5 Reasons Why Online Poker Isn’t Rigged

While online poker may have its issues such as bots, ghosting, and people illegally using solvers, it’s safe to say that online poker isn’t rigged.

Sure, you’ve definitely been on the end of some brutal bad beats but the operators have just about no incentive to rig the games for the players.

Here we’ll give you the major reasons why online poker isn’t rigged based on popular misconceptions.

1. Random Number Generators (RNGs) Pick the Cards

All of the best online poker sites use RNGs to determine who gets what cards and which cards hit the board.

RNGs on regulated sites are monitored by an independent auditor to make sure that cards are truly dealt at random.

Even if “you know” a card is going to come, it’s simply based at random and your gut feeling is going to be right a small percentage of the time.

Pocket aces are beaten by pocket kings about once every five times, you just have to deal with it when you lose.

If you play at an online poker room, the cards that are dealt are going to be as random as possible, given the technology from one of just a very small number of RNGs out there on the market.

RNGs are not purely random but they shuffle through billions of numbers before they land on one, which produces a card.

2. Online Poker is Licensed by Regulators

Online poker isn’t rigged because they are not allowed to just do whatever they want and get away with it.

Major poker websites must be licensed by regulators such as the MGA, the UKGC, and others, in order to be in business.

The sites must comply with their terms, otherwise, they would lose their license and miss out on all their potential profits.

Regulators are there to ensure that a fair and truly random game is being played at all times. They will test the software given to them by the poker operator before any updates are allowed to be put into the market.

Operators are incentivized to pay the regulators in order to get their official seal of approval and make sure their customers feel as safe as possible when they play on their platform.

If the players don’t feel safe, they will take their money elsewhere.

3. Anyone Can Use Online Tracking Software

Many poker professionals, such as myself, use legal online poker tracking software like PokerTracker4 and Holdem Manager in order to track their results, study hands, and analyze how loose or tight an opponent is playing.

Without a HUD, players would be forced to take specific notes on a certain hand and may lose key details when they study the spot later in a solver or with others.

These trackers would undoubtedly pick up on any anomaly.

It tracks which hands you’re dealt and how many times you’re dealt these hands. It also tracks the board on every hand, whether you fold preflop or not.

After hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of hands are put in the tracker, it’s very easy to determine whether or not something is up.

There are industry professionals who have access to these hands and actively look for anomalies.

This is why and how botrings and cheaters are discovered yet, after all these years of online poker, the poker community has yet to come up with any proof that online poker is rigged.

4. Poker Sites Have Nothing to Gain, Everything to Lose

If players are playing on a rigged poker site, they will leave and play elsewhere.

Operators make money by taking rake from every online cash game hand and every tournament entry. This means that the people who win or lose have absolutely no effect on their bottom lines.

If players were able to determine that some site pros or somebody connected to the website had inside information and was able to actively rig a game, people would withdraw the money from their accounts and play on another platform.

You saw the result of this from one of the latest poker cheating scandals when ACR Poker came out with an aggressive $100,000 bot challenge, literally telling players to create bots in order to prove that there weren’t bots on the site.

This, of course, put more bots on the site and people all over poker Twitter declared that they were going to withdraw their funds and never play on the website ever again.

5. There Are Plenty of Profitable Players

Players who are profitable in real life tend to be profitable online.

If this weren’t the case, there would be massive outcry from players who are live crushers who get beat up online and vice-versa.

There are many well-known professionals and little-known professionals who have a very steady upwards-trending graph showing consistent profit over many, many years of online poker.

There are also plenty of recreational players who have a very steady downwards-trending graph.

This is no coincidence.

So, Is Online Poker Rigged?

Of course not. Nobody has been able to show any definitive proof that online poker is rigged and there is plenty of data to back that up.

There are consistent winning online players all over the world that are also crushers in live poker. These players are proof that the games are fair and honest.

If you think otherwise, you may just need to study up and dedicate yourself to becoming a professional poker player.