Online poker would be rigged so fas if declared a game of skill. Online poker relies on you trusting the online dealer to not stack the deck,reveal your hand to players representing the casino, etc.
There were many reputable poker sites in the 2000s, Pokerstars being the biggest one, which still exists. It's far more profitable to run a fair site than a scam site. Keep in mind that strong poker players keep a database of the hands they played, and use data mining techniques to improve their own play and to asses the play of their competition.
No such scandals were ever found at other big poker sites, despite that there were more, stronger players at those sites, which also allowed improved scrutiny of their random number generator and the play of everyone involved.
That's not how poker works. It's player vs player, not player vs house. The casino just takes a rake (a cut of each pot). There is no incentive for the casinos to rig the outcome of the game. They make money regardless of the outcomes.
This is not quite an accurate picture, unfortunately. The casino/house earns money on each hand played. Their motivation is to maximize the number of hands played. Their ideal scenario would be where poker was a 0-skill game where a bunch of players would just endlessly play against each other with 0 edge until all the money in the ecosystem was taken up by the house.
In practice losing/casual players tend to lose their money pretty quickly, and winning/skilled players then take that money that they've earned and withdraw it - while waiting for another casual player. The house has every motivation to increase the amount of time it takes for a skilled player to wipe out a casual player. They also benefit from casual players going on 'hot streaks' early on. The goal there is to convince the casual player that they are skilled, and their later losses are "bad luck." The point being to encourage them to deposit more after they lose their money.
Would you enter a four-way game where three of the players were tipping their hands to each other with hand signals and brigade betting against you?
In an online game, how do you know other people at the table aren't side channel communicating? How do you know some of the hands aren't player bots that work for the site where whatever money you lose and they win goes to the casino site? How do you know they don't know the precise order of the "random deck"? Or that they don't know what your hand is?
