Actually I have a more specific question in mind. I have a poker videogame, but even with my lack of poker experience, I think there is something wrong with its algorithm for dealing hands: there seem to be far too many huge hands per game, or even per deal.

(On the other hand, maybe I'm just naive about how often such monsters come up.)

The game is by Birdsoft, I think, and it's called Crazy Bird's All-In Hold 'Em. The format for their tournaments is that each comprises 24 entrants, but the player only sees at most 8 at a time (the rest presumably play "offstage" at other tables). Every so often, as entrants are knocked out, replacements from other tables are switched in; and when the numbers get whittled down, a couple of tables are merged into one.

In the last tournament I played, I actually saw two straight flushes, three four-of-a-kinds, at least five or six full houses, and I lost track of the number of straights and flushes I saw. I don't believe more than six hands were won with two pair or less. In fact, this is pretty run of the mill for this particular videogame.

Now, the only thing I have to compare that to is some poker I played in Las Vegas a few months ago and watching the World Poker Tour TV broadcasts -- but I sure don't remember any series of hands like that!

I read somewhere that some videogames juice-up the deal, so that there will be lots of really huge hands (presumably because they think that will be more exciting for the player). I've also read that some games actually pick one of the onscreen entrants -- either the human player or one of the AIs -- and put him on a "lucky streak," where everything goes his way for some number of deals. Does anybody know anything about this particular game? Am I just being paranoid?

The reason I ask is that I play the videogame to try to practice various strategies and hone my skills with tournaments that last fifteen minutes, instead of two hours. Plus, I can pause the game while I go off to do other things. But it's useless to me if it doesn't mimic a real tournament -- at least insofar as the actual mix of hands is concerned.

Is there a videogame that is as rigidly honest in the deal as I know the tournaments here at FCP are? A videogame that doesn't sex-up the hands or artificially confer a magic "Mr. Lucky" spell on AIs or the human player?

Thanks,

Dafydd

Yeesh!

Dafydd

Standard.

You mean a mix of huge hands like that is normal for a table of 8 playing maybe 60 hands? That puzzles me, as I didn't see anything like that when I was playing with actual, physical cards in Las Vegas.

Dafydd

I'm pretty sure those video games AREN'T random, but I could be wrong.

I have been playing World Series : TOC and Texas Holdem' on Xbox 360 and Xbox Live Arcade respectively, as you can see by the icons in my sig. I play only against AI and find the hands and stuff to be about normal. The Texas Holdem' one is only about ten bucks, and you can download it. The UI kinda sucks, and the bad beats for me happen more frequently, but that doesn't mean it's rigged or anything. I've logged alot of hours into both of these games getting all the Achievements except of course, I'm missing the Royal Flush in the "Make all hands" category..