Mythbusting

Author: Poker Penguin

Summary: There are a lot of wild theories out there about online poker. The Poker Penguin has a look at the more ludicrous ones.

If you talk to another person about online poker, whether they play or not, you will almost certainly run into some “interesting” ideas. It’s only natural, people make up theories to explain things they can’t understand.

Let’s just get started shall we?

Theory 1 – The online poker site is just going to run off with my money.

Party Poker recently listed on the London stock exchange with a market valuation of over 8 BILLION dollars. Many of the other large poker sites are either part of listed companies, or plan to list in the near future. This makes their main shareholders very rich indeed. Their daily incomes are more money than I am likely to make in my lifetime. It’s just not worth it for them to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

There have been a few instances of sites collapsing (I can literally count the number of times it has happened in the last five years on the fingers of one hand, and still be able to hold a coffee cup), and players not getting paid. All of these were new sites with little credibility in the poker-playing community (even before any troubles started). Even with these sites, it was not, as far as I know, a deliberate con, but instead a company with inadequate separation for client’s funds (most sites nowadays keep player’s funds in an escrow account that they simply can not access).

Verdict – Myth, as long as you are careful enough to stick to reputable sites (like all the ones suggested in our reviews).

Theory 2 – Online Poker has more bad beats than “real” poker.

After your first session of online poker, you’ll have probably run into someone who firmly believes this theory. They will whine about how they keep getting beaten on the river, usually by some idiot playing 83 off suit. As you will see, there are a lot of idiots out there playing poor starting hands, obviously they win sometimes. If a hand is a 9-1 favourite (like AA is over 83o) that means that on average 83o will win 10% of the time.

Sure, the idiots sometimes catch a miracle two pair or full house and win big pots. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t play. However, they usually end up just giving away their money to players like us who wait for good cards and play them aggressively.

And, you know what? It happens in live poker too. Idiots are everywhere, and I love them.

Verdict – Truth, but not in the way the whiners think, and it’s a good thing that it is true.

Theory 3 – Online poker sites “juice” the action to create big pots.

I see it almost every time I play. Someone has Aces, someone else has Kings. When they showdown, at least one person will start talking about how whatever poker site we are playing at “rigs” the cards to create monster pots.

It sounds appealing too, I mean bigger pots mean bigger rakes, right? Well, yes and no. In most pots, the rake is usually capped at a certain dollar amount, so the site gets no benefit at all driving the potsize past the point where the max rake is taken.

Sites’ hand histories are also regularly audited by external accounting firms and probability experts to ensure that the Random Number Generator is just that – random.

Plus, any exact combination of cards is just as likely as another.
A flop of J diamonds, Q diamonds, K diamonds should be no less rare than a flop of 9 spades, 6 clubs, 2 diamonds. We just notice the Royal flush flop more often because it’s more important, and prettier, and generally easy to remember.

Verdict – Myth (and a particularly foolish one at that given that most pots easily reach the rake cap)

Theory 4 – The Cashout Curse

We’ve all heard stories of someone who won X dollars, withdrew some money and then lost it all. Maybe it’s even happened to you recently? Someone is bound to make the connection that the site punishes you for withdrawing.

Well, that’s just moronic. Nobody ever complains about the times they cash out, keep winning an cashout again (as happened to me last week – I deposit $400 to a site, clear the deposit bonus, cashout $500, turn the $300 I had left into $900 and cashout another $600). Basically if cashing out turns you into a losing player, it’s most likely your own fault, with coincidence a distant second.

As always, if you are losing money, look at your own game first. Then look at your own game. Then look at your own game. Then blame variance (after looking at your own game one last time). I think I made it clear that your results are because of how YOU play, not anything else. The site has no interest in whether you win or lose, they still get paid every time a raked hand is played. If you start losing money after cashing out, it’s most likely because you’ve started playing worse out of over-confidence. Or you were never a winning player anyway and you ought to be happy you got some money out before giving it all back.

Either way, there is no such thing as a cashout curse.

Verdict – Myth, except if you are psychologically affected by your cashout.

Obviously there are probably a dozen other stupid myths about online poker that I didn’t have time to cover today, but I hope you get the idea. Think rationally about things people are claiming, and you’ll be able to bust a lot of the myths yourself.