YES, THIS IS A LONG RANT, SO IF YOU WANT THE SHORT VERSION, ONLINE POKER IS USELESS. IF YOU WANT AN EXPLANATION, READ ON.

For those who live in areas withouts nearby casinoes but have an interest in poker, online poker has either been a blessing, or simply the next best thing. But for me, online poker is all about winning with the worse hand. Online poker defies the mathematical aspects of profitting from certain moves, such as calling with a flush draw or bluff-raising with an open-end straight draw. Most of all, online poker is just plain rigged -- if your experience online has been like me, there are simply no ways you can compare the probabilities in online poker to those in live poker. I'll describe my latest poker multi-table tournament experience to explain.

I had forgotten about it at first and was 40+ minutes late, but my chip stack had only dwindled to about 1,280 from the starting 1,500 chips. After tripling up from an expected outcome shortly after my arrival, I was dealt a pair of kings in the hole. I raised about 3.5x the BB preflop and only one player called. The flop was a rainbow no ace and a potential straight draw. I bet out for 1/2 the pot and got a call. The turn came as a queen. I checked, got bet on, reraised all-in, and got called against queens up -- how pleasant! :\ Luckily, the board paired to give me kings up and eliminate the loose-passive villain that should've gotten trapped instead of hitting their five-outer. I'd made the right read on the flop, but got colddecked on the turn. I got lucky on the river, but this would not be the last time I'd get colddecked.

With a rather big stack shortly before the break, about seven people with small fractions of my stack ended up going all-in against my fours and I ended up winning one of the side pots to increase my stack size. I ended the first hour with roughly 20,000 chips. I was happy that I'd gotten some good cards for once -- I normally only get about three decent hands an hour and often improvise only to get my money in with the best hands -- but not the nuts -- and get a bad beat. However, after the first break was over, the deck got ice-cold.

First, I limped in at the cutoff second hand into hour 2 with QJdd and flopped top pair and a flush draw. I bet out and one person called. The turn was a blank, and after the guy who'd called ahead of me checked, I bet about 2/3 the pot. Again, another call. The river was another blank and my top pair was still good. This time, the villain bet out for the same amount I'd bet on the turn, except it was a value bet at this point. I put him on Q10 or maybe even a straight draw, expecting him to think I had the lower kicker, but lo and behold, I call only to muck my hand to QK -- the next highest kicker. If I had Q9 or lower or maybe even Q10, I wouldn't have been as aggressive as I was. However, my kicker and the flush draw on the board made it impossible to run away from this hand. This was the second time I'd been colddecked in probably 10 minutes, and it was yet to cease.

The next hand, I have A10cc and make a modest raise to 2.5x the BB. One person calls and the board comes 3-4-10 with two diamonds. I bet out and the villain reraises all in. With top pair top kicker, what better hand could have called me? It costs me only about a 1/3 of my stack to call, I have top pair/top kicker, and chances are this guy has a (nut-)flush draw. If he has trips, this is a cooler. I call, and he doesnt have AX of diamonds (X being irrelevant as long as it's a diamond of course), he doesn't have a pocket pair, and he doesn't even have something that'd be respectable to call a raise with preflop like K10 or even AK. No -- he has 3-4 offsuit. Now, this guy had a short stack, calling with a garbage hand like that!? I understand the purpose of this move, but with a short stack and the raise I'd made, it simply isn't affordable -- it's just flat-out gambling. But yet, here I get colddecked again to this garbage hand. The turn and the river draw blanks, and I'm down to less than half my stack. *Sigh!*

The very next hand, I'm dealt pocket jacks on the button and raise when the action's to me. The BB makes a medium reraise and, knowing my jacks are probably good in this situation, move all-in. My jacks showdown against pocket sixes (lol) and, statistically, I know I have him dominated. But there are three things about premium hands that always tend to happen:

1) I never win a coin toss with AK against a pocket pair

2) I never win a coin toss with a pocket pair against AK

3) If my pocket pairs go heads-up against a lower pair, the lower pair always hits trips, 9 times out of 10 on the flop

Knowing this pattern, I pretty much predicted the third six which, sure enough, came on the flop. The turn and the river are blanks once again and I'm down to 4,000 chips. Frustrated, I call "fuckin bullshit," and the fish who beat me with QK has the nerve to say that, out of those three hands, I only had one good hand. Yeah, like top pair/high kicker/flush draw and top pair/top kicker are garbage. I hate fish and their egos when they win in this shit situations...

Frustrated, I went all-in when I flopped bottom pair a few hands later (knowing I had the best hand of course) against someone I knew had overcards -- cept they had K10 instead of AQ or AK like I'd predicted :\. A king hit the turn and with the river drawing blanks, I was from 20,000 chips (130 big bets at the time) to out -- all within 15 minutes of hour 2.

Of course, I'd made some marginal mistakes and I could've been able to avoid shoving with QJs, but my point is that I've never seen this in live games. Having played plenty of home games with friends, there's only been one situation where my boat lost against a boat, and a situation where a friend had the nut flush against my top boat. Other than that, I have yet to see people hit two-outers, five-outers, and basically get colddecked and suffer so many bad beats like this. I can recall more times than I can count on my fingers and toes where I've lost with trips to a boat or gotten a bad beat...in the past fucking week. Hell, bad beats are so frequent for me that I called the six before it hit the flop to give my fish opponent trips. It's so ridiculous. Online poker is rigged, and is solely meant to get bad players to keep playing and depositing money as well as earning more from the rake in the case of cash games through "action flops" such as Q-K-A or three of the same suit. I'll continue to play and attempt to build up a bankroll before my next birthday when I'm old enough to go to casinoes where I live, but if I go broke, I'm not gonna bother depositing again -- probably just gonna play freerolls and ignore bankroll management since I always run bad online which seems to make management irrelevant to me anyways. :\

If you're new to the game and are interested in learning how to play poker well, don't play online, because the only thing you'll get out of it is the wrong thing: the worse hand and the worse player always wins online.