The Poker Action Flop Theory in Online NL
Texas Holdem
Tournaments
Poker
Action Flop Theory: Hands are deliberately set up by an
online Poker room to handicap the best players and
benefit the bad
players.
Texas Holdem tournaments on the
internet attract literally thousands of players
everyday to sites that offer every kind of
tournament you can imagine. Freerolls with
small, and sometimes very high, cash prizes,
buyins from 10 cents to $1000.00, satellites to
major land based tournaments, bounty tournaments,
freeze outs, you name it, and you can find it. And
everyone who plays online has some incredible bad
beat stories - one out hands hitting on the river,
etc, seemingly in much greater mathematical
probability than seems possible.
This is where the
"Action Flop" Theory comes in. Paul Phillips is
credited with coining the phrase on the World
Poker Tour. It defines an almost improbable hand
result, where some great starting hands are played
aggressively by skilled players that hit a
flop nicely, but end up losing on the river to a
vastly inferior hand. The classic badbeat suckout.
I have statistically
tracked a number of sites as I play them. And on
certain sites (to remain nameless, but catch me in
a game sometime, and I might spill the beans)
there is most definitely a higher proportion of
Action Flops near the bubbles. But first, lets
make a note here. Cards dealt on the online
casinos are NOT randomly dealt. A true random deal
is mathematically impossible. They can get close,
but never truly statistically random. I am not
saying any sites are rigged, but do please read
on. It has already been established that some
sites use different shuffles for free games and
for cash games. These sites lead the free player
to believe they are better than they are, hoping
to encourage them to deposit and play for cash.
The theory behind
action flops is quite simple. The Poker
Actin Flop is a flop that will encourage the
good players to get very aggressive in a pot and
then the new or bad player makes an unlikely river
draw to suck out on the good player.
And this happens! A
lot! In fact, a lot more than it should,
statistically.
So why do all these
bad beats happen? This is what the Poker
Action Flop Theory explains.
The Poker Action
Flop Theory is simply this: the online poker room
wants the bad players to beat the good
players. Not all the time, just at certain
points in a tournament. Skilled
experienced players know that bad beats happen,
and they can accept them as part of the game. If
they are winning overall in the site, they
stay and just pick another tourney to enter.
But a new player or a bad player who doesn't win
once in a while will stop playing there. Thus no
more poker room deposit money from them. The
online casinos want to spread the winning
cash prizes around, so they create action
flops to do this, according to the Action Flop
Theory. They deliver great hands to the good
players who then boost the pot, and the bad player
sucks out on the river.
Skilled
and experienced winning Texas Holdem players
tend to be very aggressive. They
make value bets, forced calls
against pot odds, high percentage semi
bluffs, outright steals, and they slow play
the fish right into the net. Skilled
players know how to make the most out
of every hand they play. Bad players are
basically calling stations and have little
knowledge of proper betting techniques. So if an
Action Flop comes along, the skilled player has a
lot of chips in the pot, and loses them to the bad
player suckout.
In the real world of Texas Holdem tournament
play, new and bad players are
easily beaten by superior players. Most
of them don't stand a chance to win in a live
multi table no limit holdem tournament. They
are ?dead money?. In land based
casino poker room NL Texas Holdem
tournaments the skilled players get
most of their chips from the bad players as
they knock them out.
So why is it different online? Action
Flops!
The Theory says that "ACTION FLOPS?, those
flops that bring big action to a hand
and hurt the skilled players who are beaten
by the river miracles. Online poker room
owners know that in the general course of
play, the highly skilled players
would decimate the rest of the players. They
need something to level the playing field or
risk losing the majority of their players, and
then the majority of their income. The
Action Flop theory says this is the way they
do it, by having Action Flops during the course of
play. The better skilled players are
penalized by chip loses and the new or unskilled
players are rewarded with chip gains, and thus are
retained as customers.
The Action
Flop Theory states that Action Flops
are the mainstay of the online poker room business
model.
Action Flops let the
winning players win far less than they would
normally would.
Action
Flops let bad players play longer and
even win money on occasion.
Action
Flops benefit bad players who continue
calling on a draw against the aggressive
skilled player.
Action flops keep
the new or bad players on the site, and the poker
room makes more money.
See below for an
example of how the online poker rooms could use
their Dynamic Dealing to Generate a Poker Action
Flop without compromising in any way the integrity
of their RNG card shuffle.
How can you
avoid falling into the Poker Action Flop
Trap?
Action flops will
occur anytime in NL Texas Holdem tournament.
Generally speaking, the first few rounds are free
of Action Flops, since this is the most
dangerous time for the player, and the time
you usually see the most all in players. No
need for them here, actually.
As the game
progresses, there usually will come a group
of Action Flops. Watch for this as you play,
and be very careful if you see the start
of pattern of Action Flops. As a skilled
player you probably have an idea of who are
the other skilled players at your table, and who
are the new or unskilled players. If you see the
later start to suckout, watch out!
And as I
mentioned earlier, as you near the bubble, expect
these action flops! They are there and they
will come! Remember, the poker room wants the new
players and the bad players who have survived so
far to make the money bubble. And if you are a
skilled player, they may not want you to make the
bubble!
Your best tool is
observation! Be very careful when on the button
near the bubble. This is where the classic Action
Flop is set to give you that great had to steal
the blinds with, but may in fact be the hand that
takes you out when the Big Blind sucks out in an
Action Flop!
Learn more about Texas Holdem
Poker Action Flops and how to spot them plus
some untold poker secrets in the
ebook:
Example: We
have two players in a hand, a skilled player who
has won a lot of money on the site, aggressively
betting his AK hand, and a newbie player,
with no winnings at all on the site, holding AJ.
The flop is A J, 3, turn is K. The skilled player
goes all in on his AA KK, the top two pair. The
newbie calls with his AA JJ. On the river the
random card generator puts out a King to be dealt,
which would give the skilled player a winning full
house. The dynamic dealing program then would set
aside the Ace, not deal it and then the
program continues to set aside the randomly
generated cards until a Jack appears, then deals
it as the river card. The the less skilled newbie
player then outdraws the skilled player to win on
the river.
Even an audit of the random number generator
will still validate the RNG because it is not
compromised, it is the deal/distribution that is
compromised.
Some players claim they have detected a slight
delay in river dealing by the site software when
these outdraws occur.