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Most chess players have no interest in checkers, poker, or go.

I'm not sure that's true. I've never met a chess play who couldn't play checkers. Chess players often switch to poker, and there are even chess + poker tournaments.

Chess + boxing is more interesting.

Most chess players have no interest in checkers, poker, or go.

I'm not sure that's true. I've never met a chess play who couldn't play checkers. Chess players often switch to poker, and there are even chess + poker tournaments.

Funny, I play chess, not at a tournament level but for fun, and I sometimes like playing checkers and love playing poker. Of course, playing poker, for me, isn't about playing cards it's about having fun with my friends. As for Go, the only reason why a lot of people don't play Go is because it isn't all that popular, at least in the US and Canada. I would think that a lot of Chess players would also enjoy Go because it does require strategy.

Most chess players have no interest in checkers, poker, or go.

I'm not sure that's true. I've never met a chess play who couldn't play checkers. Chess players often switch to poker, and there are even chess + poker tournaments.

They do. http://www.pokerstars.com/ Here's an example. There's an ad for the FBI :)

When i visit http://www.pokerstars.com/ I am greeted by a message indicating that illegal gambling is a federal crime. Unfortunately, in my country, I'm pretty sure this is legal. What gives the United States the authority to prevent me from going to a site when neither the site nor I am located in the United States? Also, why doesn't Pokerstars.com get the chance to a fair trial before their site is shut down causing them irepairable harm? The message on the site seems like a scare tactic, trying to scare me from going to a website for no reason.

The United States should not be running anything related to the world-wide Internet, and this and the recent seizing of other sites/domain names that while possibly illegal in the USA are perfectly legal in other jurisdictions are the perfect examples why.

"I could practice 12 hours a day, but if I lost the game, the value would be zero. However, in poker every hour has some benefit, so after 12 hours of poker, if I've played well, then I can say, hey I just made 3k today. For my level of performance, poker was the smarter choice."

If you read poker forums at all, you'll know that this is a subject that has been beaten to death over and over. So much so in fact that (at least) one poker site's support has a lengthy form letter they send to anyone that complains about "non random" cards:

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Firstly, I assure you that our shuffle is entirely random. You can find its description at the first link below, and the results of two independent audits into it at the second:

http://www.pokerstars.com/security.html
http://www.pokerstars.com/rng_audit.html

We will send any real money player's entire hand history to them at any point that they ask for it. We have every real money hand played on our servers and have sent out literally millions of hands. There are many players out there with 100,000 or more hands in their Poker Tracker database. Poker Tracker is a program that allows you to analyse your own play and by extension the randomness of the site in question. If there were anything that deviated from the expected values, these players would have solid evidence to that effect. However, there's nothing on the poker forums. Infact, some players have posted their investigations online, the URLs for which you can find below. I am certain that there are more out there that you can easily find.

http://tinyurl.com/4lfeg
http://tinyurl.com/2nvav

I am sure that many of the players we've sent these hand histories to felt that there were problems with the game. That's the nature of how our brains work. They are very good at picking out patterns, but when faced with randomness, impose patterns of their own on the data. Our brain is also very good at picking out the unusual from the usual. Therefore, you will not take as much notice of the seven times you win your 7/8 shot, but the time you lose it is the time that will stick in your memory.

The nature of poker is that the better a player, the more often he will put his money in when he is ahead. Conversely, the weaker the player, the more often he will put his money in whilst behind. It is therefore natural that the good player will not need to outdrawn his opponent very often, whilst the weaker player has to do it with much greater frequency. Of course, the good player makes more money in the long run, but the weaker player will still win pots from him. It's a fact that in the long run, the good player will outdraw opponents fewer times per hour than he will be outdrawn on himself. This is simply because he is rarely in a situation where he has to outdraw someone to win. However, if you looked at every single time a strong player had a 20% shot to win with all his chips in compared to every single time a weak player had a 20% shot to win, you will find that both players did indeed make their hand 20% of the time.

There are three sets of people who would undoubtably recognise that something was amiss if there were any flaws in the shuffle. The first set is the programmers, the second senior management, and the third the poker specialists (who have access to as many hand histories as they want). All any of these people would have to do is ask for a 100% pay rise with the threat that they will release compelling evidence about the dishonesty. We make our money purely from rake and tournament entry fees. We would immediately lose a lot, if not all of our players as a result of this. The fact that this is not all over the forums, and the fact that I am (sadly) not sitting on a tropical island as I type this mail is a very strong signal that nothing is amiss.

Finally, the offer to send out every real money hand you've played is of course open to you as well. Just let us know and we can send it along. I recommend a tool like Poker Tracker to run your analysis, but there are plenty of other programs out there that do a similiar kind of job.

I hope th

If you read poker forums at all, you'll know that this is a subject that has been beaten to death over and over. So much so in fact that (at least) one poker site's support has a lengthy form letter they send to anyone that complains about "non random" cards:

==================

Firstly, I assure you that our shuffle is entirely random. You can find its description at the first link below, and the results of two independent audits into it at the second:

http://www.pokerstars.com/security.html
http://www.pokerstars.com/rng_audit.html

We will send any real money player's entire hand history to them at any point that they ask for it. We have every real money hand played on our servers and have sent out literally millions of hands. There are many players out there with 100,000 or more hands in their Poker Tracker database. Poker Tracker is a program that allows you to analyse your own play and by extension the randomness of the site in question. If there were anything that deviated from the expected values, these players would have solid evidence to that effect. However, there's nothing on the poker forums. Infact, some players have posted their investigations online, the URLs for which you can find below. I am certain that there are more out there that you can easily find.

http://tinyurl.com/4lfeg
http://tinyurl.com/2nvav

I am sure that many of the players we've sent these hand histories to felt that there were problems with the game. That's the nature of how our brains work. They are very good at picking out patterns, but when faced with randomness, impose patterns of their own on the data. Our brain is also very good at picking out the unusual from the usual. Therefore, you will not take as much notice of the seven times you win your 7/8 shot, but the time you lose it is the time that will stick in your memory.

The nature of poker is that the better a player, the more often he will put his money in when he is ahead. Conversely, the weaker the player, the more often he will put his money in whilst behind. It is therefore natural that the good player will not need to outdrawn his opponent very often, whilst the weaker player has to do it with much greater frequency. Of course, the good player makes more money in the long run, but the weaker player will still win pots from him. It's a fact that in the long run, the good player will outdraw opponents fewer times per hour than he will be outdrawn on himself. This is simply because he is rarely in a situation where he has to outdraw someone to win. However, if you looked at every single time a strong player had a 20% shot to win with all his chips in compared to every single time a weak player had a 20% shot to win, you will find that both players did indeed make their hand 20% of the time.

There are three sets of people who would undoubtably recognise that something was amiss if there were any flaws in the shuffle. The first set is the programmers, the second senior management, and the third the poker specialists (who have access to as many hand histories as they want). All any of these people would have to do is ask for a 100% pay rise with the threat that they will release compelling evidence about the dishonesty. We make our money purely from rake and tournament entry fees. We would immediately lose a lot, if not all of our players as a result of this. The fact that this is not all over the forums, and the fact that I am (sadly) not sitting on a tropical island as I type this mail is a very strong signal that nothing is amiss.

Finally, the offer to send out every real money hand you've played is of course open to you as well. Just let us know and we can send it along. I recommend a tool like Poker Tracker to run your analysis, but there are plenty of other programs out there that do a similiar kind of job.

I hope th

Yeah, its absolutely insane. I'd go to an online card room regulated by the Nevada, California, or Washington state gambling commission in a minute before going to Party Poker or Poker Stars. I'd feel safer with my money.

Oh, and as a Washington citizen I just became a felon again! Twice!

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/features/secu rity/

Some sites have micro-limit games, as small as 4 cents maximum bet. One of them is PokerStars, I'm not sure which others offer that low. The quality certainly isn't as good as the "real" games, but it's signifcantly better than the free games. And if you're beating the game by a ridiculous margin, you can save up the money you get from winning and have a bankroll for a slightly higher limit.

Last year's World Series of Poker winner actually qualfied for the World Series of Poker through an online tournament at Pokerstars.