ITH Poker Forum

[RiverCascade]

Please begin here. (Discussion prior to June '06, can be found here.)

[wako]

I got the PT patch and the PA HUD patch but Hollywood times me out even on 1 table. I've been 4 tabling for over a month, now with this upgrade I can't play even 1.
Any advice???

[RiverCascade]

wako, I would feel free to send the link to this to anyone that's done a site rating for PR and skins-- PR and Hold'em, for instance. Hope someone see and can help you out.

[nomikai]

lots of fish in the low limit games

[TShadyBaby]

This is the worst site. I use to think the players were so bad and I was taking bad beats. The bad beats are unreal how bad they are and how often by a select group of players. Something is wrong with the software and players are able to cheat. I am a winning player and only site I have not won on are hollywood and skins. I play on the cryptos and kill. I win on numerous other sites. I have played way over 10000 hands. Too many runner runners for players with junk cards hitting no piece of the flop including backdoor draws. They have to hit 2 pair or trips. Stay away from this site. I adjust my play have dropped down to 1 table. I have tried 7-card and Omaha hi/lo. I have never questioned the protection of software on a site, bad beats are part of the game. What happens at Hollywood is something all together different then bad beats. It is called cheating.

[TShadyBaby]

That was over 10000 hands on hollywood.

[Wadofella]

This is the worst site. I use to think the players were so bad and I was taking bad beats. The bad beats are unreal how bad they are and how often by a select group of players. Something is wrong with the software and players are able to cheat. I am a winning player and only site I have not won on are hollywood and skins. I play on the cryptos and kill. I win on numerous other sites. I have played way over 10000 hands. Too many runner runners for players with junk cards hitting no piece of the flop including backdoor draws. They have to hit 2 pair or trips. Stay away from this site. I adjust my play have dropped down to 1 table. I have tried 7-card and Omaha hi/lo. I have never questioned the protection of software on a site, bad beats are part of the game. What happens at Hollywood is something all together different then bad beats. It is called cheating.

Ordinarily I'd laugh at that sort of post. I've never believed that there was anything dodgy about any online poker site & I've played more than 40 of them.

However, for the last two weeks I've been playing this network for the first time & I can honestly say I've never seen anything like it. The number of river flushes, full houses etc simply has to be seen to be believed. At one point I had 10 hands in a row that were the nuts on the flop & turn but lost to a flush or better on the river. This was at limit holdem (& yes I was raising aggressively etc. It makes no difference on this network, no-one ever folds). But that's irrelevant: whether they fold or not, the chances of a third card of one suit hitting, or the board pairing, are still approx 4/1. TEN times in a row? And that was just one little run, it happened continually.

Something is definitely not right there. It's not just bad beats, it's that there are SO many & that they are ALWAYS flush or better hands.

It's also not because the play is loose BTW. I've played much looser networks: (Boss Media / IPN at microlimits is about as loose as it gets, but you still don't get a fraction of the premium hands at those sites).

I'm sure most people reading this will say it's crap, but all I can say is if you think that, try it for yourself & see if you still feel the same way.

And consider this: I could start a poker site tomorrow & it could be completely rigged - but for every person who voiced that opinion on a forum there would be a hundred who would decry them - even though none of us actually have a clue about the inner workings of these sites. It's quite fashionable to respond to any "blah blah poker site is rigged" post by referring to tinfoil hats etc. But that doesn't change the fact that unless you work for a company that audits RnG software for online poker sites, then you don't really know....

After all, who'd have believed that Enron was crooked? And most poker sites are pisspot little affairs compared to Enron.

But like I say, don't take my word for it. Try it for yourself: I'm genuinely interested to see what others think, 'cos I'm about the farthest thing from a conspiracy theorist as you'll get but I think it stinks.

Like I say, I played low-level fixed limit, about 120 hours worth.

cheers
Wado

[Bibra]

I'm going to have to agree here. I don't know if it's done on purpose or just bad design. But I don't get excited when I get AA on this site because it will inevtiably be beaten by something 6 4 offsuit. I don't know if I would call it cheating, but the variance is definitely very high. I think you need alot of patience and discipline to play here. You do eventually bust the fish, but it's a very frustrating ride.

[taz115]

As the tables at Hollywood are shared on the Prima network the whole network would have to be rigged.

I'm sure most people reading this will say it's crap, but all I can say is if you think that, try it for yourself & see if you still feel the same way.

I have played thousands of hands on Hollywood and other Prima sites and I cannot honestly report anything to substantiate any of these claims.

Over many of thousands of hands everyone is bound to see streaks of statistical anomaly. If you happen to have that streak at site B it can be tempting to create an association. All I can say is that there has been a considerable number of threads at ITH that have gone over flop textures, draw %'s and lots of other random factors and no wrong doing has ever been discovered.

Poker sites really have nothing to gain by allowing a group of players to cheat other players. I have made a good chunk of change at Hollywood despite never being allowed to 'cheat' there.

[TShadyBaby]

I stopped playing at Hollywood before it stopped allowing U.S. players for many reasons.
1. Cheating by players that the site would not take serious action against.
2. Only Mushmouth from A Bronx Tale (movie) could be drawed out on as frequently as what was happening to me. I played over 50,000 hands. Way too many 1 and 2 outers were hit and runner runner and those were the only two cards the player could hit.
3. Players staying to the river with 24 offsuit with no draw nothing on the flop calling raises and hitting runner runner 2 then 4 to win.


I have played on numerous sites and have had my share of extremely bad runs. The time came when no other logical conclusion can come but cheating and software problems. If you want to play on the site play at your own risk. I however will not play on a site that will not take proper action against players that cheat and it is obivious that it is occuring. Or how a select few players always hit retarded plays like my example in number 3. I have sat and just observed it.

Shame on you once. Shame on me twice.

I will play at a site that I feel is safe as possible and deals with cheaters immediately and put the hammer to them. Pokerroom skins encourage this behavior.


Lifes A Garden Dig It!!!!

[RiverCascade]

Taz, Hollywood is a PR skin, as you know. How can that be Prima?

[taz115]

Your are correct RC, I must have been thinking 2 things at once. But all of my statements stand.

I just want everyone else that reads this thread to know that there are (in my opinion, unfounded) acusations of cheating at every possible site on the net. Everyone, and noone that has actually done a statistical analysis of a significant number of hands has found anything out of the ordinary. I shold find the links to those old threads, but I don't have the motivation at the moment.

Statements like "I observed too many 2 outers" are very subjective. How many are too many? How many did you observe? If the answer is "lots" I'm unconvinced because I have seen reliability tests done on 100k's of hands and nothing turned up.

Anyways, these discussions detract from the value this forum is intended to create. Hopefully this forum does not digress into a conspiracy discussion on every site. I will therefore not continue to add anymore fluff here.

[RiverCascade]

Thanks, Taz. With every new batch of unschooled players, there's a percentage who follow this train of thinking. I haven't the desire to respond to them, and figure they'll either quit playing or find out soon enough that it's hogwash.