The Anger Phase of Denial

It's all over the major poker news sites, but in case you hadn't heard, the Alderney Gaming Commission suspended the license agreement they had with Full Tilt Poker and as such, Full Tilt Poker is no longer operating. Whether they choose to reopen with another license or reopen without one at all is still unclear at this time.

My real reason for posting this is to ask a question. Who knew this was going to happen and when did they know it? This applies to BOTH the events of today and to those of Black Friday when the USDOJ forced Full Tilt, Pokerstars and UB/AP to close their doors to the American public.

In my opinion, there are pieces of data that when added up together, point to the conclusion that there were some people that knew in advance that there was trouble ahead.

My hypothesis is this:

Even though the documents were sealed, someone had inside knowledge up to a year in advance that the 3 major sites would eventually get shut down for US-based players. As such, several short-term money grabs were put into place for this eventuality. After all, if your long-term business model becomes unviable, then get as much out in the short-term as you can.

- Both Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth do NOT have their contracts renewed with UB.com prior to Black Friday. Coincidence? Maybe.
- Full Tilt Poker introduces Rush Poker. While certainly fun to play (I put in my hours), Rush Poker is simply an accelerated rake extraction device for the cash game players.
- Full Tilt Poker introduces Multi-Entry tournament options. The notion of having multiple accounts to enter MTT's multiple times becomes a non-issue and Full Tilt earns far more on a per tournament basis than before. Again, this is an accelerated rake extraction device.
- More subtely, but still concerning to me, the electronics section of the Full Tilt store was out of stock for months on their top-tier items. To me, this was concerning because they had no motivation or priority to renew the Apple line of iPods and MacBooks once Apple issued updates.
- After Black Friday, a user on 2+2 named Deuc3s posted the following text:
"Full Tilt will announce its to default on american payements (sic) on 29th of June. Shortly after that they are to close." This again could be coincidence, some fear monger getting lucky with a guess, but the date was exactly correct. This user claimed to be a former employee.

Nowhere in the above do I mention anything about Pokerstars. Why? Well, from what I've seen out of that organization, they've operated with the most integrity and transparency of any online poker company. They've earned my respect and trust even though I'll no longer be able to play on that site ever again.

I'm most disappointed with Full Tilt. They were literally sitting on a gold mine and managed to fuck it up. That takes a unique combination of incompetence and greed to achieve. Worse yet is to think of what all our rake went towards. Hundreds of millions of dollars in rake went to a few dozen pros and company executives who right now don't give a rat's ass what happens to their former customers.

Tom Dwan, Durrr, based on his Twitter feed seems to be the only active and reasonable voice thus far, but even he can't do much for the player base currently holding an empty bag. If it comes to light that some of the players like Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson were making significant day to day policy decisions for that company, then I'll be even more angry than I am now.

My $4000 is gone and highly likely gone for good. I no longer care about that because there's nothing that I can do about it. What I want now is justice. I want these incompentent, greedy fools to do jail time. The worst thing you can do to me is take advantage of me. And that's exactly what has happened. Yes, I'm an adult and chose to play on Full Tilt while I could. I received rake back, I received advertising dollars and I willingly wore FTP branded hoodies and t-shirts. But that was because I trusted that my money was safe on the site.

Every last one of the Full Tilt Pros should be ashamed right now for associating themselves with a company who effectively scammed tens of thousands of poker players and enthusiasts who bought into their hype. They lived the high life, getting paid millions with not only the rake we willingly generated, but also with our deposits. I was stolen from and I'll never forget it.

I look forward to these cowards and thieves claiming ignorance, that they did not know the details and inner workings of the company's accounting practices. Sorry, I don't care and that's no excuse. I've held off from being angry for months, trying to give Full Tilt the benefit of the doubt.

That's the last thing I'll give them.

(I can't remove my FTP ad from here at work, but it will be the first thing I do when I get home.)

Running to Metal

I signed up for the Las Vegas Half Marathon on December 4th. It's a Sunday, the race is at night and it goes down the Strip. Pretty cool. Joining me will be G-Rob, Otis, Dr. Chako and Poker Peaker. It will be kick ass. Not unlike the new metal I got to download due to me signing up. It is after all, a Rock 'n Roll marathon.

My 5 free downloads were:

This riff seriously destroys:


This was Slayer's opening at Big 4:


Cool opening riff, cool video if not a little campy:


Another big 4 tune:


New In Flames coming soon:


And. And! Bonus song for the folks who need to understand the vocals. Do you hear any Blue Oyster Cult in here? I kind of do.

Never Trust A Junkie

It had been 20 days since I played a hand of online poker. But I was OK with that. Perhaps just somewhat, but OK nonetheless. I figured I'd simply increase my live poker play and as such would go to the wormhole PLO game a bit more often. But what is it they say about the best laid plans?

Evidence for the existence of wormholes has yet to be discovered. But if theoretical astro-physics is correct, apparently they are truly unstable constructs. My wormhole vanished. And by vanished, I mean shutdown by the local authorities. Unfortunately, PLO wasn't the only game that was running there. The trouble magnets known as video poker machines triggered this bust, and luckily for me, I wasn't there. Oh, I would have been. But thankfully Dr. Chako was coming to town for the mudrun and I had to stay near my house to pick him up.

"No PLO for you," said the imaginary poker Nazi, and he was right. If I were still planning on playing a PLO event at this year's WSOP, then where on Earth would I get practice?

Just one fix....

Browsing the 2+2 forums, I noticed that some US-facing sites were still in business. Was it risky to get involved with them now? You betcha. How much was I willing to risk? Well, perhaps the amount of my PokerStars check that I'm due to receive. On April 15th, I really expected my funds to simply vanish, so substituting one site's balance for another wasn't all too intimidating. And after reading more and more about it, I made a decision.

I chose Lock Poker.

I'm not an affiliate nor do I receive any benefits from sharing the following information. (edit: Actually, you can apply for an account at TheNuts.com using the bonus code BadBlood if you'd like. No worries if you don't.) I'm just doing it in case there are other readers out there who need their online fix and are willing to take a risk with a smaller site. They're on the Merge network and my hopes are that the US DOJ is too busy being involved with their current targets to take note of some of the minor sites. Again, it's a hope, and it could easily be that I've just set money on fire by depositing. But if you want to know, here's how I did it.

First, I went to TheNuts.com and signed up there. Why? Well they have a promotion going where if you sign up with them and use the bonus code THENUTSIPAD2 (verify, I'm not 100% sure that's correct, going off the top of my head), you will receive the following:

35% rakeback
a free iPad2 if you clear $1000 in rake in the first 60 days of play.

I believe this offer expires May 31st.

So I signed up, downloaded the software (Mac compatible too!), and tried to deposit.

...and utterly failed.

Back to the 2+2 forums I went and after some more research, I had heard that there were successful deposits if you chose the CASINO option in the Lock Software to deposit. Once successful, you could transfer from the casino to the poker room and begin playing.

So I tried that.

...and utterly failed.

I tried 3 VISA credit cards (WARNING: DON'T TRY CREDIT CARDS) and 1 VISA DEBIT card. The next day I was greeted with emails and phone calls from each card's fraud department. Fantastic. I was resolved to try the Western Union option and if that failed, simply hang my head in disgust and failure.

However, after speaking with my debit card's department, after confirming that it was me who attempted the purchase, the agent said that the charge should go through the next time I tried it. So I went home and tried one last time.

...and it worked.

However, by depositing with the Casino side, I wasn't able to enter the bonus code to entitle me to the free iPad2. A man needs goals afterall. So a quick email to support@lockpoker.com seemed to rectify the situation. Also, if you remember Rizen (Eric Lynch), he's a representative for Lock and is active over at 2+2. I PM'd him my details too just to be sure and he got back to me the next day with a reply. Outstanding.

And so off I went. By my calculations, I'll need to play about 12,000 hands of .25/.50 PLO to qualify for the iPad2. I'll be getting rakeback the whole time too, so my first $1000 in rake will yield about $850 back in my hands in either cash or, best of all, TECH GADGETS!!!

So there it is. Back online. For how long? Who knows. Will there be difficulties in the future with this endeavor? Highly likely there will be. Am I willing to take that risk right now? Well, apparently the answer is a resounding yes.

I need help.

Big 4, Quick and Dirty

Big Four Bulletized

Left G-Vegas at 5 am to get to the airport. 10 minutes into the flight, attendent says we're returning to the airport due to a "problem." 10 minutes after that, apparently they changed their mind and we continued towards Houston.

Got to LAX on time, but couldn't hook up with Al due to being in different terminals. We each took a cab to union station. For $60. "Tactical error," Al would say later.

Took another cab to JoeSpeaker's house. Nobody was home, but beer was in fridge and full bottle of SoCo was on table. Al and I immediately started drinking, listening to metal on my iPod and playing Big Deuce. This was just a tutorial however.

Speaker got home and we went to pick up StB. Since we were all hungry, we went to Hooters where I told them it was my birthday. Mistake. Had to wear a tin foil hat in the shape of an elephant. We also continued to drink.

Got to rented condo - it was outstanding. Drank more. Then at midnight local time, crashed. Missed a call from BG. Dang.

Friday, StB drove Speaker to his golf appointment. He came back with breakfast food. We ate. We drank more beer. We took a nap on a hammock next to girls in bikinis. It was sunny. It was California. Perfectly content.

Picked up Speaker from golf and had more drinks in the clubhouse. Rode dirty. Al took the day off from drinking, had to work, so the 3 of us went to Casino Agua Caliente. They had a poker room with about 10-12 tables. StB played 1/3, Speaker played the $100 donkament and I played 2/5. I drank several RBV's. Won a good amount of money and then spent it. Elsewhere.

Woke up Saturday and planned for the concert. Got a cab to take us there and walked into VIP area. The extra $100/ticket for VIP access was worth about 3 times that. Had food. Had beer. Saw Anthrax walk by. Speaker took a picture of Scott Ian's back.

We were very close to the stage and felt some pity for the huddled masses behind the VIP fence. You couldn't pay me to stand there for 8 hours. I am old.

Anthrax came on. Scott Ian appeared to appreciate every moment. StB won the prop bet when they opened with Caught in a Mosh. Their set highlight for me was Indians. "Mosh part" got the pit going right next to us. Great start.

Megadeth was next. Mustaine was less conversational than Joey Belladonna, appeared more focused on the music. Fine with me. Chris Broderick, their new guitarist, was probably the most talented guitarist among all the bands from a purely musical perspective. He simply crushed Marty Friedman's solos during Hangar 18 with effortless precision. They closed with Holy Wars / Punishment due which was downright amazing.

Slayer was next. I was convinced they'd open with War Ensemble, JoeSpeaker's pick. However, they went with new stuff and launched into War Painted Blood. My jaw dropped at their level of tightness. Jeff Hanneman was replaced by Exodus' Gary Holt and was more than up to the task. Kerry King stole the show for me. He was a machine and simply pounded out each song with a precision and speed that needed to be seen to be believed. Jeff Hanneman was however there, and played the last 2 songs and delivered during the finale, Angel of Death.

Metallica had a lot to live up to. Did they? Maybe. Kirk Hammett seemed sloppy early, especially compared to Kerry King's performance. Hetfield was solid, opening with Creeping Death to earn JoeSpeaker prop bet money. They played a decent selection of songs from most of their albums. Disappointed to hear Fuel and Nothing Else Matters, but what are you going to do. It was however, more than made up for when they did Orion in its entirety. Eight minute instrumentals at a metal concert are rare.

As they did in Europe, they did Am I Evil with musicians from all 4 bands on stage, then closed with Seek and Destroy. We cabbed it back to the condo and made a late night Taco Bell run. I am living with that decision still today.

Overall, the weekend was just about perfect. Al, Speaker and StB - you guys were fantastic to hang out with all weekend. It honestly couldn't have gone better. Well, except for the drive from Indio to LAX on Sunday. I'll call that my tactical error for the weekend. Thanks again to you 3 for everything, I wouldn't change a thing.

Good Mourning

Before I get any personal ranting and whining done, I'd like to first off say that my plight pales in comparison to a lot of other really good people. There are so many talented friends out there whose future is uncertain. I'd like to express to them that I wish them to best of luck as we all ride out the waves of uncertainty that follow from this past Black Friday. It may take a while, but my bet is that these folks will eventually land on their feet and be back up and running in a better spot than they have been the last few years. The transition will probably be painful, but the hard work and dedication that those folks have employed in the past will only translate into success in the future.

****

I was in the parking lot at Trader Joe's. My parents were in town and I had just taken them for Thai food at my favorite local spot (Sweet Basil) and we were picking up some odds and ends to snack on. I got a Google Chat message from Otis' friend T, which was vague. He doesn't play poker, but sent me a link to Pokerstars with the words Uh-oh. My phone (HTC Thunderbot, FTW!) browsed to the page immediately and found no problem. I asked him some more questions and he mentioned that the site had been taken down by the FBI. Off to 2+2 I went for the ugly confirmation.

Domain name seizures had happened before, so I didn't necessarily panic immediately. As the day wore on, more and more information came to light. With the .com domains hijacked, none of the Full Tilt client software's functionality NOT related to actual game play worked. No Iron Man status page, no Full Tilt store (not that there was anything good in there electronic-wise of late), no ability to transfer (sorry Drizz), nothing except an ability to sit at a table and play.

I realized making a withdrawal request was meaningless, so I took perhaps some equally meaningless screenshots of my account balance while I still could. How badly was I hit? A decent amount, probably about $4500 in cash and close to $900 in player point equity. Can I live without it if worst comes to worst? Yes, but I sure as hell don't want to. It is after all entirely my money and there is nothing I did illegally to acquire it. One thing I do know is that I'm not the person with the most at stake. There are others with much larger online balances to worry about. Will we ever get our balances back? Tom Dwan and Phil Galfond think so, having publicly stated their willingness to pay $1 million each if Tilt and Stars don't. As confidence inspiring as that is, it's still no guarantee. I think our most hopeful option is a Netteller-like payback time frame, 6-12 months of our money being in limbo and then a grace period where the players get their money back risk free. The alternative is that it vanishes forever.

****

Since my parents were in town, the pain of not being able to play online was somewhat minimized. But as reality sunk in, so did the withdrawal symptoms. What on Earth was I going to do with all this free time that I just acquired? I wasn't exactly sure. Most of my tech gadgets and buying decisions were centered around the ability to play online poker where ever and when ever I wanted to. Netbook, check. Ability to tether to my phone, check. Now what do I do with those things? I'm at a loss.

I'll obviously up my live play a bit. I had retired on Monday nights due to sleep deprivation and being over-tired for my weekday workouts. But now, with no online play to compensate for foregoing a live game, I'll find a way to struggle through. I'll also host more. In fact, I'm trying to host a game tonight as I type this. And if that doesn't go? Well, the PLO game I've blogged about runs on Monday's too. I have a sickness.

****

When all the dust clears, I feel that online poker will come back to the U.S. albeit in a slightly different form. It may take a year or more to do so, but there's too much money available for it not to happen. Dear Harrah's, get your shit together. You now have access to hundreds of thousands of players with no viable alternative option. I think we all knew that with Stars and Tilt offering services to American players, no U.S. company was going to invest a lot of money in developing a site knowing full well they'd be playing an unwinnable catch up game with respect to player base and marketing. Now, not only is the playing field leveled, it's stacked entirely in their favor. So much so that they can take their sweet time in providing the next alternative.

I just wish they'd hurry the hell up before my mouse-clicking finger withers with a sad, all too pathetic form of atrophy.

2011 WSOP Plans

In case anyone was wondering (I know most of you were biting your nails in anticipation), I will once again be making my way to Las Vegas this summer to try my luck at the small buy-in PLO tournament currently scheduled for June 13th. Interestingly, Day 1 of this tournament is on a Monday, which will likely mean that I'll make my travel plans such that I arrive in Vegas on a Saturday and leave on a Thursday. That departure date is obviously planning for success. It's also a pipe-dream, but that's what us low-limit grinders do. Dream about pipes. Maybe not. I have tried to play as much PLO this year as I could, both live and online. As I've mentioned previously, I had a good amount of success at the $25 buy-in tables, the bulk of that play occurring on the Rush Poker tables over at Full Tilt, which, needless to say is one of the best online poker sites currently available. Oddly, there are very few $50 Rush PLO players, so when I moved up, I jumped into the $100 Rush games. I've had some winning sessions, but through a combination of bad luck and bad play (what else is there?), the swings of PLO at the $100 level were too much for my bankroll. So lately, I've focused on the normal ring $50 buy-in tables. Grind, grind away. With respect to live play, well, you've hopefully read the post 2 below this one. That game is somewhat of an anomoly, playing completely different to 6-handed online play. Stylistically, one doesn't necessarily support the other, however there are some concepts that can be applied across the board. Other games I've played, there has been some mixing in of PLO and PLO8, usually every 3rd orbit. This turns out to be a good mix and it's one that I'll employ at my next home game this Friday (new suited speed cloth FTW!). So if you'll be at the 2011 WSOP around the same time, let me know. I'd love to drown my bust-out sorrows at the Rio with you, maybe even hit quad Aces again to dull some of the pain. More information about the 2011 WSOP can be found here: http://www.bestonlinepokersites.com/wsop/2011-wsop/

Metal Monday

Riff of the year, 2010:

Live from the same band (just posting this because I'm getting geared up for the Big 4 concert and this gets me in the mood to drink and crush).