Internet Poker Is Rigged - Atta Sex Nio Nio
The news about the problem at Ultimatebet really bummed me out.
In the mid 90’s AOL offered free internet poker on its website. The poker room was created by Masque Publishing and the number of players at any given time grew into the thousands. Now mind you, the games were not for real money and the moment AOL decided to charge players to play, it started a firestorm of protests and boycotts of AOL from loyal players.
In 1997-98 I began playing at PlanetPoker, first starting with the free play then moving up to games that involved real money. In February 2003, after more than five years of playing internet poker, I wrote my first post on the topic of Internet Poker being “rigged”. I have to admit that when I wrote my first post, I did not believe that internet poker was rigged, I just wrote on the topic because I liked to see the frenzy it caused. Sometimes I would take the side of “internet poker being rigged”, then other times I would defend internet poker. It was all in fun. This fun came to a grinding halt because of NioNio.
I am going to keep this post short, but I want to present my take on repairing the integrity of internet poker. Ultimatebet, PokerStars, PartyPoker, etc. do not need to “steal” money from players. There is more incentive for them to run sites that are NOT rigged, because the more players they have, the more money they make. It would be
individuals, not companies that would try to exploit the game. We saw this with the problem at “Absolute” last year and we saw it again at Ultimatebet.
My solution is as follows:
Internet sites must make “profiles” and statistical data available for all player on their site. Information such as how long they have been playing at the site, how often they stay logged on at a site, how much money is in their account, how often they need to buy-in, how often they cash-out, etc. By making this sort of information available, players can make an informed decision if they “choose” to play with the players currently at the table. Internet poker makes it very easy for a player to get up and leave a table, if the conditions do not fit a player’s comfort level. This would be very similar to Ebay users who use information such as transaction histories to determine if they want to risk doing business with a complete stranger.
Internet sites must make all “hole cards” available for everyone to see in the hand histories after each hand. I know that many people will say that this will detract from the game because it goes against the general rule of poker that “one must pay to see the cards”. For those of you who think that your “game” will be limited because too many people will have too much information about how you play your cards, tell it to the players we now see on TV, who have their cards looked upon by millions of viewers. I can watch 5 years worth of video of how Gus Hansen plays his cards, but this does not mean I have some sort of advantage over him. Revealing the “hole cards” in the hand histories will make it difficult for players that have “hacked” the software to go unnoticed. By making this sort of information available, players again can make an informed decision if they “choose” to play with the players currently at the table and if suspicious play occurs, the site can be alerted and the player in question can be monitored.
Internet sites can spend millions of dollars trying to create secure software, but the truth is that there will always be someone out there who will find a way to breach the system. I recently installed Windows XP on an old computer. Windows has this “activation key” process to prevent software piracy. To make a long story short, I “googled” “Windows XP Activation Key Hack” and found many different ways to get around this problem. Cheating will always exist in poker. It has been there from the beginning. Instead of the internet sites using their resources in trying to prevent cheating, they should focus on providing the players with tools to expose the cheaters.
Can internet poker be rigged? Unfortunately we are finding the answer to be yes.
I have been playing internet poker for many years and do not want to see it end.
I hope my suggestions will be taken under consideration.
And lastly… NioNio, go “F” yourself!