Random thoughts

Not much to report poker wise today. Didn't get much chance to play poker yesterday. It was a beautiful day here, so spent most of the day down at the beach reading a book, floating in the water and just relaxing. It's hard to get excited by the poker some days when the sun is shining and the beach is packed. Hoping to play a good number of hands tonight.

Today's Topic: Is it really random?

Something you read a lot of in the poker forums is posts on how online poker is rigged and you always seem to lose to that 1 outer on the river. Others talk about how it is impossible to have a truly random deal when a computer is calculating it. How do online poker sites create random cards and ensure a fair and unbiased shuffle?

Pokerstars and some other large sites use the following methods:

• user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software
  
• true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source
  
• Each of these sources itself generates enough entropy to ensure a fair and unpredictable shuffle.
  

It would be hard to argue that using the above two methods wouldn't create a random number. I think that it important to remember that when playing online poker that the sheer amount of hands that you play means that seemingly impossible situations occur sometimes. Secondly, the reason bad players keep playing and sometimes winning at poker is that the percentages usually give everyone a chance of winning in the short run. If someone goes all in with 2,7 and you call with AK they are going to win the hand with 2,7 three out of every ten times on average. The worst hand is not often that bigger dog in most all-in situation. In the long run the good players will always come out ahead. Lastly, a good player is only likely to earn about 5 BB/100 on average, so if you have just had a big day earning 20BB/100 then unfortunately you are due to have a bit of bad luck coming your way. It will all even out eventually. So next time you get sucked out on the river by that one outer, don't get angry about it and go on tilt. Be thankful that you got your money in the pot with the best of it, and if there weren't players willing to call you with small chance of winning then you would never make any money. Each time you get sucked out on, be happy that you are still playing better poker and getting your money in ahead. The days that you are doing the sucking out is the time you need to start worrying.

Today's Link:

If you are a sit n' go player a site that might interest you is Sharkscope.com. SharkScope is the most complete database of online poker sit n' go tournament results available for most poker sites. Analyze your statistics to find out where you make all your money or use our Tournament Selector to find the easiest tournaments on the internet. You are allowed 5 free searches per day. Currently the database contains the results of 63,357,423 sit n' go tournament.