This was supposed to be a quiet night of getting cheated some more. But their poker server conveniently went down after I kicked ass.

Three all ins where it took bad beats to make me die. Other tourneys I've used my tried and true fold like crazy strategy to watch the AI beat themselves do death, and I'm still hanging in.

My current target site has an impossible prize for those that get enough points to qualify. The qualifying points are conveniently the 3000 points a day you get for simply logging in. Why, for playing for free would they possibly cheat you out of your free chip play?

To qualify for the impossible to win tourney you need enough points. If you are short on points you can always click on their offers and get a huge number of points. Surely the offers cost $$.

Today at lunch I Googled cheating at poker. Universally it was posts that people that claim it's rigged are wrong. I saw lots of lame messages that attacked the pro-rigged crowd. Amusingly one was loaded with stats on flops and and hole cards and thousands of hands of play. Things are stastically cool - x number of players get an Ace and x number of players get a pair.

It's not that these stats are wrong, it's who gets those cards. Invariably(after the free trial period) if I go in all in with pocket queens I can expect to lose to kings, aces, flush or straight after The Magic River Card. On the current target site it actually shows up more often on the turn.

It's all an illusion. You are not really playing against real people. Most of the time.

On one site that claims at times 50,000 plus people at a time I got involved with my first big mult-player game ever. Being a newbie I went all in on the first hand and magically survived with a push on the first hand. The other splitter was completely obnxious. Challenged my manhood, poker skills and worth of being on the planet.

That site has a "find player" option. Found him in a seven card stud tourney of thousands of people. Not being in the tourney myself I watched the game unfold. Not only was he completely silent unlike his obnoxious attacks before he even called a hand that he couldn;t win with the table cards showing.

AI to pad out the roster.