I said "winning" players. It'd be an easy thing for their software to keep track of. Software that penalized selected players would be harder to design but not impossible. I haven't ruled out shills or robots.

I appreciate your comments.

Read kennyGs journal starting about here:

He survived a HUGE downswing, and came back a stronger player because of it.

It will happen.
How you handle the fall of the cards is what will determine your path through the green felt jungle.

http://espse.ed.psu.edu/edpsych/faculty ... nflip.html

The luck-o-meter... do you se why?

The immortal Nick the Greek was once asked why he played in a certain Kansas City poker game that all knew to be crooked.

His oft repeated answer: "It's the only game in town".

Many thanks for all those that took time to offer thoughtful answers to my postulate. I'm still not convinced, and will continue to move around but knowing others go through the same swings gives me hope.

An interesting epilogue: Both of the sites I usually use were treating me shabbliy, a few days after my initial post , so I decided to try a new site, Absolute Poker. I just put in $250 for a test run and won the first tourny I entered. Then the wheels came off he wagon.

In a few days, I was down to $22, in an $11 tourny and down to half a stack. In disgust, I tried to withdraw the last $11 and found they have a minimum withdrawal of $50. I used it to enter another tourny and won one and placed in the other. Since then (5 days ago), I've built the $22 up to $794.

We toil at the tables and the poker gods laugh.

Rhound, In my last post, I wasn't suggesting that my experience at Absolute represented anything but an interesting anomoly. I do understand variance, having just over 2000 tournies in PT on which to base my assumptions. This last week has been a mixture of better-than-average cards, help from the board, and farily good play. Nothing more and nothing less.

My overall ROI (playing mostly 2-table, $16 and $27 turbos) is just over 22%. Over the past week at Absolute, my ROI in $11 2-table (non turbo) is 62% and at $22 2-tables, 131%. 90 tournaments, total. Gross winnings now at $1198.00.

I'm often delusional but not enough to expect to maintain anywhere near my most recent run. Sure is fun, while it lasts, however.