RPP algorithm from someone who knows what he's talking about

OK, let’s break this down bit by bit. We may be finding common ground.

Anyways, in order to deal 12 cards, first you deal one card, which can be done by simulating a U(52). When you are going to deal the second card, the first card has already been dealt, so you have to deal one of the 51 cards remaining, which means you would (usually) want to simulate a U(51). After that, you will have 50 cards remaining when you want to deal the third card, so you will want a U(50), etc. at some point you will have dealt 9 of the 12 cards you want to deal, so you will want a U(43) in order to deal the tenth. After you have dealt 12 you can stop (assuming there are 2 players and 3 burn cards. You don’t really need burn cards, but whatever.) 43 is just an example. If you are going to deal Y cards, you will want to simulate a U(52-X) for every number X in {0,1,…,Y-1}.

The useless slider would indeed be deceptive, but it would also be completely undetectable. Whether a slider is useless or does what it claims, the stochastic behavior of the system would be identical.

I do not know what you think Replay does that is not fair. Site policies etc. were not really the topic. I was just discussing dealing cards.

Not sure what you mean by the difference between computer poker and online poker. From the perspective of dealing cards they are the same exact problem. There is a difference in the sense of fairness to all players I guess, because if you are playing against a CPU it really doesn’t matter whether it is fair or not.

The number 1 difference between internet and physical poker is that you can’t look at the people you are playing with. This is the most important difference in every possible sense of the word. This is why it feels different, and this is why it changes what the game is like. The algorithm for shuffling is MUCH less significant than this one simple fact.

As to why people always claim online poker is rigged, it has to do mostly with people’s general complete lack of understanding of randomness. When playing live, they don’t usually get to think about hands in blocks of 20, because each hand takes a while and there is much more going on than the cards. When playing online 20 hands can take about 15 minutes, and you can get a much better look at what happens long term. People are - in general - very bad at recognizing long term randomness. The human mind loves to see patterns in things, and things that behave a lot like patterns will show up in truly random data all the time. This is why formal statistical tests are so important: There is no level of training you can give someone that will allow them to just look at data and accurately decide whether there is a trend or not.

I am no less suceptible to this than anyone else. Here is a pretty ridiculous (and shameful) example from about 2 months ago: I had an alternative test which I was checking for accuracy in predicting diabetes. I had the results of the standard test side by side with the alternative test. When I looked through them I was thinking “well, it obviously isn’t quite as good, but usually it is mostly in the same ballpark. This seems to be an OK alternative.” Then I realized I had made a mistake: I had paired up the test for patient 1 with the data for patient 2, the test for patient 2 with the data for patient 3, etc. It was all completely bogus since I wasn’t even comparing to the right patient! Yet without actual testing my intuition had said that it was accurate. There was no pattern at all, but after years of training and looking at data my brain still insisted on seeing a pattern anyway.

The point I am trying to make is that speaking from a purely practical perspective, there is a level of randomness and fairness that you can probably call “good enough” and from that point on the other problems with the system will be much more important than any problem with the randomization. In physical shuffling and also in randomization using the MT, we are doing way better than this “good enough” level.

Now as for the last question, I have a little trouble understanding it. As stated I get the feeling you are using terms that you don’t know the meaning of. That’s fine :slight_smile: , they are technical terms from a field you don’t specialize in. If I had to ask technical questions about chemistry I would probably do much worse.

I will try to answer what I think you MEAN rather than what you actually SAID:

When you draw random cards, this thread has shown two different alternatives for how to do it:

The first is that you first draw a card from a set of 52. Then you draw a second card from the 51 remaining. Next you draw a third card from the 50 remaining, and so on.

The second alternative is that you always draw from a set of 52. The issue with this one is that if your first draw was the two of hearts, your second draw might also be the two of hearts. You can’t, of course, deal the same card twice, so the solution is that you have to draw again until you get a card that hasn’t already been dealt.

In my earlier post I wrote a 2 line proof that these two methods have the exact same behavior. The probability of being dealt a certain card at a certain turn is the same with either algorithm, so it doesn’t matter. That said, the second algorithm is much worse than the first because with the first one you only have to summon the RNG once per card, and in the second one you might have to summon the RNG many more times (there is no bound; you might just keep drawing the two of hearts over and over again forever, although the probability of this is vanishingly small).

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This reminds me of the “Press To Cross” buttons you see at some intersections. The vast majority of them aren’t connected to anything, yet they give people the illusion they have some control, and thus cut down on jaywalking.

Yes, the computer pRNG is more uniformly random than a physical shuffle… in theory. However, the difference is trivial and undetectable in practice.

The “patterns” we see are mostly the result of differences in play, not in the way the cards are shuffled. We see more people entering more pots, and more people going all the way to showdown. This is a result of the perception that the chips have no value, and has nothing to do with the way the cards are dealt.

Changing the way the cards are dealt wouldn’t change anything except the way the cards are dealt.

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wow…all this theory is far too much for my simple mind…but here is my contribution…if Rp is random why when I play Omaha hi/low I seem to get far more A2** than when playing just Omaha…probably my imagination but just seems to happen a lot.

Gotta say…I believe that what this guy says is credible.I really believe that lots of people need an excuse for their poor play or just plain bad luck!! Its the same no matter where you go even real hold em tables…it must be a rigged game…or the dealer is horrible …or the guy next to me does not play the way I think he should!! Time for these folks to suck it up and stop whining!!

I suspect it’s more about the way we form memories. Short term memory is sort of like computer RAM; it’s fast, but also volatile. Sleeping is like a mental reboot. The stuff in your short term memory is scanned, and anything deemed important is moved to the hard drive of longer term memory. Everything else is discarded.

In regular Omaha, A2 isn’t anything special, so we forget. In O H/L, your brain registers A2 as something of more importance.

It might be interesting to note that I don’t really remember many hands, at least long term. I find that I can remember almost every hand I play in a tournament, but only short term. Once the tourney is over, I don’t consider any of it to be important enough to store long term.

So it is your imagination? Not really… it’s just the way our minds work.

[quote=“spivak, post:61, topic:6651”]
Not sure what you mean by the difference between computer poker and online poker
[/quote]Thats easy… the difference between playing video poker ( computer poker ) and Internet/online poker … while the 1st can be networked within a casino, its 1v1… you against the house… the 2nd would be what we play here, free/cash same thing.

Yes, we all see patterns in things we shouldn’t… its a human trait…

I will agree in general, whether you draw 52 cards 1st, or you draw them as you deal prolly won’t make or shouldn’t make much difference , thats not what I was asking… and truthfully, I’d never program the 2nd option there. And as said earlier, there are multiple ways to “build” deck 2 from deck 1…

Lets say in general terms, you’re looking @ probability and distribution, in data sets… thats why I was wondering if there’s any adv. or disadv. in 1 data set of 50, or 50 data sets of 1 … yes I know average and mean are 2 different things…

( I also was taught, that if you wanted a number between 1-100… you did it the following way… X=INT(RND(1)*100)+1 … instead of X=INT(RND(100))+1 … in essesnce you’d think it would give you the same number either way, and thats not quite how it works… I cannot remember why I was taught that, but I was… and yes there was a reason. )

Also described earlier, you draw that 2 of hearts, then move it to the end of the line and draw from a pool 1 less than you just did, it stops you from from continually picking dead cards.

Exactly what method you use to simulate a U(100) will depend on what the RND(100) is doing under the hood. This will vary based on the programming language, and I am not sure exactly what language you are writing in. Most languages do not include a specific function for a U(100), and those that do usually just send random(a) to random(1)*a exactly (in which case there is no difference between the two ways of writing it). I suspect that in the language you are using RND(100) is something else, but I don’t know what it might be.

Great analysis! After reading all that, I still wonder why I get burned so often. Especially with pocket AA.
What everyone should remember is that RPP is great fun. --Don’t take the game too seriously. TY for the expert article!.

Hi Spivak.

I love reading your posts and appreciate the information. At least the parts that I comprehend. I am just another old guy who learned what he knows about this game through trial and error and some common sense. I wish I had the abilities of you and the people who have posted on this topic.
A couple of my thoughts:

The number 1 difference between internet and physical poker is that you can’t look at the people you are playing with. This is the most important difference in every possible sense of the word. This is why it feels different, and this is why it changes what the game is like. The algorithm for shuffling is MUCH less significant than this one simple fact.

This is the only thing you posted that I would disagree with.

After working in cardrooms as a dealer, shift manager, cage manager, general manager, shill and proposition player, then owning and operating my own card rooms, my experience is a little different. I would put your number 1 as my number 2.
My observation as to the biggest difference in casino cardroom play and playing online are physical distractions that cause the player to lose concentration.

Some of the factors I noticed with new player in my cardrooms who had only played online were how badly distracted they became. I think in the main they were used to being at home in a quiet room where they were relaxed and felt very much at home. They almost always had a very nice comfortable chair at their computer, great lighting, and limited noise.
In the card rooms, often times the chairs are cheap and pretty uncomfortable. Difficult to sit in for 6-7 hours or more. The 6 television sets around the room, all with a different sporting event on and various players hollering at a tv when their team did something. I could watch the online players getting distracted by this where it did not bother the regular card room players at all. And another noticeable factor was gender distraction. I watched many who played very well as long as a man was dealing and all the players were men, but as soon as one of my pretty young lady dealers got in the chair or a few attractive ladies got in the game, their play went to pot. Many were way more interested in flirting and also they tended to increase their alcohol intake and their play just got worse.

I have a question I would like to ask that I think the people who have posted on this topic have the expertise to help me with part of my game. I am not capable of doing it myself. It is regarding the quality of starting hands versus the number of effective players in a hand. I think the way the board operates, I should probably post this question as the start of a new topic. I don’t want to interfere with the input on the present topic. Thanks, Seville

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This is a great observation. I have never played in any kind of casino or cardroom in my life, nor would I ever consider consuming alcohol and playing poker at the same time. My experience with live poker is mostly at friendly gatherings in college or at friend’s houses.

As to the last question, I am unfortunately unable to give you very good tips about actually playing poker becuase I am garbage at the game myself, but I am certain that others would be able to say more.

Ahh gotcha, Spivak … yeah so true… I have loved this thread…

It might have something to do with numbers not divisible by 10 evenly and rounding issues, anywho… at todays com. speeds, I see no reason not to recreate actual decks/shuffles… if I was building a poker site such as Replay… plus, its always easier to manipulate stuff ( still pretty hard ) if you’re pulling cards as you deal them out ( ie- not even using a deck [ noone could tell ])… so I would use actuall decks for that alone.

If nothing else, now I think abou this thread as I play… from time 2 time…tks Spivak

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The question I have I believe is a statistical more than actual poker play. I will go ahead and ask here and see if anyone has any input.

At the end of WW!!, my folks held a poker game every saturday night. I sat on my moms lap and learned the game watching her play. I always wanted to play, so on other nights my mom and dad and my sister and I played. Then an aunt and uncle and nephew moved in with us. Now we had a 7 handed game and played about 4 nites a week. Anyhow, I grew up playing poker, made enough thru high school to pay for my gasoline and dates. Later starting playing in my uncles card room and then when I was 18 I started playing in the Casinos in Gardena, Calif. Later went into the Poker business and spent several years in it. Lots of fun most of the time but big headaches at other times.I loved tournaments. Traveled and played in the all over. Mostly in Calif. and Nev. Featured them in my card rooms. When the game of Texas Holdem got started I began playing a lot of it. There weren’t any books or anything to help you out so most of what I do, I figured out myself. Some has worked well for me over the years , but I would sure like to have some statistics to verify or back up the logic of part of my play, and maybe would make it better.

I noticed a few things over time. Some players are very good at open poker, but do very poorly in tourneys. The just dont seem to pick up the differences in strategy between the two. I also noticed that a lot of good tournament players can do real well through the tournament until it gets down to about 2 tables and their game seems to start down hill and even worse at final table. After a lot of thought about it I decided that they probably did not allow for the quality of the starting hand to the effective number of players. When I go to Nevada and play in a tournament, I find out all I can about it if I dont already know. I want to know the general quality of the player the tourney draws in. I know a lot of people in the business so I can usually find a casino employ who will fill me in on this. If it is a good tournament that draws good players I usually go into it playing pretty conservatively at the beginning and get a feel for the players and what they do. Note any bingo or real loose players , if any at the table, and also the rocks. I know that there are a large number of lists of the 20-30 best starting hands in holdem. You can google them and get several plus many others in various poker books. Over the years I have my own list of the 30 best starting hands. In Nevada almost all tourney seat 10 players at a table. So, most of your play is 10 handed. If the field looks real tough and until I get a feel for the game, I might decide to be real tight and just play my top 15 hands and only then if bet is no higher than the big blind. And at this time play the blinds but not raise. There are always exceptions to this under certain circumstances. If game is a little looser I may go up to my top 20 starting hands or even the top 25 if the players at the table seem weak. If a player gets knocked out or goes to the bathroom or leave seat for any reason, I will add the next two places to hands I will call blind on. If I had been at top 20 starting hands, I will play top 22 while playing 9 handed and would go to top 24 if two players gone, then if one returns, or players brought from other tables I would go back two for each player.

Following this line of play, I am always conscious of the effective number of players in the hand and make those adjustments. And most important at the final table. By the time we get down to heads up I am considering playing playing hands that might not make my top 30.

This type of play has worked well for me for a long time, but its mostly guess work and watching tons of hands. I would love to have some statistics as I mentioned earlier. Maybe adding 3 hands when a vacant seat at the table could be better, don’t really know. I just recognize that the value of the starting hands goes up with less players. I will play a pair of 5s or maybe mid level suited connectors everytime for the price of the big blind in a heads up game, but almost never in a 10 handed game.

Any help or advice appreciated.

Thank you,

Seville
.

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Seville - I just want to see if I have the question right before even thinking about answering. Are you talking about finding suggested ranges of hands to open with based on numbers of players at the table in addition to position? For example, A10s UTG on a 10 player table vs a 6-player? If so, there is a ton of information on this, especially on HU.

Added: A simple way of going about making the adjustment from a full table of 9 or 10 to short-handed, say 6, is to take the standard hand charts for full ring and chop off early position. Just start with the ranges for middle position. i.e. UTG on a 6-player table would be the equivalent to having 1st 3 players on a 9-person table folding and you are 1st to act.

It’s to bad you spent so much time explaining something that is more than likely way over the head of those who’s become somewhat paranoid as to why their hand lost on the river. They will not understand your dissertation of algorithms any more then the law of large numbers. There is such a thing as thinking poker to death. As many layers and depths of poker there really are, there’s certainly plenty of room for

Greetings Seville,
I too consider my self a student of the game after nearly 55 years of playing. I also worked in the casino business for 42 of those years. So it’s safe to say I’ve seen some stuff, and I have certainly learned some things along the way… I’ll try to say this without trying to confuse you or myself Seville. And maybe others that may consider some of these thoughts I want to share…
Your issue isn’t as technical as it may seem. It’s more about the concept of the game or games. First I want to show my respects and thank those who never get these next points I’m about to make…
As fundamentally similar as ring games and tournaments are as far as a card game itself, they are also hugely different games. Ring games are “infinite”. Tournaments are “finite”. There is a conclusion. That’s why many great Hold’em players struggle with tournaments in the beginning. The other big factors I’ve seen many players struggle with in tournaments is the middle, end games. To start with Tournaments are very much like the game of Chess, structurally. There is a beginning, middle, & end game. I know this all may sound a little simple, but it is how I learned from others who were and are very successful. There are many facets of tournament play I see that go missed by some if not many.
Good Luck Seville,

Thank you both, I appreciate the input.

Seville

So, limited understanding of RNG, but I’d have to think its the cards that are random, not the numbers, letters or suits, is that correct.
Would that answer why there’s so many flushes dealt?

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That is correct. The cards are what is randomized rather than any specific element separately. As to the number of flushes, it is about the same as what you would expect from shuffling a pack of playing cards by hand.

Greetings Horse-Man,
You’re correct about the Randomness of the cards themselves. It does stretch into the values of the cards in a way. They are only limited by the assigned values given. There is an exact ratio of odds to the randomness of the values of hands dealt… It’s not something easily seen without applying the actual science of, “The law of large numbers”. The odds and randomness of certain hands IS constant, but it will never rest there, It is constantly in motion and only becomes an average after enough data has performed to gathered and compute. This is the very law that makes casinos in general so successful and certainly helps those who understand it and can apply it. Really hope this helps more then it confuses…