A Hero-ic Effort (Hero Poker Steps Aside)

Yesterday evening I was relaxing at home with Vera, watching basketball while she wrapped presents. I say relaxing, although by night’s end I was making it difficult for myself to relax.

It was getting late when I had a cup of hot tea, and too eagerly drinking from it I managed to burn my tongue well enough that I can still taste a little tingle this morning.

Then later when getting in bed I was trying to pull the covers up over me and when my hand slipped I basically punched myself right above my left eye. It was a good, solid smack, and pretty comical, really. Lucky I didn’t give myself a black eye.

But I survived all of that to have a restful night of sleep. Then this morning I goofed around a little playing on Hero Poker, the usual fixed limit hold’em games (0.25/0.50 & 0.50/1). Made a couple of dumb plays on one table that put me in a hole early, but climbed back out of it to break even for the session.

By dumb plays I’m referring to the usual LHE mistakes -- cold-calling raises, chasing draws without proper odds, overplaying likely second-best hands, etc. Kind of reminded me of my slapsticky misadventures from the night before a little, and how a lot of times at the poker table our losses can usually be traced back to our own errors or lapses. It’s not always as dramatic or obvious as punching yourself in the face, but it often doesn’t require a lot of study to discover it probably wasn’t so much the cards as how you played them that affected your success or failure.

I checked my modest Hero balance -- still right around a hundy, where it’s essentially been for months as I piddle around in the micros -- and went to log off, but before doing so noticed an “alert” informing me that it sounds like I may not be playing on Hero much any longer.

“Dear Players,” read the alert. “Hero Poker will be transferring all players tonight to a new client on the Merge network.” There followed a promise that our funds were “completely secure” and we'll be getting info later about the new client.

The note is from David Jung, the CEO of Hero who has been especially communicative with players over on a dedicated “player relations” thread on Two Plus Two. I’ve actually been in touch with David personally a few times as well, and have appreciated being able to talk to him about various aspects of the site.

I knew from checking in on that thread that Hero might well be shutting down here soon, and another look over there this morning shows Dave providing further details regarding what is happening tonight. It sounds like Hero and the Merge network (of which Hero has been a part) have reached an impasse and that Hero has made a decision to step aside.

Dave’s note reflects the same sort of professionalism and honesty he’s demonstrated throughout the year-and-a-half I’ve been playing on Hero and have been either talking to him or reading his messages in the thread.

My sense from the outside is that Hero did the best they could in what was essentially an impossible environment in which to operate, and now they’re following a course that makes sense for them and hopefully provides for the Hero players adequately, too. That is to say, while they probably made some mistakes here and there, they weren’t punching themselves in the face (so to speak) like some online sites have done in the past.

I’m hoping whatever new client my balance gets forwarded to is functional and allows me to continue my low-limit piddling, although I’m not too optimistic. For more details about Hero’s decision to close (and some further context), Pokerfuse has just posted an article reporting about it.

I’m playing with money won on a freeroll, and since I haven’t been able to run it up significantly I’m not overly concerned about cashing out. Maybe such a relaxed attitude is just setting myself up to get burned or smacked again, but if so it’ll be my own fault.