Poker Articles and Strategies

After three long hours of play, you find yourself down to the last two tables of a poker tournament that started with just under 200 players. There are twenty players left, but only the top eighteen are rewarded. Not wanting to get knocked out "on the bubble," or just outside the money, you notice that almost everyone at your table has tightened up their game. The exception is a player to your left who seems to be taking down pot after pot without even seeing a flop. He makes a standard raise of three times the big blind to which everyone folds, each time earning him the blinds and dead ante money, a decent chunk of change at this stage of the tournament. Before play started, this player had an average sized chip stack and now he's the tournament chip leader, in position to make a big run at the final table.

Switching to an aggressive playing style when nearing the bubble in a multi-table tournament is an extremely effective method of padding your chip stack, in preparation for the final table. Truth be told, most players do not want to risk getting knocked out of a tournament after playing for hours when they're just a couple of spots away from cashing. The fear of a bad beat or the possibility of running into a superior hand causes even the loosest of players to fold practically everything except aces or kings during this unique stage of the tournament. Throughout a poker tournament, you will make decisions based on an array of situations, rather than your cards and opponents. The decisions you make when approaching the bubble can mean the difference between first place money and just getting your buy-in back.

Changing your playing style to aggressive at this stage of a tournament carries as much risk as it does reward. You should practice selective aggression with your raises, being careful not to get involved with the tournament's big stacks, or players you feel might be willing to come over the top of your attempted blind steal. Continue to make standard sized raises in position and try to avoid stealing when one or more players has limped into the pot before you; a limper here is often trying to set a trap with a premium hand.

Focus your pressure on tight players whose stacks are big enough that they will be able to fold their way into the money, but not so big that they can afford to challenge one of your raises without putting their entire stack in harm's way. If one of these players does come over the top of your raise, do not hesitate to throw your hand away immediately. The possibility exists that he may have picked up on your aggressive assault and is simply making a play, but it is more likely that this player walked into a big hand and is making a stand.

Often times, when the bubble has been "popped," or the last player before the money is eliminated, play will return to normal. Players will return to their regular playing styles, which means, it's time to put the brakes on your relentless aggression and resume solid poker. Before you attempt to apply this technique in a big tournament, consider your goals. If you're content with just making the money, then by all means, conform with the masses and fold away. But if you've got your eye on the big prize, raise it up!



There are literally 100's of software tools available which promise to improve your online poker profits in various ways. These range from "real-time advisors" through to "hand history databases" and perform various functions such as calculating winning percentages and showing your expected returns.

Many players, however, fall foul of the strict rules concerning the use of such tools imposed by the gaming companies themselves. In fact most players are not even aware that the sites actively detect the software running on their computer and are able to spot unauthorized software quickly.

This can result in a warning - and the money being paid for the poker software tool going to waste. In some cases the cash held in your poker account being confiscated. Before you part with any money make sure you are aware of the criteria which the poker sites use to determine whether a tool is acceptable.

The following criteria are generally used by the major sites - as a rule of thumb we suggest checking the website of your preferred gaming client before parting with any money, or at the very least taking your advice from a reputable source!

1) Sharing / Pooling of information is considered cheating, any online poker tool which does this will be prohibited at most sites.

2) Playing automatically is a definite 'no', while some 'advice engines' come close, those applications which play without human intervention are universally banned.

3) Advanced advice-giving software is generally banned, for example advice that you have a 1 in 4 chance of completing a draw is acceptable, advice that calculates pot equity based on the range of hands an opponent might have due to their betting pattern changes is not.

4) Data-Mining is prohibited at a large number of sites. This involved automatically watching a large number of tables and collecting data on the tendencies of the players at them - data which is later used to give you a better 'read'.

5) Sharing of 'Hole Card' data is strictly prohibited. When shared between 2 or more players at the same table this information is considered to be cheating.

 It is common for a poker player to directly accuse or insinuate that online poker is rigged. This is usually a result of a player receiving a "bad beat". Phrases are jokingly made such as "jokerstars" referring to the popular poker network, PokerStars. However, a lot people share the common theory that the poker sites rig their software as to encourage action; increasing their profit. The theories and conspiracies cannot be proven, and many an investigation has been made into the credibility of these accusations.

Logic and reason

Rigging a poker site would be like cheating at your final exams - the costs outweigh the gain. If a poker site is caught rigging their software then it is likely that the said site will lose all the credibility and loyalty of its customers; customers that it has taken many years to gain the trust of. Rigging a poker site, according to Game Theory, would be irrational and illogical.

Human Behavior

Human nature is a strange thing; psychologists Jean-Paul Sartre and Soren Kierkegaard were a couple of the first to look into human behaviour and more recent psychologists have studied the minds of poker players. One thing that has been discovered about online poker is that humans are naturally very suspicious. Reasons for this natural suspicion lie in the fact that the mechanism controlling the outcome of an event cannot physically be seen. Unlike in a live game, you are unable to see the cards being shuffled and cut.

Preventing Rigging

According to Poker Stars, there are 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different ways to shuffle a deck of cards.

Amazingly, the site uses the players to choose the order of the cards using "user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software". In the event that there are problems with this as a RNG (random number generator), they have a backup: "true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source". Furthermore, the RNG is certified by 2 independent organizations: Cigital and BMM International.

Cigital: An independent software risk management organization working with such companies as Qualcomm, Visa International, Texas Instruments, AOL, MasterCard, General Electric, Motorola, Pfizer Health Solutions, and Ericsson.

BMM International: A global organization that provides independent computer systems assurance and compliance certification testing services, the Australia-based company is a client of the Australian government among other organizations.

Possible Rigging

The poker industry is an incredibly tough market and one that is definately not easily entered. The large businesses such as PokerStars, Full Tilt and Party Poker have swallowed their competitors and taken a huge majority of the market between them.

Smaller poker sites may have an incentive to rig their software as profits might be low and security standards/regulations may be of poor quality or even non-existent. These companies may get a slight edge over their competitors as they have very little to lose and a lot to gain by rigging their software.

Absolute Poker Scandal

Sept. 13th. Potripper won a $1000 buy-in tourney, Absolute Pokers largest tournament. The player CrazyMarco, who finished second, insisted that there had to be cheating involved in Potrippers win. One of the most obvious signs was when Potripper bet around 20k with T-high, got pushed all-in by CrazyMarco, and called the sick 180k to beat CrazyMarcos 9-high bluff.

CrazyMarco demanded the hand history released, and to his surprise, Absolute Poker was more than willing to help him with this matter. Feb. 21st, APs support send him a file, but this was far from the ordinary hand history he had requested. The file he recieved was huge, and after a short peak he turned of his computer and went to bed as he was unable to gain any information from the data file himself.

Two weeks later rumors are heating up at PocketFives, and Marco posts in the forum that he has this enormous file from the Potripper tournament. The moderator of the site, adanthar, offers his help, and Marco sends him the file. It turns out the file covers the entire tournament, all of the players' hole cards, and other normally highly confidential information.

- Potripper folded the first two, then saw all flops, unless the times where an opponent had two queens or better.

- Potripper won all showdowns in the tournament.

- Potripper folded on the river every time he was behind - and raised every time he wasn't.

- Potripper only bluffed when the opponent(s) had weak hands.

Conclusion

The online poker (and casino) industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Credibility, respect and loyalty are at the top of the agenda for any of these businesses and therefore rigging would most likely have detrimental affects on the business.

Rigging of a poker site may be rare and unheard of, however there is the possibility that a freak incident such as the Absolute Poker Scandal may occur.

Back to Top

###