Anybody play at MansionPoker?

[2Tone]

2+2 steal. A Scary but apparently authentic admission on their part of a problem in which the exact same hand was dealt twice a row. Creepy if true.

Hello xxx,

Firstly thank you for taking the time to raise your concerns with us. After receiving your emails we have investigated the issue in order to isolate the events to which you referred and to then determine the cause.

As our players will know all too well, MANSIONPoker has experienced its share of instability during its early months of operation. We have been able to determine that a combination of events occurred on 28 July 2006 that did result in the same hand being dealt to two separate tables. The cause of the error was diagnosed to be a game result being delivered to Game 3211077 at which time the server controlling that game lost connection with the main Poker controller. This caused the main controller to then reallocate that decision to Game 3211099 on a separate node of the poker network.

We have on 21 August made changes to our main Poker controller to ensure this situation cannot reoccur and have over the past days undertaken extensive system testing to verify the changes have worked.

[GeoffM]

I was always of the impression that every single card was random, not every single "game" (as they use the term). This is some really messed up shit. I had looked into signing up there a while back, but now I am glad I didn't.

[2Tone]

I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on the thread over there, just out of curiosity. The email seems to authentic/elaborate to be a fake, but the admission is so crazy, it is hard to believe this could be the case.

[GeoffM]

Has anyone posted the hand histories of the 2 hands?

[Robbie Robb]

Yeah, the hands were posted in the original thread over there. They were absolutely identical. I was thinking of putting some money into Mansion in hopes of getting onto the PokerDome Challenge. I haven't yet and think I'll hold off a bit now. I've also heard that cashing out there is a bit of a pain but that's just a few extra hoops to jump through. No biggie there. But if their card generator is cranking out identical hands within minutes of each other...

[2Tone]

Assuming TP doesn't mind the link ...



Hand history is included. Thread has interesting back and forth -- the posters have a low post count, which is suspicious, and the hand histories have slightly different formats, which is discussed. But I don't see a motive for it all being a hoax, and if so, it sure is an elaborate one. If they posters are just looking for attention, I'd imagine they'd make this claim about a larger site.

[Talking Poker]

Actually, here's how it (usually) works:
The SHUFFLE is random, but once the deck is set, it's set. It's then just a matter of revealing the predetermined order of cards to the players.

Some sites use burn cards, and others - including Poker Stars - do not (since there is no need to online, obviously).

[Talking Poker]

I don't mind links to sites like 2+2. It's not like no one knows it's there, and this certainly isn't SPAM trying to get new users, ya know?

My question: Is it possible for anyone to reuest these HHs from Mansion, like anyone could from Stars, Party, etc? Or are they one of the sites that annoyingly don't alow that sort of thing?

[GeoffM]

That's what I meant from the above.

[GeoffM]

What's really scary is that on 1 hand, there is an open seat, and the other, there isn't. That would mean that the entire hand had been generated, not card by card, before being dealt.

I re-state, is a random hand generator not suppose to randomly assign a hand card-by-card, and not hand-by-hand?

I don't know about you guys, but I don't see how Mansion's generator would pass an audit with this scheme.

[Quint]

I didn't go back and investigate each HH, but it was pointed out in that thread that one of the guys sitting at the full table was sitting out, so both tables were dealt 8 handed.

I think some sites shuffle the deck and set the order of cards before the first card is dealt, as you would in a live game. Other sites (party?) continually shuffle the deck throughout the hand.

Edited to add: If the email correspondance in that thread is genuine then Mansion, at least at first, refused to send the guy the HH from a table he wasn't seated at because "it meant they would have to access the account of one of the players at the table... and that would be a breech of trust with that customer". Either this is a rediculus argument trying to get rid of the guy or they have a serious problem if they can't review/audit their own records fro HH's.

[Talking Poker]

Did I not just explain this?The RNG shuffles the deck. At that point, the deck is set and it is "dealt" to the players. So to answer your question, no, it's not card by card.

[Talking Poker]

That statement alone is a HUGE red flag. I'll assume it was just them trying to blow the emailer off, but if not - YIKES.I wonder how someone noticed this (the two identical hands) in the first place.

[GeoffM]

So, in theory then, the shuffle of the deck would not matter. As I mentioned above, there were different #s of players playing, so the dude that got pockets aces, should have in theory gotten 1 A and the guy to his left should have gotten the other A. Either that or I'm totally off-base here.

[Quint]

According to the poster, it was his aces cracked by tens. An observer at the table said he had just seen the same hand play out at another (different stakes)table.

I'm sure Mansion viewed it, at least in the begining, as a bad beat complaint.

[Talking Poker]

I still haven't followed the link and seen the actual HHs, but someone said that a player was sitting out from the full table, so they both had 8 players dealt into the hand. Therefore, the hand distributions would be identical.

[GeoffM]

My apologies, I just checked the HH again and indeed someone was sitting out.

[Penguinfan]

This is not COMPLETELY true, UltimateBet for example factors other things into the cards that come up, like number of players who call the flop.

Just because you fold A6 at UB and the flop come 669 doesn't mean you should wish you had played the hand, as the cards would have been different if you had called, number of players left is just one of the zillion factors they use to randomize the cards.

[Talking Poker]

Huh? Are saying they continually shuffle the remaining deck throughout the hand, but instead of actually "shuffling," they are using some algorithm that uses variables like how many players are still in the hand? If that's true... YUCK! Why in the world would they do that?

I was saying how Stars does it, which I thought was how most of the major sites do it. I know some burn, but most don't, I don't think.