Although a large number of people play Texas Holdem online every day, many of those players do not have a thorough understanding of how playing the game online differs from a live game. The most significant difference is the computer generated codes used in the online poker RNG and how those codes affect the outcome of each hand.
Mainly, since poker sites do not have the ability to deal cards like in a live game, they are forced to use a series of computer generated programs to perform this task. One of the main programs used is an RNG (random number generator). The RNG, according to the site, uses a number of associated techniques to attempt to generate a truly random shuffled deck of cards.
Due to the advanced techniques that poker sites use to arrive at their own sequence of shuffled decks, it is almost impossible to predict what cards will be drawn and what your opponents have. However, it is not difficult to predict the game and the expected result in many situations.
Although all major poker sites will claim that their RNG program is fair and impervious to any possible hijacking or decryption, the reality is that the RNG is often not the culminating factor of what will happen on the flop, river or turn. That decision is largely based on additional factors, such as the players in the game, the additional poker algorithms used to induce the action, and ultimately, poker sites’ own use of anti-collusion and anti-cheat subroutines.
The addition of these weird programs, algorithms and subroutines drastically changes the outcome of each hand and ultimately changes the actual statistical odds. For example, in a recent independent study of over 250,000 hand histories from a poker site, it was revealed that underfavorite hands on the flop made a winning hand on the river more than 20% of the time.
That percentage represents a lot of bad beats in poker that aren’t usually apparent in live play. This has led many poker players to conclude that online poker is rigged and the RNG is flawed. In truth, the RNG is rarely flawed, as the RNG is not responsible for possible bad hits as much as the additional poker algorithms used by many sites.
The secret to using the online poker RNG is to be aware of the potential hands that can be made on the flop and the potential for your hand to survive a bad beat. In many cases, knowing when a flush is expected to occur while holding two pair can tell you to avoid committing too many chips into the pot.
The perfect strategy to use is to learn how the software works, get as much information about the game’s statistics, and use that information to make your decision on whether or not to continue in the hand. The best defense for maintaining your stack is to avoid getting a bad beat, and that can be easily accomplished by understanding how and when a bad beat can occur.
