Strange is poker (in Off-topic)

Plain happy from playing a game holdem nolimit..
Got A4 on hand, and flop turned AAA.. checked (of course), and the turn turned 9, and one guy with lots of cash goes allin on house aces full of nines..
Anyone else with some stories about strange hands?

Just the other day I was playing in a no-limit tourny at a casino (50 buyin, no rebuys, about 50 players), I saw the board flop 6-6-6 two consecutive hands in a row. The first hand I had pocket aces and no one had the six so that worked out pretty well.

But the odds of seeing the board flop a set at 1/424. That means the odds of twice in row are 1 in 179,776 ! It would be even higher odds on them actually being the same set (sixes both times). Crazy. I play way too much poker, but that's definately the longest odd shot I've seen. Actually, last week I got pocket JJ, AA, AA in 3 consecutive hands, which is also pretty unlikely.

Oh! And while I was playing hold'em, some guy actually hit a 7 card straight at Pai-Gow, which pays out 8000 to 1! Not only that, but if anyone was betting $5+ on the envy, then they got paid a percentage too. This old lady was playing two hands and she didn't even realize that she won money for the envy. The dealer had to tell her, and she went crazy. $5,000 just for one envy bet. She was yelling "I won 5k!" and dancing around like a school girl (she had to be over 70). Then the dealer tells her she won $5k for EACH hand she played, I thought she was going to have a heart attack right there.

Which makes me wonder about the random number generator and the coding behind the online casinos.

One question for all you online poker players that play for real money. Say I ran one of those online poker places. What, exactly, would my incentive be to run an honest game? All I'm really interested in is making money. It'd take a statistical genius playing thousands of times to discern the difference between bad luck and a fudge-factor going my way.

I like the game. However, there's no way I'd play it online (for money) unless the code was open source and the RNG was available to check for true randomness.

well.. sites are often tested by approved companies for the number generation, but I really hate how often my twopair/set, gets shot down by a inside straight on the river.

But, atleast, it's the same for every player, so if you don't play for too much of the bankroll, luck factor is reduced in long run.

/me chuckles at the thought of checking a RNG for "true randomness".

and.. almuric, if you enjoy the game, I would recommend to make up a cash amount that you can afford to lose completely, put it into a site, and play.
If you lose all, you stray from playing for money ever after, and if you win, that's nice :)

Caedmon, there are many true RNG's you can hook up to a computer. A Geiger counter is one of them. One of the original true random number generators hooked up to the internet was some webcams pointed at lava lamps. Take the resulting bitmap, do a little math on the bits and you've got a true random number.

Hooking a true RNG up and making it work might not be the easiest thing in the world, but if you can spend $650,000 to name a new species of monkey, you can spend a little on a Geiger counter and a radioactive source.

hmmm.. in that matter, I trust the computers randomgenerator to be much more random than a real life card dealer.

This one time, the dealer dealt the cards.

I passed out at the table, and some chick stole my wallet.


Good times.

lol @ mrwuss

Almuric, I play online a bit (not as much as in real casinos). Enough to turn my $200 into $3000 something over a few months. Online is a much different game then live action is. I'm less worried about randomness then I am bots. It may SEEM like some sites give out a lot of big hands, but you have to put it in scale. They might give out a royal flush an hour, which would be ridiculous in a real casino, but they play about 10000x more hands online in an hour then is possible in a real casino. The odds say there is supposed to be more big hands.

Also, there are a few nice little statistic tracking apps/sites that automatically monitor your last hand feed and keep a database of every hand played for you (for a fee of course). I check mine out every few days. If I play somewhere for a few weeks and notice the trends are not to my advantage, I just don't play there anymore.