Party Poker "Fast Fold" (Zoom) poker alleged to have bug or intentional rigging which robs people of EV

An interesting investigation is ongoing regarding Party Poker and their "fast fold" (zoom) poker game.

Recall that zoom poker formats immediately move you to a new table after you've folded, thus cutting down the wait between hands. This format has been around for about a decade, and has been popular.

A guy named "nostalgic_goldfish", real name Justin, created a Reddit thread accusing Party of intentionally rigging their fast fold games.

Justin claims that, out of 580,000 hands played at fast fold, he got significantly fewer hands than expected in the advantageous cutoff (one off the button) position, whereas a random seating algorithm should roughly have even numbers for each player at each seat, over a 580,000 hand sample.

Justin's theory was that Party was doing this intentionally -- giving more cutoff hands to losing payers, and fewer to winning players, thus giving the losing players an extra advantage to make up for their lesser skill.

https://cdn-bfpkc.nitrocdn.com/xDGRd...f96.ffdata.jpg


This isn't an new discovery, though. In a 2+2 thread from March, users have shared data regarding this weird discrepancy in cutoff hands, and some losing players came forward to admit that they got MORE cutoff hands than expected. Uh oh!


Party Poker has supposedly acknowledged the "bug" since April, but has apparently not corrected it! They have also apparently been flippant in their response to poker pros complaining about it and demanding compensation.

Here's Kat Martin's good article about it on poker.org: https://www.poker.org/partypoker-fas...regs-millions/

The article classified players as "winning" and "losing". I'm no genius, but I'll bet my last dollar that Justin is not a winning player, just like 99.9% of all online poker players. If he was winning, he probably wouldn't have noticed. So is Party going by who loses more and giving them an advantage so that they are able to not go broke as fast to generate more rake? That seems strange to me and I don't see an upside on their end to risk their reputation on that but I have never played on Party Poker. I am surprised that Party acknowledged it, and even gave him a refund. This would also confirm what I have always said that these people that regulate these online poker sites are a joke. I have filed complaints with the NGC against WSOP and on the rare occasion that I received a response, it is clear that they have no idea what to look for and wouldn't know a rigged game from a legit one.


I can't play on Party Poker but I do play on Black Chip Poker and play Blitz and noticed that mine is off as well.

EP - 20719
MP - 13530
CO - 11801
BT - 15096
SB - 15075
BB - 15079

I call shenanigans on these "people" that have said they are getting more hands in position. The article didn't mention them or provide any proof of that so I'm guessing Justin is behind those to back up his claim. Doesn't matter since Party has admitted it but I don't think that Party is giving a human more late position hands in Fast Fold than another human. My guess is that they have bots that they own and that they use like a shill or prop player in a real casino. I've always wondered how the instant I fold, there's always 5 other people who folded at exactly the same time as me? Seems impossible but if you had it set up where you have a pool of real human players and a pool of bots that are waiting in the wings to be released then it seems much more possible.

Another thing to add that I find hilarious is that on that website there is an article I just read about a player "Yuri Dzivielevski" who won two WCOOP events on the same day. HUH? How is that possible? The odds of that happening have to be incredibly small and then at the bottom of the article it says that he signed on as a Party Poker Ambassador. I started laughing because they all play us for chumps. How much evidence do people need before everyone understands that these sites are rigged and something is going on and it's not "random" as they claim it is. Adding this as I finished reading the article and not only did this happen once but I guess twice. "The first such instance occurred just a few days earlier, when the Netherlands’ “Fisherman FV” took down WCOOP-68-M: $55 Mixed NLHE/PLO and #72-M: $109 Stud within a three-hour span." I don't know anything about these players but that just is really hard to believe that without site manipulation or cheating that someone can win two tournaments on the same day. Not impossible but hard to believe and when you see that they are not giving all players a fair shot by taking away their hands in position, it's not hard to put 2+2 together.