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.

2013 and the Fall and Rise of Online Poker in the U.S.

So Hero Poker did indeed step aside yesterday. I played a little more on the site during the late afternoon just for kicks, but signed off before dinner time. Following advice delivered by Hero CEO David Jung in that 2+2 “player relations” thread, I converted my remaining VIP points to cash before I did as it sounded as though that probably wouldn’t be a possibility later on.

It was at some point a little after 6 p.m. Eastern time yesterday that the shutdown of Hero occurred, after which one was greeted with a software update and message when one tried to log in. The message gave a web address to visit for instructions regarding what to do next in order to have one’s balance transferred to one of three other Merge skins.

That page offers little more than a list of the three sites -- Carbon, Sportsbook.com, and Players Only -- and an email address (support@mergegaming.eu) to send a message with one’s choice. It isn’t at all clear what details are needed other than one’s usernames, although I believe one needs to send the message via the email addy associated with one’s account.

I went ahead and sent an email, choosing Carbon simply because I already have an account there. I vaguely recall Sportsbook.com having redirected its U.S. players to a different skin late last year, so that didn’t seem like a good choice. And I’d never even heard of Players Only. I’m guessing it will probably take several days, perhaps even longer, for my funds to surface over on Carbon.

On a day when jokes about the apocalypse and the “end of days” are reaching a crescendo, it is starting to feel a lot like the end has finally arrived as far as the Merge network and these last vestiges of the pre-Black Friday variety of sorta-legal-sorta-not online poker in the U.S. are concerned. Or at least the beginning of the end, anyway, as I suppose these last few Merge skins and other sites will limp along like short stacks for a while until they are finally all blinded out.

Coincidentally, yesterday saw other major developments occur as far as the resurrection of online poker in the U.S. is concerned, one of which was the New Jersey State Senate passing by a wide margin that long-discussed online gambling bill (A2578). Thirty-three NJ senators voted in favor of the bill while only three opposed, and now all that is needed is Governor Chris Christie's signature for the bill to become law.

The state reached a similar point back in the spring of 2011, with Christie actually vetoing the bill rather than sign it. But following that revised opinion from the Department of Justice regarding the Wire Act only applying to sports betting that surfaced almost exactly one year ago, Christie has been suggesting a different attitude toward the possibility of his state following the lead of both Nevada and Delaware and also getting involved with online gambling.

Should Christie sign the NJ bill into law, we’ll no doubt begin hearing more regarding that story from a couple of weeks ago concerning PokerStars’ interest in buying the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel in Atlantic City.

Meanwhile, Nevada continues to approve licenses to online poker businesses, and in fact yesterday saw Caesars Interactive Entertainment to the list of licensees. It sounds like Caesars will be partnering with 888 to launch a WSOP-branded online site early next year (once 888 gets their NV license approval). All of which means as these last “rogue” sites (or whatever you want to call them) fade into oblivion, a new world of online poker in the U.S. will likely be emerging in their wake.

I’m remembering writing a typically cynical post back in February of this year commenting on all of the speculation swirling regarding 2013 as a target date for online poker’s return to America. But as this year comes to a close, it certainly appears next year will be an especially interesting one with regard to online poker in the U.S., even if it doesn’t exactly bring a full-fledged reprise of the game so many of us enjoyed for so many years before.

Speaking of still enjoying online poker, the last two events of Season 2 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games series will happen this Sunday night at 20:00 & 21:00 ET. I’m making Event No. 19 a regular no-limit hold’em event with a little bit deeper starting stack than usual (5,000 instead of 3,000), and Event No. 20 will be a H.O.R.S.E. event.

Through 18 tournaments, our buddy Kevmath leads the Season 2 standings followed by Nasal Drip and Season 1 winner thejim2020. The top three finishers win books, with the first-place winner getting to choose between Roll the Bones by David Schwartz, Reading Poker Tells by Zach Elwood, and Think Like a Pro by Byron Jacobs. (See this post for more about the books.) The second-place finisher will then get to choose from the remaining two titles, with the third-place finisher getting the last book.

For those playing on Sunday, see you there, as I expect that’ll be the only place I’ll be playing any online poker (for play chips) over the next few days at least. Perhaps, though, next year will be offering at least some of us more opportunities.

(And meanwhile, if you’re looking for something else to do while waiting for the apocalypse not to happen, you can go vote in BLUFF Magazine’s 2013 Reader's Choice Awards where Hard-Boiled Poker is among the nominees for “Favorite Poker Blog.”)

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.

Fourth-and-29

Over the weekend I played a short session of fixed limit hold’em over on Hero Poker. I’m basically down to just a half-hour here and there, still goofing around with the small roll I won in a freeroll a good while back (just after Black Friday, actually).

A lot of times I’ll just jump in a one- or two-dollar SNG to scratch that itch. Or, as I did on Sunday, just play a little bit of cash for quarters. Or nickels and dimes, even.

I’d won a few bucks and was just about to sign off in this session when I was dealt pocket aces and decided to stick for one more hand. Raised and had a couple of callers, with one check-calling my bet after the flop came jack-high. The turn was a king and my opponent led with a bet, and when I raised he just called. The river brought an ace, giving me a set, my opponent check-called my bet, and I won the pot.

He showed his hand after -- K-J. He’d gotten lucky on the turn, making two pair. But I’d gotten even luckier on the river to make the winning hand.

I signed off, then spent the rest of Sunday watching NFL games while sweating my picks. Had one of those “hero picks” again late in the afternoon in which I’d taken San Diego to beat Baltimore. As I was explaining last week, a “hero pick” is one in which I’ve gone against the entire pool and taken a team no one else has (or almost no one), meaning I’m setting myself up for a two-game swing by either gaining a game on everyone or losing a game to the field. (I’d also consider a “hero pick” one which has a reasonable chance of actually winning; i.e., not just picking a hopeless underdog for the sake of going against the grain.)

Last week I was griping about another “hero pick” I’d previously made in which defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory (the Panthers game). Well, if you follow the NFL, you know how San Diego managed to do something very similar yesterday. Up by 10 with five minutes to go, they’d ultimately allow Baltimore to tie the game, giving up a late first down to the Ravens on an incredible fourth-and-29 play in order to make it happen. The Ravens then managed to convert a few more long third downs in OT on their way to kicking a winning field goal.

When that game ended I thought back to the Carolina game as well as to a couple of other instances this year where my “hero picks” had been improbably thwarted by last-second heroics performed by the teams I’d picked against. As in poker, we remember the losses so much more vividly than we do the wins.

The fact is, last year I won the pool after benefiting repeatedly from hitting games thanks to unlikely last-second heroics. It takes a little effort to remember them, but I do recall a couple of late season examples.

There was one early November game in which I’d taken Baltimore to beat Pittsburgh and the Ravens drove 92 yards at the end for a game-winning score to win 23-20. And I took the Giants to beat the Cowboys in that game near season’s end in which New York had not one but two TD drives in the last four minutes to win 37-34 (remember that one?).

In both cases, a lot of the pool had gone the other way with those picks, thus earning me a two-game swing. And in both I’d gotten very lucky -- kind of like that ace on the river -- to come from behind and prevail.

But like I say, it somehow takes extra effort to remember those wins. Meanwhile, the “hero picks” that almost get there but then crazily don’t remain firmly in mind. Ridiculously, I feel like I’ve been cheated out of something I “deserved,” not unlike what happens to some of us after suffering a bad beat in poker.

Serious sports bettors -- like good poker players -- simply have to grow accustomed to that feeling of getting jobbed. I’ve been reading my buddy Dr. Pauly’s new sports betting blog, Ocelot Sports, where it’s obvious that experience of having had a sure win stolen away happens practically every night.

Thankfully I’m not a serious sports bettor, just like I’m essentially a recreational poker player. The stakes aren’t ever that high for me.

Still hurts, though, to watch a team I’m pulling against gain 30 on a must-have fourth-and-29. Talk about a one-outer.

Looking for a Game

Have to say I’ve all but given up on online poker at the moment. Still have those small rolls on a couple of Merge sites (Hero and Carbon), but a recent “upgrade” of the Merge network has introduced so many issues that playing anything has become quite a struggle.

Two days ago I thought I’d try a sit-n-go on Hero, but couldn’t get past the initial tourney lobbies to get a seat. Then yesterday I did manage to register for one, but when the SNG began the table never opened. When I tried to open the table manually, I encountered the above image.

None more black, as Nigel Tufnel would say.

I tweeted that picture yesterday, in response to which Kevmath quipped: “That picture's still loading, what's supposed to happen? #CWIDT.” I told him it was reminding me of the old Full Tilt Poker promise “You're just a few seconds away from playing the most exciting poker games anywhere online” we used to stare at when the client wouldn’t load.

Was kind of funny, actually, as the tourney lobby continued to reflect the SNG going on as usual, with the levels going up and the stack sizes changing, ostensibly because blinds were being won. At one point I was weirdly leading the SNG, then just as strangely two-thirds of my stack disappeared and I was last. I can’t figure how that could happen without someone actually playing my stack, but who knows?

In any case, after about 40 minutes or so the SNG was finally shut down and the entry fees refunded. Meanwhile, I did manage to get a cash table to load, and everyone there was complaining in the chat box about various problems they were encountering with the site, including difficulties related to cashing out.

Speaking of, players on Lock Poker -- which recently broke away from Merge to join up with Cake Poker to form their own network, called Revolution Gaming -- apparently have encountered some examples of credit card fraud related to the cards they’ve used on that site. Players on Carbon Poker (still with Merge) have encountered similar issues, as PokerFuse reported yesterday.

I mentioned before how after running into initial difficulty when attempting to deposit on sites following Black Friday, I essentially gave up trying. Eventually I won some cabbage in freerolls on both Hero and Carbon, and that’s the money with which I’ve played on those sites. I have never tried to withdraw from either (not that there’s much there to take out).

My friend Bob, the Poker Grump, had similar difficulties with Merge yesterday. Bob has been more adventurous than I with online poker of late. Just the other day he wrote an informative post updating his current experiences with various sites, including Bovada, Black Chip Poker (a Merge site), Luvin Poker (an Everleaf site), the Winning Poker Network (formerly known as Doyle’s Room), and Cake Poker. The post provides good overview of the post-apocalyptic-wasteland-like-scene we currently have here in the U.S. as far as online poker is concerned.

Meanwhile, play money games on PokerStars work beautifully. I always liked Stars’ software much better than FTP’s, actually, and don’t really get it when people keep repeating the line that FTP had the best software at the time of its demise.

I started a Hard-Boiled Poker “Home Game” several months months ago, and at the end of the Punta del Este trip I finally invited some of my buddies to join and we played a few SNGs. Gave me the idea to crank up the sucker for real, perhaps eventually hosting some sort of weekly tourney for readers of the blog.

If anyone with a PokerStars account wants to join my Home Game, the Club ID is 530631 and the invitation code is noshinola. (Here’s an overview of what PS Home Games are and how they work, in case you aren’t up on them.) I’ll probably wait a bit to see if the club fills up with folks, and if it does I’ll start scheduling some tourneys for us. Will announce tourneys via Twitter (@hardboiledpoker) and perhaps write about them here, too.

Might be fun. Something to do, anyway, while this other game is still loading.

Comments from the Peanut Gallery

This has been the week of making something out of nothing for your humble gumshoe.

Told you on Monday about winning some minor scratch after scoring free entries into a couple of tournies on Carbon Poker.

I also mentioned a week ago how I’d jumped into a freeroll on the relatively-new fantasy sports site, Draft Day. Thanks in large part to that offensive outburst by New Orleans on against the New York Giants on Monday night, I snuck into the money in that one, too, meaning I now have another tiny roll ($9) over there with which to try to learn a little more about the fantasy thing.

Then yesterday I hopped into one of those “Fast Fifty Freezeout” tournies on Hero Poker. I had not been faring too well over there of late at the nickel-and-dime cash tables, I’m afraid. Meanwhile, I’ve accumulated a ton of free tickets into these tiny MTTs and so decided to ensure at least a break-even day by trying one of those.

There were 108 entered into the Fast Fifty, called such because of the relatively fast structure (five-minute levels) and fifty-cent entry. As it happened, I went deep and in fact had a great shot at winning but came up short to take runner-up.

Given how the last hand of heads-up went -- I raise-shoved a nine-high flop with top pair, got called by 10-5 for middle pair of fives, then watched tens come on both the turn and river -- it would be tempting to say I deserved to win but fell victim to bad luck. In truth, though, there was a hand earlier in which I’d folded middle pair to my opponent’s flop shove, then he showed he was drawing to a flush. Woulda shoulda coulda.

Still, earned a few more bucks to add to the small Hero roll. Pure profit! Infinite ROI!

I continue stubbornly to add entries (handwritten) into my little ledger of online play. Yesterday I did what I have done at the end of every month since I started playing online back in 2004, tallying up the month’s total and writing that figure down as well. Then I turn the pages back and chuckle when I compare current totals to what I was playing for before.

Not that I had ever really moved higher than low limits previously, but I’m having to make a conscious mental effort now to make the amounts seem meaningful to me. Or “real,” even, given the somewhat theoretical nature of the idea of cashing out. Whereas before, when I’d slowly accumulate and cash out from time to time, such an effort wasn’t needed.

Had an exchange on Twitter a few days ago in which someone referred to having a little bit on these sites with which to play as an “itch scratcher,” and I said I thought that was a good way of describing it. Passing the time is what we’re doing. Just snacking.

Still, it’s fun to play, not to mention win. Even when it’s just for peanuts.

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.

LOL Americans

I was playing online over the weekend over on the Hero Poker site. While some of the Merge network sites are now allowing U.S. player sign-ups, I believe Hero is one skin that is not letting any new American players jump in. They are, however, allowing those who currently have accounts there to continue to play.

It is pretty silly, all of the different restrictions and what not. Not to mention the many hoops through which American poker players presently have to go in order to play online at all. And of course our prospects going forward remain dim as far as the near future goes, although perhaps down the road we may have some sort of legislation to allow us back online to play what Al Alvarez once called “the American game.”

Am seeing some funny usernames around the tables at Hero, stuff like “FTPTookMyMny” and “FtheDOJ” the like. On Hero you can see what country a player is from, and it does seem like whenever I check that a lot of my opponents are from the U.S.

Was playing against one guy on Saturday, though, who wasn’t from the U.S. but from Germany. He had a funny name, too -- “LOLAmericans” -- with a smirky Sarah Palin pic as an avatar.

A little later another player lost a decent-sized pot after getting it in good versus “LOLAmericans” only to be sucked out on. The loser -- a U.S. player -- got a little fired up in the chatbox about it afterwards, referring to the player’s nationality once or twice in the process. I think the username might have tilted him as much or more than losing the hand.

I had to laugh a little, both at the situation and the “LOLAmericans” name. Made me think of a couple of different stories coming out over the last few days regarding non-Americans doing a bit of trash-talking about the relative poker-playing abilities of American players and the rest of the world.

There was that story involving 2010 WSOPE Main Event winner James Bord and Matchbook.com opening up betting on who will be this year’s WSOPE Main Event champ. You might heard how Bord (who is from the U.K.) has said he will be refunding all losing bets if an American wins the ME.

A pretty bold offer, really. By the way, this year’s WSOPE Main Event at Cannes attracted a record-smashing total of 593 players. (The previous high for a WSOPE ME was 362.) Just eyeballing the list of entrants, I’m seeing 107 Americans listed in the field, meaning a little more than 1 in 6 players are from the U.S.

All of the seven WSOPE bracelet events drew big fields, in fact. Incidentally, among those first six prelims three Americans won bracelets (Steve Billirakis, Tristan Wade, Michael Mizrachi).

The other America-versus-the-rest-of-the-world story from over the weekend involved the always needling Tony G. The G decided to do a little boast-posting on his blog after getting asked by Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier to join the European team in the upcoming Caesars Cup that starts on Wednesday. That’s that team event pitting a U.S. team versus a European team that was started back in 2009 as a kind of postlude to the WSOPE. (Sort of poker’s version of golf’s Ryder Cup.)

By the way, Phil Hellmuth is captain of the U.S. team this year. I am certain Hellmuth will bring the needed gravitas to help the Americans avoid any further ridicule. I mean no one ever makes fun of him.

Tony G’s post was titled “Bring on the Americans!” and there he offers some more mostly playful-sounding vitriol directed toward the U.S. players, concluding with a somewhat confusing call to “reignite the cold war.”

He also noted there how he was betting $20,000 at 5/1 on Matchbook.com that he’d make the money in the WSOPE Main Event. After drawing a straight flush on his first hand to crack Barry Greenstein’s pocket aces, Tony G remains in the running at the moment with about 240 players left. (The top 64 cash.)

Those side bets on the online betting exchange certainly can spice up things a bit for players and fans alike. For everyone but Americans, that is, since we cannot place bets on Matchbook.com. (LOL.)

Making fun of Americans is a worldwide sport in and of itself, really. In fact, Americans themselves tend to enjoy it as much as anyone else.

How do Americans compare to the rest of the world as poker players? Historically speaking, the U.S. had a big head start versus the rest of the world with regard to poker. But I think it’s safe to say that whatever general edge Americans once had has been essentially closed over recent decades.

And given the way we’ve closed ourselves off from the online game at present, I suppose it won’t be that long before we might have to admit the U.S. will be playing from behind (generally speaking) when it comes to “the American game.”

Nickel and Dimin’ It

Thought I’d write a quick little “on the street” post. Those are the ones supposedly about my own play, which for obvious reasons has been scaled back considerably since the spring. I am still playing online some, though, over at Hero Poker where as I’ve mentioned before I have a small amount with which to play.

The last few times I’ve logged in I have actually been playing no-limit hold’em cash rather than my usual PLO, mainly because there are more tables of NLHE going. I guess I’m also being influenced a little by the fact that I’m currently reading that Annie Duke/John Vorhaus book which I talked about Tuesday, a book that seems to focus entirely on no-limit hold’em (and mostly cash games, with just a few bits here and there about tourneys).

Am having to stick with the tiny $10 buy-in tables thanks to my limited bankroll. Have had a few decent sessions here and there but am mostly just treading water. Had one short sequence the other day involving two hands in rapid succession that stood out a little. The first is more interesting than the second, strategy-wise.

It was a full ring game (nine players), and for the first of these two hands I had just about $10 when I found myself in the big blind . A middle position player limped, one of those passive sorts who limped in a lot before the flop then called a lot after. It folded all of the way around to me and I checked. The flop came , giving me bottom two.

I decided to bet 30 cents, more than the pot, in fact. The MP player called. The turn was the , and again I bet, this time 80 cents (slightly less than the pot). Again my opponent called.

The river was a not-so-pretty . I checked, and my opponent promptly bet $1.27. On Hero Poker there are buttons to bet 1/2, 2/3, or full pot, and here my opponent had clicked the 1/2 pot button. (There are “2x,” “4x,” and “8x” buttons, too, in fact.)

Probably should fold, right? Well, I was stubborn and called, and was duly punished as my opponent showed for the rivered straight.

The amounts are so small I’ll admit I was affected at least a couple of times here. If playing higher stakes, I doubt I would’ve bet so big (relative to the pot) on the flop. And I probably would’ve folded to the river bet, too, which I well knew my passive opponent likely wasn’t making with a hand worse than mine.

That left me with something like $6. (Hero’s hand histories don’t include starting stacks, I’m afraid). The next hand I folded, and watched as an opponent had his A-A cracked by a player rivering a king-high straight with 10-9.

Then on the very next hand I was on the button when a player in early position min-raised to $0.20. I had picked up , and thinking I’d take advantage of what looked like steaming I reraised big to a dollar. It folded back to my opponent who made it $1.80, and I actually thought to myself how he most likely had aces.

But I was stubborn again, influenced both by the smallness of the stakes and perhaps irrationally by the fact that a player had just had aces the hand before. And maybe I really was steaming a little. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever folded kings preflop before, anyway, so there was little chance I was doing so here.

So I shoved, he snap-called, and sure enough he had . A king flopped, actually, but an ace came on the turn and I was forced to rebuy.

The hand made me think of the one from this summer when I’d run kings into aces in that deep stack tourney. It also made me think of one shown this week on ESPN from Day 3 of the WSOP Main Event -- was talking about the coverage yesterday -- in which a player managed to fold his pocket kings before the flop after an opponent four- or five-bet all-in with aces.

Is fun to play, even for tiny stakes. While one always has to allow for the kind of crazy-random play that will sometimes crop up at the micro stakes, that really only constitutes a small percentage of what goes on. Otherwise it is the same sort of good and bad play one finds higher up, with perhaps a bit more of the latter. And even though the smallness of the stakes is likely keeping me from thinking as carefully as I should when making certain decisions, I am nonetheless feeling reasonably challenged to think somewhat seriously about the game.

Still, finding that fold button can be extra difficult sometimes when playing for nickels and dimes.

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.