Richard Roeper Debunked! Conspiracy Theories, Urban Legends, and Evil Plots of the 21st Century (2008)

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.How d they slip through?We re thisclose to total domination!IIISPORTS ANDGAMING8ONLINE POKERCONSPIRACIESFLUSHED OUTThis @$#! site is so rigged! They don t even try to makeit seem fair.What a &!$@ joke. Losing player on the PokerStars Web site after sufferinga bad beat in the Sunday Million tournament (the winningplayer in this particular hand was the author of this book) ve been playing Texas Hold em and other forms of poker as anIamateur for about 10 years now.I ve participated in events suchas the World Series of Poker, the Heartland Poker Tour, and theWynn Classic; I ve played in tournaments at the Bellagio, the Venet-ian, Caesars, the Rio, and Mandalay Bay; I ve taken part in dozensof charity events and in hundreds of amateur tournaments wherewe play for funsies only, because of course playing for real moneywould be illegal, ahem.I ve also played a few hands online, on sites such as the Mac-friendly Poker Room (which is now off-limits to U.S.players, sinceit declined to fight the restrictions of the Unlawful Internet Gam-bling Enforcement Act of 2006), and Full Tilt, PokerStars, and Ulti-mate Bet (all of which challenged the applicability of the UIGEA5960 SPORTS AND GAMINGand continued to accept funds from U.S.players).Here you can riskreal cash in games ranging from one-table tournaments to majorevents, with literally thousands of entrants and six-figure prizemoney.From Australia to the Netherlands to Germany, from HongKong to Canada to the United States, there are people who maketheir living sitting at a computer for 8 or 10 hours a day, staring atvirtual poker tables and wagering against opponents from all overthe world.Play at any one of those sites or just visit a game as an onlinelurker and it s only a matter of time before someone types one ofthe following messages in the chat box: This site is rigged! These guys are such crooks! What a scam, this game is fixed! I m never coming back here again.It s obvious they re riggingthe games.In nearly all of these cases, the person making these allegationshas just suffered what is known as a bad beat that is, losing ahand they were favored to win.(Sometimes they think they refavorites but they were actually underdogs in the hand, because theydidn t understand the odds.) For example, if you re playing TexasHold em and you have a pair of Aces the best possible startinghand and you bet all your chips, and your bet is called by some-one with a pair of sixes and you end up losing the hand, that s abasic bad beat.In another scenario, if you get to the final, rivercard on the board and there s only one possible card in the deckthat can give your opponent the winning hand, and that one cardthat can defeat you comes up well, that s a really bad beat.Which leads to the most insincere congratulatory comment inthe history of competitive gaming: Nice hand, sir. Nice hand as in You just got incredibly lucky. Sir as in asshole.Online Poker Conspiracies Flushed Out 61Conspiracy theorists abound on the Internet poker chat boards,blathering endlessly about the various ways in which one can becheated by other players and/or the sites themselves.Just a few of the ways in which the game supposedly can befixed:" In tournaments, the sites arrange it so the short stacks(players with a relatively small number of chips) are knockedout as quickly as possible.Why? Because those players arelikely to enter another tourney, which means they ll have topay another entry fee to the site.(The sites make money bycharging a percentage to each player entering a tournament.So if it s a $100 entry fee, you ll actually pay $110 to gainaccess to the tournament.)" Online sites use bots, or computer-generated players.Howdo you know the person sitting next to you at the table isreally a person?" Players at the same table can collude together by talking onthe phone or deliberately dumping chips to one another." You ll see an excess of premium hands such as Ace-Ace,King-King, Ace-King, and Ace-Queen, in order to stimulateaction and increase the chances that two or more players willgo all-in on a particular hand.Once again, this would bedone to get more players involved more quickly so they ll beeliminated and enter another tournament, thus giving thesite yet another rake fee." So-called bad beats occur far more often online than inreal-world, brick and mortar tournaments.Further proofthat it s all rigged! It s so rigged it ain t funny! said one poster on a poker chatsite.Why would [the online sites] want to have the big stacks favoredin all matchups? Because it would get the losing short stack intoanother game quicker cycle the players in and out of the games62 SPORTS AND GAMINGas quickly as possible gets them more money! Something justisn t right.I m going to withdraw my money and stick to land-based games!When someone tried to explain that poker is math and under-dogs sometimes win, another conspiracy theorist chimed in:You, sir, must be kidding yourself if you don t think Party Poker isrigged for what I call Rake-a-romas. The table I was at last nighthad five flushes within the first 22 hands [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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