To become a successful gambler, whether you play poker or casino games, you need to think as a professional player and avoid all superstitions. Luck comes and goes, but the game remains the same. You just have to deal with it.

In the first article about gambling superstitions, we discussed the gambler's ruin and the gambler's fallacy. Those theories are applicable on all forms of gambling.

Now we're going to focus on online gambling and all "rigged sites on the net". You've surely heard it, or perhaps said it your self, comments like, "Typically Full Tilt Poker" and "888.com is so rigged"

Weird stuff happens on the Net, there's no doubt about that. You loose with 20 in blackjack four times in a row or get outdrawn in poker when you push all in and your opponent only has one out. But is this due to rigged sites?

 

What Would a Casino Site Gain on Cheating?

When you hear someone whine about his bad luck, he often claims that the site would earn money by providing unfair games. But that's really hard to believe. In poker, the site doesn't care who wins a pot. The rake will be deducted anyway. Why would a site rig a game so that one player would win more than others? That's just a case of extremely bad business.

In casino games, the house has a built in edge. In the long haul, it's impossible to beat blackjack, slots, roulette or whatever games you choose. So the casino-site owners sit on a goldmine. This makes it unlikely that they would try to temper with the odds. They win without cheating.

 

Why Do We Believe Sites are Rigged?

I don't think many disagree with what I've said so far. Despite that, many think that sites actually are rigged, and one can wonder why.

One reason is the pace of the game online. If you play poker in a home game or in a brick-and-mortar casino, you play around 30 hands per hour. But when you play online, you might play 100 hands per hour; and if you play at three tables simultaneously, you play 300 hands per hour.

That's ten times as many hands, which means ten times as many unlikely situations.

 

What Do You Remember?

The human memory also has a big impact on this. We tend to forget when the luck was in our favor: When the dealer had 11 in blackjack and went bust or when you had a gut-shot draw in poker and made you straight. We might just see it as justice, like we're so good that we deserved to win.

When the luck is against us, on the other hand, it tends to stick. In reality, the luck always evens out … eventually.