Pokerstars RNG

I always wanted to know if the deck of cards was still being shuffled after the hole cards were dealt so I send an email to their support.

__________________
That's Poker

whenever i'm playing, some hands will just pop up... it wont show them being dealt. That is real wierd.

That's an interesting question Kaart. What that tells me is that the cards being dealt is fixed and known. If the PS software knows whats coming then someone could find out what they are before they're dealt.

Obviously that's unrealistic because of their security measures but damn it sure seems sometimes that some of these guys can see what's coming.

__________________

I've read in several places (couldn't say where because it was a long time ago) that most poker sites generate a random number as each card is dealt to determine what that card will be. PokerStars might be different from the norm in this aspect, I can't say for sure. I wouldn't expect them to provide false information purposefully, but I'm not sure that the average support person is going to be intimately familiar with how the RNG works.

Because of the way that most sites generate random numbers (if there is any validity to what I've read, which is old and many sites could have changed their methods by now) then the time you spend thinking about your decision or whether you fold or call, will have an effect on what the next card generated is. So when you see the flop and say to yourself "Damn, should have called", that's not necessarily accurate, because had you called, the flop may have been different.

If PokerStars does generate random numbers in the method they say they do, it doesn't necessarily mean that the card values are stored somewhere on their servers that they could potentially be retrieved. But if someone were able to obtain the exact formula they use, it might be possible to reverse engineer the formula to predict what the next cards might be. Certainly this has been attempted many times by people a lot smarter then me. And I know that for some of the early poker sites in the 90's that people were able to predict the next cards to be dealt by this exact method. I am not aware of anyone who has successfully reverse engineered the formula on the major poker sites today, but it could be possible.

It's pretty easy to search the web and find someone selling products that claim to enable you to see your opponents hole cards. If someone had reversed engineered the RNG, this would techinically be possible. However, you'll never see anything like this for sale, so those sites and products are just junk. Look at it this way, if you had a machine that printed money, you could print as much money as you needed anytime you needed it, and it couldn't be detected by the most sophisticated counterfeit detection methods, would you ever sell that machine? Why would you? What good is the money you would get from the sale when you can easily print that much money and then print more later if you ran out? It just wouldn't make sense.

The same thing applies to someone who has reversed engineered an RNG and can predict what cards will come and what cards have already been dealt. This would be equivalent to a money machine. You could make a nearly unlimited amount of money by using this. If you sold it, you would put your ability to make money with it at it risk. The more people who have it, the more likely that it will be discovered and whatever flaw that you discovered in the RNG that enabled you to do this, would likely be corrected, eliminating your ability to predict the cards and effectively shutting off your money machine.

So the chances that someone could reverse engineer the RNG for a particular site are very, very remote with the sophistication of today's programs. If it was actually possible to do this, then it would be unlikely that more one or two people had actually accomplished this and were using this. It would be even more unlikely that they would share this techonology with anyone. So while it may seem like people know what is going to be dealt next, they almost certainly cannot.

__________________
Nobody is always a winner, and anybody who says he is, is either a liar or doesn't play poker. -- Amarillo Slim

You say how could I make that call? How could you make that bet? We're playing poker, not solitaire. -- Doyle Brunson

Poker rooms (most if not at least the premium one) use random number generators that can't be deciphered. They use random data collected from several sources, eg. data can include how many people are logged into the site, current weather system information, system noise from the servers and other strange sources. The data is collated and used (somehow) within the card shuffling algarithim to create a unique shuffle.

Poker stars uses thermal noise to create random shuffles. You can not reverse engineer that or somehow guess how it was shuffled. Once their deck is shuffled, it is not touched until the next hand. Today virtual decks are designed to mimic real life decks. There are 52 virtual cards, and they are shuffled before the hand. Just like in real life, the cards are not shuffled anymore during the hand. Each virtual card has its own virtual position in the deck.

You'd have to be able to break into the server to find out the positions in the deck to know which cards are being dealt. And as has been said many times, if you can break into their servers you wouldn't cheat at poker, you would just put oodles of money in your poker account. Plus their servers are much like bank servers, if you are talented enough to break them you'd be breaking banks not poker sites.

You are correct. This is the first email I received.

__________________
That's Poker

I don't think that's exactly how it is. The cards are completely random before the first card is dealt. After that, then yes, there is that slight possibilty that someone could predict the flop, turn, and river (in holdem and omaha). Like you said though, I'm confident that no one can see that because of the security risk.

__________________
cky12 - PokerStars
cky12 - FullTilt

My Poker Journal

Today??? I've been programing since 1966 and we always simulated a pack that way, even in those days. It's always been the simple and obvious way.