Paranoid????

[skulij]

I never gave much credence to the many many internet poker conspiracy theories. But then...

I play a small Canadian online site, tournaments only, low buyins of $5 or 10 that get 60-90 players. Over 2+ years my play was consistently profitable, turning $100 into $1200. I cashed about 1 out of every 6-7 tournaments played.
Then I withdrew half my bankroll. Since then I have cashed exactly 1 time in 35 tournaments. The longest I ever went before without cashing a tourn was maybe 10-12 tournaments, right now I'm at 26. I just bubbled a nightly tournament I play 3 consecutive nights which seems absurd. I consistently am losing to 2 and 3 outers and runner runner flushes.

My logical side says they don't care who wins or loses, they get their fee from all entrants but my paranoid side argues that if my play hasn't changed then how on earth did it go from steady winning to zero winning?

 

[alien666dj]

Analyze the period before and after in Holdem Manager 2, PokerTracker 4 or Hand2Note. That is, your hands played and you may notice situations in which you acted differently than before. When I did this, I found a lot of interesting things.

 

[Andrew Popov]

Perhaps (but this is not certain) they really do not care who wins. But there is probably a difference between those who win and lose and so on in a circle until everything gets raked, and those who win and withdraw money from the poker room. But this is conspiracy theories.

 

[Zapahlohotrona]

This happened after the cashout last year. Something inexplicable started. I stopped playing profitably, although my game has not changed. Now I have to play freerolls and even there I have no chance. This has been going on for more than six months.

 

[Cooking]

This is the bad luck after the cashouts. I know it's just a conspiracy theory, but I believe..lol. But for me it usually lasts a couple of days, but I avoid to play on the day that I made the cashout.

 

[blackknives]

I would also chalk it up to bad luck. Everyone has their bad days and sometimes even long dry spells. Canadian sites (or those in N.A.) i hope have some governance and audit around their software and logic and wouldn't likely have something that targets that scenario you mentioned to cause your losses

 

[vittopio]

I never gave much credence to the many many internet poker conspiracy theories. But then...

I play a small Canadian online site, tournaments only, low buyins of $5 or 10 that get 60-90 players. Over 2+ years my play was consistently profitable, turning $100 into $1200. I cashed about 1 out of every 6-7 tournaments played.
Then I withdrew half my bankroll. Since then I have cashed exactly 1 time in 35 tournaments. The longest I ever went before without cashing a tourn was maybe 10-12 tournaments, right now I'm at 26. I just bubbled a nightly tournament I play 3 consecutive nights which seems absurd. I consistently am losing to 2 and 3 outers and runner runner flushes.

My logical side says they don't care who wins or loses, they get their fee from all entrants but my paranoid side argues that if my play hasn't changed then how on earth did it go from steady winning to zero winning?

If this is a proven room with a good reputation, then you are covered by a wave of dispersion (unfortunately in MTT it is very large), but I would not be so sure!

 

[lauestla]

Well if it happened just after your cashout it can seem strange.
But maybe you were very lucky before the cashout and then the variance catched you back

 

[fundiver199]

Just because two things happen after each other, does not mean, one caused the other. Its like saying, that if you sell your car, and the next day it starts raining and continue to do so for several weeks, then the change in the weather was caused by you selling your car. Downswings are a normal part of poker, and only cashing in 1 out of 35 tournaments is something, most poker players will experience sooner or later.

 

[Luvepoker]

I never gave much credence to the many many internet poker conspiracy theories. But then...

I play a small Canadian online site, tournaments only, low buyins of $5 or 10 that get 60-90 players. Over 2+ years my play was consistently profitable, turning $100 into $1200. I cashed about 1 out of every 6-7 tournaments played.
Then I withdrew half my bankroll. Since then I have cashed exactly 1 time in 35 tournaments. The longest I ever went before without cashing a tourn was maybe 10-12 tournaments, right now I'm at 26. I just bubbled a nightly tournament I play 3 consecutive nights which seems absurd. I consistently am losing to 2 and 3 outers and runner runner flushes.

My logical side says they don't care who wins or loses, they get their fee from all entrants but my paranoid side argues that if my play hasn't changed then how on earth did it go from steady winning to zero winning?

To be honest cashing at the rate you played is unrealistic long term. While I can understand your questions this is more like variance finally catching up to you or a small change in your game. Over 1/2 the time i hit a downswing and I review my play i see what I was doing different. Not cashing in 26 straight is not fun but not as bad as it could be. I have gone over 40 and been in the 30's a few times over the years. I would not get so worried about it. FYI, went went this bad both online and live. It hurts a lot more when live.

 

[Artbart805]

online poker is not random...it is pre arranged on who is allowed to win or more importantly who is not allowed to win. 1. High rake player ( one who generates a lot of income for the site ) gets miracle turns or rivers ) Or incredible flops. Trips over trips, ect... 2. Low rake player takes out a high rake player ( the site is not going to get the money or portion of the money back. 2. Free rolls ( a wider variety of winners means more people have the opportunity for getting hooked on the site ( the purpose of freerolls is to generate new players) Useful idiots are people who think there is no a reason to pick winner and looser, its a money making industry. The goal is to get your dollars into their bank account. How do you know that miracle river just didn't give the site ( bot or shill player for the site) 2 more dollars. They don't have to finish first,they only need to cash a percentage to make the desired income. Have you noticed buy in tournments collect one dollar from each player? A cut is taken from each player. One site offers a $1 buy in, 4 people register, but it shows 2 dollars collected? Why a free entry for one player. Computers or corporate shill does not have to pay?

I still play, but only expect entertainment value. I have cashed regularly live, pre black Monday, but these days its not the same. Players are not better, the deck is more selective. The site is programmed for excitement and results. To generate excitement, Miracles must happen more frequently , AA over KK pre flop... 4 card flushes, 4 inside straights, .. Hit the river and the turn... you see it...

Some players are paid to play.. just using rake back. So who covers that cost ? If you ran a business, your best customer generates $1000s of dollars, you control the game, are you going to let that commodity go broke and leave? I don't think so......
It comes from someone. Like casinos, over time the site will get the money. You may get a win but that means 100 others lost, the house gets its share.

 

[darthjewel]

Although I focus on one, I play at several poker rooms and also different types of games.
This is to find my niche but also to get broader perspective to tackle issues like this.
Then if I am loosing across three poker rooms at the same time it is a kind of sign that my play sucks.
If I loose only on one game type this suggests the opponents are better, stronger than me.
Only after concerning these two possibilities I would think about the poker room.

And you are not paranoid here, but the situation where the poker room alters the game odds is rather unlikely
I would rather think about some kind of collusion, for example few players sharing the cards info between them.

Of course usually we feel overconfident after some victories, that is the reason I would suggest to play elsewhere for a while to check it.

 

[jeffman123]

Our brain is incredibly good at, among others, these 2 things:
Pattern recognition and selection bias. So we're very good at linking unrelated phenomena into a cause-effect relationship and we're very good at only remembering the times our aces got cracked and completely forgetting the other 80% of times when they win. It's no wonder that there's so many people who think online Poker is rigged, it's just the way our brain works. If you actually want to do science, which means to actually investigate how the real world works, you need a huge sample size (atleast 300 tournaments or 100000 hands) which have all been recorded with some databse software. Then you can actually investigate.

 

[puzzlefish]

Just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean that they are not out to get you.

 

[LadderingUp]

Its just a downswing. If you are really consistent it will turn around

 

[Ellvira]

I read everything in this branch, and realized that everything can happen at a short distance, you just need to keep playing and watch your progress at a long distance, I am very often angry why it happens to me that my AA vs KK lose, I just started taking a screenshot for myself as a souvenir, I opened it once and was very surprised that my AA wins more than they lose, and now I am not very offended by the loss of AA, I know that they will win more on 10k hands

 

[eniseysmail]

Take a full week off from games. Perhaps after the withdrawal of funds, your attitude towards the game has changed a little and you began to play more frivolously.

 

[itsallgoodie]

Just let it go for some time and go again. It happens

 

[mina271]

I know that it is difficult, you know that you can do it, but you are stuck in a streak of bad luck where you don't seem to be able to do anything and you start to doubt whether you are really doing everything right, or that the site where you play might not be like that trustworthy is how one thought. I can't say whether you play on a trustworthy poker site, but I know that everyone has such a phase where almost nothing works. But it is something that also passes again, just as the phases where you were lucky pass. Nobody stays happy forever and nobody stays unhappy forever.

 

[ShaunCaps]

Think about it logically, if they punished everyone for withdrawing money, they wouldn’t have any customers as they’d try a different site. What’s the point? People withdraw everyday, if they punished them all they be shooting them self in the foot out of bitterness.

 

[Maxmustdie]

I have the same paranoid

if yesterday i won the tournament
you can't play today
i will lose all coinflips

 

[Alekxandrovi3]

You need to rest.