He is convinced that something is amiss; that someone, somewhere has it in for him - not to mention all the other innocent souls like him who, he suspects, are not on the "inside" of the site and not reaping the monetary rewards of rigged RNGs.

Because PokerListings is a major hub through which most of the world's major online poker sites can be accessed, this seems like a good place to examine my friend's concerns.

His suspicions got aroused by a series of unlikely outcomes, two-outers to be exact, that won large pots in those popular, rapid-fire sit-and-gos (SNGs). "It just can't happen," he howled. "It just can't. It is too wildly unlikely that this is occurring. It has to be rigged."

Actually, no: it doesn't have to be. In fact, it is exceedingly unlikely that the RNGs on the site in question or on any other are being compromised by someone on the inside who is out to get my friend.

Ask PokerStars pro Daniel Negreanu how many runner-runner beats he's seen live. It's higher than you think.

Monkeying with an RNG is no simple matter, and controlling the outcome of the virtual cards without leaving your fingerprints all over the place is not simple.

Moreover, what would be the point? It is very much in a poker site's best interest to maintain scrupulously honest games. Any sites that are ever implicated in anything less than 100% honesty get hurt financially - badly.

For a company that operates in the elusive ether of the Internet, the loss of its patrons' trust is a wound that can be lethal. My friend is not being cheated by a "tweaked" RNG.

But he is a sensible fellow, smart, savvy and a pretty good poker player. What's going on here is actually a common psychological reaction to situations where there is a lack of control over events.

Now, of course, in poker we are pretty much used to this. We know we can't control the cards that are dealt to us, and we try to live with this. We often see players change seats or ask for a new setup for reasons that can only be called superstitious.

These requests are usually just a vain effort to try to establish control, to try to do something that will alter the outcomes.

2007 Main Event champ Jerry Yang: The exception to the externalizer rule.

To understand what's going on here, let's continue a discussion begun in a recent column on the concept of the locus of control.

People have different beliefs about where the source of control over events lies. Some are highly "external;" they tend to think that the causes of the good and bad things that happen to them are to be found in the external world.

Others are more "internal;" they are more likely to believe that they are responsible for things that happen.

Externalizers tend to blame others when things go amiss; internalizers usually look to themselves for things they may not have done right. Generally, internalizers do better in life. I suspect that they are also better poker players.

If they get sucked out on three times in a row in online SNGs, they say to themselves, "That's poker" and sign up for the next one with the full recognition that the RNGs dealing the cards have no memory of the previous three games.

But, logic aside, RNGs are a rich source of paranoid thinking. They have no soul, no pity, no patterns, no purpose and no memory. They don't make any sense and we don't have any control over them.

They are random number generators, and people flat-out hate randomness.

And we should. We're a thoughtful species. We see patterns everywhere, we're good at detecting purpose and structure, we have well-developed memory systems.

We don't like it when we can't find these things in the world about us. And when these nutty, unpredictable suck-outs win huge pots, when screamingly improbably outcomes win, they fertilize the more suspicious parts of your mind. Paranoia enters, stage left.

It may be tough to grasp, but when randomness is doing its thing, wacko stuff happens. It has to happen and it will keep happening. There are so many wildly improbably things that can happen in poker that some of them are bound to happen.

Almost everything that happens in poker is unlikely.

Almost everything that happens in poker and the rest of life is unlikely. You flop a set three times in an hour. Unlikely but cool. You win money and forget about it. Three opponents hit sets against you and you chew on the felt for hours, days.

But, of course, there are eight or nine bozos out there, so the likelihood of this happening to you is a lot higher than that of it happening for you. Capice?

One more tidbit to chew on here. Some years ago the Rand Corporation (I've always liked the implied pun in this story) compiled a list of random numbers. This was before the development of RNGs, so they used a series of other methods.

After they had 1 million digits, they analyzed the list for "randomness." It wasn't really random. There were all kinds of odd features to it.

But they could not find any biases in it - in the sense that they could not predict which number would come up next by analyzing the sequence of previous digits.

In short, it was "random." If your brain doesn't hurt now, it will in a few minutes.

Take-home message: Don't sweat the wacko features of those SNGs. Be more "internal" and work on your game.

Author Bio:

Arthur Reber has been a poker player and serious handicapper of thoroughbred horses for four decades. He is the author of The New Gambler's Bible and coauthor of Gambling for Dummies. Formerly a regular columnist for Poker Pro Magazine and Fun 'N' Games magazine, he has also contributed to Card Player (with Lou Krieger), Poker Digest, Casino Player, Strictly Slots and Titan Poker. He outlined a new framework for evaluating the ethical and moral issues that emerge in gambling for an invited address to the International Conference of Gaming and Risk Taking.

Until recently he was the Broeklundian Professor of Psychology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Among his various visiting professorships was a Fulbright fellowship at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Now semi-retired, Reber is a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

More strategy articles from Arthur S. Reber:

• Internalizer or Externalizer: Which Are You?
• Aggression, Testosterone and Confidence
• The Metagame: Playing at Playing Poker
• Poker Brain Farts and the Rule of 10