Poker Myths Explained

Online poker sites are rigged

Online cardrooms go to great lengths to ensure their shuffle is fair and the cards are dealt randomly, it is in their interest to host fair games where every player has an equal chance of success in the long term based purely on the randomness of the cards. Many poker sites have floated on the stock exchange, are answerable to shareholders and are worth billions of dollars, why would any company with such huge responsibilities be interested in putting their company in such a position of weakness? There are 3rd party poker software companies who have tested the random number generators for many of the more well known online cardrooms, all finding that they are truly random. There are online players who have built up enough hand history to be able to prove that the cards are not rigged; if you have played and recorded a certain hand a million times, you are likely to have reliable data about how many times your coinflip hand has won. If online cardrooms were cheating, some shrewd players would have publicised the information by now as we all have the capabilities to determine whether we are getting a fair deal.

Winning poker players bluff a lot

Not necessarily so. Some winning players rely on bluffing in poker more than others, but it's certainly not necessary to bluff a lot in order to be a profitable player. Betting for value can often be interpreted as bluffing when actually it is'nt. Poker bluffing is about betting when you're confident your hand would'nt win in a showdown, betting for value is about getting your money in when you feel you are infront; the top professionals all bet for value but not all of them bluff a lot. At the lower table limits, bluffing can be counterproductive because your bluffs are much more likely to be called, playing solid poker is usually enough to make a slow and steady profit.

If I don't have enough chips to call my opponents bet, I must fold, right?

This only happens in the movies, not in real poker games, you cannot be bet off a hand. If you find that you don't have enough money to call an opponents bet, you are put into an 'all in' state where you can only win the main pot while a side pot is created for other active players to continue betting if they wish to do so, you would not be eligible to win the side pot because you have'nt contributed to it, you only stand to win the main pot as an all in player.

Online poker is impossible to profit from because of all the bad players

This arguement goes against one of the fundamental principals to winning poker, find weaker opposition than you and exploit them. You should be glad that there are bad players willing to populate your poker room, without them it would be much harder to profit. One thing you must bear in mind, you will have to adapt your game as the table becomes weaker or stronger, the key is learning to adapt to playing poor players, you won't win as often but the pots you do win will be significantly larger.

All players go broke on their path to profit

This is absolute nonsense, not every player puts themself in a position where they can go broke, so it's just not true. You can help yourself to not go broke, by initially learning the game on the free play tables and then making the transition over to real money games very slowly. If you play at too high a table limit for your poker bankroll, you will likely go broke many times over.

Changing cardrooms means a change in your luck

This is the equivalent of saying, changing your socks means a change in your luck. More to the point, this is a psychological and superstitious myth which has nothing to do with luck. You might start playing differently if you think your luck has changed for the better, kind of like the footballer who can't score without his lucky boots, but this is purely psychology, not luck.

If I withdraw money out of my poker account, the poker site will punish me by rigging the game making it harder for me to win

If you scour the poker forums on the Internet, you will find rumours that once you make a withdrawal, online cardrooms add your username to a list, meaning you get dealt premium cards less often and win less frequently in general. This, again, is a psychological problem at most; a more likely explanation is that players who have made a withdrawal change the way they play because they fear they've been put on a list whereby they now lose more often, in effect it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Online poker is'nt real, most likely you are playing against software programs

If only this were true to the extent people believe it is; yes, there are software programs called 'bots' which play poker on behalf of the bot purchaser, but these pieces of software are far less complex and much more readable than most online players, they certainly can't grasp the strategy concepts that solid Hold'em players apply and are therefore flawed. Many poker forum posters claim to have used these bots, but very few claim to any significant amount of success using them. If you still believe that all online poker games involve rogue software designed to swindle you out of your bankroll, why not host your very own private game, only inviting players who you trust and know are real; many online cardrooms now provide the facility for you to create your very own private games, the house is happy because they still make money from you by charging a rake, you are happier because you know you're playing against your friends and not a table full of bots.