Online Poker Today: VP$IP, PFR, and DDoS

Was writing a little last week about what appeared to have been a deliberate attack of the “DDoS” (Distributed Denial of Service) variety over on Carbon Poker that caused the site to crash repeatedly.

Most discussions of those crashes connected them to a user who found a means to cheat by casuing the site to crash, timing the shutdowns to come after the player had raised in a hand, thus guaranteeing others in the hand couldn’t respond and the pot would be slid his way.

Since then there have been more reports of such attacks on online poker sites, in particular those on the Winning Poker Network including during its recent $1 million guaranteed tournament last Sunday. WPN includes Americas Cardroom, Black Chip Poker, and about a dozen other sites. The CEO of the Winning Poker Network, Phil Payton, was on Twitch earlier this week delivering some apologies and commentary about the attacks.

The Equity Poker Network (which includes Full Flush Poker and a handful of other sites) has also been victimized by such attacks. It doesn’t appear the attacks against WPN or EPN have to do with efforts to cheat but rather seem motivated by other purposes.

All of these sites serve U.S. players. In other words, the risks taken by Americans depositing on these sites has become even greater. Not only are they having to avoid the various obstacles to depositing and withdrawing, but now the sites themselves are becoming less reliable in terms of simply being able to remain online and functioning thanks to the attacks.

I don’t know what kind of customer service these sites provide nor really anything about the experience of playing on any of them, but it appears as though it must be getting increasingly hard to endure. I heard a player on Americas Cardroom call in to Todd Witteles’ Poker Fraud Alert show this week to describe some of that frustration. Interesting stuff, and worth a listen if you’re curious to find out more about what has been going on.

We often spoke of the pre-UIGEA world of online poker as being like the lawless Old West, although those days seem tame relative to what some are enduring these days dodging virtual bullets on the “rogue” sites.

Crashing Carbon

In the post-Black Friday era, I was still playing online for a couple of years thanks to winning some cabbage in a freeroll over on Hero Poker. Those funds I had transferred over to Carbon Poker once Hero decided to step aside in December 2012, where I played a few months longer although sadly saw my small roll dwindle down to next-to-nothing.

I believe the last hand I played over there was probably sometime in the spring or summer of 2013, which now that I think about it had to have been the last hand of real money online poker I’ve played.

In any event, my memory of briefly goofing around on Carbon for a few months isn’t especially enduring. That said, I found myself trying to remember the games when hearing about this recent story of the site experiencing frequent crashes and disconnections, including some weirdness involving players subsequently logging back on and having access to other players’ accounts, having hole cards change on them in the middle of hands, and other oddities occurring.

It sounds like the site might have fallen victim to a hacker who figured out a way to crash the site (like a “distributed denial-of-service” or DDoS attack). You can read more about what’s known and what’s being speculated about it all in this article by Steve Ruddock for PokerUpdate.

Ruddock uses the story as an occasion to argue again for legalized, regulated online poker in the U.S. He’s right that in a regulated environment players are theoretically going to be protected from fraud, theft of funds, or other consequences of site-hacking, even if the regulated sites aren’t necessarily going to be immune to such attacks.

Meanwhile... that business of the hole cards changing mid-hand -- how many of you have had that bad dream before?

Merge Move and Super Stretchy Screaming Monkeys

Had a great Christmas day watching the NBA marathon of games, eating off and on all day, exchanging more gifts, and hanging out with family. I especially enjoyed goofing around with my three-year-old nephew. We split time racing toy cars and tossing around Amazing Super Stretchy Screaming Monkeys that release hilarious-sounding howls when they land.

Around dinner time yesterday I noticed I’d received an email from Merge Gaming regarding my request to transfer the balance from my Hero Poker account over to Carbon Poker. I’d made the request five days ago, shortly after Hero went dark and instructed its players they’d have to choose from one of three different Merge skins as a destination for their funds.

The email was entirely generic (addressed to “Valued player”). It was also a little ambiguous (and grammatically suspect) when it stated that the “Accounting Department will credit the funds to your account at anytime [sic].



” I logged in over at Carbon to find no funds had been transferred as yet, but a little scouting around on relevant forum threads suggested that if I waited a few hours the money would soon appear. Sure enough, this morning I see my balance has indeed been shipped over to Carbon, and thus I’m able once more to play.

Traffic on Merge remains meager. In fact according to the current numbers over at PokerScout, Merge has dropped well behind both Revolution Gaming (where Lock Poker now highlights a list of about 70 skins) and Bodog among other online poker choices still available to U.S. players. Over the last few months (when playing via Hero), almost anything other than no-limit hold’em has been pretty much a wasteland, with only one or two tables going here and there for my preferred stakes/games, if that.

The forum threads suggest that players are still successfully cashing out from Carbon (with a few weeks’ wait), although as always the situation appears highly tenuous. Of course, that won’t be a concern for me unless I somehow manage to run up my modest roll.

A more likely future for me on Merge will be a few more months of low-limit, break-even nickel-and-diming, probably destined to end with some sort of mildly frustrating, faint echo of Black Friday when Carbon and/or the network as a whole suddenly becomes unavailable.

In other words, I’ll just be passing a few chips back and forth with a small group of others. Pretty much the equivalent of tossing the amazing super stretchy monkeys with my nephew, really. Only I have to make my own screaming sounds.

On Endings, Wished For and Otherwise

Over the last eight months or so, I’ve been gradually working my way through a draft of a new novel. Started with an idea back in May, something I originally thought might be just a short story. But the sucker gained momentum and by the time I made it to the World Series of Poker in mid-June I already knew it was a novel-length puzzle I had given myself to try to solve.

That trip, followed closely by another to LAPT Uruguay, introduced what amounted a two-month break from the fiction writing. But I got back to it and have steadily pushed through to where I am now looking at just a couple more scenes to go before I can say the draft is done and begin the work of revising.

I was realizing over the last few days how a small part of me doesn’t want to reach the end of the draft. That is to say, while I have known for some time how the story is going to end, not knowing precisely how I was going to get there allowed me to indulge in the fantasy of my novel having a kind of limitless potential -- that there was still time to include all sorts of scenes or characters or allusions or what have you.

But now that the end is nigh, I’ve started to accept that my options are becoming fewer as far as introducing new elements is concerned. Sure, when I revise I already know of a few new items that are going to have to be brought in as part of the story. But it’ll no longer be a “no-limit” game then, given the considerable constraints of the plotting already in place.

I used to play poker in a similar fashion, not wanting a session to end no matter how long I’d played, or even how the session was going. But more and more I’ve found myself cutting sessions short. In fact, it has gotten to the point sometimes that I find myself starting to think about leaving even during the first orbit of hands.

There are several reasons for this change of attitude or lessening of enthusiasm about playing or whatever you want to call it. One, in fact, is that I’ve often preferred to work on the novel than to play.

Also, being relegated to sites with fewer options for game selection, not to mention having to stick with the micros (thanks to my unwillingness to deposit), has made the idea of sitting down to play less inviting. This recent VIP Cash Rebate I earned on Carbon -- for two whole cents! -- is a good indicator of how little time and money I have been investing trying to build my small roll on the site.

Another factor may be simply that the novelty of playing online has long since worn off, too. The “stories” poker used to provide me on a regular basis have mostly gone away or become less interesting. There was a lengthy stretch when I’d play a decent number of hours every week and almost always be guaranteed to come away with some interesting anecdote or hand or something that I would subsequently write about here. But things that are happening at the tables these days just aren’t as inspiring, I’m afraid.

Which is why I go back to the novel. Like Same Difference, it’s a murder mystery, although the protagonist is not a detective. Nor is the story especially “hard-boiled” or as licentious as was the case in the first one. Oh, and again, no poker.

Like I say, the finish line is in sight as far as the draft goes, and I’m hoping to get through the revising and have it out into the world by the spring. At which time we’ll see what new games there are to play.

The Chris Ferguson Challenge

Those tourneys on Carbon I mentioned last Friday both turned out well for me. Both had $5 entries, but I’d won free entries by answering questions posted by the @CarbonPoker account over on Twitter.

The “Fat Stack” tourney featured starting stacks of 1 million chips (with 25,000/50,000 blinds to begin) and 10-minute levels. A total of 50 entered, which I liked because Carbon has a kind of odd payout schedule whereby only the top five spots cash if 30-49 players play, but the top 10 make the money if 50-99 play.

Thus with exactly 50 registered, that meant 20% of us would cash. While I certainly wanted to win, even a small cash would be fine by me, helping me start a tiny bankroll. As it happened, I did make it all of the way to a seventh-place finish, at which point my pocket aces were cruelly cracked by a player holding 6-6. Good for $12.50, that.

I chipped up early in that one and was sitting on 30-35 big blinds for much of the time, so there was some play pretty much until the very end. By contrast, the other one, the “Slim Stack” one, was just about entirely chance-based, essentially an “all-in-or-fold” tournament in which we began with 10 chips and 0.5/1 blinds, then saw increases every two minutes.

Only 15 entered that one, which meant only the top three spots paid. Again, though, we were looking at 20% of the field cashing.

On the third hand I shoved with A-8, got called by A-J, and spiked an eight. Tripled up soon after that with A-Q (I believe), then survived to finish third and score another $15. In other words, I made more in the crapshoot than in the one requiring some genuine decision-making.

I mentioned Friday how I had a penny in my account there before, so that makes my total roll on Carbon $27.51.

Once again, then, I get to contemplate how best to turn a little into a little more. For those of us who were playing online poker several years ago, this whole “zero to hero” scenario automatically recalls “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” in which the pro succeeded in building a bankroll of $10,000 from nothing, starting his journey by winning a pittance in a freeroll, then practicing sound bankroll management from there.

Ferguson’s rules included never buying into a cash game or sit-n-go with more than 5% of your total bankroll, never buying into a multi-table tourney with more than 2% of your total, and leaving a cash game if you ever worked the money on the table up to more than 10% of your total worth.

He allowed exceptions for the micro limits. You could buy into any cash game or SNG for $2.50 or less, or any MTT for $1 or less, regardless of your roll. I think he may have busted at least once and had to start over, but eventually he did reach the goal, then donated the $10,000 to a charity.

That whole story reads much differently today, of course, thanks to the “Black Friday” indictment and civil complaint that targeted (among others) Full Tilt Poker, with the civil complaint later amended to include Ferguson among those being accused of various wrongdoing.

The amended complaint (made public in September) alleges that “Defendant Ferguson” was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Tiltware LLC as well as a part-owner of the company, and that he was among those who were paid large sums out of player funds, thereby helping create a situation in which Full Tilt owed players something like $390 million worldwide while having less than $60 million on hand (in late March 2011).

According to the amended complaint, “Ferguson was allocated approximately $85,161,305.88 in distributions,” although records indicated only about $25 million had actually been transferred to Ferguson’s accounts “with the remaining balance characterized as ‘owed’ to Ferguson.”

Shortly after the amended complaint dropped in September, Ferguson’s lawyer, the excellently-named Ian Imrich, responded by refuting the whole “Ponzi scheme” characterization made by U.S. attorney Preet Bharara. A couple of days after issuing the amended civil complaint, the DOJ moved to seize funds from FTP board members’ accounts, including Ferguson’s.

A week later Ray Bitar filed a claim against those seizures, and a couple of weeks after that (in mid-November) Ferguson likewise filed a few motions with the Southern District of New York, including some against seizures of funds from his accounts. One of those motions lists a couple of different FTP companies (the Kolyma Corporation and Vantage Ltd.) having the rights to $98,276,540 in several accounts seized by the DOJ. Another speaks of Tiltware, and that one Ferguson claims his right to $196,553,080 worth of funds in several different accounts.

The argument -- if I am following it correctly -- is that some of the funds in those seized accounts were “in the process of being returned to Full Tilt Poker players” (to quote from one of the motions). Indeed, I’ve thought since I first heard of those “FTP Insider Accounts” that the moving of big sums into the owners’ personal accounts probably wasn’t unrelated to an effort to keep the money squirreled away somehow and not necessarily evidence that the owners were simply taking the money for themselves. Then again, I think some of that was probably going on... who knows, really?

Of course, the status of all of this has likely changed with the apparent deal between Groupe Bernard Tapie and FTP (“brokered” by the DOJ) to effect the sale of the company to the French group as well as the return of funds to players, including funds seized by the DOJ.

A curious contrast, isn’t it, between Ferguson's careful management of money in his “Challenge” and his apparently less-than-cautious handling of things at Full Tilt Poker?

In any case, I'll consider Ferguson's bankroll advice as I try to manage my little roll on Carbon, realizing as I do that it’s hard to refer to something called “The Chris Ferguson Challenge” anymore without recognizing all of the new possible meanings the phrase evokes.

A Matter of Perspective

NFL Picks went well yesterday. Three for three. I mean it was a good day, but small stuff big picture-wise. A ways to go yet.

Will now relax for a couple of days to enjoy some college ball (both football and basketball) before focusing anew on those pro picks on Sunday.

Meanwhile, I scored a couple of free entries into tournaments happening on Carbon Poker later today, more chances for me to build a bankroll there without actually depositing.

We Americans can deposit onto Carbon if we want to, though it takes a little effort. We can withdraw, too -- an important point -- although that also requires some patience. But as I’ve been expressing in various ways here over the last seven-plus months, I’m with that large crowd of can’t-be-bothered recreational players unwilling to make the effort to go through the extra steps needed to stay in action.

I'm not sure of exact figures, but I think it’s probably safe to assume that when Black Friday came -- that other, one, on April 15, not today -- probably more than 90% of Americans who played online poker for real money played entirely on PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Absolute Poker, or UltimateBet. (At the time, I only played on Stars and FTP.)

And of that group of players, I believe it's still a super small percentage who have since found their way over to the Merge sites, Bodog, Cake, or the few other tiny ones still taking Yanks. I’d be interested to know exactly how the number of real money players in the U.S. today compares to that of early April.

I am still piddling about some with the money I won in a freeroll over on Hero Poker. And like say, perhaps I can win me a little over on Carbon, too.

Technically speaking, I do currently have money on Carbon. Exactly one penny (no shinola)!

Some time back I won a $1 ticket to a sit-n-go on Carbon, finished second there to win $2 cash, then ran that up to more than five bucks playing micro cash games and a few $0.11 SNGs. But alas, a bit of run bad compounded by bad bankroll management knocked me back under a buck, then all of the way down to the $0.01 total I have today.

Will see, though, if these tourneys work out and I can try again over there. One is a “fat stack” tournament in which players start with 1 million chips, with blinds beginning at 25,000/50,000. The other is called a “slim stack” tourney. In that one, players begin with just 10 chips, with blinds beginning at 0.5/1.

In truth, both tourneys start relatively shallow (20 BBs in the “fat“ one, 10 BBs in the “slim”), although the “slim” will feature turbo-style blind increases every two minutes, as opposed to the 10-minute levels in the “fat” one. Will be fun to see how players differently respond to starting with a million chips as opposed to just 10.

Kind of a psychological test, I guess, these two tourneys. Of course, the whole year has been a similar challenge for online poker players in the U.S., where once it seemed we had a ton of chips (and play) left, but at present very few.

I guess that explains why I’m sorta looking forward to my little freerolls today. ’Cos you know... they look different than they would’ve before.

Another Online Poker e-MERGE-ncy

I played a freeroll over on Carbon Poker over the weekend, a tourney (announced over Twitter) in which there was a $600 prize pool. To be precise, it was $600 worth of tourney entries, not cash. And well, to be even more precise, any of us Americans who happen to win anything in a freeroll on Carbon have to keep in mind that actually cashing out winnings we earn on the site is itself a bit of a game at this point, too.

Like some of you, I saw that report late last week over on Subject:Poker regarding the possibility of impending action by the U.S. Department of Justice “against the Merge Gaming Network or some part of it.”

The report doesn’t provide details regarding what exactly the action will be -- i.e., whether there will be some sort of indictment against site operators and/or payment processors as happened with Black Friday or domain seizures or what. S:P’s (unnamed) sources told them the action had been planned for “mid- to late-September,” although the report also says “such timelines are extremely fluid” and acknowledged that it could be possible that the very fact of S:P making the planned action public might affect the timing.

The Australian-based Merge network of sites -- which includes Carbon, Lock, Hero, RPM, FeltStars, and more than 60 others -- continued to allow U.S. players to deposit and play up through late May. At that point they stopped allowing new U.S. sign-ups, but still let existing U.S. players play. There was a lot of talk over recent weeks that at least some of the Merge sites were going to reopen its doors to U.S. players, but it doesn’t appear that has happened.

The S:P article appeared on September 8, and while it isn’t too specific it does kind of confirm some recent rumbling on the matter of Merge. About two weeks before (on August 27), there appeared a sorta provocative post over on Two Plus Two by someone claiming his brother-in-law who works in the Office of Enforcement Operations in the DOJ had indicated to him that “they were still very aggressively going after online gambling sites,” naming Sportsbook.com (of the Merge network) as one particular target.

The poster -- a longtime contributor at 2+2 who set up a new “lurker” account to make this anonymous post -- added that his brother-in-law advised him that if he “still had money on any online sites” to “either get it off asap, or only have [on the site(s)] what I wouldn’t mind losing.”

That was late August. Now we find ourselves already nearly upon mid-September. Meaning those with funds on any Merge network sites now face a tricky decision. Do they try to withdraw their balances -- which latest reports indicate has become at least a month-long process -- or do they leave money on the sites? Either choice poses a risk. Funds in transit could perhaps be seized by the DOJ from payment processors. Meanwhile, as the examples of Full Tilt and Absolute Poker/UB have demonstrated, funds left on sites might be in danger, too, should the sites find themselves subject to indictments or other action.

Regarding the latter, it seems at least some of the Merge sites are segregating players funds (as PokerStars did), meaning if they were subject to a “Black Friday”-like action they may be able to respond more like PokerStars did than FTP or AP/UB did (or, rather, did not). Representatives of some of the Merge sites have confirmed that they do, in fact, segregate players’ funds. Also see this article on Holdem Poker Chat that talks about Merge’s relationship with both the Kahnawake Gaming Commission (which does not require fund segregation) and the Lotteries and Gaming Authority in Malta (which does).

For what it’s worth, many (not all) of the sites on the Merge network have already moved their top-level domains, switching away from the U.S.-based .com addresses to .eu (European Union) or .ag (Antigua) ones. When it comes to the busiest U.S.-facing sites, Merge currently is in a virtual tie with Bodog on the latest PokerScout traffic report, with both just ahead of Cake Poker.

Of course, unlike with Black Friday, a shutdown of the Merge Network would only affect hundreds, not tens of thousands. The fact is, relatively few U.S. players who were shut out of the top sites by BF managed to get any funds over onto Merge prior to late May.

Hard to say, really, how to respond to these rumblings. It does seem that whatever the specific future of the sites on Merge might be -- or any of the other sites still allowing U.S. players to play, for that matter -- there’s little chance that any U.S.-facing site is going to be allowed to grow into anything substantial going forward. In other words, the most likely scenario will be for all either to be shut out (via some DOJ “action”) or pull out voluntarily. At which point we’ll then await -- or hope for -- some sort of legislation to license and regulate online poker in the U.S., whether via the “Super Committee” or other means.

How did I do in the freeroll? Bubbled the sucker, finishing about 45th out of 340 or so when only the top 40 got tourney entries. Made kind of a dumb, possibly avoidable move near the end to seal my fate, I’m afraid. Was one of those hands where it felt a little like a “set-up” -- I open-shoved my short stack with ace-rag from the button only to run into a monster in the blinds -- though looking back I probably could’ve found a way to stay out of trouble.

Which I guess is how most U.S. players are looking at online poker right now -- perhaps a set-up, but one we can (and probably should) avoid.

Now What? Online Poker in the U.S., ca. late July 2011

Very much enjoying being back home and settling into the more familiar routines. Spent the weekend mostly relaxing. And not writing about poker (for a change). I did play a little online, though, over on Hero Poker where I have a small roll.

As was the case the last few summers, while away at the WSOP I hardly played online at all, just logging on a couple of times the entire time I was there, and then only for brief sessions. Of course, this year was different insofar as like other Americans my options for playing have been reduced markedly. I hadn’t been playing that much even before I went, so during the weeks I was in Vegas there really wasn’t much change as far as my online play was concerned.

I mentioned some time back how I’d gotten myself a bankroll of sorts on Hero not by depositing, but by winning a freeroll back in May which got me a nifty hundy over there with which to play. Been piddling around with that, building it up a bit but mostly just treading water at the PLO10 tables.

I think I also said something at some point about winning a smaller freeroll on Carbon, another Merge skin, which got me started with a whole dollar. Built that up to more than five bucks via sit-n-go’s and some PLO, and felt like a genius. Then I went busto in short order, and felt like a doofus. Actually, to be wholly accurate, I’m not utterly busto. I have exactly $0.01 on there now, the penny sitting there, taunting me for my poor bankroll management.

Bad planning, I guess. Of course, we’ve seen a lot of that sort of thing in online poker.

Of course, when I say “I did play a little online” I’m referring to something decidedly different from the hobby I pursued for many years before. I no longer look forward to or plan sessions. It has been a good while since I’ve studied the game or my play with any real earnestness. And I can’t say I feel part of that larger community of poker players -- extending from recreational, casual types to the most serious grinders -- like I always did when playing online before.

When in Vegas I had several conversations with various people about playing online. Often I found myself awkwardly caught between past and present tense when discussing the subject. Since I still play (a little), present tense seemed correct. But I realized as I spoke that most of what I was talking about with regard to the experience of playing online was over and done with, relegated to the past. For now, anyway.

Because it has all changed for us here in the U.S. as far as online poker goes. Black Friday hit. We got our money back from PokerStars. We wait and wonder about Full Tilt Poker. We wonder a little less about Absolute Poker and UB, whom many of us wrote off long before.

But years of habit mean we still instinctively think of those sites when we think of online poker. And now, as far as playing goes, the great majority of us are either sorta kinda playing once in a while (like me), or not bothering at all. For some (like me), the WSOP distracted us for much of the summer. But now we are back home and thinking about playing again. And realizing the game isn’t really there for us at the moment.

A feature over on the CNN Business page from yesterday asked the question “Will the online poker business become a ‘busted flush’?” The headline writer was no doubt eager to apply the game’s lingo to describe the situation of unrealized potential presently characterizing online poker in the U.S. But it works. As far as online poker in the U.S. goes, a lot of heavy betting on the come was going on (to apply some more lingo), and the river blanked.

The gist of the piece is to point out that healthy turnouts at this summer’s WSOP should not be taken as an indicator that here in America the prospects for poker generally speaking or online poker in particular are healthy as well -- that, in fact, the WSOP numbers “put a misleading gloss on an industry still mired in controversy.”

Our buddy F-Train is quoted in the piece (under his less jazzy-sounding moniker, “David Behr”) describing how Black Friday and the frustrations caused by Full Tilt Poker’s continued inability to pay back (or even communicate clearly with) U.S. players “put a damper on the whole Series,” muting some of its “pageantry” even if it didn’t affect numbers too greatly. F-Train goes on to suggest that the “steep drop” most predicted would happen at this year’s WSOP is more likely to occur in 2012.

I’m inclined to agree with F-Train on both points.

Looking back, the mood at the Series this summer -- at least for the final four weeks when I was there -- was certainly toned down a bit from year’s past. Still a lot of excited folks about, and some genuine drama marking both the prelims and the Main. But the whole “last hurrah” thing (mentioned in the CNN piece) weighed fairly heavily, I thought, affecting the players and perhaps some of the media a bit, too.

(By the way, on that latter point the Wicked Chops guys recently suggested a “nasty, toxic atmosphere among poker media” at this year’s WSOP. I get where they are coming from, but my personal experience working with and alongside others didn’t suggest that at all, once again being very positive and marked by a lot of mutual support and camaraderie. The fact is, I’ve worked in environments which were a whole helluva lot more “nasty” and “toxic,” to be sure.)

Looking ahead (to address F-Train’s other observation), even if some sort of legislation is soon passed to license and regulate online poker in the U.S., we’re still facing a mighty lengthy ramp-up period -- one likely to take much longer than the 10 months or so before the start of the 2012 WSOP.

As I tried to explain to my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class in late April, poker took a huge hit in the U.S. on April 15. Many will still play, of course, but without the online option fewer new players will find the game going forward. And a lot of us -- again, like me -- will find ourselves playing less frequently and less seriously, the likelihood of our becoming part of the fields at WSOP events decreasing as a result.

Am starting to miss online poker. And I know others are missing it a lot more than I am. I mean the game we used to play, the one where everyone (essentially) was invited. Poker will endure, no doubt. But right now it seems that years’ worth of growth and momentum has been seriously slowed or even halted -- that poker in America will recede from the cultural spotlight for a while, perhaps to return to the dark corners where it mostly dwelled for so many decades before.

Plan accordingly, I guess.

Lost in America

I wanted to write something about the current situation for online poker players here in the U.S., a little over six weeks after “Black Friday.” Was scrounging for a title and remembered that excellent 1985 comedy starring Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty, Lost in America. A movie which begins with an ill-fated trip to Las Vegas, if I remember correctly.

There was a point about two weeks after Black Friday when I considered changing that tag line up there at the top of the blog where I identify myself as “an online poker player.” I mean, I wasn’t playing online poker. And in truth I wasn’t sure when I would again.

The two sites on which I had previously played -- PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker -- no longer served U.S. customers. I had an empty account on Bodog, a site I abandoned long ago when its traffic had died down to a point that I could rarely find games/limits I wanted to play. As I mentioned in that “Five Years” post (from 4/28/11), I still wanted to keep my poker blog. But I wasn’t really playing at all, and it was looking as though I may not for a good while.

A week after Black Friday I had spent a small amount of time and energy looking into depositing options at a couple of the sites that still served U.S. customers. But meeting with some initial resistance I quickly gave up. I could have made it happen, I am fairly certain, but I lacked the resolve to see it through. (Probably says something about the nature of my commitment to the game, actually.)

Then, a few days after that fifth-anniversary post I won a whole dollar via a freeroll (and then a sit-n-go) on Carbon Poker. And two weeks later I managed to score another, larger success by earning $100 in a freeroll on Hero Poker. Since then I’ve split time between the two sites, occasionally playing those 11-cent SNGs on Carbon and some six-handed PLO10 on Hero.

Since April 15, more sites have left the U.S. market. For a variety of reasons, Victory Poker pulled out just a few days after Black Friday, initially moving its U.S. players over to Cake Poker, then more recently sending all the rest over to Cake and shutting down altogether. Then “Blue Monday” (5/23/11) saw the domains for both TruePoker.com and DoylesRoom.com seized by the DOJ, apparently due to their being part of the Yatahay network on which also resided the popular sportsbook Bookmaker.com.

Last week came news that the Merge network -- on which we find both Carbon Poker and Hero Poker -- was temporarily going to stop taking new U.S. players, although Americans who already had accounts would still be able to play, deposit, and withdraw as usual. Apparently that decision was primarily due to Merge needing time to handle the additional traffic the network has seen since April 15. No word on when Merge will again allow new U.S. players to sign up, although it sounds like it could be anywhere from 1-3 months. (A couple of Merge skins -- Sportsbook and Hero Poker -- had already made the decision to stop taking new U.S. players prior to last week.)

All of which is to say, options are dwindling. Bodog is still around, although it appears U.S. poker players aren’t terribly excited about jumping into the games over there as the site has seen only a small uptick in traffic on its poker tables since Black Friday. Cake Poker is also today sitting at about the same level, traffic-wise, as on April 15 (according to PokerScout). There’s the Everleaf network where a site named LuvinPoker is starting to be promoted a bit, but I don’t know much about what’s happening there.

Another option for U.S. players, Rise Poker, popped up last week. Rise Poker offers freerolls with real money prizes -- i.e., you can play there without depositing. There is also a “VIP Membership” for $19.99 a month which gets you into lots of other tourneys and opens up further game play options. They’ve launched a blog and forum, too, over there, where some of my buds (including F-Train, Dr. Pauly, Change100, and Benjo) can be found writing.

Rise Poker is part of the ZEN Gaming Network. I’d actually heard of ZEN previously because I know someone who played on another site on the network, NLOP.com (National League of Poker). She enjoyed playing the games there, having gone deep in a tourney once and winning a small amount. If I’m not mistaken, I believe the player pools for both Rise and NLOP are now combined.

Thanks to winning that little bit of cabbage via those freerolls, I’m still calling myself “an online poker player,” although am not pursuing my hobby as often or at the same level of seriousness as I did before. I’m curious to know what other U.S. online poker players are doing at this point. My sense is most are still sitting on the rail, discouraged from trying to fuss with depositing on other sites (as I was back in April). Lost, so to speak.

So let me ask my American readers who also call themselves online poker players... what have you been up to since April 15?

Freerolling

Over the last couple of weeks I have actually been playing online poker for real money. That followed a full month away from the tables, when like most American players I found myself without a site on which to play.

A few sites do remain available to us, though, and I mentioned here before how I’d manage to win myself some cabbage playing freerolls on Carbon and Hero Poker, both skins belonging to the Merge Network. (Hero has actually stopped taking U.S. sign-ups this week, although they continue to allow those of us who got accounts beforehand to play.)

On Carbon I played in one of the five daily freerolls Merge offers, each of which has $200 prize pools, although in truth most of that prizepool (all but $46 worth) is in the form of entries to other tourneys. The freerolls generally draw around 2,500 players with only the top 24 spots making anything, so the odds of success are fairly slim. Somehow, though, I weaseled my way into a min-“cash” in a H.O.R.S.E. freeroll, finishing 23rd to earn a $2.20 SNG ticket. There I managed to finish second and win a whole dollar with which to play on Carbon.

That’s half a typical roll of nickels, which I have read is what patrons in Las Vegas casinos were sometimes given back in the 1950s upon arrival, which is where the phrase “freeroll” allegedly originated.

Meanwhile, on Hero Poker I played in that May 15th freeroll tournament for U.S. players that featured the generous $30,000 prize pool. A little less than 1,200 played, I believe, with top 300 finishers each receiving $100. I managed to get there in that one, too, and thus got myself a hundy on Hero without having to make a deposit.

I haven’t really played a lot over the last couple of weeks, although it has been nice to be able to jump into games now and then.

On Carbon my choices are severely limited with my teeny weeny total -- less than the minimum buy-in for most of the available cash games. I managed to start out squandering most of the original dollar fighting the crowd at the $0.02/$0.04 limit hold’em tables, dropping to just 14 cents at one point. But I won back some in a couple of six-cent tourneys, then tried a few of these $0.11 turbo SNGs where my ROI has been good enough to push my roll up to a whopping $1.24!

Yeah, I know... sick brag.

On Hero I’ve been mostly playing shorthanded PLO, trying to practice sound bankroll management by sticking with the max-$10 buy-in nickel-and-dime games. There I’ve done okay thus far, too, hovering around $115 for the last week or so. I’ll probably start exploring some of the lower buy-in MTTs with guarantees, as I think a few of those are having some nice overlays.

It has been kind of interesting to alternate between a site in which my bankroll is mere pennies and another where I have 100 times that with which to play. (Since Carbon and Hero are both skins of the same network, I necessarily can only play on one site at a time.) Has kind of demonstrated to me how the significance of money in poker can be wholly relative, with my winning or losing a nickel on Carbon giving me a similar “high” or “low” as I get winning or losing five bucks on Hero.

That said, whatever emotions I’ve felt while playing over the last couple of weeks have been somewhat muted, a detachment I attribute directly to my not having any real, concrete thoughts at the moment about actually cashing out funds.

You could say I’m “freerolling” in a couple of ways here. Not only did I win the cash with which I’m playing via freerolls, but while playing I’m weirdly “free” of the various thoughts or feelings necessarily associated with playing with a knowledge that the result will involve tangible gains or losses.

That’s not to say I’m playing all that differently than I would otherwise (e.g., more loosely or aggressively). At least I don’t think that’s the case. In fact, I’d say I’m actually playing a tighter game, for the most part, fearing the “risk of ruin” which in my case would mean having to leave the cash tables altogether.

The freerolling has been fun, though. Way better than free falling, anyway.

The Urge to Merge; or, Zero to Hero

Yesterday marked the one-month anniversary of “Black Friday,” the day the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed its indictment and civil complaint against the two biggest online poker sites in the world (PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) and the third-biggest one then serving the U.S. (Absolute Poker/UltimateBet).

While some Americans have (incredibly) continued to play on AP/UB despite being no longer able to withdraw (see Friday’s post), both Stars and Full Tilt quickly ceased allowing us Yanks to sit at the real money games. Stars has already facilitated the withdrawal of funds by U.S. players, and by now most have done so. I mentioned on Friday how I’d requested a paper check from Stars and received it last week (about two weeks after I’d requested it).

Meanwhile, Full Tilt continues to drag its feet, issuing yet another announcement yesterday in the form of a thread-starting post on Two Plus Two misleadingly titled “FTP Answers 5/15.” (The “answers” also appear over on the FTP FAQ page for U.S. players.)

There “FTPDoug” passes along the site’s statement that they continue to work “tirelessly” to ensure both the return of funds to U.S. players and the continued operation of the site for non-U.S. folks. However, the announcement gave no indication of when exactly Americans would be allowed to withdraw, stating only that FTP “underestimated the time it would take to work through” the unspecified “issues” that are hindering their efforts and that Full Tilt “will update our US players when [they] have more specific information to provide.”

Not good. Especially for the many pros, full-timers, and shot-takers who had planned to enter WSOP events with money they currently have tied up on Full Tilt.

FTPDoug goes on to say that U.S. players will soon be able to use their FTP points to purchase items in the Full Tilt Store again -- currently we cannot -- but will only be able to buy merchandise, not cash bonuses or (obviously) tourney tickets. Interestingly, PokerStars also allowed U.S. players to use their FPP points, though restricted us to exchanging them for cash, not allowing the purchase of any of the other products.

This, too, is a bad sign, I think, perhaps further indicating Full Tilt Poker doesn’t have the funds available to allow Americans to cash out. On the other hand, FTP may well have an abundance of teddy bears and key chains.

Meanwhile, U.S. players like me who only had funds on Stars or Full Tilt have been mostly waiting on the sidelines over the last month, perhaps jumping in the odd play money game here and there and/or starting to explore the other remaining options available to us.

At the moment the Merge network of sites has become the most popular for U.S. players. According to Poker Scout, Merge, though still miniscule when compared to Stars and FTP, saw its traffic increase by 77% from April 15 to May 9. That makes Merge more than twice as popular as Bodog or the Cake Poker Network, both of which also still take U.S. players.

I have a Bodog account, though it is presently empty and I haven’t played a hand over there in many months. I did open accounts on the Merge network since April 15 -- one on Carbon and another on Hero Poker. Just for kicks I opened one over at Sportsbook.com (another Merge site), too, before they shut their doors to new U.S. players on May 1.

Since these are “skins” sharing the same network (and thus the same player pool), it isn’t possible for me to play on more than one of these accounts at a time. The sites look and feel very similar, although there are small differences here and there, including the various promotions each offer.

I did spend a little bit of time looking into depositing (at Carbon and also Bodog), but didn’t pursue it very far. It certainly looked like I could get it done, but like many recreational players I wasn’t too interested in taking the extra steps. Not just yet, anyway.

So I piddled around playing some of the daily freerolls on Merge. I was playing on Carbon, although you can play these from any skin. About 2,500 enter these, and you have to make the top 24 to cash, so the odds aren’t great. Actually I think you have to make the top four to earn any actual cash, as the other spots only reward tourney tickets.

I’ve mentioned already how I managed to min-cash in one of these, a H.O.R.S.E. tourney, earning a $2.20 ticket that could only be used in a six-max SNG. There I finished second, for which I earned one real dollar. With still very limited options, I managed to lose most of that at a $0.02/$0.04 LHE table, then won a little back in a $0.06 tourney. All of which is to say my “roll” on Carbon is now a cool 45 cents.

Meanwhile I unexpectedly had a couple of opportunities over the weekend to play in some pretty lucrative freerolls on Merge sites -- one on Carbon and the other on Hero Poker.

I signed up for Carbon through Poker Source Online, thinking I’d eventually take advantage of a bonus they were offering once I finally deposited. When I logged on Saturday, I discovered I had a ticket to play in a special freeroll that afternoon just for new PSO folks, one with $2,500 prize pool. I joined the tourney -- a turbo-style NLHE event -- and was surprised to find only 34 players had registered. The top five spots paid, with $200 going to fifth and a cool grand to the winner!

Like I say, it was a turbo tourney, and so after the first few levels it quickly became an all-in-or-fold affair. I managed to hit a couple of hands early, and in fact enjoyed the chip lead with 20 left. I was still leader when it had gotten down to 15 or so when a hand arose in which I was dealt A-K. A super short-stack had pushed for about 2,000, then there was another reraise all-in for about 5,000 when the action got to me. I had about 15K at the time, and went ahead and reraised over the top. As it happened, the fellow with 5K had pocket aces, and so I slipped to 10K.

Some more misfortune ensued at the final table, and with seven left I found myself one of the two short stacks, watching the other five happily folding their way to the money. Ended up pushing my five-BB stack with K-10-suited to get bounced in seventh. Was kicking myself afterwards, mentally second-guessing whether or not I would’ve made the money had I turtled up earlier.

By Sunday I’d gotten over that missed opportunity, though it was still fresh in my mind when I joined another nifty freeroll in the afternoon, this one on Hero Poker. It was for U.S. players only, and featured a $30,000 prize pool. The top 300 finishers would each receive $100 plus a bonus to earn $100 more with player points. In the end, I think the six-handed NLHE event drew something close to 1,200 entrants, which meant more than a quarter of us would be making the money.

It also featured a nice, slow structure with 15-minute levels, which was good for me since it took me a good hour-and-a-half or more to get anything going in terms of collecting chips. Had built up some, then lost a meaningful chunk when somebody outdrew me with 5-3 versus my pocket nines. At one point I was down around 1,000 -- just a third of the starting stack -- when for the first time I checked the lobby to see the standings. I chuckled to see I was almost dead last, in 394th with exactly 400 players left.

Soon after that I luckily won an all-in with versus . Then I had some more good fortune when I rivered a full house in a BB-special scenario, allowing me to double up again.

I won a couple more small ones, then came a big hand in which an opponent with a big stack -- one of the top 10 at the time, I think -- minimum-raised from UTG and I called from the blinds with K-Q. The flop came K-K-3, and I check-called a smallish c-bet. The turn was a queen, and I checked again. My opponent bet about half the pot, I pushed, and he called with pocket aces. The river blanked and I was up over 10,000, which put me in about 110th with 350 players left.

My stack was above average, and while I wasn’t 100% sure I had the chips to do so, having the experience from the day before in mind I decided it was time to shut it down and start folding.

Early on I folded A-K, wincing a little as I did. I’d fold A-Q shortly after that. Then I folded A-K one more time. I folded a load of laundry during that stretch, too. Hell, I would’ve folded whatever you put in front of me -- paper, napkins, an omelet, you name it.

Turned out to be the right call, as I still had about 5K when a player went out in 301st. The tourney still played out, and I joked a little in chat with my neighbor on my left who had been short-stacked throughout the bubble period and in real danger of missing the money. “I’ll admit it,” I typed. “I tightened up my range there just a tad at the end,” as if folding 50-odd hands in a row hadn’t communicated that clearly enough. He responded with smiley faces -- the Merge games offer an amusing variety of them -- and something about being glad I did.

Yesterday’s tournament also featured something I’d never seen before on a site -- tourney-wide announcements that appeared as a speech bubble emanating from the small Hero icon on my Mac’s menu bar. Early on there were some jokes and welcome messages, then towards the end some timely announcements about how many players were left. I liked it, and found myself thinking about how more could be done with such a feature.

So now I have a bankroll, of sorts -- a hundy on Hero, plus a few coins on Carbon. I have to say I do like the interface at Merge. I’ve also used the live chat support a few times, which is a pretty cool feature for a site to have, too.

We’ll see how it all goes over there moving forward. Am nowhere close to that comfortable spot I was in pre-Black Friday when it comes to playing online, as I imagine is the case for most U.S. players. But for now I’m glad to be back in the game, even if only in a small way.

Playing in Fear

Still pretty much sitting on the sidelines when it comes to poker these days. I mentioned last week how I’d won myself a whole dollar over on Carbon Poker. I finished 23rd in a freeroll in which 2,600-plus played, earning me a ticket to play in exactly one event and no other -- a $2.20 buy-in, six-handed SNG. There I finished second, which got me just a buck.

Not a lot to be done with $1.00 on Carbon. Too little, in fact, to sit down at the lowest NLHE table they have. I probably should’ve weighed my options more carefully before hastily grabbing a seat at the lowest limit LHE table ($0.02/$0.04) where the play uncannily resembles $2/$4 live. There I ground my one dollar down to just 20 cents before I skedaddled. I suppose after losing the first hand or two I was playing not to lose -- with “scared money” (so to speak). I think there’s a six-cent tourney on the schedule listed somewhere which is where my silly little “zero-to-hero” story will next go.

I imagine I’m responding here like a lot of recreational online players who aren’t yet rushing to deposit again. I do miss playing, and am reasonably certain I’ll try to get a smallish roll back online again soon, probably either on Carbon or Bodog (where I already have an account). But I suppose the trauma of getting suddenly shut out, never mind the slight uncertainty over future cash-outs should I deposit again, is causing me to act more prudently with this decision than I did when sitting down to play LHE for pennies last week.

(By the way, for the mathematically-inclined, check out this interesting post on Quantitative Poker analyzing and weighing all of the new factors faced by U.S. players like myself who are contemplating whether or not to join a new site: “To play or not to play: Optimal game selection with risky operators.”)

Since April 15 I’ve been occasionally searching back through old UIGEA-related posts to revisit various moments in its almost five-year history. In one such post, dated October 12, 2006 (the day before President Bush signed the bill into law), I found the following sentence: “I envision very little (really, no) recourse for the online player who suddenly discovers he cannot access his favorite online site.”

Just days later PartyPoker -- a favorite of many at the time -- would no longer be accessible to Americans. And it kind of felt at the time like most of the other sites would soon follow suit, although as we know that didn’t quite happen. Now it has, and while the unexpected unsealing of the indictments and civil complaint wasn’t necessarily the way we’d thought it could happen, we all sort of knew for a long time now that it was always possible that the games could go away.

I was chatting with a friend last week, an older fellow who has told me the story before of his immigrant parents running an illegal gambling operation out of their home when he was a child. I don’t remember all of the details, but there were poker games. I think there was an elaborate, ongoing bingo game, too, in which he might’ve had to participate in its running.

Whenever he and I talk, we almost always talk about poker. And when we do talk about poker, he always takes an interest in what I have to tell him about my own experiences, as well as what I have to say about the state of the game, generally speaking. But he’s always made it clear to me that he has a kind of a personal distaste for poker and gambling, primarily because of his experiences growing up.

His aversion to gambling games -- including poker -- is absolutely reasonable. Such games were never much fun for him. In fact, they introduced enormous stress into his childhood, since his family lived in constant fear that their lives would be utterly disrupted should the cops ever catch wind of what was happening under their roof.

As I was thinking over the weekend again about my friend’s childhood, I realized how his personal story was somewhat analogous to the larger story of online poker. Could have been those raids last Friday down in Costa Rica by the OIJ that triggered this line of thinking.

Certainly since 2006, but really even before, I imagine anyone who’s played online poker has always done so with a vague apprehension that the game could suddenly go away at any moment. And I mean that in all senses -- from the simple, temporary loss of internet connectivity to the sudden shutdown or unavailablity of sites we’ve now experienced on multiple occasions.

No one wants to live in fear. And we all know in poker that playing in fear -- with “scared money” -- is hardly recommended.

In fact, “playing in fear” seems kind of paradoxical, doesn’t it? I mean, why do we play games? To experience pleasure. To enjoy ourselves. To feel good, happy. To relax. And to escape, to some extent, the worries or anxieties we experience when not playing.

No, I don’t want to play a game in fear. However, I do want to play Fear: