Many people all over the internet are asking the same question: “is online poker fixed? Can you really beat the house and get that big jackpot?” This should come as no surprise to anyone that’s even remotely familiar with the online poker community – that is, online poker blogs, forums and discussion boards. So many new players jump into the game without really thinking, or for that matter knowing all the ins and outs of the game, and it’s no wander that they suck out, place bad bets and generally get burned way to soon. But still, is there more to it, or is it just bad skill and worse luck? Can you really win consistently when playing online poker, or is the game fixed?
For my money, the answer lies somewhere in between. While most bad online poker experiences can in fact be attributed to the “human factor” – that is, bad decisions on the part of the player, or just as commonly, bad luck (poker is after all a game of chance, not only skill), from a certain point of view, online poker is in fact fixed. I mean, just think about it for a moment: when you play poker with real cards and a real, human dealer, the order of cards that are dealt is randomized by the shuffle. On the other hand, when you play poker online, the shuffling of cards is substituted by a sophisticated algorithm that generates the order of th? cards in the deck, and is in a way, pre-determined. So yes, you can say that online poker is in fact “fixed” or “rigged”, but not in a way that most people think it is. In order to create a realistic and engaging online poker experience, online casino websites use software algorithms that try to mimic the real life statistical odds. And since it’s an virtual recreation of a random occurrence, a careful online poker player can spot a pattern in it – and best of all, even use it to his own advantage.