Blue Monday (How Does It Feel...?)

Saw various folks -- I believe Poker Scout was the first on my Twitter feed -- using the phrase “Blue Monday” with reference to yesterday, an attempt both to evoke “Black Friday” while distinguishing it from the events of that day, too. I liked the reference, for a couple of reasons.

One was the immediate reaction I had felt upon learning that a federal grand jury in Maryland had returned indictments against two gambling businesses (ThrillX Systems and K23 Group Financial Services) and three individuals charging them with illegal gambling and money laundering. The indictments, dated April 26, 2011, were unsealed yesterday, and also involved the seizure of 10 different domains, including at least a couple (TruePoker.com and DoylesRoom.com) that hosted online poker.

Was hard not to feel “blue” -- i.e., sad, even a little down -- about the news, especially when considered as an indicator of what appears to be an increasingly dim future for online poker here in the U.S.

Additionally, for some of us, “Blue Monday” also evokes that early ’80s synth pop hit by New Order, the one that begins with the self-pitying line “How does it feel to treat me like you do?” Again, as an American online poker player, it was hard not to respond in a similar vein -- like we’re getting treated badly here. And perhaps to think how we’re looking at the aggressive establishment of “new order” for our game.

My mood became a little less “blue,” however, as I learned more about yesterday’s indictments.

A press release appeared yesterday afternoon explaining the charges as well as the “impressive undercover work” performed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI) that led to the indictments.

Agents set up a fake payment processor, called Linwood Payment Solutions, in order to learn more about how the businesses operated. A Maryland resident was then given $500 to set up an account (on BetEd.com), won some cabbage and used the fake processor to move winnings back to gambler’s bank account. That was back in November 2009. Subsequently, the fake processor went on to facilitate over 300,000 transactions for the two targeted businesses and involving the 10 sites, moving more than $33 million back and forth all over the globe.

In other words, there appear to be some significant differences here from what happened on April 15th when the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker/UB were charged along with those other folks involved with payment processing.

For one, yesterday’s indictments only refer to money being moved around to faciltate sports betting -- not poker. Or any other forms of gambling, for that matter.

With regard to TruePoker.com and DoylesRoom.com, the domains were seized, but the founders/operators of those sites were not targeted. I believe this resulted from the fact that Bookmaker.com -- a hugely popular sportsbook and one of the other 10 seized domains named in the indictment -- was part of the Yatahay network, a network to which both poker sites belonged, too. DoylesRoom moved there (from Cake) in late January. And speaking of recent moves, Doyle himself announced he was stepping away from DoylesRoom just last week, a move some are thinking might’ve been more than just another example of good timing by the “Godfather of Poker.”

In other words, for those of us in America who are variously invested in online poker (emotionally, financially, etc.), I don’t think yesterday’s indictments are necessarily to be regarded as a specific blow against online poker. Unless, I suppose, you were one of the few for whom TruePoker or DoylesRoom was a site of preference.

Still, yesterday gave us plenty to be concerned about.

The involvement of various governmental agencies here -- including ICE-HSI and the Internal Revenue Service -- suggests all forms of online gambling, including poker, are receiving a lot of scrutiny at present. As does a more-than-two-year-long sting operation set up to nab these two businesses.

Also of note from yesterday was the news that one of those named in the “Black Friday” indictments -- Bradley Franzen -- pleaded guilty in a New York court hearing to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, to accepting funds in connection with unlawful Internet gambling and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Unsurprisingly, the plea is reportedly part of a deal to try to lessen Franzen’s punishment in exchange for his providing “substantial assistance” to prosecutors in their continuing efforts to take down the other individuals and sites targeted in the April 15 indictments.

All of which suggests things are especially tenuous at the moment, both for those few online poker sites still serving American customers -- all of whom (one has to think) must be at least contemplating leaving the U.S. market, if not worrying about becoming the next to be targeted by the feds -- as well as for the so-called Big Three, two of which (PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker) still remain the largest in the world.

So I think I’ll stick with “Blue Monday” as a shorthand way to refer to what happened on May 23rd. I mean, perhaps we aren’t necessarily feeling “blue,” but it does seem like we’re getting knocked around pretty good. As Poker Scout wittily put it yesterday, “Only makes sense to pair black and blue in this context.”

(That image up top comes from an exhibit at the Amherst Museum in New York collecting various laundry-related artifacts, titled “Blue Monday: Washday and Women.”)

Doing the "What If?" Shuffle (the sequel)

In my last post I decided to track down the answer to a question about how the shuffling software works over at PokerStars, a site where I play frequently. After one of those very common “what if?” situations (I had folded a hand preflop that would have flopped a straight), I wondered about a comment I had heard on the PokerDiagram podcast regarding online sites and how they “reshuffle” the deck all throughout the hand. I wrote an email to PokerStars and they told me that, in fact, they only run their randomizing program once prior to the hand and thus “set the deck.” This meant that when you decide to fold that four-flusher on the turn and the fifth of your suit comes on the river, you can correctly torment yourself with the woulda-shoulda-couldas. If that’s your cup of tea.

Anyhow, since the fellows on PokerDiagram play on PokerRoom (a site on which I do not play), I decided to send PokerRoom an email asking how their shuffling software works. In his comment on that post, derbywhite said not to “hold your breath waiting for a reply” from PokerRoom -- good advice, as they have yet to respond (over 48 hours later). But I was already wearing my detective hat, so I decided to keep snooping. I thought I’d ask around at other sites to find out what the “norm” was. Doing so would serve a few purposes: (1) I’d find out whether other sites, like PokerStars, only shuffle the deck once prior to the hand or not; (2) I’d learn a bit about how shuffling software works, generally speaking, and how sites defend the integrity of their games; and (3) I’d perform an informal survey of the level of customer support at each site.

I looked on Poker Listings -- a helpful site that gives tons of information about fifty or so poker sites -- and picked out the ten sites that currently have the highest player volume. Those sites (from highest volume on down) are PokerStars, PartyPoker, PokerRoom, Hollywood Poker, Ultimate Bet, Paradise Poker, Doyle’s Room, Poker Share, Full Tilt Poker, and Pacific Poker. (PartyPoker has the highest cash game volume, but PokerStars makes the top of their list because of its frequent high-entry tourneys.) I had already contacted PokerStars and PokerRoom, so I sent a similar message to the other eight sites asking them about whether the cards were reshuffled during the hand or not.

The first to respond was Paradise Poker. Within 15 minutes I was directed to a page on their website with a fairly detailed description of their shuffling software that appears written for programmers. I battled through it, however, and toward the end found my answer. Each time they run the program, they create what they call a “seed” (referring to the shuffled deck). They then update the seed very frequently (again, like PokerStars, incorporating lots of input such as players’ mouse and keyboard movements), including during the hand. As they explain, “The updated seed is used for dealing cards during each card dealing round, and since a hand always lasts longer than it takes to inject 2000 bits of new random data, all subsequent cards will be dealt using a seed which is completely random and which is completely unrelated to the seed used to deal the previous hands of cards.” So Paradise reshuffles throughout the hand. Asking “what if?” is even less meaningful over there, as the cards would not necessarily have come out the same way.

Pacific Poker sent a response shortly afterwards (within 30 minutes), and while they also sent me a somewhat technical explanation of the process, the support person helpfully prefaced that with this handy sentence: “I am enclosing an explanation but in answer to your specific question it is done on every card.” Then came Hollywood Poker's response (within 45 minutes) which begins in uncertainty (“I cannot say for sure how does the random number generator works [sic] in shuffling and dealing . . . ”) but concludes by saying that at “each phase in a single hand, the cards are generated at the moment it is shown on the hand or table and not pregenerated in the deck.” Soon afterwards, Poker Share sent a terse but clear response that “the deck is shuffled after every card, rather than after every round.”

Like poker players, detectives are always looking for patterns. And I was seeing one. Of the first four sites to respond, all four reshuffled the deck throughout the hand. I wondered if I might be approaching an "industry standard" here -- one that PokerStars didn't necessarily follow . . . ?

Full Tilt Poker got back to me within 90 minutes or so with a detailed message defending its software’s integrity (but not really addressing the question). However, FTP did direct me to “a newsgroup link to a simplified explanation by Perry Friedman (one of our pros) of how our random number generator works.” I followed the link which didn’t seem to feature Perry Friedman at all but did include a transcript of a chat session involving Howard Lederer. There Lederer explains that over at FTP “the remaining cards are shuffled during the action.”

In his comment to my earlier post, mattastic had said he thought FTP reshuffles throughout the hand and he was right. Incidentally, Full Tilt has incorporated a new feature in its games that seems doubly useless, given this information. After you have folded, for the rest of the hand you can hold your mouse over your avatar to see what cards you folded, in case you forgot. (There is a thread in which some were discussing this new feature -- and related issues -- over on the Card Clubs Network Forums over the past couple of weeks.) But since they reshuffle the deck during the hand, the only thing that is significant about the cards you folded is that no one else will be receiving them. In other words, the only person who gets this information is the one person for whom it is utterly meaningless!

The only other site that responded to my message was Doyle’s Room. (I never heard from PokerRoom, PartyPoker, or Ultimate Bet.) Within an hour or so Doyle’s Room got back to me with a valiant but ambiguous reply that didn’t really answer the question. They did, however, tell me if had any further questions to contact Gaming Associates, an independent agency that consults with many online gambling sites. I sent them the question, and looking at their response it appears I’ve got the whole team buzzing over there:

Of the seven sites that responded, then, six of them reshuffle throughout the hand. And Mr. Pedley here (who probably knows a bit more that you or I do about the subject) says that “generally” speaking that is the way it is done -- online sites don’t usually “set the deck” the way PokerStars does.

Based on this information, I’m guessing that PokerRoom -- as Henry and Zog were saying on the PokerDiagram podcast -- probably does as most of the industry does and reshuffles throughout the hand. There’s probably an advantage, security-wise, in doing so, I would imagine, although I’m not too concerned about the integrity of PokerStars’ games. Nor am I that concerned, really -- despite the length of these last two posts -- about whether I should have played that 58-offsuit when the flop came 746. Hard enough to live in the world as it is without worrying over what it might have been . . . .

Photo: Tom Neal from the 1945 film Detour (adapted), public domain.