What is RNG in poker? Random number generator for online poker
In this article, you will learn about one of the most important components of online poker - the random number generator (RNG). The “honesty” of the RNG of various poker rooms is regularly questioned and is always discussed on any resource dedicated to poker. Users constantly complain about the "twisted" generator, which allows the room to hold back stronger players so that the majority representing the category of "weaker players" remains loyal to the room. Let's figure out if everything is really that bad with randomness on poker sites.
You all know what a random number generator is and how it is implemented on a computer, but for the sake of completeness of the article, I will describe the basic concepts. You can skip the next section if you wish.
What is RNG?
A random number generator (RNG) must generate a completely random sequence of numbers. Such a sequence can be obtained by using some physical natural processes, for example: physical noise, cosmic radiation, background radiation, etc. In computer systems, a distinction is made between software and hardware RNGs. The first ones are actually a pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) and are an algorithm that generates a sequence of numbers, the elements of which are almost independent of each other and obey a given distribution. Since the algorithm is predetermined, the sequence of the resulting numbers is also predetermined. It turns out that if you know the PRNG algorithm, you can get a “random” sequence.
A hardware RNG is a device that uses any of the external sources of entropy to obtain sequences.
Nowadays, RNG is usually implemented by combining an RNG and an external source of entropy. In computers, the processor clock counter and noise are used as such a source. sound card or original methods, for example “RNG from WiFi noise”.
RNG in online poker
Generating random sequences of cards along with their transmission from the server to the client is one of the fundamentals of poker room security, so they are given special attention great attention. For such an important system, it is unacceptable to use a pseudo-random number generator, because it can be hacked and a sequence of numbers can be obtained, and then players’ cards and unopened table cards can be decrypted.
All poker rooms receive various certificates to prove the validity of their RNG and software. Cigital is one of the largest companies in this area, engaged, among other things, in the certification of poker software and RNG. The largest poker rooms Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars have a certificate from this company. The basis for testing any RNG is a set of NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) tests based on the US standard FIPS 140-2 (Federal Information Processing Standard). It includes various tests from a test for the ratio of 0s and 1s in the generated sequence, to a test for compression by the LZO algorithm (a random sequence cannot be significantly compressed because it should not have many repeating sequences).
To generate random sequences, they use a system of one or more entropy sources and a PRNG algorithm. For example, the largest poker room PokerStars uses data from users (mouse movements, reaction time to certain actions, etc.) as a randomness factor and Quantis hardware RNG, certified by the Swiss Federal Bureau of Metrology. Quantis uses physical processes to generate number sequences. It captures photons and passes them through a translucent mirror. Two events: reflection and transmission of light are taken as 0 and 1. Quantis is available with different interfaces: USB, PCI, PCI-E with a random number stream of 4 Mbit/s. There is also a 16 Mbit/s modification for PCI devices. The price of such a device is €890 - €1165 for a 4 Mbit/s stream and €2000 for 16 Mbit/s. PokerStars also has criteria for determining a sufficient degree of randomness. For example, if there is not enough data from users, then distribution does not begin until sufficient generation of random bits by the hardware RNG is ensured. The actual conversion of a stream of random bits into numbers occurs as follows: if a number from 0 to 25 is needed, then 5 bits are selected and converted to a number from 0 to 31; if the number is greater than 25, the process is repeated. To shuffle the deck, an original deck and an empty one are selected, a random card is selected from the first and transferred to the second. This continues until all the cards are transferred to the initially empty deck.
In general, poker rooms use two types of deck shuffling: single and continuous. In single player, the deck is shuffled once before being dealt, while in permanent, the deck is shuffled throughout the entire deal. The second option introduces additional protection against hacking, because the next card of the table is unknown until the last moment. Constant shuffling, for example, is used in the second largest poker room - FullTilt. The FullTilt RNG itself is built similar to PokerStars principle, 3 independent generators are used: a hardware RNG with a physical source of entropy and two independent RNGs (ISAAC and OpenSSL). In general, this option of combining several random number generators is now used everywhere, but at the dawn of the formation of online poker, things were much worse with RNG.
The story of Planet Poker and ASF Software Inc.
Planet Poker is the first poker room in the world that offered its users games for money on the Internet. . A little later, specialists from Reliable Software Technologies (now Cigital) became interested in its security. The sources of their RNG algorithm were open sourced on the Planet Poker website (the algorithm itself belonged to ASF Sowtware Inc.). By this they wanted to show their honesty and reliability, but the source code only helped specialists find holes in it. Here is the card shuffling function from the published algorithm:
procedure TDeck.Shuffle;
var
ctr: Byte;
tmp: Byte;
Random_number: Byte;
begin
(Fill the deck with unique cards)
for ctr:= 1 to 52 do
Card := ctr;
(Generate a new seed based on the system clock)
randomize;
(Randomly rearrange each card)
for ctr:= 1 to 52 do begin
random_number:= random(51)+1;
tmp:=card;
card := card;
card := tmp;
end;
CurrentCard:= 1;
JustShuffled:= True;
end;
Briefly, an unsorted deck of cards is taken and cards from 1 to 52 are swapped with any random card. To generate random numbers, the Pascal functions random, randomize are used, which use the system timer and PRNG algorithm to obtain random numbers.
The first error of the algorithm lies in the random(n) function - it, unlike most Pascal functions, returns a value from 0 to n-1. Those. "random(51)+1" gives us a number between 1 and 51 - a classic off-by-one error. It turns out current map will never change places with the last 52nd card, which already gives a deviation from the randomness of the resulting deck.
Also, Reliable Software Technologies specialists revealed the inconsistency of the algorithm itself, even if the off-by-one error was corrected. To demonstrate this they used the algorithm described above:
for (i is 1 to n)
Swap i with random position between 1 and n
To simplify the calculations, a deck of 3 cards was used. As a result, decks 231, 213 and 132 were encountered more often than 312, 321 and 123. It is clear that for a deck of 52 cards, some variants of shuffling the deck should have been encountered more often than others.
Another important omission was the number of possible decks in such an RNG. With a real shuffle of cards, there are 52!= 8.06*1067 possible deck options. Pascal functions generate random numbers based on the system clock. The basis for calculating the random number is the number of milliseconds since midnight. There are only 86,400,000 milliseconds in a day, so we have only 86.4 million possible options for shuffling the deck, which is much less than what is actually possible.
And that’s not all, the flaws found do not provide any particular advantage for the players, but the next vulnerability made it possible to fully recognize the sequence of cards in the deck. All again because of the PRNG, or rather its predictability. The researchers wrote an exploit that could accurately show all the players' cards and the remaining cards of the table after 3 cards were laid out on the table. So he was based on 5 famous maps ah: 2 players and 3 on the table. Using a RNG algorithm similar to Pascal and selecting a different number of milliseconds with a deviation from the current time (the map generation time had to be close to local time), the exploit found an exact match of 5 known maps and produced all the others.
After this, the exploit additionally synchronized the local time with the server time, and the next searches took less than one second.
For the players, this story turned out well - the exploit was in good hands, and Reliable Software Technologies specialists immediately reported the vulnerabilities found to ASF Sowtware Inc. (their services, in addition to "Planet Poker", were also used by purepoker.com, deltacasino.com) and later published their report. They estimated the damage if the program fell into the wrong hands at $100,000 per day. This story caused serious damage to Planet poker and online poker in general, although it did not prevent the active development of this industry. And "Reliable Software Technologies" was renamed "Cigital" and is now a very reputable software audit and certification company.
Real Deal and Cut"N Shuffle technology
Separately, it is worth mentioning the Real Deal poker room with their. Playing for money in it began on May 7, 2010. For shuffling, a real deck of cards and a special shuffle machine are used to mix them.
This patented device is called the Cut "N Shuffle. With its help, a real shuffle of a real deck of cards is obtained. In addition, the dealing player is invited to cut the deck (he can refuse), which introduces an additional element of randomness. Video recordings of each shuffle of the deck are saved on the server and any player can get them if desired. This is a fairly young technology, let's see how successful it will be in the future.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to speculate about possible frauds with RNG. The poker room’s profit comes from the rake (part of the bank that the casino takes for itself), so for them it doesn’t matter who wins, they only care about the amount of rake played. This is where the idea of profitable fraud comes from: giving good combinations more often to several players so that they try to play for all the money. It is quite feasible, but everything secret will someday become apparent, and leakage of such information is quite possible. And it’s unlikely that a small increase in profit is worth huge losses if such a deception is discovered. Therefore, if you play poker and you are fatally unlucky, you should not blame the “twisted” RNG for everything, just wait out the streak of bad luck and continue playing.
In practice, most often, players try to shift their mistakes onto the strong shoulders of the RNG, blaming it for all their own failures. Always analyze your own actions and look for mistakes before blaming the software developers.
Almost every player at least once in his life was faced with an absurd, at first glance, situation when his seemingly invincible hand suddenly lost to an obviously weaker one.
Why is RNG so important?
For example, you take a long time to pull chips out of your opponent because you have a pair of aces in your hands and a third ace on the flop. You draw, show your cards, look forward to victory - and the turn and river bring your opponent some unlikely straight or full house. If this happens offline, then players usually shrug their shoulders and nod sympathetically: “Bad luck, it happens to everyone.” If something like this happens, then all sorts of suspicions immediately begin that the generator is rigged, there are no random numbers, everything was rigged...
Of course, every self-respecting poker room has strong evidence that this is where the real random number generator - RNG - works. Let's not go into theories; we'll leave that to mathematicians and programmers. Our task is to play and win.
Players who have tried to play on several poker rooms note that the random number generator works a little differently on them - somewhere the RNG is twisted in one direction, somewhere in the other. It is difficult to say whether this is actually the case, since we do not have sufficient statistical data. However, there are a few points that we would advise you to pay attention to.
Players at almost all poker rooms note that after withdrawing money from the deposit and after several consecutive hits at the final table, a “black streak” begins. Players of PokerStars, Party Poker, and all rooms of the iPoker and Ongame networks talk about this. It’s hard to say whether this is reality or an attempt to justify the dishonesty of the owners of poker rooms. We can only advise you to be as focused and careful as possible in the game after getting into the black.
RNG of the most popular poker rooms
PokerStars
To begin, let's figure out whether poker is intellectual game in principle. I'll give you my favorite example. In the final of one of the major poker tournaments An interesting hand happened: both players were dealt the same hand - 98 offsuit. The hand commentator noticed that one of the players is a favorite with odds of 2 to 1. How is this possible, since their cards were no different in status?
The fact is that in poker moves are made in sequence. As a result, the player acting second receives a large information advantage, because he sees how the opponent makes moves and can react to them. This is called "playing in position" and it is one of the basic concepts that any beginning player will learn.
Another example. Two aces are the strongest starting combination in hold"em poker with a probability of winning at showdown of 85%. At the same time, there are many options for playing this hand incorrectly, when, being in theory a favorite, you do not receive money (or chips) for it or receive too little.
Thus, despite the fact that poker is initially built on randomness, there are technical techniques aimed at maximizing winnings. Roughly speaking, the cards you are dealt are random, but the way you manage them is not at all random. Because a player's actions and decisions have a huge impact on the outcome of a poker match or tournament, it truly is a mental game.
Of course, online poker has its own specifics, but that doesn’t stop it from being poker. Indeed, there are many myths circulating that when playing on the Internet you are surrounded by constantly winning bots or even that the poker rooms themselves (sites that provide a platform for playing) use dishonest methods to extract money from players. These misconceptions are based on a misunderstanding of how a poker room works.
Any poker room generates profit through rake - a fee charged to players for each hand or participation in a tournament. Rooms also compete with each other, trying to attract players with various bonuses and providing the best conditions for playing. How long do you think a poker room will last in the market if it becomes known that it is not able to provide fair play? The answer is not at all, and they know it, which is why any reputable poker room has numerous security procedures aimed at tracking down bots or player collusion.
The second myth is that poker rooms “drown” players, creating conditions for losing. Read any poker forum and you'll see that talk of "powered RNG" is very popular. What is RNG? This is a random number generator, on the basis of which distribution takes place online. This is an electronic imitation of a dealer shuffling a deck of cards.
Currently, in order to start operating, a poker room must have a licensed RNG. It is checked by specialists (mainly mathematicians and programmers), who give an opinion on whether the RNG does its job, that is, a completely random distribution of cards. Some jurisdictions (for example, the UK) impose huge requirements on poker rooms to gain access to the national market. Rest assured, such a “trifle” as an insufficiently reliable RNG would not escape the attention of regulatory authorities.
In my room, during peak hours, up to 300 thousand players play, and thousands of hands take place simultaneously. I’m not a programmer, but it’s hard for me to imagine how complex an algorithm must be so that in such conditions it would be me, Masha from St. Petersburg, who would go broke and go around the world with a bag) Well, I’ll repeat once again that poker rooms receive money in the form of a fee from players for participation. They don't care who wins a particular hand - you or your Australian tablemate, since they have already received their money.
RNG in poker stands for random number generator. Each online poker room uses a specific RNG to generate numbers, which ideally selects random cards.
However, no computer can choose a completely random number. The numbers are obtained using a very complex formula. This formula is essentially what we call RNG. If a poker room player knows the RNG formula used there, he will know what cards will be on the flop, turn, river, and will also know the hole cards of other players. As every poker player understands, this will give a dominant advantage to the cheater/hacker. It is important to note that online poker rooms change their RNG every two weeks, and some even change it every week. While this doesn't stop hackers from trying to find a new RNG, it does slow them down a lot.
Random number generation is such a broad field that you can even get a degree in the field and become a master. Random number generators produce random numbers using different methods. They use modern computer installations to produce them, which led to the hacking of the RNG by a group of hackers. Currently, other methods are used, such as radio frequencies.
Exists software, the description of which claims that they can track the RNG of the poker room and predict community cards, cards of other players and so on.
What is Poker RNG?
Poker RNG is software whose developers claim that their program can understand the RNG formula of online poker rooms. In this way, one can predict the appearance of community cards to dominate the flop and recognize the two hole cards of other players at the table.
The way it works is that you punch in your hole cards and known community cards into the software (a screenshot of the actual software is shown below). Then, based on their database (which was built by you), they will show you which cards will appear on the flop, as well as which two pocket cards your opponents at the table have with 99.9% accuracy.
How does Poker RNG predict upcoming hands?
As we wrote in the previous section, you will need to create a database for your Poker RNG. Each different online poker room requires different databases. By the way, various databases are needed even for cash games and tournaments. The database is created by you, since it is the user who enters his pocket cards and the community cards known to him into the software.
Poker RNG uses the database you enter to figure out the random number generator shuffling system. For the software to be able to predict cards with 99.9% accuracy, there must be more than 2,000 hands in the database (depending on the poker room).
Until the database is built, the software cannot accurately predict maps. There are different levels of accuracy depending on the number of hands entered into the database.
Before we continue, we must make two important notes:
- You enter the data manually (your cards and the community cards), and only the complete hand is considered in the database if it reaches the river. So to build a database of 2000 hands, you would actually have to play over 3000 hands. This is very important to note if you are seriously thinking about purchasing Poker RNG. Because it requires large quantity time before you build the database.
- Additionally, once the database is built, you should play approximately 300 to 400 hands per week to keep the database up to date. As we already wrote, most poker rooms change their RNG once every two weeks. Therefore, the Poker RNG database needs to be updated.
Hands from 1 to 300
With sample sizes ranging from 1 to 300 hands, you will see some results, but mostly low accuracy results. Remember what was said about accuracy above. The level of accuracy will not be high unless there is consistent accuracy. If it jumps from minimum to 80% and back from 80% to minimum, then 80% accuracy will not be a stable indicator for every hand.
Hands from 301 to 800
With this type of sampling, you will notice more matches and better results. You will see an accuracy of approximately 80%, which, however, will not be stable.
Hands from 801 to 1500
With this sampling you will see high accuracy and more direct hits. But remember that unless the results are shown as 99% in every hand, this is not the optimal level. You will match at least 4 hands out of 10.
Hands from 1501 to 2200
You are very close to complete accuracy. You will see accurate results in 6 hands out of 10, many straight hits, and several times almost all the data will be correct.
Hands 2201+
You should now be very close or have already achieved 99% accuracy for all hands. If you don't see the river often enough, your database will need more hand input.
Is it legal to own and/or use Poker RNG?
Poker RNG software is not illegal to own.
However, almost none of the poker rooms will allow the use of external poker software that will run simultaneously with their servers. If online poker rooms discover that a player is using external programs for collusion or other types of fraud, they will temporarily close account until the investigation is completed. Once they believe (no need to prove) that the player cheated, they will close the account permanently and withdraw money from the player's account.
Some poker rooms, including Party Poker, are looking for software that runs alongside their poker client and are trying to track players (mostly poker bots) for cheating. However, Poker RNG does not require that it be used on the same computer on which you play poker. You just need to enter the data into the database and check the predictions, so there is no communication between the programs if you are using two computers. Thus, it cannot be detected by poker rooms.
Does Poker RNG really work?
The only people who could answer this question are those who have actually used this program. However, if someone used it and later said it didn't work, would you really believe them? If this program works, then it is natural that competitors will try to discredit it.
However, the editors of our site have serious doubts that this program really works. Follow our logic:
- Online poker rooms make at least a million dollars a night each. If you had a business like this, would you allow some $500 software to destroy the trust between you and your customers? There is no doubt that the actual owners of online poker rooms will do the same thing as you just answered yourself. Even if this means that you have to pay the owner of Poker RNG all the money that he might have made by selling the software in order to stop the sale of that software.
- You are a poker player. You know that you would have a big advantage if you knew the community cards (forget about other players' hole cards). If you had software that helped you gain that advantage, would you sell it for a measly $500? Or would you use it and make millions playing online poker? This is the second reason why our editors do not believe that this software actually works.
How much does Poker RNG cost? Where can I buy it? Is it worth the price?
Poker RNG costs $457. We couldn't find a cheaper option. Each client receives an ID associated with their address email. You will need an email address to log into the program each time in order for the Poker RNG program to launch. This is used to prevent illegal copying of Poker RNG.
Whether it's worth the price or not is up to you to decide. We have given you all the information about this software that is available online. So decide for yourself whether you want to give this program a chance to show itself or not. We bought Poker RNG for ourselves and used it for less than a week. In fact, we were never able to enter more than 2,000 hands into the database. It takes too long. It's likely that this is the case for most clients. They buy software out of curiosity and forget about it after using it for some time. We always want what we don't have.
Here's our advice: Don't cut your bankroll to buy this program because you think it will make you a millionaire. If you have an extra $500 and don't know where to spend it. Or you can try using it with a friend so that you can maintain a database at the same time. However, it is highly doubtful that this will bring any results.