Someone please answer this definitively!

[Washerwoman]

I have had countless discussions with people on different sites as to whether the cards on the flop are

version 1 : "set" from the flop status, ie including turn and river (so no amount of mouse clicks makes a difference)

or

version 2 : completely random according to the number of mouse clicks involved during the round in question...

this means, are u watching a hand you could have won come down as a folded bystander, or, if you'd stayed in, would it all be different because you would have altered the amount of clicks in the party, thereby altering the cards with each click...??

Somebody who knows...pleeeeease clear this up

[Assistanc3]

The cards on the flop turn river are pre-determined much like your hole cards being dealt. The hand number is associated with what be dealt.

[villaridge]

online RNG's all constantly shuffle the deck. and the shuffle is time and player fold dependant. what you see after you fold is not what you would of seen if you called, or maybe it would of been.

As some examples, when the down cards are ready to be dealt to a full table, the table would ask for 18 cards from a 52 card deck.
18 random cards are selected using a Knuth algorithm from a 52 card deck. The actual random numbers are selected from a hardware TRNG (not a PRNG) meaning it is TRULY random on a quantum physics level*. This source is XOR'ed against an PRNG as a failsafe against hardware malfunction. The process of obtaining the 18 cards from the 52 card deck caused the deck itself to be reordered.

Hence, the next request for cards from the 52 card deck would start
with a different initial state than the previous request.

The request for cards returns 18 unique indices between 0 and 51.

Now, when it comes time to deal the flop, the table asks for 3 cards
from a 34 card deck. The table knows what cards are left in it's own
deck. All the RNG returns is 3 indices between 0 and 33, which are
used to pick from the remaining cards in the table's deck.
Again, the process of choosing these new indices causes the 34 card deck
(or more correct, the set of indices from 0 to 33) to be reordered.

This means that all tables are basically shuffling decks for each other,
and that the timing of the hand affects the outcome (in two ways... first,
the TRNG itself will return different results depending on when it
is queried, because it is not a PRNG and is stateless... it's is truly
random... second, even if the TRNG returned the same numbers, other tables could have modified the state of the indices before you made your request).


The deck is shuffled once a game starts....CONTINIALLY. this aint live poker, online, a deck gets constantly shuffled, depending on mouse clicks, time u wait and other peeps folds or calls.

[Alnoble]

While villsa explenation is excellent and accurate for some sites it's not the only method used.

I think what is described is Full Tilts metho.d Poker Stars I believe use similar methods for the RNG but the deck is set at the start of the hand and not reshuffled during it.

I'm open to being wrong on this as it'a a while since I read it all.

The point is though once you have folded your hand it doesn't matter to you what flops, if you think about what might of been it affects your game and you make rash decisions.

[Assistanc3]

The deck is shuffled once a game starts....CONTINIALLY. this aint live poker, online, a deck gets constantly shuffled, depending on mouse clicks, time u wait and other peeps folds or calls.

While villsa explenation is excellent and accurate for some sites

you actually believe that? mouse clicks determine the outcome

For the record, a computer algorithm CAN NOT generate anything random, ever.

[Alnoble]

Quote/you actually believe that? mouse clicks determine the outcome

For the record, a computer algorithm CAN NOT generate anything random, ever. /Quote

Random data is feed to an algorithm to produce a random suffle the algorithm it'self does not produce the random data.

Why don't you do some research for example 30seconds on PS finds this.

Quote from PS

SHUFFLE

"Anyone who considers arithmetic methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin." - John von Neumann, 1951
We understand that a use of a fair and unpredictable shuffle algorithm is critical to our software. To ensure this and avoid major problems described in [2], we are using two independent sources of truly random data:

• user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software
• Quantis [3], a true hardware random number generator developed by Swiss-based company ID Quantique, which uses quantum randomness as an entropy source

Each of these sources itself generates enough entropy to ensure a fair and unpredictable shuffle.



It took 30 seconds to find this on the PS site. I'm sure I could find similar on FT if I could be bothered




There is a lot more detail available if you want to look.

[Dan Abnormal]

if the above description is accurate becasue I have always wondered too, weather cards are set in stone once betting starts. I dont quite understand why poker sites dont want poker to emmulate LIVE POKER and in a sense that does make the 2 games quite different IMO. If cards are still spinning once betting has started, just doesnt seem on the level. Especially when I hear other folks talking in threads about, how the games are on the level but they like to move people in and out as fast as possible to get more tournies in each day and I was like thats not a very good argument to defend sites. It just seems that once betting has started than the deck should stop spinning because it aint like the cards are shuffling when you play live once pocket cards are delt. Does anyone know which sites have constant spinning and do any sites have it set in stone once pocket cards are delt

[Assistanc3]

Interesting you start with PS, maybe cause your 30sec search only looked for something to copy and paste. Search for this part: "Information about the results can be seen.", and please show me the results, cause I couldn't find any. (please don't reply with quotes, only results of the tests by Cigital.

There is a reason they don't actual print results, it gives programs something to work with.

Why not use open source? Let every hacker, programmer, mathematician take run at it. If you honestly believe it is 100% truly random then why isn't every poker site using the same generator? Is one more random then the other?

1951 quote, impressive isn't? Should read his papers on game theory, does wonders for your chess game.

[Alnoble]

PS happened to be one I had previously looked at and a site I play regularly. If you knew about all this why didn't you say.

Why don't all use the same. There are so many things that companies or individuals choose to do different to each other simply because they think there method is the best.

If you don't think it random enough have you managed to find a pattern, has anyone. I don't think it's perfect but I actually think is more random than live games.

[madjek]

The shuffles are all random enough. The 2 and 3 outers don't hit when I need them, do hit when someone against me needs em. Keeps all the percentages right that way. You see they pick a certain percentage of players to always get bad beat, the rest do the bad beating, hope some of you are on the good side, sucks to be on my side

I don't really see what it matters, I just assume everything's would of been different if I stayed in hand and don't worry about what could of been. If you made the right decision without knowing what was coming, then its still a good decision even if after the fact it wasn't.