Arggg...

I'm smart enough and good looking enough to know that the big online gaming sites have RNGs implemented fairly ...

This morning playing poker at Poker Stars, I started noticing after a few hands that I hadn't yet got a pair. And so I played on ... waiting for the first pair. I got it at hand 134. Then I played some more. I stopped at hand 198 with just that one pair recorded.

So ... for those who care ...

The expected number of pairs in 198 hands is E = 198/17 = 11.64706.

The standard deviation is sqrt(198*(1/17)*(16/17)) = 3.31088.

My result was 2.93151 standard deviations below normal.

Now here's the thing. In spite of how it felt, it was less than 3 standard deviations below normal. That's well in the range of normal results. However, it felt so abnormal I wanted to scream after a bit. Then again, I've played close to 50,000 hands online. This sort of thing occurs quite often playing that many hands. For example, I once had a streak of 6k hands with 3 SD pairs of aces OVER expectation.

I think most people who play online are just not ready for the sheer quantity and speed of hands. When they encounter bad streaks they believe the software is fixed. They concoct elaborate conspiracy stories. They argue micromanagement of each player's results. But the truth is, it goes by so fast, there is nothing in the brick-and-mortal world that comes close to the experience.

--Dorothy

Quote: DorothyGale

I think most people who play online are just not ready for the sheer quantity and speed of hands. When they encounter bad streaks they believe the software is fixed. They concoct elaborate conspiracy stories. They argue micromanagement of each player's results. But the truth is, it goes by so fast, there is nothing in the brick-and-mortal world that comes close to the experience.

--Dorothy

I think it is also most people who play online think thbe WSOP is "live" or "live shot" and that all those hands should be regularly happening.

Many people don't understand that strange things and bad beats happen more often in online Poker because instead of seeing 30 hands per hour like in a live game, you are seeing 80-100 hands per hour. It stands to reason if you are seeing 3 times as many hands, then 3 times as many rivers might get you or 3 times as many pocket aces might get cracked. It's just a numbers game and online poker puts out high numbers of hands.