During online play we've all had thoughts such as "if I hadn't have folded I'd have flopped the full house" or "if I'd stayed in 'til the river I'd have hit that straight" etc, but my question is... would we?
Unlike live poker, where the sequence of cards is 'fixed' - by that I mean sequenced during the shuffle pre-hand and the sequence doesn't change until the next shuffle post-hand - online card sequences have to be determined by a random number generator (RNG) within the poker software engine. The RNG will use many variables to get it's results, one of which could be very small units of time. Therefore all the players involved have a sort of 'influence' over the sequence, as they all take time to perform their action. Now if on those occasions where you had 'folded but would have flopped the FH' you'd taken another action (call or raise) then potentially you'd be altering the ultimate outcome (ie, the community cards) because the time involved would be different so the RNG would produce a different result.
Are there any Sky boffins around to confirm my suspicions? :-)
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