Dismissing The Myth That Online Poker Sites Are Rigged

Many players often complain that online poker sites are rigged – and sometimes it can appear so, especially when a certain player is constantly suffering from bad beats, or when they just cannot hit the card they really need. Of course, when players are frustrated it is easy to try to blame the poker sites, but the simple truth is that all of the major sites are extremely fair, and take a very strict view of any cheating.

(There may be smaller, less scrupulous sites out there that do actually rig games, but as long as you stick with a major, well known site you can be sure of a fair deal.)

So, how can players be sure that online poker isn’t fixed or rigged? Well, all you have to do is take a second to think about the logic. Poker sites make a lot of money by collecting a rake. They can only do this so long as people are playing at their tables, and so they will do everything they can to encourage people to keep playing. If a site was rigged, then it might make a few extra bucks in the short term, but the long term losses from lack of players and the damage to the site’s reputation simply wouldn’t make rigging the games worthwhile.

Online poker sites use extremely complicated and complex random number generating algorithms to ensure that the cards are always shuffled fairly. Indeed many of the large sites actually use their own players to generate these random numbers, for instance using the poker client software to collect the summary of mouse movements and events timing. Many of the sites also run backup systems as well, to ensure that if there is a problem with one system then the site can continue to operate in a fair manner.

Think about it this way, the only time that people complain about a site being fixed is when they are losing, either when they make a wild call that had no hope of being the best hand, or when they suffer a bad beat from a lucky player. No one ever complains about online poker being unfair when they hit the river card they needed, or when their pocket deuces end up making a set and beat a player with pocket Aces.

Bear in mind that even the strongest starting hand, AA, is still only an 8:1 favourite against one of the worst hands, 72 off suit. Even in this situation you would expect to lose one time out of 9 because no hole cards, no matter how strong, are guaranteed to win.

Also, think about all of the money that online poker sites make through the rake. This is guaranteed income so long as people continue to play at these sites, so it would actually be business suicide to try to fix or rig the dealing!