I want to see your email
This is not an angry complaint (haha). More of a "wondering." I've just had perhaps one too many peculiar situations come up so far in my two-day old online poker career with PokerStars. I've logged maybe a little over two hours altogether at cash tables, playing in like five separate sessions.
At first, I was dealt pocket Queens twice in a row, which as far as I know should be incredibly rare. Not only that, a few hands later I got pocket Queens again!
I've witnessed in a single session and not that far apart two players going all-in against each other and both times it was pocket Aces over Pocket Kings. I've read that it should be incredibly rare that Aces are dealt with Kings in the same round, and it was Daniel Negreanu saying it in his book.
In a most recent round, I was dealt what honestly was an insane amount of low pocket pairs, to be realistic it was probably somewhere like 18-20% of my hands seemed to be low pocket pairs and I just don't think that's mathematically sound (I think pocket pairs of any kind are a little more rare than that). Not only that, towards the end of a session I went all-in with pocket two's and came up against pocket Kings. Just seems strange...
I've taken a number of peculiar and tough beats as well and it's just all adding up to be a bit of a strange experience. I may not have thought anything of it, but before I got involved in online poker I remember a friend of mine commenting on the sometimes "rigged" nature of some online poker sites. Honestly I'm totally willing not to believe it and realize this is very unlikely given an upstanding legitimate site such as this, I was just wondering if there's a better explanation for what I think is pretty blatantly odd situations that come up with great frequency at PokerStars tables so far, Should it just sorta "smooth out" eventually or something?
Again, just a "wondering..." :) Overall a fun experience so far!
Thanks!
and stars' response
Hello Joseph,
Thank you for your email.
We are sorry to hear you have suffered some bad beats recently. Please keep in mind bad beats are a part of poker and happen to all players, whether they play poker in a live casino, at a friend's house, or online at PokerStars.
Please understand that if there is a low probability of any event happening that this does not mean it is impossible.
For example, the chance of picking an Ace out of a deck of 52 cards, four times in-a-row (provided that you reshuffle the cards after each time you pull a card out) is is ((4/52) * (3/51) * (2/50) * (1/49)) or 0.00000369%. However, if you tried it 50 million times (the average amount of hands we deal on PokerStars each day), regardless of how seemingly low the probability may be, you would mathematically expect to pull out an Ace, 4 times in a row, just over 184 times!
Low probability events *will* occur given a large number of attempts. At PokerStars we deal around 50 million hands per day, so the low probability hands you think are impossible actually happen many times, simply because of the enormous number of hands we deal.
Think of it another way; If low probability events never happen (and our opponents never outdraw us by catching their one or two-outers) it would actually indicate a shuffle was NOT random. For a shuffle to be legitimate, low probability poker
hands must also happen sometimes.
PokerStars deals the cards in a fair and honest manner. Once the deck is shuffled, it is set, and the order in which the cards are dealt cannot be changed. The software that shuffles and deals the cards cannot control who wins and loses; it just deals the cards, and the rest is up to the players in the game.
Our software produces a shuffle that is completely random and favours no player over any other. The methods we use ensure complete randomization of the cards and complete unpredictability of the cards to come:
PokerStars Software Security - Secure Online Poker
We arranged for Gaming Laboratories International, a widely recognized independent gaming product testing laboratory, to review PokerStars' shuffle. Their investigation found the shuffling to be fair and random:
Random Number Generator - PokerStars Randomly Generated Numbers - RNG
This information is also described by Lee Jones, Head of Poker Communications, in a video called 'How does PokerStars shuffle the deck?’, which can be found at:
http://www.pokerstars.tv/channels/2014/10/inside-pokerstars---episode-3.shtml
We encourage you to review your own hand histories and to perform your own analysis using widely available poker tracking software. We have dealt over 100 billion hands and freely give real money hand histories any time someone requests them. If you want, we can send you a copy of every single real money hand history that you have played.
*Every* proper investigation of our shuffle has found the same thing: our cards are randomly shuffled. Many who have conducted such studies have posted their findings to the Internet. You can find two of them here:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.gambling.poker/OtsfsNSLx3E/f0rcZ_4tCJAJ
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.gambling.poker/JJin8F9J4Mg/a0yfh6QQcBcJ
We hope this information helps you to understand that PokerStars' games are fair. We value all of our players and take the integrity of our site very seriously.
Regards,
Mick
PokerStars Support Team
They have to deal with this crap!
How did Mick do?
(If you guys help me out, we can work to make another response for me to send out if you guys are as unfazed by this response as I am.)