The Deal Is Not Always Random At Pokerstars

The title of this post may suggest that this is going to be one of those vague ‘online poker is rigged” conspiracy type posts. I can assure you it is not. I also want to point out that Pokerstars is the most trustworthy poker room on the internet. I would trust them with my grandmother’s social security check. That doesn’t mean that they are infallible though. At Pokerstars there are certain situations in which the deal will not be random. They actually make sure you don’t get certain cards. That may seem pretty scary and you might be thinking that I’m just making this all up. What if I told you that Pokerstars admits to doing this on their web site? We will get into that in a bit but first lets take a look at why this is happening. The only game where the cards are not random is 27 Triple Draw. 27 Triple Draw is a fairly un-common game so I should briefly explain how it is played.

27 Triple Draw is a 5 Card Draw game. There are three draws and you are trying to get the lowest hand. Aces are always high and straights and flushes count so the top hand is 2-3-4-5-7.

Now that that is out of the way lets get back to the deal not being random. With 3 draws and the ability to draw 5 cards each player at a 27 Triple Draw table can use up to 20 cards. Obviously with 6 players that adds up to much more than 52.  As with all draw games the solution to running out of cards is to re-shuffle the discarded cards, which Pokerstars does. It is at this point that there is a “breach” in the randomness of the cards. Pokerstars has programmed their software in a way that makes it impossible for you to receive a card that you previously discarded. Pokerstars is the only poker room, online or offline, that does it in this fashion.

From what I understand one of the professional players on their team suggested this. Obviously this can’t be considered cheating or stacking the deck but it has caused some concern amongst poker players at several of the top poker communities. The main issue is that online poker players expect to receive the exact same odds that they would if they were playing live poker. Just the thought of a computer controlling what cards we receive is very alarming. In this case it’s pretty harmless, nothing more than a bad decision but it is something to be aware of.

It may not seem like a big deal to some people but there is a huge difference between a 99% random deal and a 100% random deal. I hope Pokerstars changes this policy in the near future, not just because it makes more sense to do it the other way but because it would give everyone piece of mind.

Source: http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/games/draw/reshuffle/