HIGH OCTANE Poker and the ON OFF SWITCH ?

Having spent a considerable time playing Online Poker its time to for an update to my original post Late Night Poker Online With Ninjas.

First the good news. It appears the "Short Stack Ninja" software "Bot" that regularly infested the tables appears to have disappeared. Whether this is due to direct action from the online poker company or better educated poker players learning how to combat the Bot and therefore reducing its profitability for the human controller remains unclear.

All of the traits I mentioned in my previous report remain a reality and a concern but I want to talk about a slightly longer term pattern that I have witnessed many times over and you can hear spoken of on many of the tables.

The ON - NONE - OFF Switch

We have all heard ourselves saying "..oh its one of those days.." or "...I'm just having a bad day at the office.." and of course playing online poker should be no stranger to that concept.....

However, there is definitely something artificial about having a bad or good day on these tables. The main separator between having a good or bad day is Luck. As an experienced player, we recognise when we have played like a chump and taken a few stupid risks and been punished. It happens to the best players in the world, sometimes you cant stop yourself but this is different....

Bad Beats - A Bad Beat occurs when you match your great hand up against your opponents weaker hand and the Odds say that you are expected to win that showdown. Odds of you winning normally range between just better than 50-50 to perhaps 10-1 on that you will win. Now suddenly this gives us something to measure. Luck should be random and as such, an excess of bad luck is a bad day.

Now The Point - I have identified by keeping my own records that the luck I experience on these tables comes in blocks rather than spread randomly. What I mean by this is that I experience a few days of excessive luck where I seem to make hands from nowhere, regularly hitting silly flushes or straights etc to win hands I have no right to. Then equally, it is exactly as though a switch has been thrown and this completely reverses. It becomes one stupid, almost impossible loss after another. In fact is feels very much like you are being "set up" for a fall. Every time you get a fantastic hand, your opponent produces an absolute monster.

Now this can of course happen occasionally but the issue here is that this goes on and on and on for day after day. If you continue to play you will lose lose lose. Unless you start folding pocket Aces and Kings or folding any hand unless you have the nuts your cash will drain away with one staggering blow after another.

Eventually the storm clears, the sun starts shining and the ON - NONE - OFF switch moves away from the OFF setting.

It is my belief that the software although technically not favouring any particular player and not breaking any laws is designed in a sophisticated fashion to generate excitement and interest on the tables. The effect I am talking about is the manifestation of that software design technique in practice.

I think it is important that players recognise that they are not playing poker with a standard deck of cards with their friends on a Saturday night but are instead participating in a game of "High Octane Poker" designed by a software engineer whose favorite film is The Matrix......