Online Poker -- Tom 'durrrr' Dwan Dominates High Stakes Cash Games

Where have all the people gone that were talking smack about him being busto?????? Durrrr is always going to come back stronger, isildur1 may have been the new kid on the block, but it's going to take a lot more than a few losses to get rid of Tom Dwan, he is still the best.

Great post. So true. Pokerstars is a prime example. I play regular schedule in home games and harrah new orleans. Not one of the players I've talked to have won online. That's all players winning and losing players. Online they're all losers. They've already caught ultimate bet cheating. They're all rigged. Stay away until they become legal and regulated.

Hackers have broken into the computers of the Pentagon, World Bank and N.A.T.O. Do you really think they'd have any problem with an online poker site? I know of three separate amateur consortium's who conspire daily to sit at the same table, trade hole card information, gang up on the unsuspecting and split the winnings at days end. Imagine what the professionals can do.

Anything is possible in the digital realm inlcuding being a winning poker player!!! I'm profitable on Pokerstars and Full Tilt over the last several years; though I hardly ever play on Full Tilt anymore because it seems to have more variance than Stars in my experience. I'm not saying cheating hasn't happened on some sites but I am saying that it is totally possible to be a winning player. I'm paraphrasing Lee Watkinson here ~ being a pro poker player means finding and playing in games you can beat. Maybe you guys haven't found those games yet??? I'm not saying I'm a pro or that I make tons of money but you can win online consistently.

Poker Stars has no choice but to protect their 'bad player' clients by altering the odds of both types of players - good and bad - so good players lose an edge while the bad player gains an edge thus causing both players to come out just short of even in the long haul with only the RAKE WINNING and SLOWLY EATING AWAY at both the good and bad players bank rolls.

SLOW ENOUGH TO KEEP THE BAD PLAYER IN HOPES OF SOON MAKING MONEY AFTER SEEING SO MANY DRAWS HIT AFTER PLAYING 900 OF THE 4000 HANDS DEALT AND THEN FEELING (THE ILLUSION) OF WINNING HALF THE POTS THEY PLAY SO WITH IMPROVEMENT, THEY WILL SOON BE WINNERS LONG TERM
***Otherwise, Poker Stars would lose that bad player as a client because the money lost by the bad player over several sessions (or several days) would turn the bad player off from playing anymore due to few short terms winning sessions and few pots won compared to many overall loses!!!***
This alone is the simple biggest reason why the site is rigged, since the majority of Poker Star's clients are below average players.

POKERSTARS: The money circulates through 'a fraudulantly designed program' causing hands to be constantly fixed allowing the 'bad player' chasers and 'bad player' raisers to hit at a slightly higher percentage than they should. This change only needs to be ever so slight to cause the bad players to lose their money at a SLOWER rate, thus giving them extra wins at almost a 50% rate (to give them the same feeling that 'blackjack' gives whereby the player is winning almost 50% of the hands for constant winning satisfaction) but are slightly behind just enough to pay the rake to Poker Stars. Meanwhile the good and great players are losing slightly more hands than they should be, just enough to also put them in the slightly below 50% winning category, so that again, only the rake wins!!!
I HAVE STATISTICAL PROOF OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF HANDS OVER THE LONG HAUL TO SHOW THAT THE PERCENTAGES ARE NOT WHERE THEY SHOULD BE.
FROM THE THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS OF PLAYERS I HAVE TRACKED (THROUGH SOFTWARE) , ONLY A FEW (WHICH STILL ADDS UP TO MANY) ARE LONG TERM PLAYERS AND THEY ARE ALMOST ALL IN THE LOSS COLUMN WITH SOME AT (OR SLIGHTLY ABOVE) BREAK EVEN POINT - AND THE SCARY THING IS THAT MOST OF THESE LONG TERM PLAYERS I HAVE TRACKED ARE MAINLY ABOVE AVERAGE PLAYERS THAT ARE TRYING TO PLAY THIS FOR A LIVING >>> I KNOW THIS BECAUSE I WATCH THEIR STYLE AND MOST OF THESE LONGER TERM PLAYERS ARE PLAYING VERY WELL SO WHY THE LOSS???!???!???!???!???)!!!!!

These types of discussions will continue to grow bigger >>> FACT
Poker Stars is still growing >>> FACT
More clients means more chances of people like me >>> FACT
The longer Poker Stars continues means the longer string of history by players like me >>> FACT
The growing awareness of poker softwares and peoples suspicions of Poker Stars means more databases saved and more hand histories saved >>> FACT
Based on growth and greed, Poker Stars will succumb to its death when too many people have finally come forward >>> FACT

So the conclusion is simple:

If you are a multi-billion dollar GIANT making money strictly off a rake that is designed to come from ONGOING clients, wouldn't you want to protect your clients so you don't lose them?

I'd like to see anyone in the world that can answer that question logically and still go on to say that Poker Stars is NOT rigged.

As someone who regularly defends online poker to my friends...

What you are saying about % outcomes of hands sounds extremely familiar with my results.

I know i am losing more than 50% of my races, and when i have someone dominated (ak vs aq or such) i am barely winning 50% of the time.

I am no pro, and i make the occasional Matusow blowup dumb play, but for the most part, i constantly get my chips in with the best of it, and still lose. Often feels like the odds are stacked against me.

is there a site that people have found to be more balanced than others. I play Stars for the convenience, and the chance of the huge payday, but the final tables are just so damn ellusive, i need a new place to play.

But the reason guys like me play online, is the sheer cheapness of it. to play a decent deep stack tourney live costs $150 minumum. online i can find them for $11.

No, I don't believe any of that. I used to work for a poker site (now off-line) and did all of the programming for random numbers, dealing, and so on. Here's what's really going on:

1. The online poker sites make a fortune from rake. So do your local card rooms. They have zero incentive to skim off more money, and a huge incentive to have players trust them. I am a consistently winning player (about 55% according to a statistics tracking site) who has lost small amounts the last few years because the rake eats up that small percentage advantage. That's why poker is profitable to the sites. I only play small stakes because I know the rake is stacked against me.

2. Many online players do not really think about the odds in a logical way, so they stay in hands they should fold. As a result, there are far more showdowns in on-line play, and often multi-way showdowns. That means that a lot of bad players are going to get lucky on the turn or river after playing hands a good player would have folded. There isn't anything nefarious going on. All these players lose money in the long run, but they'll sometimes get lucky because they see so many rivers.

3. These luck situations aren't against the odds or abnormal. Many average players think they "deserve to win" with AK or pocket Jacks. They do not understand that in poker every hand has a chance, and those odds aren't as far apart as they think. I just read the report on the NBC Heads-Up Championship. I think one of the hands won by Annie Duke, she had something like 85 and was only in the hand because she was priced in. She made a straight and won that match. So sometimes GOOD players take bad hands to the river because the pot odds are right, and sometimes they get lucky with them. (And when, more often, they're unlucky... the number of chips they lose aren't important.)

Paulstar are you going to post that hand history database somewhere or otherwise expose online poker sites?

If sites are programmed that way, then shouldn't there be a set of ways to exploit those tendencies?

If the programs adjust to how your play changes, then as in live poker the solution has to be to adjust your play back at them, right?

You know, even if you tracked 800,000 hands, that would still be less than two thousandths of one percent of the forty billion plus hands that Stars has run. Examining what they have been doing is of value only if you apply it in order to beat the games, which should always be the point.

My point earlier here was yes, there are ways to exploit the software and people are doing it everyday.Probably in ways most of us have never thought about because we don't spend our time trying to steal money from other people.The vast majority of players are just looking for a level playing field. Paulstar makes several good points and backs them up with facts. Players should but listen.But they won't

Paulstar, don't beat around the bush, do you think online poker is rigged? Truly, if you folks believe it, then you obviously call certain person's name into question. These are some of the giants of the game. And I am not talking Russ Hamilton. Chris Ferguson is probably the easiest example. I'd like someone to go on camera talking smack to him about it. Witteles was cool doing it to Hellmuth, and it was deserved. But to call ALL online poker may be a bit overboard.

his battle "loss" vs. ilsdurr1 will be good evidence that he can stand the test of time. this is what i thought would keep him out of the poker hall of fame....but now the critics know he's for real and thats if they didn't already and did not want to addmitt. good job tom keep it up ur a baller and let the haters hate cause if you get all the money in the end...thats all that matters!!!

Don't like online poker, don't play. Think the live games are more legitimate? Um..probably not. You have to pay exceptional attention to notice in either capacity. Zartan is closer to the truth (whatever that is) than paulstar. So many more hands online produce crazier results. You spend your time and money on gambling, shit is gonna happen.

Listen to Zarten and forget all that other nonsense.

First, zartan is right. Second, i've played some 12 thousand online sngs and am a winner. Is the long run still gonna catch up lol? Plus if u put in a lot of volume, being a supernova allows u to get a lot of ur rake back - i'll have collected about a million fpps by december this year. I dont think i'm bad, but i'm not among poker's elite yet - and still i love pokerstars for how competent they are. Also they take collusion very seriously, and on several occasions they gave me money back for playing against cheats who got caught. So yeah, pokerstars is fair, and to many people it's possible to become winners if they work enough on it. But it can really fry ur head and it's not for everyone. So there's nothing wrong with making ur money elsewhere and losing a little bit on ps. Poker is fun, and it's great to feel that rush when u dont actually depend on winning. Do u expect to win money when u go to the movies? No, and neither should u if u play against pros for very long. Believe me if u will: anyone can win a huge tournament, the rake on ps is fair, and cheats do get punished and u get Ur money back if they cheat against u. Plus tourney structures are the best. Ps knows it's way more profitable to promote fair games than to steal from clients. Anything else u hear is pure crap. Now come find the poker star in you.

Maybe i'm just getting old or sumtin, but when someone says, "let the haters-hate, blah, blah, blah"; you lose me. "Stand the test of time" means more than a year or 2, even to the internet gen. "my 2 cents".

one and two outers should be rare, not like in online poker games. these suckouts are the norm sites are perfect for durr. sites give out two good hands, and a good draw because more calls = more rake. its a simple equation, and like someone said, they keep getting bigger.... so y not? he doesn't do well in live games, but online is different, wonder why?

Firstly fetonzio is right on the money. I seem to hear everywhere that online poker is rigged. I dont play on FTP or PS i play on a smaller site, and im raking in huge profits consistently over the past year. Maybe the smaller sites have less pros on them and more poor players, which i think is the case.

People who say suckouts happen more online are just complete idiots who are still licking their wounds when they got rivered 3 years ago. A true statement: you allways remember when someone sucked out on you, but do you remember whe you last sucked out on someone ?

Yfzstarr said,"one and two outers should be rare, not like in online poker games. these suckouts are the norm sites are perfect for durr."

How rare should one or two outers be lol???? Runner runner one outer is fine to complain about. If that was happening regularly I'd be on the other side of the fence. The bottom line is that over the volume of hands that I play nothing is super rare. If I let that slow me down, tilt me or otherwise slant my view on whether or not I could believe in the integrity of the site I'm on then I'd have way to much junk going on mentally and wouldn't be able to focus on getting it in with the best time and again. For all you guys/gals who trip out on one or two outers might I recommend this article:

http://www.learn2holdem.com/poker-leaks-analysis/not-believing-in-poker.htm

Good luck, take a breath, make some money.

Quick background- my records show six consecutive profitable years in live cash games. In the same time, I've probably lost $200 TO $400 a year online. Obviously a microstaker. However, I've had the usual hair pulling, teeth nashing questions of whether online is rigged, are the hands truly random, are all these ludicrous bad beats for real, etc. Then I made a mental shift that made online poker fun again. You just have to understand that online poker is different from real poker, especially the odds. Any two cards is 50% against any other two cards. AA against 66? 50% chance a 6 will fall. AK against A4? 50% for a 4. KK against 4 7 offsuit? 50% for 2 pair or straight, etc.
Once you realize there is no such thing as getting your money in good, then there is no such thing as a bad beat. Now when I take what I used to consider a sickening bad beat, I just say, well, the coin landed on heads this time, c'est la vie. Much more mentally healthy :-) GG and GL to all!

@daveshousekw, your post HAS to be a level. If it is, it was really well played. What you wrote is pretty much word for word what I'd write if I were making fun of online poker conspiracy theorists by pretending to be one. It's just too perfect not to be tongue-in-cheek. Congrats to you, sir -- you just made my day.

@PAULSTAR:

I would love to answer your question because you have obviously put more time than the average rampant into your post. Read this with an open mind.

Pokersite are not, cannot, and will not ever be rigged in the manner you describe. While it is possible to obtain hole card information via "master" accounts, one must assume while playing that they are never going to endure this type of cheating. It simply is too extreme and isolated to one or a handful of victims, if it were to go down again (UB/Absolute). The reason it won't go down again though, and need'nt be feared, is exactly what you said: the sites are huge profiteers from on going clientele. This means those clients must feel safe, protected, and that there money is in good hands. The possibility of riggedness, if it were possible, would do the opposite of instill those aformentioned feelings within the clients thus rendering the site unprofitable.

Poker sites make money of advertising, venues, tournaments i.e. (EPT for stars), contracts with pros and celebs, and most formidably, RAKE.

Your suggestion to even out the odds really makes no sense for a couple reasons. How does the computer know whos good and whos not? Does it run a fair deck for a few months to see how good the player is and then adjust to his playing level to make him just less than 50% all time EV? Think about it, if I played on stars and tilt, and noticed that stars had me running bad but tilt had me running good, for hundreds of thousands of hands, I would not play on stars anymore. The same holds true for poor players on any site, in that if they are just below 50%, than in theory they will still be getting crushed over time and will still suffer those shitty feelings of loss, albeit not as often as they "should".

I could imagine you replying with something like all sites have the same rigged adjuster, but that would mean that they are just a huge conglomerate of sub companies under one parent monster organization which we both know is just simply not true.

I personally have been on monster downswings at medium stakes wherein in lost 7 months of profit in just under 2 and then continued to lose the same amount I was up. This all happened over about 110K hands, where I obvioulsy must have played tilted, but I still lost 15 flips of 16 in a day, 7 straight 4 to 1s allin pre etc. I could imagine a noob or weaker player feeling this is crazily rigged against them, but even after my own experiences of rediculous "luck", I can say that it does turn around, and all that matters in this game is making good decisions all the time.

So few people are capable of this over time, that this alone can make it feel like Stars is rigging you.

It can't be rigged. The golden rule in poker is this: over time, if you play better than your enemy, you win.

Good luck turning it around.