For every pot that a player wins, there are either one or more losers in that pot. It is a common misconception that most players are winning poker players; in fact the opposite is true. How many times has a player said they are a “break even player”? Rarely is that the case and if they are not winning when they play poker, they are probably losing. These losing players are often not objective enough to consider that they should make improvements to their online poker game and they look for ways to pass the blame. There are many common misconceptions and sensational theories in online poker particularly.
The Curse of the Cash Out
After cashing out got lucky and the luck is now evening itself out. Only the very best win and win and even many players report a negative change in their luck. There is a thinly veiled accusation made that the online poker site is manipulating their cards in order to keep the money going to other players. They are implying the poker site is consciously thinking “This player will cash out so keep money away from them”. In reality this is unlikely to be the case as this sort of policing on players withdrawals and deposits on a grand scale would require complex algorithms that would be difficult to hide in their code. Many of these players will be losing players who simply get a bit of bad luck after having some good luck.
Hole Cards Manipulated Late in Tournament
We all know how the action hots up late in a poker tournament with raises and re-raise action in nearly every hand. Players must gamble for a stack and you get a lot more standard and some bizarre calls. An accusation was made by a forum member only yesterday suggesting there are more “big” confrontations between good starting hands near the end of the tournament and suggested the sites give players good cards to encourage more all-ins and calls to finish the tournament faster. Poker fools us well. You should be folding hands like AJ from early position late in a online poker tournament and this hand may be raised and called off later in the tournament. The ranges of calls and pushes get looser as the tournament progresses. The random card generator algorithms will always be discussed by the techies on the Poker forums but we can rest assured that our online poker experience will let our own skills decide whether we are good enough. If tournaments were ending very early this would be too obvious to hide.
Poker Books Do Not Teach Correct Strategy
This is a theory that I somewhat agree with, but with reservations. Poker books teach “optimal poker strategy”. Often this optimal strategy is playing with the knowledge that we are never sure about as poker is a game of incomplete information and lots of guesswork. Success or failure of a play tends to be made in hindsight. Poker is a game of exploitive strategy, so providing we have a good basis on general poker theory then as we progress through online poker tournaments or cash games we work out opponents approach to the game and adapt to achieve success. The key thing is to make sure you have that solid base of theory.
There are many people telling us that online poker is not safe, is rigged or that we are not able to win. Whilst it would be better if online poker sites were audited so that we knew for sure as time goes by and there are no problems then the risk of encountering them reduces. There will always be conspiracies, just like there will always be winning poker players, make sure you are one of them.
By Malcolm Clarke