Great Hands

I was reading Cardgirls blog yesterday (always a good read) and she was talking about hitting another Royal Flush online. I am not sure exactly how long she has been playing but this is her fourth Royal with 3 of them being online. I congratulated her of course as its always great to get the ultimate hand but it got me thinking about the amount of great hands that appear to happen in the online world. Is it out of kilter to what happens in the real world?? Cardgirl said a Royal Flush happens every 1 hand out of every 650,000 approximately. She said she has played over 2 million online hands which would equate to getting her 3 online Royal flushes.

Now I have only hit one Royal in my life and it was live. I have hit straight flushes online a couple times and this week in consecutive days hit quad jacks and quad tens. In fact online I have hit quad everything I think yet I play a live game 3 times a week and have been playing poker live for over 30 years and haven't hit the same kind of hands and quantity that I hit online and I play way more hours live than I do online. I know my son who has only been playing for a year has hit a Royal and a couple straight flushes online already. That seems pretty high to me. Not to mention the amount of quads he has hit. Now I know all the pros contend the online game card sequence is similar to the live game but hey they have a monetary reason to say that. The big argument of course is that with the amount of rooms and hands being dealt that these big hands are going to fall way more often.

That may be true but how do we really know that they have it programmed to be correct. I know reading different forums on poker the people that play for cash online having differing views on this. Some say the big hands fall more often so that the poker sites get a higher rake?? Is that possible?? Who is actually monitoring the poker sites?? How much are they making yearly?? What are they paying to the pros that they sponsor??

Its probably a discussion that will never be resolved as there is no way of really telling if high hands fall more often in online poker but this guy will always be a skeptic. Meanwhile I wait for my next Royal flush to hit.