Poker Blog: Burbs Poker

The new age of Internet gaming portals

2012-01-26T16:56:00.001-08:00

Black Friday has done a lot more than simply shutdown ahandful of online poker rooms; it has also damaged the affiliate market to thepoint that more affiliates are shutting down than online gaming sites!Fortunately, there are a number of online gaming portals that have managed todiversify themselves enough (being in enough different markets and utilizingmore than simply affiliate dollars to produce revenue) to not only survive, but in some cases thrive now thatthe market has been scaled-down and there are fewer competitors, and far fewerstart-ups to deal with.

Of all the affiliate sites, online poker portals have been thehardest hit, with PokerNewsDaily and BLUFF Magazine cutting back on theircontent since Black Friday (PokerNewsDaily was actually sold soon after BlackFriday and was basically shut-down for a couple of months this past summer) whileCardPlayer, PokerNews, and PokerNewsBoy.com have increased the amount ofcontent they are offering their readers and have been upping their advertising.

Gaming portals have seen less of an impact and lesscausalities because Black Friday was mainly an online poker problem, but by andlarge the industry has been cut back dramatically with a few noticeable exceptions.One example of a site that is still thriving is GamblingPlanet.org, which is stillproducing online gaming news, updated casino reviews, and the latest depositbonuses and offers from those casinos.

Now, the question many in this industry are asking iswhether the current affiliate-based model will remain in place if online gamingis legalized in the US?

With the market splintered between public and private sites(most private sites have remained active in the US market and are unlikely toreceive a license if online poker is legalized in the US) it would seem thatthere will always be a need for affiliates, even if the mega-casinos come todominate the online poker industry and switch to a more traditional marketingcampaign.

That said, the historical success of the affiliate-basedsystem may be appealing enough to any new entities that get involved in onlinegaming. If this is the case than the remaining poker affiliates and gamblingaffiliates who weathered the Black Friday storm, and in some cases like theones listed above invested more in their business, should be very prosperous inthe future.

There are a number of divergent opinions on what will happento the industry if the US is suddenly back in play, with everyone from industryinsider Bill Rini to Bodog founder Calvin Ayre all offering up their thoughtson the affiliate market industry on their respective blogs –going through thearchives of BillRini.com and CalvinAyre.com makes for some interesting reading.

What Tim Thomas and his defenders do not understand

2012-01-25T06:18:00.000-08:00

Here is my question to Tim Thomas and anyone who isapplauding his decision to skip the White House celebration to honor theStanley Cup winning Bruins: What precisely does attending this event, shakinghands with President Obama, and having your picture taken say about yourpolitics? Does Tim Thomas really think he will be viewed as an Obama supporterbased solely on this visit? That the team picture surrounding the Presidentwill be used in attack ads by Obama in the upcoming campaign?

The fact of the matter is that these schmooze-fests havenothing to do with the President in office, or the country’s politics, they aresimply a way to celebrate a championship team on a national stage and give thecountry a little feel-good moment. His failure to show-up overshadowed theentire event, and instead of being asked about their White House visit, theBruins’ players and the Bruins’ front office instead had to answer questions aboutThomas’ absence.

Also, just because you say something isn’t political, doesn’tmake what you say non-political! Thomas’ Facebook statement that his decisionhad nothing to do with party or politics was akin to prefacing an insult with, “don’ttake this wrong way,”

I believe the Federalgovernment has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, andProperty of the People. [Political Statement]

This is being done at the Executive,Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to theConstitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government. [PoliticalStatement, and absolutely absurd when you consider the Founding Fathers ran thegamut of the political spectrum: Hamilton and Jefferson had totally differentopinions on government]

Because I believe this, today I exercised myright as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not aboutpolitics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for thesituation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as anINDIVIDUAL.

This is the onlypublic statement I will be making on this topic. TT

Now, if Thomas is so worried about the size of thegovernment why didn’t he opt-out of the tax-payer paid for parade we threw forthe Bruins in Boston (sponsors did donate money to get their logos on theduck-boats which paid for quite a bit of the cost but not the overtime andcleanup)?

We also learned later on that Thomas told the Bruins’ frontoffice he would not be attending months in advance for “political reasons”. Sowhich is it Tim?

Here is the rub: Why couldn’t Tim Thomas have gone with therest of his TEAM to the White House, met with the president, his representativesin Congress who were in attendance, and simply make his political statementafterwards? It would have carried the same weight, and would have been void ofthe controversy. Instead he chose to overshadow his team on what is supposed tobe a very special day by making a nonsensical political stand.

What Tim Thomas did to his teammates and the Bruins organizationis like an older sibling purposely ruining your 16^th birthday partybecause they feel there party was not as lavish, or for some other pettyreason.

Top 5 signs you might be bad at Facebook

2012-01-16T05:10:00.000-08:00

Sign #1 – If yourrelationship status changes more than three times in a 6-month period

This is probably more of a sign that you’re not good atrelationships, but if your status goes from single, to engaged, to single, toits complicated, and finally back to engaged (usually by this time it’s with adifferent person than the first engagement) maybe you should wait a week or twobefore announcing the big relationship news and then having to post aretraction.

Sign #2 – When youthreaten to delete people for commenting on the nonsense that you post

If you don’t like what your “friends” have to say then don’tpost controversial thoughts and opinions on serious topics –if you don’t knowif something is controversial or not please don’t post ANYTHING. Guess what?Not everyone is going to agree with you on every single topic, so if you don’tlike what people have to say either:

1. Deletethem! But do it without the completely unnecessary tirade in a new statusupdate--that all of your “Yes-Men” friends will then defend you in while thedeleted individual has no idea you are now trashing them.

2. Don’tmake controversial posts that people might disagree with! Basically, if youdon’t know what you’re talking about; are making a comment on religion,parenting, or politics; or trashing some public figure be prepared for someblowback.

Sign #3 – You talkabout “drama” in your life without specifics

Seriously, nobody is going to empathize with you if yourupdate is “So sick of this BS” or “really buddy, you’re going to do thisagain!” If you want empathy, GET SPECIFIC, otherwise you’re just the comicrelief on our Facebook wall –YES, we laugh at your perceived misery and how theworld has wronged you because it’s obviously sooo bad you can’t even talk aboutit.

Sign #4 – the AcronymFML appears in virtually every status update

Not only does this show a penchant for the melodramatic, butit goes along with point #3 above. Unless something really bad has happened:you lost your job, house, limb, etc., the term FML simply doesn’t apply! Stopusing it!

Sign #5 – you postpictures by the hundred and 90% are landscape photos

If you take 12 photos of the skyline and they all suck,DELETE THEM! We get it, your cruise was great, but we don’t need to see everysingle picture you took. Also nobody wants to see a photo that makes no senseand has no caption or tag. Before you post a picture ask yourself one question:Does this photo need an explanation?

Facebook is to share your thoughts and experiences with yourfriends, acquaintances and family, it’s not a folder on your computer to holdthousands of pictures.

A few other thingsthat crease me on Facebook:

I know who will post this “Chain Statuses”

Vague updates

People who rotate their profile pic every few days using the same three pictures over and over! It’s not a merry-go-round people!

People who click malware and then claim they have been “Hacked!” you weren’t hacked! You simply wanted to “see what this girl did to get expelled” you pervy wanker!

3 Societal “Norms” which I find simply ridiculous

2012-01-11T06:07:00.001-08:00

Adults exchangingpresents on Christmas

This makes absolutely no sense to me on a number ofdifferent levels. First off, as adults, if there are things we would like wecan go buy them --if we can’t afford them than it would seem we shouldn’t havethese things in the first place!

More importantly, the idea of gift-giving on Christmasshould be about the kids. Adults should be able to spend a pleasant eveningwith family and friends without the looming pressure of whether or not thepresent they bought for someone will be of equal worth to the one they aregiven.

Now I have no problem with husbands and wives, or boyfriendsand girlfriends (or boyfriend/boyfriend and girlfriend/girlfriend if that’syour thing) exchanging presents, but does anyone realize how hard it is to buyfor 10+ different adults???

My guess is this custom was started by people without kidswho felt they were getting screwed in the gift exchange process –with giftsgoing out but nothing coming in.

Engagement Rings

I’m not sure who came up with this scam, but dear god isn’tthere a better way to show commitment than saddling your new family with anextra bill! This isn’t some old world dowry or anything; an engagement ringseems to be nothing more than some type of collateral on the man’s behavior:“Well, if I fuck you over or anything at least you have this!”

I won't even get started on big weddings...

Beer = A Man’s Drink

First off, I’m not a beer drinker, the taste simply doesn’tappeal to me. So I get hit with a lot of “pussy” drink comments and the like.But if you are so worried about your “manliness” that you need to drink aproduct that 1) tastes a lot worse and 2) takes a lot longer to get the jobdone (e.g. get buzzed) who’s the pussy?

Beer is historically the workingperson’s beverage, asliquors and wines were set aside for the more well-to-do. It has nothing to dowith manliness, and everything to do with wealth! Given their druthers yourtough-as-nails ancestors most certainly would have chosen wine or a nice brandyover their beer.

If your manhood is preventing you from holding the stem of awine glass or enjoying a Mojito on a hot summer day that’s your loss. Thebottom line is this, if its alcohol who gives a shit if it’s a beer, wine orhard liquor, it all does the same thing.

Some thoughts on the results from the Iowa Caucuses

2012-01-04T04:48:00.000-08:00

Well, an 8-vote margin of victory, and some of the strangest concession speeches in the history of politics: What an interesting night!

Unless I'm mistaken, what I heard last night from Newt Gingrich during his‘concession’ speech was that Rick Santorum doesn’t have the money or campaigninfrastructure in place to deal with the Romney-Machine that took Newt down.Furthermore Santorum’s benign demeanor and debate abilities (His toughestattacks seem to be along the lines of “I think you’re wrong”) is just not onthe level of Newt Gingrich’s matter-of-fact statements and overall bombast.

So, Newt has basically declared that at the next debate, “Iwill kneecap Mitt Romney in order to allow Rick Santorum to gain more tractionbefore his inevitable showdown with Mitt somewhere in South Carolina andFlorida.”

Newt is going to allow Rick Santorum to continue to stayabove the fray while he continues to distract Romney and suffer the penaltiesof running a negative campaign. This, for the lack of a better term, makes NewtGingrich something of a debate mercenary –Perhaps a whole new job market willopen up for practitioners in this field; people who cannot win themselves butare terrific debaters and can help decide the actual winner.

My guess is that Newt Gingrich would have welcomed acontinued rise to the nomination and potential presidential showdown withBarack Obama, but from the outset I don’t think Newt’s primary goal was tobecome the President of the United States. Much like Herman Cain and DonaldTrump, Newt’s presidential run seems more bent on increasing his financialportfolio.

Perhaps Newt’s new decision to become the GOP debatemercenary is his way out with reputation not only intact, but enhanced? PerhapsNewt was looking for his “Ross Perot” moment, where he could sabotage his owncampaign without really looking like he was sabotaging his own campaign?

Some random thoughts on the other Iowa Caucus participants:

· Other than being a strict social conservative,what is Rick Santorum’s baggage??? He is really only loathsome to single-issuevoters as far as I can tell.

· Mitt Romney and Ron Paul both have verynoticeable ceilings.

· BUT, if we were to give Ron Paul’s campaign toformer New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson (a true Libertarian) Johnson would havereceived 35% of the vote last night and gone on to win New Hampshire. SouthCarolina is a different story…

· John Huntsman over-performed. After basicallygiving Iowa the middle finger, Huntsman still managed to tally 1% of the vote!

· Rick Perry is one of the worst publicly-electedspeakers I have ever seen.

· Wherever the planet is that Michele Bachmannspends most of her time on, it seems like it’s a happy place; she is ALWAYSsmiling!

Outrage over changes in the online poker industry continues

2012-01-02T12:12:00.000-08:00

For a long time the online poker industry has catered to thehigh-volume, winning players of the poker world (in political terms this wouldbe something akin to the 1%) but recently this seems to be changing. While this model, rewarding the best and mostprolific players for their loyalty, was an unbridled success during the pokerboom (when new players were signing up all the time), since the US governmenthas cracked-down on online poker (beginning in 2006) the idea of rewarding thevery best has proven to be more of a liability than a boon for most poker sites.

With fewer and fewernew signups and fewer recreational players participating in the online pokerworld, as well as an across the board increase in the overall skill level ofthe players at the sites, many sites have started to rethink the way they caterto players, and precisely who should be receiving the benefits.

Bodog for instance has turned to completely anonymous tablesin an effort to entice casual players to their site, while PokerStars took aless drastic approach, announcing they would be moving from the “dealt” methodof rake calculation to the “weighted” method (which benefits looser players).

The backlash sites like Bodog and PokerStars are receivingon poker forums like 2+2 shows just how out of touch with reality the pokercommunity has become, and just how spoiled they have been over the years.

Players are furious that some of the tools that haveexponentially increased their edge over recreational players are being takenaway at sites like Bodog, and are even more up in arms that PokerStars mightmake their lives a little more difficult at the tables, by making it harder toclimb the PokerStars VIP Rewards ladder thus resulting in fewer bonuses andrewards.

While I feel for these players, some of whom are break-eventypes who need these reward dollars for their income, I also feel they need tostop thinking about their bottom line and examine the long-term solvency of theonline industry. The Online industry is not going to survive in its currentincarnation if they continue to reward the top 1% of the players (more likely5%-10% but I like the 1% vs. 99% analogy) while treating the rest of theircustomers as simply an online player id#.

Walk into any Brick & Mortar casino and see if yourcomps as a poker player add up to $50,000 a year –you’ll be lucky if its $5,000!Honestly, the online poker sites owe you absolutely nothing! If you are sooutraged by the decision PokerStars has made than my advice is to switch toanother site.

Personally, I think the decision is good for the game,considering I’ve been scratching my head since 2005’ish trying to figure outwhy break-even players are able to make $100,000/year simply by opening up 24tables at a time. The idea that online poker sites have been rewarding volumemakes sense, but the inexplicable emphasis they have put on the smallpercentage of high-volume players is mind-boggling. Between rakeback andLoyalty Programs these players need be little more than poker bots, capable ofplaying numerous tables at a mediocre level.

I know it will be hard for some players to come to gripswith, but imagine a poker world where a player’s knowledge, skill, emotionalstability, and ability to adapt are the primary tools for success, instead oftheir ability to open multiple tables, use a piece of software to determinetheir opponents skills and style of play, and use a strange loophole in thesystem that allows them to be break-even and even losing players but still makea comfortable living.

Anonymous Online Poker Tables revisited

2011-12-20T16:02:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here (holidays andall) but I have really been meaning to revisit the topic of the Bodog Anonymoustables that the site launched a few weeks back.

It seems Bodog has cleared-up the encryption error thatallowed the website HHSmithy.com to crack their Anonymous Table code and seeeach player’s Bodog ID#, as well as getting into a bit of flare-up with theonline poker traffic site pokerscout.com –who Bodog claims is now “making-up”the data they use in their new Bodog numbers, a position that seems prettyaccurate actually.

The site also released details of the security measures theywill put in place to help players better detect colluders. Since the tables areall anonymous, the site has decided to send players any requested HandHistories with all pre-flop cards “Open”.

These reasons are precisely why the Anonymous Tables aresuch a necessary advancement in online poker. Not only have they tossed awrench into the current model which for some bizarre reason caters toward thehighest-volume players, but it is also causing a lot of “testing” which shouldonly improve whatever security measures are already in place.

I’ve always said that the #1 goal of any online poker roomshould be to make the player base as close in skill level as possible (thecloser the skill level the more hands are needed before players go broke, whichmeans more rake for the site). Why other sites have decided it’s better toincrease the edge the best players have over the worst players is beyond me–allowing data-mining and tracking software simply lets the players in the“know” utterly crush the casual players. Instead of closing the gap in skill,allowing these third-party software add-ons and other sophisticated tools ofprofessional players to be employed at the tables has only furthered the dividebetween the haves and the have-nots.

Anonymous Tables is not a singular change either, as we havealready seen it has caused a ripple effect that may completely change onlinepoker before it is all said and done, since if you implement Anonymous Tablesyou have to change security measures, and if you change security measures youwill likely have to change another part of your software. As with anything newthe flaws will be exposed and Bodog will work to fix these glitches, which willthen cause new glitches or issues that will also need to be addressed, and soon, and son. This cycle should eventually lead to a terrific overall product.

For a better example of what I mean simply look at thecurrent online poker model which basically states that nothing can be doneabout ghosting, account-sharing, multi-accounting, and so on, and the only waythese crimes against the poker community ever get reported is because theperson did something incredibly stupid like talk about it in an interview or ona poker forum. The notion that “it’s part of the game” needs to be rethought,because the only way online poker gains credibility is by taking on theseproblems head-on and solving them.

Op-Ed: Reinventing the WSOP Bracelet

2011-12-07T06:32:00.001-08:00

Earlier today I was reading an interesting article by RichRyan at PokerNews.com titled, FiveThoughts: A Bracelet for the Big One. In the article Ryan ponders somethingI have advocated for a while now, separating the smaller buy-in WSOP eventsfrom the high-buy-in Championship events. Ryan writes:

“…winning a $1,000event shouldn’t warrant the same praise as winning a $10,000 event, so theyshould be separated. There should be WSOP-Gold events (anything under $10,000)and WSOP-Platinum events (anything $10,000 and higher). With this system, theweekend one-timers could still compete for the coveted gold bracelet, while theregular, late-afternoon crowd would have something more to compete for.”

I’ve had many thoughts on this over the past few years but Ireally like Ryan’s suggestion, of course I’ll offer a few tweaks of mine now!My primary line of thinking on this matter is that the “award” should be ofequal value to a single buy-in (hell the WSOP could even take the cost of thebracelet or trophy out of the first-place prize-money).

Realistically, outside of the poker world (where asponsorship can be achieved based on career bracelets) a WSOP bracelet is worthlittle more than its melt value unless there is some serious history attachedto it. And as much as people equate a WSOP bracelet to success, I think thevast majority of amateur players and professionals in the poker world would puta similar type of value on my following suggestions.

First off, all $1,000 and $1,500 events should be demoted tothe level of a WSOP Ring (like they award on the circuit series). The buy-ins forthe $1k and $1,500 WSOP events are comparable to the WSOPC Main Events and thechance to win $500k + in prize-money AND a WSOP ring worth $1,000 - $1,500 shouldbe appealing enough to keep registration in these events high.

$2,500, $3,000 and $5,000 events should award the goldbracelet we have come to know –with the value and embellishment of the braceletbased on the buy-in of the tournament.

$10,000 Championship Events should all have uniquely craftedplatinum bracelets to differentiate them from the smaller events.

$25,000 and $50,000 buy-in tournaments at the WSOP shouldsimilarly award unique bracelets (or even a finely crafted watch), with thevalue of said piece equating to the buy-in of the event.

Now, the only place this idea runs into trouble is forsomething like the proposed $1 million buy-in tournament. Obviously nobody intheir right mind would want a trophy or a piece of jewelry with a $1 millionprice tag attached to it (just give me the money thank you!) so in this caseI’m for a nice $100,000 piece of jewelry –again either a bracelet or a watchsuits me fine.

UB and Absolute Poker are at it again

2011-12-05T17:19:00.001-08:00

Just when you think UB and Absolute Poker couldn’t possiblypunch you in the gut any more we get this past weekend’s breaking news: Datafor over 3 million users on the two sites that make-up the Cereus PokerNetwork, including personal details and some account details, was leaked onlineand was available for public consumption for a short period of time!

I won’t get into precisely how the story unfolded here (ifyou want that I recommend Todd “DanDruff” Witteles version at DanDruffPoker.com, since he isone of the people that has access to the information) instead I’ll focus on thelatest travesty from the Cereus Poker Network.

While I have never fully trusted any online poker room I didfeel that UB and Absolute Poker were reformed (or at least better run) aftertheir massive Super-User scandals. My thinking, which apparently didn’t takeinto account just how f**king greedy some people can be, was that since theyhad been caught they would be more likely to now follow the rules sincescrutiny would be higher and the rope waiting to hang them was already slungover the tree.

Instead I learn on Black Friday that not only is UB andAbsolute still engaged in some shady activities, but the same ownership isstill in place!!! Since Black Friday the sham of a poker network has somehowmanaged to keep their doors open when even Full Tilt Poker was shuddered, andlord knows what other atrocities they have committed in that time. Now it turnsout all of our account details have been leaked or sold online!

Here is what Witteles has been able to decipher from thedata:

· Screen names

· First and last names

· Full addresses (street, city, state, country,ZIP)

· E-mail addresses

· Phone numbers (for some players, not all)

· IP addresses

· VIP Level, and Blacklist/Chargeback status

· Deposit methods used (for some players, not all)

· Withdrawal methods used (for some players, notall)

· Various numbers that were hard to decipher.These could be player balances, VIP point balances, or many other things usedinternally.

· Date of signup (for some players, not all)

· Date of birth

· Other weird fields that cannot beexplained/deciphered

Basically more than enough personal information for identitythieves to do some damage, spammers to be in heaven, and scammers to do theirthing. So any former UB or Absolute Poker players out there make sure yourpasswords are solid, your secret questions cannot be figured out with the aboveinfo, and so on, because UB and Absolute Poker have just screwed you (and me)again!

A number of major tournaments on December poker schedule

2011-12-02T06:38:00.001-08:00

With the Player of the Year races still up for grabs, youcan expect the biggest stars in the game to be making the rounds to all of thescheduled poker tournament stops in December; and there are plenty to choosefrom!

December kicked off with the inaugural World Poker Tour stopin Prague, for a €3,500 main event that will feature the WPT’s new baby,re-entries. Prague will continue to be the center the poker world’s attentionwhen the World Poker Tour pulls up its stakes and heads back to the US, as the European Poker Tour PragueMain Event is scheduled to begin on December 5^th.

The WPT won’t be out of action for very long, since just aday after the Prague tournament wraps up they will be in Las Vegas for ahistoric tournament on their Season X calendar. On December 6^th theWPT will be hosting a very important Main Event Championship, as the tournamentthat started the whole thing back in 2002, The Five Diamonds World PokerClassic, will be held at the Bellagio in Las Vegas for the tenth time in thetour’s history.

Other major tournaments on the early December scheduleinclude:

· The WSOP Circuit Series Harrah’s Atlantic City fromDecember 1^st – 12^th

· 2011 Native American Casino Poker Tour Choctawfrom December 1^st – 11^th

So with the Holiday Season fast approaching it looks likesome professional players could be in line for a big win, making the seasonextra nice –especially for the people on their “nice” list.

Checkout PokerView for some terrific bonuses.

Bodog makes the first move in Data-Mining fight

2011-11-30T16:57:00.001-08:00

Anyone familiar with my blog knows I’m a staunch opponent ofany type of Data-Mining in poker. The reasons for and against Data-Mining havebeen debated ad-nauseam by the “experts”, so I will not revisit those in thisarticle. Instead I will look at what could go down as a courageous first-stepin the battle, as Bodogunveiled their new “Anonymous Tables” today.

By doing so, Bodog is banking on the fact that enough peopleare against data-mining (if they even know its taking place) that the move tocompletely anonymous online poker tables will prove a profitable one. It’s arisky bet, especially in the current online poker climate where new depositorsare few and far between, but in the end I feel Bodog will be vindicated becausethe deck is stacked against the data-miners.

As a data-miner myself (I have used PokerTracker profuselyin the past), it seems odd that I would be lamenting the practice, so let meexplain why I data-mined:

If you want to be competitive in the current online pokerworld you have to data-mine, or your opponents will have won the informationgame. It’s as Antonio Esfandiari stated during the WSOP live-feed[paraphrasing], “Anyone who isn’t taking advantage of this extra information ismaking a big mistake.”

Now, did I like data-mining? Absolutely not! Not only am Iagainst it on a philosophical level, but I absolutely hated the extra time Ihad to devote to poring over my player notes and databases looking for holes inmy opponents’ games. Given my druthers I’d much rather pit my skills against ananonymous opponent; instead of being on equal footing because we both data-minewe would be on equal footing because we DON’T data-mine!

I have faith in my ability as a poker player to determinewhich players are familiar, and to adjust in-game to how a person is playing.It’s like walking into a casino you have never visited; your opponents knowzero about you, and you know zero about them. From that point on it’s all aboutpoker, and not simply a battle of who has the most information and the bestanalyzing system.

This is why I feel Bodog’s decision is the right one on theend: Not only will it appeal to recreational players (who are likely sick ofhearing their Sharkscope or PokerTracker Stats talked about in the chat afterthey get lucky a few times) but it also appeals to a lot of poker pros who onlydata-mine out of necessity, and would L-O-V-E to be done with it. My guess isthat Bodog will cement its place as one of the easiest poker sites thanks totheir new Anonymous tables.

A look at the possibility of online poker legislation in 2012

2011-11-29T16:17:00.001-08:00

As we head into 2012 the one question on just about every USpoker players’ mind has to be, is online poker going to be legalized in 2012?In my opinion, the answer to this question is about 75% no, which I’ll explainbelow.

First off, who is going to be the person who steps up inCongress as the main advocate for online poker legislation? Joe Barton appearsto be in the online poker fight only for the campaign contributions, BarneyFrank is retiring (but will be around for the 2011 Lame Duck Session), HarryReid, Robert Menendez, Jim McDermott??? The problem is, everything gets blockedin the Senate, and the Republicans control the House of Representatives.

Secondly, a lot of people are looking to the lame-ducksession at the end of 2012 as the possible vehicle for online gaminglegislation (since outgoing congressmen and senators can vote their conscienceand not their donors) but there is a major flaw in this thinking, which is:Everything hinges on what happens in the election (and I don’t mean thePresidency).

If the Democrats get slaughtered and lose the Senate theRepublicans are likely to put a halt to anything that they try to push throughin the lame duck session. If the Democrats manage to hold on to the Senate andpossibly narrow the gap or takeover in the House of Representatives onlinepoker has a chance of finding its way into another larger bill. And we justmight have some USPoker Sites.

Finally, Congress works really, really, slow, and this iseven truer when they are trying to repeal or change an existing law, opposed topassing new legislation, where none currently exists, like the UIGEA in 2006. Iknow everyone thinks that with the major casinos now endorsing online poker andsetting up their lobbying groups that things will get done, but look how longit took for DADT repeal, look at the nonsensical fight over the Bush Tax Cuts,look at how the debt ceiling debate was distorted by both parties… Congress isalways 5-10 years behind the rest of the country.

Still, even if legislation is passed at the end of 2012, youare looking at the very least a year to get everything in order (stateexemptions and every other bit of legalese that needs to be solved) andprobably another year before the industry is up and running… See you in 2015!

An interesting day in the poker world

2011-11-28T16:42:00.001-08:00

Some days I sit at the computer begging the poker gods tolet something interesting and meaningful happen that I can write about, whileother days I stare at the screen screaming “SLOW DOWN, there is too much goingon here”! Well today started out as the former, but ended as the latter as newstrickled in throughout the day.

One of the biggest headlines was the announced retirement ofonline poker’s biggest advocate in Congress, Barney Frank (D-MA). Frank was thetypical Massachusetts politician: controversial, scandal-plagued, brash-talking,educated on the issues, and despised by the opposition party while beloved byhis constituents; his loss will leave a very large void in the fight for alegalized and regulated online gaming industry.

Another interesting story that is simply not getting enoughplay in the Kahnawake Gaming Commission’s decision to revoke the license of 24Poker –thus far no explanation has been given, but it really doesn’t look verygood at this point. If you were a 24 Poker player you might want to find a PartyPoker Bonus Code.

All of this while at the same time we have major tournamentswrapping up around the globe, the ultra-high-stakes cash-games are in full swingin Macau (with all kinds of strange rumors on the forums), and the typicalpoker news fare. Now let’s see if the poker gods listen to my prayers and giveme a slow day tomorrow so I can give these stories the attention they deserve.

New sports-betting column

2011-11-26T16:38:00.001-08:00

In addition to PokerNews I’ve started writing some NFL football “TIPS” for a fledglingsports-betting site www.betonfootball.usif anyone interested in seeing my prognostication skills. Basically I’ll beoffering up a Pick of the Week (maybe two depending on the games, and thendoing a quick rundown of my thoughts in the other games (which I place no faithin!) for the week.

Now, I rarely make a sports-wager, I bet a single NFL seasonback in 2005 when Sportsbook.com handed me a free $50 in sports-bets andproceeded to go 13-1 before cashing out my $2,500. I haven’t placed asports-bet since, but I do fairly well handicapping the games nonetheless …. Asyou’ll see by my first column on this past Thursday’s games where I won my Pickof the Day and also was spot on in the Ravens/49ers gamed where I predicted aRavens cover and a field-goal battle (although I was a little high on the finalscore).

You can check out my two picks of the week at the site --theyshould be up and posted first thing in the morning. I chose the Bengals/Brownsand the Patriots/Eagles for the Games of the Week, and also give you a littleinsight on where to find the best betting lines online, consideringBetOnline.com has the Pats as 3 point favorites while Bodog.com has the Patslisted as 3.5 favorites.

Thoughts on Poker, slights, and a blog milestone

2011-11-23T17:19:00.001-08:00

This post follows along with my Randomthoughts on Random Things post where I will be rambling away on differentthings that have caught my attention recently. So let’s get straight to it.

First off, I surpassed 20,000 hits today since adding thatlittle tracker to my blog. So when you subtract my 19,000 trips to the site Ihave had at least 1,000 hits from my followers!!! Seriously, it's a bit odd (humbling but odd) that so many people would listen to my ramblings.

Before I get into some random thoughts on poker (accompaniedby a shameless link) I want to bring up the fact that very few people use theword “numnuts” any more. Personally I think this is the perfect way to describesomeone who just doesn’t get it –it’s not offensive to any religion, gender,ethnicity, or any other subset of the population. So here is my effort to bringback “numnuts” back into the lexicon.

Some random thoughtson poker

Most people would answer “Four” when asked, what is 2+2? Buta poker player would have an entirely different answer to this question, “it’sa poker forum!”

How has nobody seen Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson sinceBlack Friday? Marco from QuadJacks.com ran into him outside a restaurant, but have they really gone Howard Hughes on us?

Why does Titan Poker have two really big names on theirroster and nobody else? Surely they can afford to sponsor a few lesser knownpros in addition to the hefty price they have to be paying Sam Trickett andMarvin Rettenmaier – they also used to sponsor Sorel Mizzi. It’s time for a fewof those Titan bonus dollars players arepaying to go towards a few more sponsorships.

Some thoughts on the GOP foreign policy debate

2011-11-23T05:25:00.001-08:00

After 11 debates it’s pretty clear that some of the peopleon the stage are simply not ready for prime-time, and it’s time for debateorganizers to stop offering up half-a-dozen or more candidates so we can startto hear a little more detail from the candidates that actually have a chance ofbecoming the Republican nominee.

I’d like to see no more than four candidates up on thestage, which would allow for more back-and-forth (it is a debate right? Not justa Q&A session with the moderator) like we saw last night between JohnHuntsman and Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. It’s time to stopplaying regular season games and whittle the teams down to the playoffs.

So here’s what I want to see happen: Bye-Bye Rick Perry, ~~SarahPalin wannabe~~ Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Herman Cain (althoughHerman probably won’t drop fast enough in the polls to be uninvited for anotherdebate or two).

That leaves us with Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul(who I would like to see replaced with Governor Gary Johnson), and JohnHuntsman –if you need a hardcore “righty” then go ahead and leave Mr. 9-9-9Herman Cain up there, he’s entertaining enough.

Here are some other observations I’ve made after watching my11^th Republican debate (yes I watch them all):

· Can Michele Bachmann open her mouth without saying“President Obama”? It’s like a SNL skit: “failed policies… President Obama…Socialism… President Obama… Fannie and Freddie… President Obama… Stimulus…President Obama… Obamacare… President Obama… President Obama… President Obama…Obamacare… OBAMA, OBAMA,OBAMA!”

· The more John Huntsman speaks the more I likehim. Unfortunately his delivery seems too formal to be appealing, and it comesoff a bit insincere. He just seems meant for state dinners to me. While NewtGingrich is confident Huntsman seems like a nervous guy at a job interview(which I guess he is sorta).

· Mitt Romney thinks the idea of throwing goodmoney after bad is a GOOD IDEA! [Paraphrasing] “after the sacrifice and moneywe have spent in Afghanistan we can’t just up and leave, we have a commitment”:Which is akin to a poker playing saying I know I can’t win this hand but goddamnitI’ve invested half my money already in this hand so far, so I guess I’ll justthrow the rest in. Hey Mitt, we are INVOLVED in a war in Afghanistan, notCOMMITTED to Afghanistan.

Here is a quote I like to live by that might help MittRomney out: The difference betweeninvolvement and commitment is like a ham and egg breakfast: The chicken wasinvolved and the pig was committed.

Massachusetts latest state to legalize gambling

2011-11-22T13:32:00.001-08:00

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is often tagged as beingthe liberalist of the liberal states, but anyone who has had the distinctpleasure of living within Massachusetts borders knows that there are two sidesto that coin. For every liberal agenda that has taken shape in Massachusettsthere are instances where the state is a couple decades behind the times; suchas not allowing tattoos until the year 2000 (after a 38-year ban).

Today we see yet another area where the liberal utopia hasfinally caught up with states like Indiana, Florida, and Mississippi, withGovernor Deval Patrick signing a bill into law that opens the door for threecasinos and a single slots-only parlor to set up shop in Massachusetts, as wellas creating an exploratory committee to look into online gaming –perhaps pavingthe way for 888Online Bingo to be legalized.

The basics of the bill are:

· The developers must pay an $85 million licensingfee (and be approved for said license)

· The Developer must invest a minimum of $500million into the property, including infrastructure

· 25% of revenue will be paid to the state (49% ofthe slot parlor revenue will be handed over to the state)

The current areas up for consideration include Milford,Holyoke, Boston, New Bedford, Palmer, and possibly Springfield. My money wouldbe on Palmer (on land owned by the Mohegan Sun), Milford (a developer DavidNunes has purchase a swath of land between the Mass Pike and I-495), and NewBedford (where the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe is seen as the front-runner for thecasino to be located in Southeastern Massachusetts).

House hearings on online poker show slow progress

2011-11-21T13:43:00.001-08:00

It’s hard to watch the snail’s pace the US government movesat sometimes, especially when dealing with what should be clear cut-and-dryissues like the legalization of online poker (or online casinos for thatmatter), so while I’m happy that the usual fearmongering was left out of thethree recent hearing held in Congress, it still seems that there is a very longway to go before anything actually happens at the federal level.

The latest attempt at getting some type of legislationpassed taken by the online poker advocates is to separate online poker fromonline casinos, which seems like a rational idea, until you look at the way the“skill” aspect is treated in courts and by politicians, who say things like, “Surethere is skill involved, but you can’t predict the next card” or “there islong-term skill, but anything can happen on any given hand”.

So my question is; do we really think there will be morevotes to pass an online poker bill than a full online gaming bill? Honestly,the idea of the long-term skill aspect of poker is lost on 90% of thepopulation, so wouldn’t it be better to also push for online casinos, whichcould drive up the amount of tax revenue the government could take in? Not tomention, what will be US players’ casinochoice options if online poker is legalized, but online gaming is not?

My guess is that once again online poker legislation willsimply wither and die on the vine of Congress, sent from committee to committeeto be debated and calling on expert witnesses, only to be faced with the sameopposition. It really does look like the potential for legalized online gamingin the US lies solely with the states, which presents us with a whole new canof worms to deal with…

Will players receive ALL of their Full Tilt Poker funds?

2011-11-20T05:06:00.001-08:00

A few weeks ago I wrote a piece titled Whythe Full Tilt Poker Sale WILL NOT Happen, and since I’m sitting here likelyto be eating crow in the coming days (as a sale seems all but complete) Idecided to keep chugging along with my cynical theme regarding Full Tilt. Inthis article I will offer my thoughts on what will likely happen after the salegoes through, and what problems we may face in having our money returned.

#1 -- I already see alot of problems with the way the DOJ will handle repayments.

There are already whispers that players might not be (asEric B. and Rakim would say) Paid in Full, and then there is the added issuesof the phantom funds many people were playing with. Will the DOJ just tossaside the missing $160 million or so from the eChecks shortfall? And then thereis the matter of Full Tilt Point conversions, tax implications, and so on.

I’m also curious if the DOJ will take a look at playerrecords over the past five years when they have Full Tilt Poker assets in theirpossession –before selling them to GBT? It’s obvious we will have to hand overour life history when we request our funds from the DOJ, so will they use thisto hammer some of the biggest winners in poker for not paying taxes???

#2 -- I’m still uncertainhow Groupe Bernard Tapie will convince players to leave their funds on the siteand/or return to Full Tilt Poker.

If nothing else poker players know how to hedge their bets,so I’d be shocked if players left large amounts of money on Full Tilt Poker nomatter what assurances are given. It goes without saying that there will be aninitial run on the bank as soon as GBT allows players to withdraw, so how willthey deal with this?

Will they place restrictions or fees on cash-outs? Will theyprocess withdrawals at a snail’s pace?

#3 – Will Full Tiltbe allowed in the US market when legislation is passed (which seems inevitable atthis point)?

I’m really not grasping the huge investment ($80 million forFull Tilt’s assets plus another $150 million to cover current account balancesfrom players around the world) GBT is making. Even using a conservativetimeline of five years before online poker is legalized in the US; do theyexpect the US government to allow them to apply for a license? Do they expectto see a Return on Investment?

Even sites like 888 Games, iPoker Networkrooms, and Party Poker must be scratching their heads over how the licensingwill be skewed in favor of current casino giants in the US: I’m sure PokerStars(and Full Tilt Poker) see little chance that room will be made for them.

Where does Full Tilt Poker go from here?

2011-11-18T08:53:00.001-08:00

With yesterday’s news that the deal between Full Tilt Pokerand Groupe Bernard Tapie is all but finalized (the Full Tilt pokershareholders, who are likely frothing at the mouth to be done with Full Tilt atthis point, have to pass the deal by a two-thirds vote) there are still threelooming questions in my mind:

#1) How will playersbe repaid by GBT?

I have little doubt that Groupe Bernard Tapie will try totalk as many players as possible into returning to the Full Tilt Poker tableswith their now-unfrozen funds, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t a major runon the bank by players from around the world: Sure they might return to FullTilt(or they might choose to play at 888 Pokeror Party Poker), but will likely do so with much smaller bankrolls.

So, will GBT “incentivize” players to leave their funds onFull Tilt –maybe with a significant withdrawal fee or some other method??? Orwill they simply bite the bullet and repay players dollar for dollar with nofees?

#2) How will playersbe repaid by the DoJ?

This one is more up in the air, and could take a number oftwists and turns before it’s over. Will the DoJ honor players FTP’s and assignthem a cash value? Will there be a fee of some sort? What will the taximplications be?

At this point players would be happy to receive anypercentage of their funds back, but as payments start being processed my guessis that poker players will start griping about the government’s methods.

#3) What are GBT’sintentions with the site?

Finally, what are GBT’s plans for Full Tilt poker? It’sunlikely they will be allowed into the US market should legislation pass(although this could be written into the deal between GBT and the DoJ) so willit simply be a “feeder” site for the GBT’s other poker project theInternational Stadium Poker Tour (ISPT)?

More thoughts on Occupy Wall Street: No Mas Ocupado

2011-11-17T06:39:00.001-08:00

I’ve been fairly neutral in my comments on Occupy WallStreet (my previouspost on the topic talked about the reasons behind it more than the movement’smethods) but frankly it’s getting a bit old. 2 MONTHS! No growing coalition, , no progress, no clearly defined goals; after 2 months it's the same on Day 60 as it was on Day 1?????

The Occupy Wall Street movement needs to take a cue fromRoberto Duran, and simply shout, “No Mas!” When I say this I don’t mean theyshould quit protesting or airing their grievances, I’m not even suggesting thatthey stop “Occupying” Wall Street. What they do need to stop doing is INDEFINITELYOCCUPYING these spaces at all hours of the day and night; it’s time to start goinghome at night and coming back in the morning.

My first reason is actually simple: If you really care aboutthis movement you would go about it in the right way; the way protests havetaken place in this country for decades –organize marches and organizegatherings. Have your protests, but at the end of the day go home and plan youractivities from there. Precisely who are you boycotting/inconveniencing whileyou sleep in your tent at 3AM in the morning? Wall Street closes at 4PM! MostBanks by 6PM! Go home; the people you are fighting against aren’t thereanymore!

My second reason has to do with the right to protest.Apparently we are making this one up as we go, because I don’t recall anywherein the First Amendment of the Constitution where it says you have the Right to “Squat”on a piece of public land. Here is a little passage I nicked from Wikipedia[bold mine]:

… InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights contains prohibitions on advocacy of"national, racial or religious hatred"; and it allows the restriction of the freedom to assembly if it isnecessary "in a democratic society in the interests of national securityor public safety, public order, theprotection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others."

More specifically the First Amendment states very clearlyyou have the “right to assemble” not the right to reside. Frankly if you arenot out marching or protesting in some active way you are not reallyprotesting! Cooking and reading books from your “library” are not methods ofprotest.

Seriously, where does this end? If I have the right toprotest can I, and my 30 closest friends, start a tent community at the localplayground? And if the police ask us to leave we can cite the abhorrentconditions of said playground as our reasoning for being there, and that we arenot leaving until something is done about it? While a group of kids is unableto get to the swings or the monkey-bars?

People can liken this to Egypt all they want, but thoseprotesters had a very clear goal (not to mention it was aimed at the governmentand not private financial firms which is a key point in your right to protest).The Occupy Wall Street movement may be well-intentioned, but the execution hasbeen horrendous. If you want the government to address the situation you needto direct your protests at the government.

If you want to protest, then protest. Form Marches, createorganized protests that have start and end points, these are all things thathave worked in the past. If you want to live in a tent… go camping. Hell youcan do both! Go camping at night and protest during the day… just don’t do themat the same time and in the same place.

Some random thoughts about random things

2011-11-16T08:51:00.001-08:00

1. Why did Maryland wear TWO terrible lookinguniforms at the same time against Notre Dame last weekend? Look at these things!!!!

2. Beavis and Butthead is a really witty show, andI find it even funnier in its second incarnation.

3. The guy in the “Mayhem” commercials is absolutelyawesome.

4. After watching debates and talking heads on TV I’vecome to two conclusions: #1 Republicans never answer the question they wereasked: #2 Democrats just prattle on until you forget the original question theywere asked.

5. Why do fast food restaurants use terms likeAsiago and Artisan? Just stick to Whopper, Big Mac, and McWhatever.

6. Aside from rare scenarios like a sky-high kickor after a penalty pushes the kicking team ahead 5-15 yards, why does any NFLteam take a knee on a kickoff? I would love to see the data that says startingat the 15 yard line is demonstratively worse than the 20. I would much ratherhave the option of breaking a big return and occasionally starting at the 15yard line than having no chance of a big return and starting at the 20. weak-tight NFL teams that take a knee; WEAK-TIGHT!

7. Anyone using the term FML over anything short ofan emergency room trip should have to juggle chainsaws until they can actually applythe term FML to their life.

Some thoughts on the 2011 WSOP Final Table

2011-11-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

After watching the entire “Live” coverage of the 2011 WorldSeries of Poker final table on ESPN2 (thus proving once and for all that I canrival a Trekkie when it comes to being a poker nerd) I have a number of thingsI would like to touch upon.

· A Tight/Solid approach to the game may not giveyou the best opportunity to win the WSOP but it sure as hell can win you $3-$4million!

While players are firing off chunks of their stacks it seemsfrom watching recent final tables play out that if you have a middling stack atight-solid approach will let you move up at least three or four places on theleader-board, and should you catch a couple of hands at the right time put youin position to win. Just look at the styles John Racener, Matt Giannetti,Martin Staszko, Filippo Candio, Jeff Shulman, and Tuan Lam have implemented inrecent years –all of whom were able to watch their compatriots fall by thewayside, and a few of them a card or two away from winning the WSOP

· The Live coverage was a huge success –with 99%of the credit going to the players themselves

In any other year a “live” feed may have gone down like theHindenburg, but thankfully there was not a single player at the 2011 WSOP finaltable who decided to “Hollywood”, and only a couple of decisions that requiredmore than a couple of minutes to make.

Also making the live feed a success was the fact that theplayers abstained from any of the Hevad Khan, Mike Matusow, Jamie Gold, orJerry Yang type antics of elated celebrations, abject misery, and so on. Forthe most part, the average Joe doesn’t really care how heart-wrenching winning$4 million instead of $7 million is to you!

Of course ESPN’s decision to have a hole-card reveal at theEND of the hand (something I have been hoping they would switch to for years).

· The commentary is getting much better

Antonio Esfandiari is the perfect “expert” in the boothcompared to the name-dropping, out-of-touch Phil Hellmuth; Lon McEachern is aconsummate professional and keeps the banter moving as was evidenced when DavidTuchman took over after the dinner break (no offense to Tuchman but he is noLon McEachern); and Norman Chad’s shtick is all Ad-Lib! He really makes thatstuff up on the spot!

A couple of other points:

· How did Americas Cardroom get those ads on theair?

· Can ESPN please, stop cutting away to the anticsin the stands –it only encourages them.

Some thoughts on poker player ratings

2011-10-29T11:06:00.000-07:00

After Tuesday’s hearing on potential online pokerlegislation that took place before a House subcommittee in the House Energy andCommerce committee one of the possibilities that was flouted was a poker playerrating system, similar to how Chess players are rated. While I’m all foranything that legitimizes the argument that poker is a game of skill –which aratings system would obviously do, my feelings are that a player rating systemwould destroy the game.

Here is quick rundown of why I think this is the case:

1. Partof being a “good” poker player is the ability to categorize and adjust to eachopponent

2. Goodplayers will have a hard time getting action

3. “Poorlyrated” accounts will be worth a lot of money on the “Poker Black Market”

4. Ratingswill breed further online abuses like multi-accounting and ghosting

5. Thereare simply too many formats and game types for the ratings to be accurate

6. Insteadof minimizing the effectiveness of poker bots this will spur bot programmers themon

While I'm generally against a ratings system, if it has to be done here is what I would like to see. One solution would be to have a system in place that simplystates the volume a person plays as well as their average stakes and game type.In this way you can see if a player plays a lot of poker or only occasionallyplays, and what stakes they typically play for.

The ratings would mainly help out cash-game players, andwould allow anyone to see just how much a person plays and what stakes theynormally play for. From there the person would have to draw their ownconclusions as to what a person playing 10,000 hands of NLHE per week at anaverage stakes $2/$4 means. It could look something like this:

Game Type	Avg. Stakes/Buy-in	Hands/Week
NLHE	$2/$4	10,000
PLO	$.25/$.50	>100

The ratings would also help out tournament players, as itwould allow them to see if they are dealing with a serious Sit & Go or MTTgrinder:

Game Type	Avg. Buy-In	Tournaments/Week
STT	$22	205
MTT	$33	60

If ratings are a necessary component of legalizing andregulating online poker, than they should be used in a way that does the leastamount of harm to the game as possible; after all, the above statistics don’treally reflect the skill level of the player, and while my first assumptionwould be that I’m dealing with a winning player in both cases, this is far froma concrete fact.

These types of statistics could be integrated with aperson’s screen-name (which would only be available by right-clicking on arandomly generated ID # given at the beginning of every session): This wouldallow players to keep notes on each other, but at the same time avoiddata-mining sites.

Some thoughts on the Occupy Wall Street movement

2011-10-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

I was originally goingto have this as a bit piece in another post, but my thoughts are constantlyevolving (as is the movement it seems) on what precisely is taking place in these Occupy Wall Streetprotests, so I decided to turn this into its own post.

While I’ve never been of the mind that shouting pointlessslogans (no matter how witty) is going to change much of anything, and I’mfairly certain that a protest without some specific end-game goal is doomed tofailure; there is a point to be made by the Occupy Wall Street protests, andhopefully the movement will move in the right directions and not be sidetracked.

I’ve been saying for a while now that people (the masses)will allow themselves to get kicked and kicked for quite some time, buteventually they will rise up –The French Revolution is the perfect example ofwhen the poor and working class simply said “ENOUGH”. We have also seen recentexamples of this with the Arab Spring, and in Greece, and it now seems that weare on the precipice of a possible second revolution in the US. The questionis: Will the movement continue to growand change the course of the entire nation; will it simply peter-out as theprotestors are ridiculed and called “Hippies” and members of the “Fringe”; orwill the “rich” placate the masses with a few bones here and there?

Americans are being attacked on all fronts simultaneously,we are in a recession, our Civil Liberties are being trampled on, and the taxcode is rigged to favor the wealthy (we actually have a regressive tax systemwhen you look at effective rates). Blame is being thrown on the uninsured,teachers, and illegal immigrants.

Now, I’m of the opinion that 75% of Americans understandwhat is actually going on, but up until now they haven’t felt the pinchthemselves. Now that this recession is affecting ALL of us, and the outlook isso goddamn bleak, the protests have begun.

Now I’m not arguing for socialism or for tax hikes on therich –anyone familiar with my blog will know I’m pretty much a libertarian –flat tax on income and a consumption tax, especially on non-essential services.What I do want to see is transparency!

We need to get the money out of politics. If corporationsare people than doesn’t it also apply in the reverse? Is every person acorporation? We need to hold Wall Street accountable for their greed and notsimply look to chastise them for their prior transgressions –Greed is good, butunchecked and unhindered it will lead to utter chaos—and finally we need to getback to what made this country so prosperous which is the ability for everyable-bodied person to find work.

I think Bill Maher’s analogy sums it up perfectly: Theeconomy is something along the lines of a raging river. In the analogy Maherstated that Communism sought to fight the river and paddle upstream (doomed tofail), while Capitalism uses the natural energy of the river to its advantage.BUT, there has to be some built in protections in the form of dams, canals, andlocks.

It needs to be pointed out that even the godfather of themodern Libertarian movement, F.A. Hayek, saw the need for regulation, but itneeds to be the RIGHT kind of regulation! My hope is that the Occupy WallStreet protesters start calling for more transparency in government, and notsimply calling for the heads of the Wall Street barons who gamed the system toget rich. We need to make sure we separate accountability from blame. We areall accountable for the current situation we find ourselves in, so blamingcertain people is pointless, and amounts to nothing more than a witch-hunt. BUTif we take responsibility for what we have let happen, and what needs to bedone, great things can still happen in the future, and positive change can bemade.

My hope is that the protestors find some voices to stay onmessage, and not allow the idea to be hijacked by special interest groups --muchlike the original Tea Party was hijacked by other groups and now is simply asham organization with mouthpieces spewing their corporate master’s talkingpoints.

Why the Full Tilt Poker sale WILL NOT happen

2011-10-08T07:43:00.000-07:00

Doubting Thomas

There has been a lot of fist-pumping and finger-crossing bythe poker world after it was revealed that Full Tilt Poker wasn’t simplyblowing smoke up our asses, and was in negotiations with Groupe Bernard Tapie,the investment group interested in purchasing the struggling online poker room.Despite all of the jubilation, there is still a long way to go before anythingresembling a deal is in place, and in my opinion, it’s unlikely.

Before I get into the reasons I feel the deal will fallthrough, let me throw out a few reasons why it might happen:

· Groupe Bernard Tapie is a major investor in therecently announced International Stadium Poker Tour (ISPT), which is looking tocombine online and live play and would therefore require poker software (andwith 30,000 entrants, software that included Rush Poker would be an even betterfit).

· Pretty much everyone involved from the DOJ tothe current Full Tilt owners wants this to go away, and would probably give theGBT a sweetheart of a deal –but GBT will likely want an even better deal sinceit’s basically bailing out an insolvent company.

That said, here is why the deal is destined to fall apart:

· There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen: GroupeBernard Tapie, the US Department of Justice, the Aldernay Gambling ControlCommission, some 23 Full Tilt poker owners, and thousands of disgruntledplayers are all expecting different results from the negotiations. In additionto GBT’s goals which include a fair settlement with the players and thereinstatement of the site’s AGCC license,, the DOJ isn’t going to simply dropthe case and give up hundreds of millions of dollars, and according to Subject:Poker, in order for Full Tilt Poker to accept the deal “owners representingtwo-thirds of the shares of Tiltware must sign off”.

· Basically, everything hinges on the DOJreleasing some $330 million in seized funds (the alleged amount confiscated).The DOJ isn’t going to simply turn over these funds and without this capitalGroupe Bernard Tapie is looking at a mammoth initial investment to save thesite. Not only will there be an initial run on the bank if the sale goesthrough, but players’ funds have to be matched 1-for-1 in a segregated accountfrom here on out, not to mention the tremendous amounts of money that will beneeded for the obligatory “Under new Ownership” PR campaign.

· And if the DOJ cuts a sweetheart deal with FullTilt wouldn’t this set precedence for when they come calling at PokerStars,looking for a hefty fine? The DOJ is asking for $2 billion from the sites, Idoubt they are going to settle for $100 million, or whatever number, GroupeBernard Tapie needs to happen for the deal to go through.

· And finally, we have already seen inklings thatGBT is not willing to invest the amount needed to take on the struggling site.There have been whispers of players who are owed large amounts of money beingpaid off with equity shares in the company as well as whispers that people inmajor roles (owners) can stay with the company so long as they were notindicted.

Here are a few other questions that are being asked as well:

1. CanFull Tilt Poker even be saved?

2. Willthe DOJ cut a deal with a man convicted of corruption and subornation ofwitnesses, who was also prosecuted for tax fraud?

3. Whatwill the Full Tilt brand (even if fully rehabilitated) be worth when onlinepoker is legalized in the US –since there is no way they will ever be allowedinto the US market?

4. Whatbecomes of the current Full Tilt Poker owners –in addition to getting out oftheir current bind they must also be looking at their reputation in the future?

God, I really hope I’m dead wrong about thisone….

Thoughts on the Epic Poker League TV premiere

2011-10-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

We recently got our first look at the Epic Poker League onTV, as the polarizing professional poker tournament league debuted with footageof the 6-Max Main Event that took place in August. While the broadcast was wellproduced and features veteran commentator and TV personality Pat O’Brien aswell as poker commentator Ali Nejad, the Epic Poker League broadcast was almostindistinguishable from the myriad of other poker programming that is availablefor consumption.

Not only was the broadcast hampered by being just more ofthe “same-old-same-old” but there was yet another problem that I’ve beennoticing on other poker programming as well: The audio was tough to listen to,and it was near impossible to pick up the table talk between the players.

Let’s face it, poker on TV is fairly boring at the best oftimes, and one of the highlights is the report between the players. When thisdialogue is tough to follow, it makes the show itself disjointed. One way toimprove upon this is to add some more microphones or better microphones ifthat’s the problem. I would also suggest the EPL use a format along the linesof the PokerStars Big Game where the audio for background conversations islowered or raised based on its importance/entertainment value.

So what were the “innovations” revealed on the debut episodeof the Epic Poker League?

· The EPL has added a wrinkle that moves theplayers in the blind above the other players after the flop in the sidebarwhere viewers can see the players’ hole cards.

· The player whose turn it is to act ishighlighted in green (because the camera focusing on them wasn’t enough of atipoff).

· A total reliance on the Global Poker Index to“rank” the players, and the non-stop use of the GPI by the commentators.

· The use of thehendonmob.com to list players’tournament statistics –a very nice addition.

What the EPL needs to do more of: Prop up the status andprofiles of players like Sam Trickett, Matt Glantz, and Gavin Smith who arelikely to be the types of players that will play in the EPL tournament aftertournament. I realize the Hellmuth’s and Seidel’s of the world are the league’sbread-and-butter, but they can’t rely solely on a couple of the Top 10 mostrecognizable players in the world always making a deep run.

Other than that, the Epic Poker League looked the same asthe WSOP, the WPT, or any other poker broadcast out there.

Post #200: Book Update, Monetizing the blog and more

2011-09-28T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is a milestone post on Burbspoker.blogspot.com, post#200! So I will be blaming any spelling errors on the copious amounts ofconfetti and balloons falling from my home-office ceiling –I really spared noexpense in this celebration.

Ok, basically this will just be a quick update on the blogitself, starting with my decision to monetize the blog (see those oh soenticing ads from Google on the right-hand sidebar and at the bottom of thispost). Those are clickable, non-virus, ads chosen by Google to appear on myblog. Every time you click one of those ads I make money (HINT, HINT, WINK,WINK) and you don’t have to buy anything or even fill out a form, unless youwant to. So go ahead and click those links; you know you want to go to ITTTech, and buy a custom poker table!

Second, the 50-in-50 book challenge is just about done, andeven though I haven’t updated in quite some time, it’s still happening.Although, I know there are a few books that I have read that I simply forgot towrite down somewhere –this damn Kindle messed me all up.

So overall I have 46 books marked down as read in the 50weeks, and since I was using the Full Tilt Poker approved AGCC as an oversightcommittee and regulatory body, I say I completed the 50-in-50 challenge andthere’s nothing you can do about it!

Alright, so how is that for a 200^th post!!!!

What I miss the most about online poker

2011-09-26T16:48:00.001-07:00

There are certain nights that I’m on the computer andcursing the government for shutting down online poker in the US (I still havesome money on Lock Poker but it’s just not the same anymore) and taking away mycasual online poker habit –not to mention costing me quite a bit of income asaffiliates and news outlets cut down on their content orders.

However, nearly six months after Black Friday (yes, it’sgetting close to the half-year anniversary) I have discovered an even deeperproblem than a decrease in salary and the inability to play online poker: Ireally relied on online poker for a lot of free swag!

I made this discovery while putting away some laundryrecently and realizing my half-a-dozen PokerStars T-Shirts are ready for thetrash can: Even more alarming is the problem with a lack of hoodies as theweather gets colder here in Massachusetts –have you seen the price of hoodieslately, they’re like $50+ each! Normally this would be solved in 5 minutes witha quick 10,000 point purchase at the PokerStars store (Full Tilt gear wasalways much more expensive in terms of points), and in 2-6 weeks there were myitems, waiting on the front porch.

I didn’t realize just how heavily I relied on the onlinepoker rooms for staple items like T-Shirts, Hoodies, MP3 players, laptopcovers, multiple poker chip-sets, etc. You know the staples of life. I nevermade a really large item purchase from a poker site, except for a monitor backin the day, but I have probably had more T-Shirts/hats/sweatshirts pass throughmy mailbox than the local Target (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but you get thepoint). My key-chains, my hats, my kick-around clothes, jackets, books, DVD’s,random useless items like a tournament that doubles as a button, MP3 players,headphones, and on and on; they all bear the logo of a poker site in my home:Full Tilt poker, PokerStars, Party Poker, even UB Poker is represented!

So what am I to do? I can’t in good conscience go buy threehoodies and five t-shirts at $200+; this is what online poker sites are for!This is an absolute waste of money. Thanks a lot DOJ, thanks a lot!

Social Security is NOT a Ponzi scheme, well technically it isn’t

2011-09-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

There has been a lot of arguing lately about the use of theterm Ponzi scheme. The first arose after Rick Perry infamously called SocialSecurity a Ponzi scheme on national television. And more recently was the useof the term to describe Full Tilt Poker and the way the company was run in therun-up to Black Friday.

Now, the classic definition of a Ponzi scheme has to do witha very specific financial crime where the perpetrator guarantees a return oninvestment far ahead of other investors, or in some other way lures inpotential marks. Divedends are then paid out with the person’s own money or newinvestors’ money, along with the perpetrator taking a nice cut off the top forthemselves.

According to Wikipedia the scam was first mentioned inCharles Dickens’ novel The Life andAdventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, published in 1844 (and considering humannature has probably been around since civilization began in some form). Can’tyou just picture some ancient Sumerian standing on the banks of the TigrisRiver telling his counterparts about a fabulous investment opportunityinvolving clay tablets and cuneiform seals…?

However, like many words and terms in our lexicon the term“Ponzi scheme” seems to be evolving, especially recently. At its heart, a Ponzischeme is simply a fraud, but since “Ponzi scheme” is such a sexier term it hasfound its own place in the English language. Even though it’s originalintention was to describe a very specific type of fraud it has now branchedout, and is used far more broadly to describe money-in to cover money-outfrauds –purists will decry this bastardization of the term, but in the endwords change over time, and mean what people want them to mean.

For instance, here is what a Columbia Law Professor has tosay about the use of the term “PONZI SCHEME”: "Ponzi scheme is certainlythe term du jour these days," said Daniel Richman, a professor at ColumbiaLaw School. "If you want to drive home the point of taking people's moneyand not giving it back and sustaining it through later deposits, using the wordPonzi captures it." Quotetaken from Reuters Article

***As a side notehere, it pisses me off when people like Lawrence O’Donnell (who I like) stateswith unequivocal assuredness that a Ponzi scheme is “…Fraud… Committed byCharles Ponzi in the 20’s…criminal…Bernie Madoff…jail…” So it can’t be used todescribe Social Security or anything that isn’t specifically this type ofinvestment fraud that occurs in precisely this way. Basically this is one stepshy of saying “if the crime was not committed by a man named Charles Ponzi itcan’t be called a Ponzi scheme.”

So don’t act likesomeone who loosely applies the term Ponzi scheme doesn’t understand what itis, or what the original crime committed in the 20’s was. I still love you thoughLawrence. ***

The new definition of the term Ponzi scheme (or betterstated what people apply it to) seems to be: A fraud where certain guaranteesare made that continues over time because the perpetrator uses new moneycoming in to pay out other investors that are due payments. Where at some pointthe money will dry up, and investors will be left out in the cold. The strictdefinition that certain ROI guarantees are made in advance and that the fraud takes place as a financial investment opportunity no longer seems tobe necessary.

So is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Not really, sincethere is no intention of fraud, but it does have the hallmarks of a Ponzischeme in its execution, especially as the money coming in can no longer coverthe money being paid out (although this is some 20 years away at this point).

Was what Full Tilt poker did a Ponzi scheme? It’s hard tosay at this point, but once again it has the nuts and bolts of a Ponzi scheme,considering players funds (supposedly kept separate), were used to payinvestors, for marketing purposes, and operating costs; in the end playerwithdrawals were being paid with new deposits coming in, which was nowhere nearenough to cover the collective amount of money supposedly in the accounts oftheir player base.

Key points in the new Full Tilt Poker complaint filed by the DOJ

2011-09-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

It really does seem that when it rains it pours in the pokerworld. Take today for example: No sooner had I finished catching up on themajor tournaments taking place in around the globe, followed by checking recentstatements made by US Digital Gaming and the American Gaming Associationregarding possible online poker legislation, followed by a search for any newscoming out of the Full Tilt Poker/AGCC hearing, and just when I finally thoughtI had caught up with all of the day’s headlines after reading through somesmaller news and notes like the Bodog signing of Amanda Leatherman, BAM, the USAttorney in the Southern District of New York unloads a bombshell early thisafternoon.

While the entire amendment being sought is eye-opening,there are several aspects of the amendment that I found particularly interesting.

· Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson were officiallynamed as owners of Full Tilt poker, along with percentages being given.

This is the first time the poker world has received confirmationon what we have always supposed to be true, and it appears the DOJ has detailedrecords as to precisely who owns what, and what has been paid out to eachindividual.

· Full Tilt Poker knowingly lied about the waythey used player deposits.

In the amendment a number of E-Mails and public statementswere posted verifying the claims that Full Tilt Poker claimed to segregate playerfunds –which turned out to be patently false.

· While we all had the feeling that Full Tilt pokerwas making the principle owners rich, none of us had any idea that several keyfigures were pulling in at least $10 million per year –Howard Lederer, ChrisFerguson, Ray Bitar, and “Player Owner 1” (which is almost assuredly Phil Ivey)all profited to the tune of at least $40 million.

The numbers thrown around in the amendment are almost mind –boggling:between Howard Lederer, Ray Bitar, “Player Owner 1”, and Chris Ferguson over $218million was paid out in the last four years!

· It would seem that Full Tilt Poker knew thewheels were coming off long before Black Friday and were in fact making anabsolute last-ditch cash-grab at the players’ expense.

This excerpt from the amendment is particularly damning:

Instead of disclosingthis fact, Full Tilt Poker secretly began to credit funds to players’ onlinegambling accounts that Full Tilt Poker had never actually collected from players’bank accounts. As players gambled, and lost, these phantom funds, Full TiltPoker developed an undisclosed shortfall of approximately $130 million owed toplayers that Full Tilt Poker had never collected because, in reality, thesefunds were never withdrawn from players’ bank accounts. The management of FullTilt Poker, including the FTP Insider Defendants, operated Full Tilt Poker withthe hope that only a small number of players would try to withdraw funds at anyone time, and that Full Tilt Poker would regularly receive additional depositsin amounts greater than any withdrawal requests.

And this excerpt even more so:

Despite the fact that,by early 2011, Full Tilt Poker was severely insolvent, it continued makingpayments of approximately $10 million per month to its owners up to and includingApril 1, 2011. Full Tilt Poker also continued making “loans” to itsprofessional poker players who also owned an interest in the company, includingloan payments totaling more than $2,000,000 to Player Owner 1 between August2010 and January 2011.

And finally the proof that they knew they were in a diresituation:

Full Tilt Poker’s CEO,Bitar, was well aware of the need for new deposits after April 15, 2011, andknew that even a few million dollars’ of unexpected withdrawals could revealFull Tilt Poker’s true financial situation. For example, in an internal FullTilt Poker e-mail dated June 12, 2011, Bitar expressed concern that a company announcementregarding lay offs and the Board (including himself) being replaced would beseen as bad news, which would cause a “new run on the bank,” adding that “itcould be a huge run” and that “at this point we can’t even take a five millionrun.”

Basically Full Tilt Poker was in such a harried state onceUIGEA legislation went into full effect that they decided to engage in the mostridiculous business practices imaginable according to the DOJ amendment.

You can read the entire civil complaint at the following link (the amended portionbegins on Page 63).

Thoughts on the Subject: Poker “Merge Network” article

2011-09-14T13:18:00.001-07:00

Recently the poker website Subject:Poker published an article claiming that the DOJ would be cracking down onpayment processors used by the Merge Gaming Network, and throughout the articleimplied that the Merge Network would soon suffer a similar fate to Full TiltPoker and PokerStars. As it turns out, the article created quite a bit of anuproar after Merge saw traffic decrease by 40% last week according to www.pokerscout.com, and of course thismeans Merge affiliates also took a major hit.

I don’t plan on getting into the veracity of what S:P statedin the article, or if some are accusing the site of, “writing a hit-job”. Ifyou’re interested in my thoughts on the article you can read them here: SubjectPoker comes under fire for Merge article.

Basically, I think the rest of the poker news community waswaiting for this to happen the moment Subject: Poker came onto the scene citingthe fact that they are not affiliated with online poker rooms in an affiliatecapacity, and with their tag-line of “Poker News Done Right” –the implicationbeing that they are filling a void in the current poker media. Actuallyimplication is not quite right since Noah Stephens-Davidowitz states in his bioon Subject: Poker:

“Noah and Thomas foundedSubject: Poker because of general dissatisfaction with the established pokermedia. In his capacity as editor-in-chief, Noah reads, edits, and approves allcontent that is published on the site.”

Personally, I’ve had limited dealings with Noah –I think IPm’ed him once on 2+2, and possibly communicated with him, or someone else, atS:P when they first came online to see if they were looking for writers—but inthe comments I’ve seen him make to detractors he comes across as a bit finickyand hyper-critical. Noah also makes a point of nitpicking the wording othersuse (such as not quoting exactly and such), yet there is a blatant falsehood inhis bio:

“He uncovered theStoxtrader collusion scandal, the Absolute Poker keno scandal…”

The first part is patently untrue. Noah investigated the Stoxtrader collusion scandal after Grudzien wasouted for multi-accounting, followed by several 2+2’ers questioning his playinghistory with other screen-names.

As to the second part, I can’t state with 100% accuracy thatthis is true, but if my memory serves me, Noah did not uncover the AP Kenoscandal either, and was again an investigator. I’m not trying to downplay hisrole in either instance as his work was exemplarily, but merely want to pointout that the S: P website is not without its own embellishments andunsubstantiated facts.

Back to my original point: It’s one thing to say thatGambling911.com is overly opinionated and likes attention-grabbing headlines,or that PokerNews.com is a bit spammy with some of their affiliate articles,but when you make a blanket statement that you are dissatisfied with thecurrent poker media, so you simply had to create your own website, is a bitobnoxious.

The truth of the matter is that there are literally zeroresources in the poker world for investigative reporting. Anyone who has donereal investigations, like Haley Hintze, does so on their own time and receiveslittle in the way of compensation: Although Haley did eventually sign a bookdeal.

Furthermore, 90% of the poker playing population has nointerest in this type of coverage. They are interested in strategy, tournamentreports, book reviews, interviews, the latest promotions, and so on. For Noahto say that he is dissatisfied with the poker media is a bit of a leap. Basicallyhe is performing an entirely different service: It would be akin to CarlBernstein saying he is dissatisfied with the in-depth reporting of the gossipcolumn on Page 6 of the New York Post.

If Noah and Subject: Poker want to fill this void than morepower to them, and I wish them the very best. But to insinuate that they aredoing the job of –or need to improve upon the job done by-- the general pokermedia is ludicrous. Because of this, I found it a bit hypocritical for Noah andSubject: Poker to pass off their recent Merge Gaming Article as “straightnews”. If you’re going to show up with a holier than thou attitude you betterkeep to the facts, or at least clearly state that you are just conjecturing.

Some more thoughts on the recent tragedy in Milford

2011-08-31T05:33:00.001-07:00

In my firstpost on this topic I focused almost exclusively on the drunk-driving aspectof the tragic death of Matthew Denice, 23, from Milford MA. While I touchedupon my thoughts on illegal immigration, I don’t think I made myself clearenough on what I feel should be done in terms of illegal immigration… I’ll tryto clear this up now.

I will say that this paragraph from MarieParente’s recent op-ed in the Milford Daily news sums up my personalbeliefs on who we should be going after when it comes to illegal immigration: “Lastly,landlords, employers and illegal alien sympathizers should be aware: "Aperson (including a group of persons, business, organization, or localgovernment) commits a federal felony when she or he: assists an alien she/heshould reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employmentauthorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtainemployment, or encourages that alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him orher to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in anyway, or knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions."

First of all, this was still –at its core—an issue of adrunk driver. We can say “he shouldn’t have been here in the first place” or“if the Governor adopted the Safe Communities Act this wouldn’t have happened”,but in my mind this is just applying postdiction/Monday-Morning-Quarterbacking/hindsight.The fact of the matter is HE WAS HERE. And now we have to deal with this casein the present, not look back at what could have been done in this instance toprevent this single tragedy. The tragedy already happened –this argument isbetter served looking forward: Basically, my feelings are that the person beingillegal did not kill Matt, the fact that he was drunk and driving did.

As I said in my first post, I’m not pro-illegal immigration,but It’s also not one of my main concerns in life (it probably ranks somewhereahead of dusting the top of my light fixtures, and somewhere below defraggingmy hard-drive). However, there is one aspect of illegal immigration that doesraise my ire, and is something I follow fairly closely, and that is criminalactivity.

Now I’m of the opinion that if you are arrested, orlegitimately pulled over, you should be able to produce some form ofidentification. If you are unable to produce said identification than thepolice should have the right to look into your background, including yourimmigration status! By not enforcing the Secure Communities Act, which simplyallows law enforcement officers to run the fingerprints of people they haveapprehended against the ICE database, our law enforcement officers are the onesin handcuffs.

By not allowing law enforcement officers to look into thebackgrounds of people that have been arrested for assault and battery, breakingand entering, DUI’s, and domestic assault, Governor Patrick is basically givingillegal immigrants an incentive to come to Massachusetts –not just the hardworking ones, but also the troublemakers! They can simply give a false name,claim the need for an interpreter, and will likely be out on bail or released.

As I stated on a Facebook status this past week: If you arehere illegally you should be on your best behavior. If you cannot control yourimpulses when you are on your best behavior, what kind of person are you?Basically, an illegal immigrant who is willing to drink and drive, assault apolice officer, and a slew of other offenses has to have more than a few screwsloose! You’re here illegally and this is how you act!?!?!?!? It would be akinto having a friend invite you to one of their friend’s houses, and when you showup you eat all the food, piss in their sink, and start a fight, and then can’tfigure out why everyone is so mad. Because you were not suppose to be there inthe first place and on top of that you acted like an ass! If you acted normaland were well-behaved there would be no issue with the unknown person –hell,you might even make a few new friends. But if you act like an ass, what do youexpect the response to be?

I have no idea why Governor Patrick is against a sensiblepolicy like the Secure Communities Act –I’m a Libertarian and I have no issuewith it—but his lack of action now is bordering on insanity: Doing the samething over and over (in this case ignoring the facts in front of his face) andexpecting a different result. He has an opportunity to correct his mistake andadopt the Secure Communities Act, to look forward and use this tragedy as awake-up call. This is an opportunity for the Governor to send a clear messagethat we want to attract the right kind of people to Massachusetts (be theylegal or illegal), and make sure that troublemakers are not granted asylum onour streets.

Reexamining the possibility of online poker being rigged

2011-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

My standard conspiracy theory pic :)

A while back I wrote a blog post outlining the way onlinepoker sites “might” possibly be cheating players. The method I detailed isvirtually undetectable, and can be skewed to be either more or less severe atthe site’s whim. Furthermore, without complete access to huge blocks of thehand histories from the site, at most some players might “feel” something wasamiss in the back of their brains. In order to keep this post at a manageablesize I won’t go into the details of how a site can rig the deck and not getcaught, if you’re interested you can read about it here: IsOnline Poker Rigged? One Possibility.

Although my original post was meant as a hypothetical, oreven a slight warning to stay alert to all possibilities, I think theperception of the online poker world has changed in such a way that it’s time to revisit thepossibility that something may have been rotten in Denmark, or more aptly, inIreland.

When I first wrote about this possibility I left the name ofthe online poker room that was the focus of my suspicions out, Full Tilt Poker.At the time I did this for two reasons:

#1 – I think it leant more credence to what I was saying bynot fingering a specific target when I have absolutely ZERO hard evidence.

#2 – Very few people at the time would have taken meseriously, since Full Tilt Poker was considered one of the pillars of theonline poker world.

This entire post is still just conjecture, and I have no empiricalevidence, just a hunch, and thanks to all of the findings post-Black Friday atrack record of less than ethical behavior by the site.

Now I want to mention a few things I left out from myoriginal post. The first thing I want to expand on is the fact that Full TiltPoker is the only poker site I have ever played at where I am not a winningplayer –only my rakeback deal allowed me to turn any kind of profit at the site.For a long time I believed the industry hype that the players were just alittle bit better at Full Tilt Poker, but now I am wondering.

Now I’m not a world-beater when it comes to my poker skill,but I am a solid long-term winner, and it wasn’t like I was playing $25/$50NLHE or even $5/$10 NLHE. I quit playing poker professionally in 2006, andsince then I have only “goofed around” at lower stakes, online, games playinganywhere from penny PLO games to $100 buy-in games. Games I should have a verybig edge in.

Here are some questions I have:

· Werethere in fact bots being employed by the site?

Even in $1/$2 and $2/$4 Limit O8 games and $10-$100 PLOgames there were players that were seemingly always there, who played strange(a weird assessment in a low stakes online game, I know), and were long-termlosing players according to my PT Omaha –most slightly under break-even, somehorrible -10BB/100 losers—yet there they were day after day.

When I say they played strange I don’t mean on the whole, whatI mean is a player with a 25/2 VPIP/PFR might cold call a three-bet pre-flop inPLO and turns over JJJ6 at showdown, and then folds his small blind after 4limps the next hand! Which begs the question: What the hell is he foldinggetting 11-to-1 if he thinks JJJ6 is good for flatting a 3-bet?

It wasn’t that the play was unorthodox or just bad; it wasthat they would suddenly go against their typical playing style for a singlehand here and there, showing up with a hand the craziest maniac would havediscarded. So a guy in an Omaha 8 game who is playing 10/7 VPIP/PFR all of asudden turns up in a capped pot pre-flop with A69Q??? Or, a player with an 85/50VPIP/PFR open-folds on the button. It was as if certain hands were programmedto be folded.

As I watched these same players do out of character thingsmy suspicions continued to grow. And interestingly these players never chatted.

· Where didthe rumors, or the notion, of Full Tilt Poker players being “better” come from?

It turns out that Full Tilt had a number of shills postingin the poker forums around the Internet. So were these posters the Genesis ofthis rumor, or just the response from the site to cover up poker bots and otherforms of malfeasance?

In small stakes games I find the best indicator of how gooda game is, is by looking at the average pot. Full Tilt Poker’s pots were aboutthe same as they were on PokerStars or UB, but the one thing I always noticedwas that the games were far less aggressive pre-flop. Basically it seemed to methat there were fewer chasers on Full Tilt. This would lend credence to thepossibility of bots, as well as playing into my next question.

· Why was Ieither red hot or ice cold on the site?

If you were to classify my play in an Omaha 8 game it wouldbe “Nitty”, in PLO I’m a little looser but still pretty much a tight player ina typical game. Obviously in low-stakes games this equals a winning strategy,but it also helps keep my variance pretty low since I avoid a lot of marginalspots where I might be slightly +EV. Put it this way, in all of my yearsplaying live poker I’ve lost a full 25BB buy-in playing Omaha 8 or better–anywhere from $2/$4 to $75/$150 over the years—a grand total of one time! Inmy time at Party Poker and on PokerStars it was maybe a weekly occurrence, butat Full Tilt I was constantly reloading, there were days where I was losingfull buy-ins at two or three of my four tables, sometimes losing up to threefull buy-ins at a single table.

At Full Tilt it seemed I was either running really hot, orextremely cold (especially when playing Sit and Go’s). Considering the gameswere more passive than on other sites, this only makes sense if they weremessing around with the Deck as I outlined in my older post (or rigging thegame in some other way).

Pursuing REAL justice for Matthew Denice

2011-08-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

This is my second really long post in a row, so here goes:

It’s not very often that my stomach churns and twists intoknots, but the news of what happened to Matthew Denice, 23 from Milford, MA, thispast weekend was enough to bring a tear to my eye and send my stomach somewherebetween “excuse me, where is the bathroom” and “get out of my way!”

Denice was the victim of a fatal traffic accident whileriding his motorcycle in total accordance with the law. But it wasn’t simply acase of a distracted driver or even someone texting; the whole scenariounfolded in such a way that it’s almost implausible to think it could be true.

Denice was hit by an inebriated motorist –driving with hisfour year old son in the truck to boot—who ran a stop sign, struck Denice, andthen either unaware, or more likely out of fear of being apprehended, decidedto flee… With a screaming Denice lodged under his truck. As nearby residentschased the pickup truck, pleading for the driver to stop, he continued driving.For a quarter of a mile Denice was dragged before finally being dislodged frombeneath the truck; not because the driver came to his senses, but because hehopped a curb, which allowed Denice’s body to escape an even more torturousdemise.

When I first read the story in my local paper I had aflashback to when I was a teenager (which was some 20 years ago) and while playingbasketball at the Town Park witnessed an out of control motorcyclist –who as itturns out was already being chased by the police—wipeout and plow into a veryyoung girl riding her bike on the sidewalk. Like Denice’s murderer (yes that isthe proper term to use) the motorcyclist felt it best to save his own hide andfled the scene. Fortunately he was apprehended within minutes, which led to oneof those scenes that is forever embedded in your brain: Watching the littlegirl’s mother pound the glass of the police cruiser while the reality of thesituation sunk in on the young man’s face –I don’t recall their names, or whatthey looked like, but I can vividly recall the emotions that were on display.

One added detail of the more recent story was that Denicewas killed by an illegal alien with no driver’s license. While I’m not anapologist for illegal immigrants I am pretty much apathetic to the whole debate–frankly I have my own problems to worry about and cannot be bothered to guessat the immigration status of other people, or their motives for being in thecountry.

The one point I always bring to a debate over illegal aliensis who is to blame? Is it the father of four who comes to this country to findwork who should be the target of our ire? Is it the widowed mother who justwants to escape the gang violence in a Mexican border-town who is to blame? Wouldn’tyou do the same if our roles were reversed?

Or is it the US citizens who hire and exploit these workers;the landlords who rent to these illegal aliens; the used car lots that sellvehicles to them; and of course our government (state and federal) that feelschecking someone’s immigration status when they commit a crime or are stoppedfor a moving violation of some sort –which should take all of 20 keystrokes anda mouse click—is simply unnecessary and outside the jurisdiction of the lawenforcement officer? I’m not saying go Arizona, but if someone is legallystopped by the police and has no ID they should be checked out! If you’retrying to rid the world of drug addicts you don’t lock up the addict, you lockup the enablers and the same holds true for illegal immigrants.

That said; the murder of Denice has sparked an outpouring ofrage and hatred towards illegal aliens in the community –It should be notedthat Milford has a vibrant (sarcasm noted) illegal alien community. But I wantmy fellow law-abiding citizens, who are mourning the loss of this young man’slife, to realize that the murderer didn’t do what he did because he wasEcuadorian, or because he was an illegal alien; he did what he did because heis a scumbag! A DRUNKEN SCUMBAG! Just like the 20-something Caucasian I watchedplow into little girl and run off; S-C-U-M-B-A-G. Let’s not overlook the realproblem here, which is DRUNK DRIVING! Drunk Driving is not a problem confinedto the Ecuadorian community! Let’s not condemn the widowed mother or the fatherof four because of a scumbag; I know I don’t want to be labeled based onJeffrey Dahmer.

People are asking for JUSTICE for Matt, but justice is not eyingevery Ecuadorian in the community with a look of suspicion, or labeling them “illegal”based on their appearance – I’m going to go out on a limb here and say thatSOME of them are here legally, or god forbid some vigilante-style madman outfor revenge on the Ecuadorian population. REAL justice for Matt would mean crackingdown on drunk driving first and foremost. DUI’s need to be taken a lot moreseriously than they are now; we don’t need a three-strikes you’re out policy;we need to make it clear that you do not get a “free pass” the first time youdrink and drive; it’s NEVER OK! When you get behind the wheel of a car drunkyou are a danger to society, period! End of story. Here’s an odd analogy forDrunk Driving: Imagine a guy walking into a random house a grenade with no pin,but promising he will hold it tight (just like a drunk driver promises to becareful); yes 5,000 times nothing will happen, and there will probably be a fewnear misses, but one time SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN.

Let’s honor Matt’s legacy not with ethnic profiling andslurs, but with Matt’s Law which will crackdown on drunk drivers; the goal ofwhich is to make our streets safe for future Matt’s and innocent young girls ontheir bicycles.

All that said, my thoughts go out to Matt’s family and friends as theysuffer through this horrific ordeal.

Why online poker is corrupting the game

2011-08-16T06:57:00.001-07:00

First off, this is a really long post. Secondly, I left outany names that would be viewed in a negative light –although any pokerenthusiast should be able to fill in the blanks. Finally, this is not myopinion of every online poker player, but I do feel it applies to a prettysubstantial number of highly successful online players, since I view thesescandals like a mouse –for every one you see there are at least a dozen lurkingin the shadows! Something that should be evident to anyone who has ever seenthe way people on poker forums –well-known players to boot—defend, or makelight of, the severity of things like multi-accounting. OK, so here we go!

One of my favorite poker books of all-time was written byJames McManus, titled Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker, and in the massive 600page tome McManus details the history of the game, from its origins in Asia andEurope, to the birth of modern poker as we know it in the Mississippi Riverdelta, to the current climate of televised tournaments and Internet poker.

Throughout the book it becomes readily apparent that pokeris game dominated by not just skillful practitioners, but also by sharps andflat-out cheaters. This dynamic seemed to be coming to an end in the early2000’s as poker went mainstream, and the game was taken out of the back-roomsand it’s most skillful practitioners have been fast achieving celebrity status.

Soon after this “poker boom” a new era of poker took hold,the rise of the young online poker superstar. Suddenly experience, both in lifeand at the poker tables, took a backseat as the game shifted further andfurther into the realm of game theory and equity, and away from what were onceconsidered the skills of a poker pro: reading people, experience, and a dash ofcunning to either avoid or exploit the cheats and hustlers that occupied thespace beside them.

But in today’s poker world the cheating is done anonymously,and in many cases it’s chalked up to a “don’t hate the player; hate the game”mentality, where players feel that if someone else is exploiting a loophole orbreaking an unenforceable rule, than it’s also in their best interest to do so.Considering their opponent’s are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of milesaway these transgressions cannot be self-policed as they were even 10-20 yearsago –with a good old fashioned ass-kicking, accompanied by relieving theoffender of their money. 50 or 100 years ago your head would likely be meetingeither the barrel or the butt of a revolver depending on how serious yourtransgression was, or based on the frame of mind of your victim is in.

Instead we live in an age where disputes are settled onpoker forums, and admissions of cheating are met with panels discussing termsand using equity calculations to determine what is a “fair” compensation forthe cheater and for the victim –yes I said that right, what is “FAIR” for theperson who cheated is debated.

This brings me back to McManus’s book Cowboys Full,specifically to the time of riverboat gamblers. Where basically nothing wassacred, and so long as you had a mark, you could pretty much do whatever ittook to take their money from them –even if it meant you lost and simply robbedthem upon debarkation!

This was something that most poker pros thought a thing ofthe past as licensed and regulated casinos and card-rooms began appearingacross the country and the world; the thought of having to bring a gun to apoker game, and keep a keen eye on the door and all of the players was supposedto be a thing of the past. But this is not the case on the Internet!

· On the Internet we have seen several cases ofthe house robbing its players: UB and Absolute Poker being the most infamous,but also sites like PokerSpot and Pitbull Poker who closed up shop never returningplayer funds.

· On the Internet there are numerous instances ofoutright cheating: From collusion packs to poker bots, and viruses and scamshave taken place.

· On the Internet the scruples of the playersappears to be regressing: Ghosting, multi-accounting, shared accounts, sharedhand histories, and all sorts of violations of the terms and conditions of thesites are on the rise –this T&C Violation is how they get around calling itcheating— not the decline.

Doyle Brunson must shake his head at some of the antics ofthese young poker stars, and what they view as “acceptable” behavior; At leastin the old days a cheat knew he was a cheat and didn’t try to rationalize hisbehavior. A scoundrel of a man, and admitted cheater and hustler, TitanicThompson would likely tip his hat at the way these players view and treat “thesuckers” in the modern poker world.

It’s not simply the disdain for the only law that governsthe game of poker –which is that poker is and always has been a self-policingsport much like golf. Yes there are officials in legitimate games, but thefirst line of defense against cheating is the players. Even worse is theflippancy with which they defend their actions or write them off as youthful indiscretions.And the major problem is that these players really don’t know any better!

From age 16-18 they have lived a life of looking for smalledges, studying all the different angles, and finding +EV situations, all thewhile playing a cutthroat game where you are surrounded by other players alleying your money like a like a lion hunting a gazelle. Making matters worse isthe anonymity of the Internet, where you are detached from the actual moneychanging hands, and what the wins and losses may mean for the other playersinvolved. The world of online poker is creating these young apathetic players,who lol at anyone they feel beneath them –it’s schadenfreude at its worst.

Read any “origin” story of the old-school players likeJohnny Chan, Doyle Brunson, or Erik Seidel and you’ll see that they all took tothe game early, but they also worked, studied, and lived a “normal” life forsome amount of time. And even as they began their careers as poker players theywere not instant millionaires; it took decades for some to achieve truesuperstardom in poker. They had families, they had friends, and they travelled.

Now we have these young, apathetic, egotistical, kids, withvery little “life-experience”, participating in a self-policing game, becomingrich and famous during their formative years. They have a gaggle of people whorail them when they play, and follow their every movement on Twitter. They haveenough money that things like credit card roulette and hundred thousand dollarprop bets are commonplace. Thanks to their “edge” over the suckers. It’s as ifthey live in an alternate reality where every decision is based on the EV ofthe situation and not the other people that might be impacted, or even whatdamage they might do to themselves.

But on the flipside, they hear of one guy multi-accountingand they decide it’s necessary to keep that edge. They are duped, or hear ofsomeone being taken, by a collusion ring, a transfer scam, or some othermalfeasance and they immediately look to return the favor in some way –a commonreason for cheating is and always will be, “well so and so cheated me!” Theylook for ways to get around the sites’ terms and conditions like ghosting theirfriends, live coaching sessions, and multi-accounting. They further their edgeon the fish by using software, buying hand histories, and subscribing totracking sites.

But what they don’t realize is this: This type ofunregulated environment simply won’t last. At some point online poker willeither be gone, or will be regulated, at which point all the PTR subscriptionsand PoekrTracker databases in the world are not going to help you.Transgressions previously policed by a forum community like Multi-Accountingand other scams will now be policed by the authorities.

Sure, they will always have their poker theory andmathematics to rely on, but their “edges”, these loopholes that have helpedmany become millionaires will be gone. Sure, there will always be superstarplayers, just not in the numbers that we see in today’s poker world. Take awaythe rakeback deals, the “unethical” behavior like ghosting, and the access toall this information on their opponents for an investment of a few hundreddollars, and how many of these winners would survive? When their edge isshriveled up, and the swings are much wider without that rakeback money?

Quereshi speaks as the Girah scamming saga continues to unfold

2011-08-08T07:10:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading HaseebQuereshi’s blog on his involvement with Jose Macedo, and I have to say, Idon’t think I believe a word of it! Throughout the lengthy post Quereshicontinues to downplay his involvement with Macedo, while at the same timethrowing out specific, mundane, details of the kid’s life!

I’m basically going to steer clear of Quereshi’s side of thestory when it comes to multi-accounting and other transgressions –which he sayswas wrong, but, “It's one of those things that happens and that everybody does and has been guilty of at one time or another,but yes, I acknowledge that it was wrong.” REALLY??? Everyone logs into anotherplayer’s account at one time or another?

But on to the real things that stick out at me from his blogpost: First off, who in the world contacts a poker pro –according to Haseeb, Macedoapparently contacted Quereshi out of the blue for coaching—gets rebuffed forcoaching, and then the two go on to form a friendship where they don’t talkabout poker, just life???? Is he serious?!?!?!? And why is he contacting HaseebQuereshi for coaching if he has banked several hundred thousand dollars at theonline poker tables in 6-months????

“He had seen my videos and read my forum posts and told mehe was a big fan of mine and wanted coaching… I told him he should contactJungleman if he wanted some NL coaching… Jose talked to me a lot after that,though we didn't talk much poker. He mostly spoke to me about his life andabout more general things relating to poker.”

Quereshi all but admits to having artificially propped thiskid’s skills up throughout the post –it’s like Jack the Ripper taunting thepolice if you read between the lines. Quereshi wants the praise for havingcreated this false idol, but can’t outright admit to it:

“Anyway, I told Josethe first thing to do was to come out and tell his story for all to see. I knewit'd be amazing enough that he would be able to make a lot happen, but I neverimagined it would blow up as a big as it did. I was amazed when it even got30,000 views, much less 300,000.”

“you write your story,give me all of the details you want to include, and I'll spruce it up and makeit nice and fluid.”

“I told him - once youcreate this story, you're going to become known as the new big poker player onthe block, so you'll need to have one online monicker for people to know you by”

“the story breaks andI advise Jose throughout all of it. How to deal with the media, what to tellpeople, how to carry himself…”

“Jungle, Sauce and Iall ended up posting in the thread vouching for him, or more specifically,congratulating him on his success, as we all really wanted to see him succeedand build a career and name for himself.”

“So, I did a lot ofodds and ends in helping the kid's career move forward. I set him up a websitedomain and helped him find a web designer to create his website, I edited hisblog posts and always encouraged him to tweet, blog, post on 2p2 etc. regularlyto keep his fans happy”

A couple of other small, strange, points he made were:

1. “Attimes it was suggested that I'd receive a cut of his coaching winnings as he always told me he was very excited aboutbecoming a poker coach.” Ok, come on!!! This is like having a highschool football star telling you how much he wants to be a defensivecoordinator at Mississippi State!

2. Whyis this self-made millionaire who crushed the games not allowed to play above$5/$10 without jungleman or Quereshi’s permission?

3. Quereshi leaving the door open that maybeGirah had scammed him: “Actually, Josewas in makeup to Jungle and I by quite a bit - over 50k iirc. He always showedus his EV graphs which showed him running way under EV, and every time wecleared him to take higher stakes shots they seemed to go poorly”

4. Andof course the reason everyone should just drop the drama and let Haseeb off thehook “So there. Now you know everythingthere is to know. Now calm the fuck down, pack up the drama, and let's call ita night.” Yes, let’s call it a night, despite the first-denied and then admittedmulti-accounting, account-sharing, attempts to cover-up the Girah scam and keepit out of the public eye, and all of the other BS lies and half-truths thathave come from the mouths of the people involved over the past year.

Seriously, if you repeatedly deny things until you arecaught, why on earth would the poker community be willing to take you at yourword, because you wrote an extremely long blog post? A blog post where YOU showyour narcissism –a trait that you claim Girah is guilty of—by includingunnecessary details like he compared your writing to F Scott Fitzgerald, howyou were able to ‘touch-up’ his writings and make them better, how he chose youas his agent over all the big poker agencies: all the while you say you don’thave the experience, you think the comparison is ridiculous, blah, blah, blah.It’s the most ridiculous blog post I’ve read since, well… the Ashton Griffinprop bet BS you wrote.

Thispart is important enough that I feel it must be restated: Why is this self-made millionaire who crushed the games not allowed toplay above $5/$10 without jungleman or Quereshi’s permission?

Doesn’tthis shoot a hole straight through the entire origin story of Girah? You wouldthink if they thought so highly of the kid they’d want him playing higher ifthey are staking him!

Basicallywe are supposed to believe a self-taught Portuguese TEENAGER that made hundredsof thousands of dollars in 6-months, randomly contacts a little-known Cardrunnerscoach in the US, and after a long courtship process the little-known playerfrom the US becomes his agent/backer but won’t let him play above $5/$10,despite claiming over $2 million in winnings and crushing High-Stakes games??? Allthe while getting him banned from one network, and causing him to bedisqualified from a most high-profile contest, the BLUFF Pro Challenge. What amI missing here????

Random funny exchange from years ago

2011-08-06T16:50:00.001-07:00

No idea why this popped into my head, but you really can’t argue with this logic…

Person A: “Do you want to go to Applebees and watch thegame?”

Person B: “Do they have naked ladies dancing on tablesthere?”

Person A: “No…”

Person B: “I don’t go to gay bars.”

Person A: “huh???”

Person B: “If there aren’t naked ladies dancing on tablesit’s a gay bar.”

Thoughts on Tony G angle-shot against Phil Hellmuth on The Big Game

2011-08-05T05:08:00.000-07:00

It’s no secret that Tong G has a disdain for theself-proclaimed “Greatest Poker player of All-Time”, Phil Hellmuth, and prettymuch anytime the two are seated at the same table you can expect somefireworks. In fact, Tony G goes out of his way to get involved in pots withHellmuth, and his main goal seems to be to put the “Poker Brat” on tilt –whichTony is very good at.

With that in mind, I want to examine a hand that took placeon the most recent episodes of the PokerStars.net Big Game, where Tony G wasaccused of shooting an angle against Hellmuth. Now, nobody will rally claimthat Tony G wasn’t guilty of an Angle-Shot –a really, really, nastyAngle-Shot—but was he within his rights as a poker player to do so? For anyonewho hasn’t seen the episode Hellmuth raises with AJ, Tony re-raises afterlooking down at AK, BUT proceeds to tell Phil he hasn’t looked at his cards–going so far as to promise, and even pushing his cards to Joe Hachem to verifyhe hasn’t looked; putting Hachem in the very awkward spot of having to say,“it’s between you and Tony” which Phil should have realized meant “Tony has amonster”.

Now against any other player, sans Ralph Perry or anyonefrom France, I don’t think Tony would ever attempt this move, but with hishistory against Hellmuth I can see why he felt it was an ok thing to do,especially when you look at the dynamics of the PokerStars Big Game and howHellmuth behaves on the show –particularly on the night in question. Basically,to me, it seems like Tony G’s thinking was that he was slow-rolling aslow-roller, and here’s why I think this is the case.

The PokerStars Big Game is supposed to be a loosened-upversion of High Stakes Poker, thanks to the Loose Cannon element added byPokerStars. To me the point of a pro going on this show is for one reason:Exposure. The Big Game is the ideal setting for an up-and-coming poker playeror an established pro to show their personality as well as their poker skills,and it seems Phil Hellmuth simply doesn’t get this concept.

In the episode, Phil lost a huge percentage of his stackearly on –on the first hand actually—and refused to rebuy, instead he sat theirshort-stacking a six-handed game where one player was trying to winlife-altering money! All of the other players had $100k in front of them whilePhil clung to a $25kish stack. A totally unacceptable action for one of therichest people in poker in my view; this isn’t Dani Stern or Peter Jetten where$200k is a lot of money, this is PHIL HELLMUTH, how could he not add at least$50k to his stack!

And this isn’t the first indiscretion that Phil has made onthe Big Game. He constantly berates the other pro players in the game –which istypical for Phil—but also the amateurs! AsI mentioned, he refuses to top-up when he loses a big pot; he takes the gamesuper-serious and whines and moans when things don’t go his way; and perhapshis worst transgression on the Big Game was when he got it all-in post-flopagainst the Loose Cannon Max Martinez in a coin flip situation and afterMartinez asked how many times he wanted to run it –remember the money in frontof Martinez is the equivalent of Hellmuth putting $20 million on the table—Philsays one-time! Thank god Phil missed all his draws and the LC won a big pot.

So, here is Tony G shooting an angle, but doing so in a potagainst a short-stacker who constantly belittles the amateur players on theshow. Is this really such a terrible angle-shot? Well, in any normal situationit would be terrible, and Tony would be condemned for pulling such a move, butin this spot I think it’s just not as condemnable an action as some are makingit out to be. While Phil doesn’t shoot angles, he does have some of the worsttable etiquette in poker.

My Verdict: While I don’t applaud or condone what Tony did,I wouldn’t hold it against him either. This incident doesn’t make Tony aperpetual angle-shooter, which is something entirely different than using badetiquette against: A) a player you dislike to begin with, and B) a player thathimself doesn’t have the best table manners.

Republicans won the battle but lost the war

2011-08-01T06:51:00.000-07:00

Although it appears that the Republicans scored a majorvictory over the debt ceiling negotiations late Sunday night, considering thedeal calls for no revenue increases and some $2.5 trillion in cuts over 10 years–why does Congress do everything in 10 year periods???—if you look at the fineprint I think they have been had; here’s why.

“But if the superCongress somehow failed to enact savings, the measure requires automatic cutsworth at least $1.2 trillion. Those cutswould be split equally between military and domestic programs. Social Security,Medicaid and programs for the poor would be spared, but Medicare providers --not beneficiaries -- would take a hit.” ~ From the Huffington Post.

The real reason the Republicans lost has to do with timing:The Super-Congress deal would be negotiated around the same time the Bush TaxCuts are set to expire, so if the Republicans refuse to deal –like they do--not only would the Bush Tax Cuts expire but entitlement programs and programsfor the poor are off the table, and defense spending will get slashed. What theDemocrats agreed to do is, allow the Republicans to cut $100 billion inspending per year right now, and they will be able to raise taxes at will whenthe debate comes around again.

So, basically the deal allows the Democrats to be theRepublicans during the Super-Congress negotiations: Either you do everything wesay, or absolutely nothing happens and $1.2 Trillion will be cut BUT all of theBush Tax Cuts expire! If nothing passes the Super-Congress, the Democrats stillwin; the Republicans have ZERO political capital to work with; they are all outof bogeymen.

Honestly, the Tea Party killed what should have been a greatvictory for the fiscally conservative. The deal being offered that would havecut spending/increased revenue by a 3-to-1 was every REAL Republican’s wetdream –with the revenue increases mainly coming from subsidies-- now it’s goingto end up being 1-to-1 at best for the Republicans after the next round ofdeals.

My hope is that the two parties –whom I have almost equaldisdain for-- have painted themselves into such a corner that they look atoverhauling the tax-code completely, as well as creating new revenue streamsfrom legalizing pot, online gaming, etc. Stop trying to get more revenue fromexisting sources and look to new revenue streams – It’s like the differencebetween jacking up someone’s Health Club Membership versus bringing in newmembers!

Negreanu and Matusow talk cheating in poker on QuadJacks

2011-07-30T07:53:00.000-07:00

It was a riveting show on Quadjacks.comFriday night, featuring a very long segment with Daniel Negreanu and MattSavage –the pair were later joined by Mike Matusow as well—where amidst thetalk of the “No Talking Rule” rule at the WSOP, the Epic Poker League, and thedealings of Full Tilt Poker, we also got Daniel’s take regarding the rampantrumors of Men “The Master” Nguyen’s cheating; with Daniel saying he sort of feltbad for Men.

Daniel didn’t absolve Men of the cheating allegations, butdid explain the reason why Men is often accused of playing in a cheating packand soft-playing his “horses”. According to Daniel, Men was under a lot ofpressure from the Vietnamese community to not bust Vietnamese players intournaments. Daniel said that if he didn’t soft-play the other Vietnameseplayers –some of whom Daniel described as gang members--he was threatened, withthe players saying “I know where you live Men The Master”.

Of course Daniel then went on to detail two legitimatesoft-playing/chip-dumping scenarios with Men, and implicated him in moreserious charges –charges Daniel didn’t go into detail about, but likely havingto do with missing chips, spotters, and other more serious allegations thathave haunted Men through the years.

Towards the tail-end of the cheating discussion, MikeMatusow jumped into the conversation and outlined how the nosebleed action onFull Tilt Poker --when Guy Laliberte was active on the site-- was also a bitcrooked. According to Matusow, Laliberte was the victim of the other playerspartaking in behind the scenes equity chops, which means that when Guy was notin the pot the players would chop up the big pots based on their equity in thehand. While not explicitly illegal, partaking in equity chops with one playerexcluded and unaware is quite unethical.

Although it should be pointed out that at first Matusowdidn’t want to discuss what happened, and seemed a bit in the dark as to theactual details –but he did say that Barry Greenstein called it on the edge ofbeing ethical.

So while many people were sitting there listening to thetrio –mostly Daniel and Matusow—talking about what is going on behind thescenes at Full Tilt Poker, and Matt Savage and Negreanu at each other’s throatsregarding the Jamie Gold Rule at the WSOP before finally coming to an agreementto reexamine at the next Rules Committee meeting: There I was listening to thepossible cheating allegations –although the other stuff was extremelyinteresting as well!

Where I stand 3 months after Black Friday

2011-07-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

It took a while for me to feel the ramifications of BlackFriday since in the immediate aftermath everyone wanted news stories on whatwas one of the biggest stories in the history of poker –if not THE biggest. Butas time wore on I lost an assignment here, and another there, but overall I wasable to keep the bulk of my writing jobs intact. So Black Friday wasn’tdebilitating for me, and even though I have seen my workload drasticallyreduced there is always a silver lining, as I will soon explain.

While I did lose the capability of playing online poker–which made up a small part of income, more importantly is that the affiliatemarket tightened their purse strings, which reduced the amount of money I was making–as well as the amount of backup work I had to choose from. So where I had my pickof the litter when it came to assignments and projects on April 14^th–which allowed me to be extremely picky with which assignments I chose—just afew weeks after Black Friday I started to see the market drying up, and mychoices with it.

However, this did give me a chance to devote a bit moreattention to my blog, as well as my two Examiner.com pages, and I also pickedup a monthly column at BlindStraddle.comwhich in turn has seen my first submission to the site get picked up by PokerPlayer Magazine.

While these are “exposure” gigs, as I learned fromExaminer.com, exposure is worth quite a bit! So hopefully my new column atBlind Straddle will open even more doors for me in the future.

I was also able to form a better schedule, so when myworkload does pick back up I’ll be able to fit in these new assignments, whilenot harming the current volume of work I’m producing –not to mention I’vebasically cleared out my entire day after 11AM until 7-8PM, so I get to do alot more things with the wife and kids, instead of writing until noon, cleaningup and getting everything in order, writing a little more, and before you knewit, it was dinner time!

3 things that the World Series of Poker got right in 2011

2011-07-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

While I’d like to think that all of the changes at the 2011World Series of Poker that I’m going to list below were well thought outdecisions by the WSOP and ESPN, I know that most of them were simply made outof convenience, or simply because of the circumstances in the poker world. Thatsaid, the good news is that these changes happened at all, and hopefully willremain in place in subsequent years.

Here is a look at the three things the WSOP got right in2011:

#1 -- The NASCAR lookis all but gone

Ok, this has absolutely nothing to do with a decision by theWSOP or ESPN, but the one thing I’m grateful to Black Friday for is thedisappearance (with some exceptions) of the gaudy patches slapped on to everyplayer at a featured table. Even the players who were sporting patches weredoing so in much subtler, toned down, ways.

#2 -- The Live Streamwas superb

The one thing I really enjoyed about the live stream was theway they handled the hole-cards –only showing them at the conclusion of ahand—and I hope they incorporate this into their regular Tuesday nighttelecasts. How much better was it to watch a hand develop not knowing if theplayer was bluffing, stealing, or had the goods!

#3 -- New faces inthe broadcast booth

What a difference between Olivier Busquet’s, AntonioEsfandiari’s, and even Phil Hellmuth’s analysis of a hand than the shtick ofNorman Chad and Lon McEachern. Nothing against Chad and McEachern –I think theyboth do an excellent job in their roles—but I am pleading with the WSOP/ESPN toadd a third person to the broadcast team for all telecasts: Baseball utilizes athree-person booth for the playoffs and World Series games; Football has used athree man team for Monday Night Football; and Golf uses a huge array ofannouncers/commentators positioned all over the course.

Of the three I feel poker on TV is most akin to Golf, andthe WSOP could employ an expert to analyze the action at each table, so if abig hand comes up it can be filmed and the main broadcast team could simplythrow it to the pro who is assigned that specific table.

I’m sorry Daniel, but this is really close to cheating

2011-07-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

Despite being one of the worst-written, ignorant stories Ihave ever seen about poker, there was a very, very, intriguing couple of lines with strange implications, as TheNew York Post quoted Daniel Negreanu as saying the following in a recentstory about the hole-card coverage at the WSOP:

"I had someonetexting me with physical tells while I was at the table,"

"There was a guyfrom St. Louise [sic], an amateur, and I knew what he was capable of because Ihad a friend watching for me.”

If the quote is true –and hopefully based on the fact thatit’s the New York Post it’s not or at the least is extremely butchered—I don’teven know what to think about poker anymore. Really, is poker turning into ateam game where the player with the most resources has the biggest advantage? I’msure the “friend” watching for Daniel was a body language expert, and what’s tostop another player from hiring someone like Joe Navarro to rail them at theWSOP and text them body language indicators on their opponent?

What’s to stop current WSOP Main Event chip-leader AntonMakiesvskyi from offering 10% of his winnings –guaranteed to be mid six-figuresat least—to a couple of top poker minds and a body language expert thismorning?, in exchange for real-time hand consultation and reads on opponents?Is this really “the new poker reality”?

I’m all for working with experts away from the table, and ifyou have the money you can hire the best coaches and experts money can buy, butto have them employed around the tournament, or watching the semi-live feed andtexting you information is getting very close to the line of what is ethicaland what is not. In fact, in my opinion it’s getting close to Ali Tekintamgacterritory –not in the same ballpark, but definitely in the same sport.

Once you sit down at a poker table it’s suppose to be youagainst your opponents; not you and the numerous people you’ve hired/asked tobe your eyes and ears in the crowd and on the live feed against some poorschlep who won his way in through a satellite, or put up a good chunk of his savingsto play on equal footing with the best poker players in the world. Seriously,does Negreanu really have a body language expert watching the livefeed/30-minute delay feed in some secret bunker somewhere and then sending himtexts on his opponents???

This is just another reason why the WSOP and all casinos needto ban electronic devices from the tables –how on earth can this be justifiedas being competitively balanced or good for poker! It’s just like the onlineplayers who dismantle their opponents because they are ignorant of the existence,or cannot afford, tracking software, ICM calculators, and hand history databases,and so on. But unlike online poker the WSOP could easily eliminate this issueby banning cell phones and other electronic devices from the table.

If you want to talk shop with your “hired guns” do it on thebreaks or before and after the tournament. For someone who considers himself anambassador of the game, and has always been viewed as one of the most honestbrokers in poker I’m actually quite surprised that Negreanu would engage inthis –again I hope the stories not true, and if it isn’t then I apologize forlinking Daniel to this. But either way there are obviously people who are doingthis.

Thoughts on the WSOP 'No Talking About Your Hand' Rule

2011-07-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

A strange trend I’ve noticed over the past two years ofcoverage at the World Series of Poker is that tournament officials REALLY sticktogether! Last year it was the strange 10-second countdown that ends at 1,where virtually every tournament official sided with the floorman’s ruling, andthis year it is this odd “what you can/can’t say” when heads-up controversythat has seen tournament officials band together.

The way Matt Savage is defending the enforcement of thisrule on Twitter is really bad. Basically, Savage is saying this is not a newrule –which he’s right, it’s not—BUT the way they are enforcing the rule thisyear is drastically different than in years past. It’s like the way passinterference is enforced in football –from year to year it’s enforceddifferently, but each year the players are consulted and explained why and how the ruleis being enforced differently, with explicit explanations of what is and isn’tallowed.

I think the bulk of the player complaints are in regards tothe way the rule has been changed on the enforcement end without any notice, infact it never even came up during the preliminary events! Suddenly in the MainEvent the rules are being enforced in an entirely different manner. Just likelast year, when suddenly countdown’s –which have forever ended at ZERO—ended atONE!

Savage, Effel, and the rest of the A-list tournamentofficials can say it’s an old rule –the Jamie Gold rule which was enacted afterthe 2006 WSOP—but the problem is obviously the enforcement of the rule haschanged or there wouldn’t be any talk of it!

As an afterthought you should be able to say anything aboutyour hand, or even show one or both of your cards if you’re heads-up. You’rethe one talking so how on earth can you be gaining unless your opponent isunsophisticated enough to give off a tell, or manipulated into giving youinformation: Which is part of poker, no?

If there is actual collusion taking place the tournamentofficials can penalize the players involved for collusion, instead of fortalking about their hand. There are rules in place for soft-playing and collusionalready, why are they making it even more complicated and unclear as to whatthe rule states; especially when they are employing dealers who are unfamiliarwith poker, and poker rules.

Rules in poker should be simple and all-encompassing, notcomplicated to the point where even after an explanation players and dealersstill don’t know what is and isn’t allowed.

Have I been wrong about Phil Hellmuth?

2011-07-08T10:22:00.000-07:00

During my time as a poker writer I have argued vehementlythat Phil Hellmuth is not one of the best players in poker, and now Phil’s successat the 2011 World Series of Poker –in non-Holdem games no less—has left meeating my words… a little bit… That was until Phil vindicated my stance withhis own play late in the $50k Players Championship.

For most of the final table Hellmuth was playingbrilliantly; his decisions were fast and confident, he was making solid reads,and he was in good spirits. And then, just before the dinner break glimpses ofthe old Phil came through as he chided Brian Rast for beating him in a pot, andhe went into his usual tangent of “just wait til I get Aces and bust youbuddy!” while standing up and animatedly waving his arms in disgust andmumbling to himself.

Don’t get me wrong, Phil is a very good poker player, but hejust doesn’t have the intangibles to succeed in today’s poker world. His styleand attitude was perfect for the 90’s poker scene where people were afraid tomix-it-up with a well-known, brash, nut-peddler. Middle-aged poker players whodidn’t understand the merits of continuation bets and semi-bluffs were scaredof Phil, but this is no longer the case.

His play in non-Holdem games isn’t really a surprise to me–he has final tabled many of these formats in the past—but he did have methinking that he must have rededicated himself to poker after watching theentire Players Championship live feed… right up until the dinner break of the$50k Players Championship final table he had me hoodwinked –although I also sawthis at the 2-7 Lowball Championship final table where he lost to John Juandaheads-up.

So what do I see as Phil’s weaknesses? Here is a short-list:

· He tilts way too easy, and doesn’t recover oncehe starts to get riled up. Phil on his A-Game is a really good player who makesvery few mistakes; Phil on tilt is a calling station/bluffer with horridtiming, who must win every pot he is involved in.

· Far too often I see Phil playing a solid, tight,game and then suddenly his whole demeanor changes and you just know he is aboutto start playing 50%+ of his hands and three betting A7 and J6s; you canliterally see it on his face and in his body language that he is gettingfrustrated. With Phil it’s usually one extreme or the other.

· He just doesn’t know the “new” math of the game.His bet-sizing is bizarre and wrong at times, and he has no interest incontinuing his poker education. He is like the 70 year-old doctor who is not upon the latest advancements in his field.

Sodespite his 2011 WSOP success, including three runner-up finishes and likelythe POY award, I still can’t call Phil one of the best –you can read more of mythoughts on why here

3 reasons why electronic devices should be banned in poker

2011-07-07T06:13:00.000-07:00

We’ve officially entered the slippery slope phase of allowing electronic devices at a poker table. At the 2011 World Series of Poker there is a rule that says you cannot use an electronic device –cell phone, iPad, etc.—while you are involved in a hand. Which begs the two-part question of, how would you know, and can you enforce this rule? Another rule states that you cannot wear headphones if you are in the money at the WSOP. Really, why at this point of the tournament and not sooner or even later?

In my opinion there should be a zero-tolerance policy towards any electronic device being used at a poker table. No cell phones, no iPads, no smart phones, no iPods, not even a 1980’s Sony Walkman! Now let me explain why I am a technophobe/Luddite when it comes to poker.

#1: It slows down the game and causes mistakes

Live poker is slow enough as it is, and there are plenty of instances that necessitate the floor being called to make some marginal decision or enforce some obscure rule, so why add to the confusion at the table by allowing players to wear headphones, play Scrabble on their iPad, or text while they are playing???

Seriously, how many times have you been sitting at a poker table with a player that has not been paying attention, only to see them fire out an inadequate amount of chips to bet/raise/call, play out of turn, need to be reminded it’s their turn, or commit some other irritating offense? The chances of this rise exponentially when players have headphones on, or are otherwise distracted.

#2: It looks bad on TV and in Pictures

This goes more towards the perception of poker players, but how foolish do these kids/adults look fiddling with their iPads and listening to their iPods while they are playing for millions of dollars! Seriously, you need to at least look like you are not a degenerate who could care less.

If we want poker to be taken seriously we need to help with the perception of the game, and that means paying attention and looking professional –you don’t see the backup quarterback playing scrabble on the sideline, or the 12^th guy on the bench for the Celtics texting, even though they are bored out of their minds!

#3: It increases the potential for cheating

For me this is the most important reason of all, especially in the wake of the sophisticated/elaborate means a player like Ali Tekintamgac was willing to go through to get an edge. With an electronic device it’s simply easier to coordinate with other players and cheat. Here are a few examples:

Two players who know each other well are at the same table and of them folds A6 Under the Gun, and proceeds to text or call on silent-mode his friend across the table because the two of them have worked out a system that if they fold an Ace they call or text each other! Yes it’s a very rare occurrence, and a small advantage, but poker is a game of inches.

A player has his smart phone sitting behind his chips or on his lap with it open to an ICM calculator page, or on pokertableratings.com, Sharkscope.com, or some other tracking site looking up a player sitting at his table.

How about if a player’s headphones are actually a receiver for a friend looking at another player’s cards, or some other elaborate scheme to transfer information.

The point is, the potential to cheat is there, and as we’ve seen all too often in poker where there is a will there is often a way.

Thoughts on AGCC suspending Full Tilt Poker’s license and other musings

2011-07-01T06:08:00.000-07:00

This is going to be a Led Zeppelin post, where I basically Ramble On…

After Black Friday my only concern with online poker sites was to get as much of my money off of every online poker site as quickly as possible. I wasn’t interested in finding a new online poker site to play on, and I wasn’t concerned about frozen funds –but the second they were available I would get them the hell off the site. No, the only, ONLY, concern I had was retrieving as much of my scant online funds as possible.

So the Full Tilt shutdown on Wednesday didn’t surprise me all that much, considering after two months not a cent had been returned to US players. I feel bad for the people in the US who had substantial amounts of money on Full Tilt Poker prior to Black Friday since it was a blindside hit, but anyone that could have gotten their money out of the site after Black Friday was playing with fire.

Since Black Friday the online industry has dramatically changed; players need to realize that online poker sites can no longer be viewed as something of a bank, that holds there funds in a 0% interest account. Other than PokerStars –which was scary for a few weeks in and of itself—and Party Poker, no online poker room has proven themselves as a “Safe” place to play online poker, and there is no reason to think that either of these rooms are immune to the next crackdown, scandal, what have you.

I moved fast when I discovered what was happening on April 15, and on Black Friday I was able to transfer my Full Tilt Poker money to a trusted person in the UK before the ‘fit hit the shan’ big time, leaving about $50 in my account –this was the amount of money I didn’t care about losing and decided to leave on FT in case the seizure/indictments turned out to be a one-day thing and I wanted to play some small stakes poker.

So after a couple of Rakeback payments and tournament ticket conversions, I have about $100 on Full Tilt right now, and about another $100 worth of Full Tilt Points. If I had ANY chance to cash this money out from the site between April 16 and now, I would have. And even if I could return to Full Tilt Poker right now, there would be no way I would trust my money there after everything that has happened and come to light.

Having your online poker license pulled/suspended is akin to being asked to leave a dive bar: You have to do something REALLY wrong to reach that point. And now there is talk of Full Tilt switching to Kahnawake –the regulatory body that still, STILL, licenses UB and AP! Oh yeah they seem reputable…

Alright, rambling done. Basically until the online poker industry is legitimized, with these sites held accountable –and not a $10k fine to a billion dollar corporation accountable ARJEL!—you’d be crazy to play at any online site. Need more proof:

Prior to the Super-User scandal you were laughed out of forms if you suggested rigged games. What we’ve learned is that in addition to the insider cheating at some sites, there is also faulty encryption, shady payment processing procedures, and less than enthusiastic investigations into cheating allegations. Would it really surprise anyone to find out the sites used poker bots, or rigged the RNG, or flat out stole money a la UB/Absolute???

Since Black Friday the upper layer of the online industry has been laid bare, and so far it hasn’t been pretty. I can only imagine what is lurking even deeper in these companies. Hidden owners, shell companies, and all manner of shenanigans seem to be the SOP in the online poker world.

***Late Edit: It appears Full Tilt Poker might be sold to a group of European investors; a deal that would include the repayment of US player funds. So I may just get that $200 after all –BUT, I’m still not going to play there, now or in the future!

No online poker? Maybe I’ll just play Bingo

2011-06-29T07:10:00.001-07:00

Earlier this week I realized I hadn’t played online poker –or any poker for that matter—since Black Friday! That means it has been well over two months since I have sworn at my computer screen or hammer-fisted the top of my desk. Truthfully I haven’t missed it, so I’ve decided to make a pact not to play online poker until it is legalized and regulated in the US.

Now the question is what to do with myself to get my slight degenerate gambler fix? Since I know the odds of every casino game, and I can’t count cards at online blackjack, I’m thinking maybe online Bingo is a good choice –who knows, I might even be able to score a decent Bingo Port Bonus???

Here is what I’m thinking:

#1 -- It’s a mindless game

Mindless games are very good in that you don’t have to worry about any mental stresses or distractions while you are participating. I could probably make it even more mindless by multi-carding –who knows, maybe I could be the Randy “nanonoko” Lew of the Bingo world as I sit with my four monitors full of 20 Bingo Cards each!

#2 -- It’s not as fast-paced as other online gambling endeavors

When I’m planning on losing I at least want to get my money’s worth out of the activity! And I can’t think of a better game than Bingo; there is no way I could go on tilt as I mark off my Bingo Cards.

#3 -- Apparently the online bingo industry is a lot bigger than I imagined!

After I checked out Bingoport Online Bingo I was shocked at the amount of online bingo sites out there, and at how busy they were. You can even find Bingo Port Promotions! Apparently online bingo is an industry all to itself –I wonder if they need any writers in the industry… with a background in online poker???

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You see US government; this is what I have been reduced to!!!

What the Barton bill could mean for US poker players

2011-06-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

The recent legislation introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX) would be a poker advocate’s dream scenario considering the bill is balanced between benefitting government, provider, and consumer quite fairly. But beyond the matter of legalizing and regulating online poker there are a few other reasons poker players should be excited about this bill, which I’ll list below.

#1 – The bill would create competition between states to attract online poker rooms

This would disallow one or two states from monopolizing the market (or the federal government for that matter) and prevent them from gouging the online poker providers with exorbitant licensing fees and taxation, but it may also be the genesis of states passing some type of poker or gaming legislation in order to attract online poker sites –which in turn would mean the legalization of, at the very least, poker within their borders.

Of course, Nevada, California, New Jersey, and a few other locales are already ahead of the game, but if these states and their gaming commissions get greedy, don’t be surprised if a few other states try to lure online poker rooms to their borders. Whether this comes to pass or not is irrelevant since the possibility should be more than enough of a check and balance.

#2 – The distinction that poker is a game of skill

This is a hotly debated topic in many state courts, and with rulings coming down on both sides of the argument the fact that the Barton bill makes a clear distinction between poker and games like Roulette, Craps, Blackjack, and slot machines could set a strong precedent in future cases.

This could also get the ball rolling for states to at least legalize brick & mortar card-rooms in the future: How cool would it be if basically every town had its own legal poker club!

While neither of these points is definitive, the way the Barton bill is worded, and with what it’s trying to accomplish, it could wind up not only being a boon for online poker in the US, but the bill could also kick-off the live poker industry in the US.

More proof that Boston is the best sports town PERIOD!

2011-06-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

In November of 2009 I wrote a blog post called, Why Boston is the Best Sports Town PERIOD!, where I laid out a non-standard explanation for making this claim. In this post I want to make a second case for Boston as the best sports town, this time focusing on the more palatable metric of winning championships.

In a span of eight years, 2004 through 2011, all four major sports teams in Boston have hoisted a Championship Trophy; an unprecedented span for any city. Not only can we lay claim to utterly dominating the past decade, but a look at the numbers over the history of pro sports shows a similar dominance.

First off, only four cities can lay claim to a Championship in all four sports, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Of the other three, only New York is even in the conversation for best sports town when talking about championships.

While the New York teams have utterly dominated baseball: Yankees (27), Mets (2), Brooklyn Dodgers (1), and New York Giants (5) they have been nonexistent in basketball with just 2 NBA titles for the Knicks, and a total of 4 Championships in football (both teams play in New Jersey by the way), and 8 in Hockey. But, one thing to consider with New York teams is that they have multiple teams in every sport sans basketball, so the numbers are a bit inflated.

On the other hand the Boston sports teams have a fairly good track record in every sport: 17 Championships for the Celtics, 8 for the Boston Red Sox/Boston Braves combination, 6 for the Bruins, and 3 for the Patriots. So even though there are markedly fewer championships, the percentages are actually better!

So here are the Championship percentages for both cities (I rounded off in many spots –especially baseball and Hockey-- just to make the math a bit simpler).

Baseball: over 100 World Series played there were approximately 100 Yankees seasons, 50 seasons for the New York Giants, 50 seasons for the New York Mets, 50 seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers –or about 250 team seasons. Boston has 100 seasons of Red Sox and 50 of the Braves for a total of 150 team seasons.

· The New York baseball teams are approximately 35 for 250 = 14% win rate

· The Boston baseball teams are approximately 8 for 150 = 5.3%

In basketball it’s not even close:

· New York Basketball teams are 2 for 55 = 3.6%

· Boston Basketball teams are 17 for 55 = 30.9%

Hockey:

· New York Hockey Teams are approximately 8 for 125 = 6.4%

· Boston Hockey Teams are approximately 6 for 85 = 7%

Football:

· New York Football Teams are 4 for 96 = 4.1%

· Boston Football Teams are 3 for 48 = 6.25%

NEW YORK TEAMS OVERALL chance of Championship = 8.5%

BOSTON TEAMS OVERALL chance of Championship = 10%

Why Phil Hellmuth is NOT a poker king

2011-06-14T08:22:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite new poker writers, Chad Holloway, wrote a recent op-ed article at PokerNews.com on why he feels Phil Hellmuth is still a top dog in the poker world. In this blog post I’ll attempt to make sense of the numbers and achievements Holloway utilizes as a metric for Phil Hellmuth’s success, and also provide my own statistics on why this is only half the story.

First off, let me state that I think Hellmuth is a very good poker player comparatively speaking, but when it comes to comparing him to the top 500 players in the world there really is no comparison, he simply doesn’t belong in this conversation –in my estimation he is in the bottom of the top 1,000 players on a good day.

Perhaps the most telling statistics is the one below, which Holloway cites showing Hellmuth’s earnings each year since the poker boom:

· 2003 -- $1,160,832

· 2004 -- $96,441

· 2005 -- $845,810

· 2006 -- $1,271,502

· 2007 -- $932,324

· 2008 -- $1,156,544

· 2009 -- $177,243

· 2010 -- $427,656

At a cursory glance the numbers look pretty good for Phil, but what isn’t factored in is that Hellmuth is one of the game’s most prolific tournament players. Chances are that Phil is averaging $10k per week in buy-ins over the course of a year, and that doesn’t even factor in his travelling expenses. I remember a rumor –I wish I could find the exact figure but Google is not cooperating—of Hellmuth spending some ungodly sum of money to live at the Rio (some other casino) during a WSOP. If you stop and think about it he might be spending in the ballpark of $250,000 each WSOP!

Now I realize UB picked up most of this tab for many years, but this doesn’t mean these expenses should simply be overlooked or not taken into account when discussing poker ability –if we were talking about Hellmuth’s overall earnings than yes he does very well for himself thanks to his sponsorships and branding. So, if Phil was spending $750,000 a year than he was only about +$8,000/year over this time period at the poker tables! Hardly a world-beater.

The second statistics cited that I want to rebut are his career wins, and close calls as Holloway puts it. Basically, if you allow any very good poker player to play an unlimited number of WSOP tournaments over the past decade or so –on someone else’s dime, with no pressure to perform-- they are going to win a hell of a lot more bracelets than Phil has. Look at what Ivey has done in the few years he has dedicated himself to a full WSOP schedule.

If you enter virtually every WSOP event and every WPT tournament, plus a few other majors –Aussie Millions, PCA, EPT events—for the better part of a decade you are going to win your fair share. And if you look at his achievements pre-boom the same holds true. He played virtually every WSOP event since 1989 when the fields were much smaller, and the players were much weaker! Since the boom, Phil has four WSOP bracelets and no WPT, EPT, or other major wins, ZIP, ZERO, NADA.

To me Hellmuth is the Tracy McGrady/Steve Francis of poker, if he actually dedicated himself to the game and keeping up with the new trends he could be a superstar, but he is content to rest on his past accomplishments and drop in with an occasional 30-point game here and there (the poker equivalent of a 30-point game being a final table) and occasionally going off for 50 (actually winning), something he hasn’t done since 2007!

Review and thoughts on the Amazon Kindle

2011-06-09T06:54:00.000-07:00

My perfect wife –she truly knows me better than anyone—thought I would like a Kindle, and after hemming and hawing about how much I like paper books I gave in, and she bought me a Kindle for my birthday. Well, as usual she was right and I was wrong.

First off let me explain why I settled on the Kindle over the Nook and other E-Readers:

1. The E-ink or whatever they call it

2. 30-day battery life, enough said

3. Amazon bookstore

4. Lighter than a paperback

5. The F’ing thing is only $114!

Now, let me explain what I found to be the case with the Kindle:

1. The screen is amazing, it actually looks fake; so much so that I though the initial screen was one of those transparent stickers that needed to be peeled! Fortunately, there was no damage done to the screen by my idiotic attempt to peel it. The screen really does look like a print book and not a computer screen.

2. The Battery life is really solid.

3. A very good, but not great, selection of titles are available, all cheaper than the book itself costs.

4. Not only is it lighter than a paperback but you don’t have to worry about using two hands to hold the book open, or any other assorted “issues” that arise when reading a book –such as your 3 year-old deciding he likes your bookmark and pilfering it!

5. The thing is well worth $114 plus the $40 for a cover.

My guess is E-Readers will be one of those techie products that are constantly being upgraded, so I went with the lowest priced model. The $300+ touch-screen, 3-G/4-G, versions will likely be $100 in two years when the they add the newest latest advancements so why pay more now??? At $114 I can basically buy a completely new one in 2-years for another $100 and feel fine about it –which at that point will just be the cutting edge ones they offer now for $400 minus all the glitches and issues.

Not only have I had no problem reading on the Kindle, I find I focus on the text better than a “brick and mortar” book –a little joke for my poker playing readers. All in all I highly recommend any avid reader to pick up one of these.

50 in 50 update: The reading challenge continues

2011-05-31T05:38:00.001-07:00

It’s been awhile since I updated my progress in my challenge to read 50 books in 50 weeks, so here we go! I’ve only managed to knock out 4 books in the last six weeks or so, so I have once again fallen a little behind schedule –but I did purposely take a full week off from reading to recharge myself recently.

So, roughly 29 weeks into the challenge I have 27 books under my belt:

1. No Limits: The Fundamentals of No-Limit Holdem by Chris “Fox” Wallace and Adam Stemple

2. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne

3. Poker Nation by Andy Bellin

4. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

5. Me of Little Faith by Lewis Black

6. Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Bet on Everything by Kevin Cook

7. S**T My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

8. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man by Christopher Hitchens

9. Secrets of Sit & Go by Phil Shaw

10. 5 Stars Wars E-Books, Lost Tribe of the Sith by John Jackson Miller that I’m only counting as one book due to their brevity

11. Star Wars Old Republic Fatal Alliance, by Sean Williams

12. Star Wars Crosscurrent, by Paul Kemp

13. The Book of Fate, by Brad Meltzer

14. Advanced Pot Limit Omaha, by Jeff Hwang

15. The Wit & Wisdom of Mark Twain, by Mark Twain

16. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Outcast, by Aaron Allston

17. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Omen, by Christie Golden

18. Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

19. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Abyss, by Troy Denning

20. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Backlash, by Aaron Alston

21. The Plot to Seize the White House, by Jules Archer

22. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Allies, by Christie Golden

23. Star Wars Fate of the Jedi Vortex, by Troy Denning

24. Super Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner

25. Star Wars Old Republic: Deceived

26. Star Wars Knight Errant

27. The Book of Lies, by Brad Meltzer

One note I want to make is that The Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer is one of the best fiction novels I have ever read, definitely pick up this book.

I’m currently reading The Road to Serfdom, by F.A. Hayek, and still in the queue are a couple of Christopher Hitchens books, and despite the dominance of my above list, I still have a few Star Wars novels to get through. I also just got a Kindle for my birthday and have started reading the very fascinating The Psychopath Test, by Jon Ronson.

Freakonomics Steven Levitt is wrong when it comes to poker

2011-05-23T14:18:00.000-07:00

First off, I absolutely love Freakonomics and Super Freakonomics, and I think any contrarian viewpoint is necessary in order to have a serious debate. That said, in a couple of recent columns Freakonomics author Steven Levitt took the US government to task over its recent crackdown on the online poker industry, and while I agree with him on the legalization of online poker, I have to disagree with the argument he makes for legalizing online poker: What he refers to as the “Daughter Test”.

Before I go into my issue with the “Daughter Test” I first need to touch upon Levitt’s other article where he says poker is a game of skill and makes the comparison of “skilled” poker players versus unskilled players to playoff baseball teams’ chances of winning against inferior teams; which he finds to be about the same 55/45. While I think his assessment is spot on I do have an issue with his analogy.

The problem is that a baseball player is not paid based on his team’s performance, and win or lose they all get paid the same. Poker is more akin to golf, where a player is in it for himself and is compensated based on his performance each week –for non-sponsored golfers (just like non-sponsored poker players) your past accomplishments mean nothing and your pay is not guaranteed. So while there are a handful to a dozen golfers that are cleaning up, and a few dozen more making well into six-figures, the vast majority of “pro” golfers are struggling to stay on tour, and making decent but not jaw-dropping salaries.

My issue with the analogy is that it reinforces the stigma of poker being an easy way to make a living, or perhaps worse, downplaying the ups and downs of a typical poker player. Most “professional” poker players are not analogous to a backup infielder making the league minimum, we are the players trying to qualify for the Nationwide Tour and travelling from course to course in our SUV to make $50,000 a year and support ourselves and our families. If we don’t perform we don’t get paid! That 55/45 edge is a completely different thing in baseball than it is in poker.

Ok, now back to the “Daughter Test” where Levitt asks the question of, “How would I feel if my daughter were engaged in that activity?” as his basis for whether he feels the government should pass a law for or against something. As an example Levitt states, “If the answer is that I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it, then I don’t mind the government passing a law against it. I wouldn’t want my daughter to be a cocaine addict or a prostitute, so in spite of the fact that it would probably be more economically efficient to legalize drugs and prostitution subject to heavy regulation/taxation, I don’t mind those activities being illegal.”

So when he uses the “Daughter Test” for poker this is the conclusion he reaches, “When I imagine my daughter growing up to be a professional poker player, my reaction is to think that would be a great outcome!” Which is precisely where he loses me! And this is where he should lose you as well if you think back to my point about poker players being like golfers and not baseball players.

The first reason why Levitt’s “Daughter Test” doesn’t hold water for me is that it applies to the current world of poker –which is only about a decade old at this point. Prior to 2003 being a “professional” poker player meant sitting in a casino for 12-15 hours a day playing $10/$20 or $20/$40 Limit Holdem –or worse spending time in the back of bars and underground clubs playing in illegal games. And five years from now this could once again be the case.

However, the real issue I have is that his test assumes his daughter will be in the top 1-2% of “professional” poker players –which, from my experience, is about the percentage that do better than $100k/year.

Having played poker for a living for about 5 years, I can say that grinding out $50k/year isn’t all that glamorous and requires putting in a lot of time at the poker tables, as well as a lot of effort and study away from the tables. You have terrible mood swings, and the hours are not conducive to any non-poker related relationship –which is why I quit playing poker when my first child was born.

I would imagine that any mid-stakes grinder would feel the same way I do; in that the last thing I would want my daughter (or son for that matter) to be is a middling poker pro. This is akin to wishing your child to be a minor league baseball player –yes, we all want our children to be pro athletes, but the smart money is on them not getting to that point.

Would I steer my kids away from professional poker? No. If they were passionate about it I would wish them all the best and try to impart whatever knowledge I could, but at the same time I would make sure they understood the pitfalls of such a profession –the long hours, the troubled relationships, the ups and downs monetarily from variance, and the chance of being cheated, and on and on. Unless you make it to that top 1% than playing poker for a living is no easier or more glamorous than managing a McDonalds. We are not all Daniel Negreanu’s and Phil Ivey’s; most poker pros are anonymous faces confronted with the same problems as any other middle-class person –just like your average pro golfer.

The Bonnie Situation at the WPT Championship

2011-05-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

The recent uproar over accused Partouche Poker Tour cheat Ali Tekintamgac participating in the 2011 WPT Championship reminds me of the line by Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules in Pulp Fiction, “You got to appreciate what an explosive element this Bonnie situation is.” Dealing with this situation isn’t just a cut and dry decision by any means.

First off it needs to be pointed out that Tekintamgac won his seat by virtue of his WPT Spanish Open win, so it’s not as if the World Poker Tour allowed him to buy-in to the tournament –he basically had a $25,000 voucher for the event. And it should also be pointed out that Tekintamgac was not caught cheating –red-handed as the saying goes—and a lack of evidence has even created a €1.5 million lawsuit against the Partouche Poker Tour by Tekintamgac.

That said; it’s pretty apparent to anyone in poker that he was cheating, but it was also pretty apparent to anyone with half a brain that Barry Bonds was not 100% natural during his later seasons in Major league Baseball. The problem with sanctioning someone on a belief is a pretty difficult undertaking, despite what other people in the poker media like Elaine Chaivarlis at PokerNews.com seem to imply in their articles.

Saying the WPT should have disallowed his entry is quite troublesome, especially when it is rather obvious that Tekintamgac has no issue filing a lawsuit. Personally, I would have been fine with the WPT disallowing Tekintamgac from playing in the tournament on the grounds of the cheating allegations, if they had simply paid him the $25,000 value of his entry –remember he won his seat into the tournament—and said something along the lines of, “we are disallowing Mr. Tekintamgac from playing in any of our tournaments until his current case is settled.” If he turns out to be innocent the blow to Tekintamgac’s reputation –causing him to lose his livelihood-- will be on the hands of the Partouche Poker Tour and not the WPT.

Now the real reason I feel this is an explosive situation is precisely for the distinctions that Chaivarlis states in her op-ed piece: Where do we draw the line? Is rumor enough to bar someone from competing? Is any past transgression suitable for a ban? Chaivarlis claims that Justin Bonomo and Josh Fields have paid their debt, but at what point is the debt considered paid?

Let us not forget that Johnny Moss was an admitted card cheat, as were many of the early road gamblers –at the very least they were angle-shooters extraordinaire. Poker is a self-policing game, and part of being a good poker player has to do with protecting yourself at the table. It was player complaints that brought the Tekintamgac situation to tournament officials’ eyes.

This situation is extremely similar to the Nick “Stoxtrader” Grudzien collusion allegations where it was fairly obvious there was something fishy going on, but without solid proof what more can you say other than “alleged colluder”? Should we bar Grudzien from the WPT Championship?

Until PROOF is shown of his cheating the label of cheater/angle-shooter should follow Tekintamgac throughout his career, and it is then up to the other players to know his reputation, point it out to everyone at the table, and for everyone to protect themselves accordingly. If proof is shown than the individual poker tours can decide if they want Tekintamgac to participate in their events or not.

This talk of a governing body for poker is being overblown. In the examples cited in Chaivarlis’ article it should be noted that the players who were suspended in other sports were being paid to perform, not putting up their own money. They were employees for a company and as such fall under the companies they worked for’s policies.