to make me lose because I withdrew some funds
Poker sites don’t care who wins or loses. And this is quite a reverse situation that just wouldn’t make sense. Imagine being the manager monitoring cash-outs. You are told that JoeBloggs has just withdrawn most of his cash. You angrily jump up and hit the switch to make him lose from now on. But hold on, does that make sense? If he loses the rest of his cash, he may get fed up, leave and never come back. Surely it would make far more sense to have a switch that made him win?! That way he would carry on playing and generate more rake for the site. But there is a catch. If he wins, someone has to lose. Oh no, so he may leave. Better make him win a few hands too. In fact, why not just make one big button that keeps everyone about even in their bankrolls so everyone will stay and generate lovely rake? Or better still, have no hidden buttons at all.


I think that covers my thoughts on the situation. I apologise for the long post and I would like to emphasise that these are only my views on things. I could be totally wrong, I could be right.

I am the first to admit that I have been more than vocal about PKR, especially after suffering a bad day. I would like to apologise to PKR (if they read this) and anyone else who may have rolled their eyes at my whinging. But I have thought long and hard about these issues, and the more I think about it, the more I am convinced there is no online conspiracies. Playing on other sites made me realise that there are a lot more rivers seen on PKR. And when more rivers are seen then so are more suck outs. I also have zero live game experience so it is very viable that I am looking to blame the software for the inevitable variance that hits every poker player.

At the end of the day, we are playing against each other. We are trying to take each others money. If you lose, someone else has won. And visa versa. Your bad beat is someone else’s good beat and while you are screaming at the monitor and blaming the software, he (or she) is dancing around the room. And let’s be honest, we’ve all been the ones that get to dance once in a while.

Good luck at the tables