Is PokerStars a scam?

Play on other sites then.

I lost a 99.90% hand once on stars. I just laughed it off.

Originally posted by nsavov
Play on other sites then.

I lost a 99.90% hand once on stars. I just laughed it off.

I won a 0.10% hand once on stars. I also laughed.

Can confirm stars is rigged

Are you an idiot? Seriously!

I haven't had a losing month in last year.

Simple answer to the question in the topic: no.

Stars has been my main room for a long time, now I'm trying iPoker again. I have had good and bad runs on Stars, same thing on other sites. Totally normal. Overall I'm winning.

Did I play terribly? Actually no. Of course yo can always learn and play better, but I stuck to the general poker rules.

Are you sure everything went so well? What are general poker rules? Have you analyzed your hands and your stats, have you got coaching, worked on your mental game, watched coaching videos and took notes, played around with solvers or PokerSnowie?

If you started 10 years ago, your strategy should have changed a lot during the years.

I think the games have become much more loose aggressive in general. About 5 years ago there was not so much 3betting and squeesing. For me that are the main reasons why I don't earn anything anymore. But I am still break-even.

I think La55i is right that we have to adapt our ranges and our strategy.
We have to have different ranges and lines against callingstations or LAGs.

General poker rules are not sufficient against various types of opponents.

About the rivers:
it happens so often that opponent gets his 2outer for a better set or a 4outer or 8outer for a straight, that you really think it is not normal variance anymore.
To me that happens at Stars, but also at Unibet.
Loosing far too often to fishes that have 20% or less equity.

I don't know what I have to do against this. Like you Schijtlijster, I am loosing confidence the last halfyear.
Are you from the Netherlands too?

I think the rooms work with learning algoritmes that can give the x-outer on the river to the player that the room wants. To keep most players break-even.
You cannot beat a learning algoritme.

Probably 95% of players are losing ones. And I am 99,99% sure that if someone would review your hands there would be leaks in your game. And that is the reason you are losing.

Just the other day I shoved J7o from SB and the guys in BB had 44 and I LOST THE FLIP!!!!!

So rigged

All poker sites are rigged in that they charge rake or tournament fees which means in order to make a profit one must first overcome the rake just to break even.

I had a bad run on Pokerstars which lasted for quite some time, and I got so frustrated that I stopped playing there altogether, convinced it was rigged. Never experienced so many coolers and set ups in my poker life. But guess what? The run bad ended when I started playing again and the opposite happened. I won back all my losses and my bankroll increased to a new high. I also play on other poker sites and the same variance swings occur on these sites as well.

Pokerstars isn't rigged just because you are not a winning player. It's impossible for all poker players to be winners. For someone to be a winner there must also be a loser to pay that winner. That is how poker works.

A lot of people also claim that they lose way too often to guys who have only x% equity. But in almost all mental game material you will see some talk about how our brain works in a way that we remember the losses a lot better than the wins. It could be that we first run quite bad and tilt a little bit, then we win our hands "just like we should" for a longer period of time, and then we suddenly lose every hand again which makes us tilt again. Then it is easy to think that we are losing more than what is normal because we tilted now and we remember the last time we tilted, but if we observe things in a sample of hundreds of thousands of hands, we probably see that the frequencies are just as expected.

Poker rooms have no incentive to cheat you.

That's why we have trackers to get the EV line. When you run 40 buyins under EV in single session, you can say that you run bad.

I am quite confident that 99% of people doesn't really understand randomness.

Although, I changed my mind. You are a pretty good comedian. I just read it again and laughed my ass off.

Originally posted by TeamSchijtlijster
To me it seems I am a designated depositor. Now, hundreds of dollars later, to me it is clear: I was tricked!

This is gold, sir.

Originally posted by TeamSchijtlijster
Of course they get away with it, since they have a camouflage named variance. You can hide it ALL in there.

This is so funny. Please, tell me more ...

Just out of interest I filtered for pre-flop all-ins on my database and checked how I was doing..

The first 100 all-ins I ran quite bad. At hand number 96 I was -700 on the negative side while the EV line was +240bb, so I was running 940bb under EV. Someone could get tilted and feel like they are getting scammed because they always lose their all-ins.

At hand number 184 I caught up with the EV line and started running good.
600 pre-flop all-ins later I'm running 700bb above EV.

I also checked that I went all-in pre on average once every 600 hands. That means that getting those first 100 all-ins I would have played about 60k hands.

I guess it is easy to start thinking something is wrong if you play so many hands and just keep on losing every god damn pre all-in. But it happens and it is normal.

Originally posted by arthurbentley
All poker sites are rigged in that they charge rake or tournament fees which means in order to make a profit one must first overcome the rake just to break even.

I had a bad run on Pokerstars which lasted for quite some time, and I got so frustrated that I stopped playing there altogether, convinced it was rigged. Never experienced so many coolers and set ups in my poker life.

This was my experience with PartyPoker and iPoker

I've been a winning player on PokerStars for a long time -- but then, I play very little NLHE. On sites where I do play NLHE I am winning, but by only a small amount.

All people playing poker -- online or otherwise -- need to be aware of variance.
You can play each hand perfectly, and still lose over many hands.

Check out this:
http://www.pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

Enter some numbers and hit "Calculate" to get the news.

Cheers,
VS

Originally posted by TeamSchijtlijster
Hey everyone,

I have been playing poker for about ten years now, and throughout those years I was never able to only even win one penny on PokerStars.

Because you dont beat the games. PokerStars is not rigged I win money there and some of my Skype mates have won close to 1 million $ and that with 6max cash game or HU sngs and not with a lucky MTT bink.
PokerStars.eu is well known for being the thoughest site to play on.

if you never have win a penny why you still play on pokerstars move to anader poker room and try your luck there ore skill

This was the best clickbait i encountered all week.
You got me good there sir, yes you did! :f_thumbsup::f_thumbsup:

I think Pokerstars can be very discriminatory towards losing players
Legends say the site makes them lose in the long run!

Hmm...this actually gave me an idea
Would there be interest in having "The Hidden truths of Variance" One-off special stream guys?

We're talking actual ways it happens people don't realize, mental game, hand examples of variance impacts, some sick bad beats posted by members, mindset after beats, wins etc. And also thinking that sites are rigged.
Like the post or reply here and we'll make it happen if there's enough interest

Mr Moshman has said he's preparing a video about variance.