Lock Down

Among the weekend poker news was the report that Lock Poker, for a good while one of the more conspicuous “rogue” online poker sites continuing to serve U.S. players post-Black Friday, went offline sometime last Friday.

John Mehaffey first reported for U.S. Poker that the site had gone down on Saturday, although over the last few weeks it had become something of a ghost site with only a handful of players at a time. Others reported on the shutdown as well, which appears also to include that “SuperWins” site that popped up about a year ago as a surreptitious skin of Lock.

While there hasn’t been a lot of activity on Lock of late, the site has remained well within the poker community’s consciousness thanks to the site having become increasingly unreliable with processing withdrawals, then finally becoming altogether unresponsive to all withdrawal requests. Mehaffey notes how troubles withdrawing date back to late 2012, with the site not having processed any withdrawal requests at all since April 2014.

He lists “$10-$15 million” as an estimate of how much sits in Lock Poker accounts, although I’ve seen some guessing the total to be even higher. Or should I say nominally sits in those accounts, as the money surely is long gone, having been either spent or otherwise purloined by the site’s owners. (And some percentage of it probably never was anything more than “phantom” funds to start with, thinking of alleged payouts in freerolls, overlays being allegedly covered, and so on.)

Never has a site been more appropriately named, a fact I’ve already exploited more than once here in posts from 2013 punningly titled “Put Your Funds on Lock Poker (And Throw Away the Key)” and “Lock’s Stock in Peril.”

Those posts were written two years ago, and it’s amazing to think the site continued to function for so long afterwards with players continuing to deposit as the ability to withdrawal gradually diminished and then ceased altogether. There was a regulator for Lock -- Curaçao eGaming -- although they obviously weren’t acting legitimately in any way to ensure against the ongoing thievery. (In fact, Mehaffey notes the license with Curaçao is still valid.)

When I peeked over on Twitter earlier tonight it was interesting to see some back-and-forthing among some whom I follow regarding how much sympathy should be given to those losing money on Lock, with some taking the position players foolish enough to risk playing there -- especially after the troubles began in earnest -- got what they deserved.

Others are pointing out how some affiliates continued to advertise for Lock, with Card Player being the most conspicuous culprit after having continued to host banners and direct players to sign up and deposit up until May 2014. The assorted Lock Poker “pros” who continued to be associated with the site well after it became apparent to many it was not trustworthy are catching some heat again as well as they did before.

Some were surely encouraged to play on the site by Card Player and other affiliates, and perhaps by the pros, too, although their influence was likely less extensive. Anyhow, enough of the unwitting were hoodwinked to keep things going over there, even if only barely, up until Friday.

It’ll amount to a sad, belated postscript to all of the other scandals and disappointments that form the narrative of the fall of U.S. Online Poker 1.0. That story still continues with a few more lingering sites and Bovada (formerly Bodog) having gathered momentum of late as the currently most popular “rogue” site. According to PokerScout, Bovada (whose traffic has to be estimated) is now more popular than Full Tilt and PartyPoker, even, in terms of the number of active cash players.

With the story of U.S. Online Poker 2.0 starting so sluggishly and without much inspiration, the finish of the prequel continues to be more interesting, even if anticlimactic.

Supergrins

Was following a little of this story that popped up within the last couple of days regarding a new online poker site, suddenly appearing and available to U.S. players in all states -- i.e., rogue, not regulated -- and awkwardly-named Superwins.

Kind of a minor blip on the poker radar, this, but somewhat humorous given the apparently obvious connections between the new site and the fraudulent Lock Poker site from which the great majority of players have not been able to cash out their funds for many months now, more than a year in some cases.

The new site shares all of the same promotional jibber-jabber, conditions, bonus offers, and apparently the software is similar, too. And as was quickly sorted out in the forums and by others, the site’s domain is registered to Lock’s CEO, and some inquiries have apparently uncovered that the two sites share a player pool to some extent, making Superwins a “skin” (more or less).

It appears a fairly transparent Plan B (or F or G or whatever) by Lock to drum up some capital, although the fact that the word on Superwins has gotten out so quickly would seem to have prevented the site from ever gaining any momentum in that direction. Sure, there will be some uninformed suckers depositing on Superwins, but I think we’re well past the days that a new “U.S.-facing site” (as we would call ’em) can make much if any splash.

You can read a rundown and some commentary on the shenanigans over at Flushdraw. The part of the story that was most silly to me -- and also notable to Haley Hintze who authored the Flushdraw piece -- was the lame ad/review for Superwins on the Poker News Boy website where the new room is being promoted with surprising vigor.

That PNB rates the new room 9/10 is funny enough, although we must compare their 10/10 rating for Lock Poker for some idea of the fantasies perpetrated over there (and note as Haley does how PNB is owned by a Lock affiliate manager). The review’s odd syntax, sentence fragments, and breathless tone add further grins.

In fact, the more I look at it, the more every detail seems as though it could possess dual meaning, from the “big ambitions” of the site to its list of “popular methods” for depositing. Like a postmodern palimpsest with “straight” significances and built-in parody overlapped right on top of each other.

It wasn’t that long ago, though, that we were paying a lot more attention to new sites like this. Just after Black Friday they caught the eye of many, and some (like Lock, in fact) successfully attracted business. And before that there were dozens, some suspect, many appearing legit.

I guess it is the (increasingly dim) memory of those ads and that earlier era when the context for them was different -- and knowing that context is no more -- that makes looking at this new site and those trying to promote it as all the more risible.

Two-and-a-Half Years Later (Withdrawing from Full Tilt Poker)

This week I submitted my petition to the Garden City Group, the Ohio-based claims administrator charged with facilitating U.S. players’ claims for the return of their funds from Full Tilt Poker. Finally, two-and-a-half years later, I’ve begun the process of withdrawing the funds I had left on the site back in April 2011 when “Black Friday” came along.

Submitting my petition wasn’t too hard, although there were a couple of “WTF” moments along the way.

The GCG has reported that it has delivered 1.4 million email notifications to FTP account holders in the U.S. I did receive such an email in mid-September, the generic one announcing that the Full Tilt Poker Claims website was finally ready to begin accepting petitions. I did not receive a notice containing a “Petition Number” and a “Control Number,” however, as some have (and many have not).

Getting that second email apparently would have saved me a step as I could have then entered those two special numbers and gotten started right away with filing my petition. Without those, I had to create a new petition associated with my FTP account, which wasn’t that hard to figure out how to do.

Once clearing that hurdle, I then had to enter some more information (including my Full Tilt Poker username) and soon was presented with a screen listing my current FTP balance -- $0.00.

Oof. I’d heard many others have discovered something similar when reaching this page, and so after clicking around a little further realized I could enter what I thought was the correct balance on that page and proceed with my petition. I also figured out that in order to support my claim for a different balance than “$0.00,” I had to provide some supporting documentation. Here’s how that step is described on the GCG’s “FAQ” page:

“If you agree with the FTP Account Balance displayed through the online filing process, you are not required to submit documentation. However, if you dispute the balance, you are required to submit supporting documentation, such as complete unaltered copies of cancelled checks, wire transfers records, bank or credit statements or similar official transaction records. This supporting documentation must show the account holder’s name, date, transaction descriptions, amount, and financial institution information.”

Again, oof. Obviously I have no cancelled checks laying about, and while I could possibly go back into my bank records to find information about deposits I’d made after withdrawing from FTP, none of that really has anything at all to do with my current balance.

However, I did find a solution (I hope). I searched around online a little further and realized that one can in fact request transaction records within the Full Tilt Poker client. And it turns out that while the process takes a few steps to complete, it is surprisingly easy (and quick).

I actually found it necessary to download the FTP client again because the version I had on my laptop -- unopened for several months -- seemed to get stuck during the updating process. Once I did I was able to log in without a problem, then clicked the “Requests” tab up top and then “Account History (Web).” That opened a browser to an “Account History” page.

Once there I was able to click a date range as well as whether I wanted to see just real money transactions or also tourney dollars/tickets. I went back in my own records and found the exact date I opened my Full Tilt Poker account (in 2006) and made that the start date, then made 4/15/11 the end date, and submitted my request.

Doing that triggered an email to be sent to me which told me my account history was ready to be downloaded. To get to it I had to retrace my steps back through the FTP client -- i.e., hit the “Requests” tab, select “Account History (Web)” again, and be sent back to the web page. (I had to close the browser first, by the way, and let the page be reopened again.) This time there was a new “Download” tab which I clicked to get to a .zip file containing an Excel spreadsheet with my transaction history.

I downloaded that file, unzipped it, and gave it a looksee. Was kind of interesting to see every single transaction for almost five years listed in full detail, ending with 4/15/11 and my final balance listed to the right.

Now I had some supporting documentation to submit to go along with my claim that $0.00 isn’t in fact my balance. I am hopeful that this transaction history will be sufficient given how Full Tilt Poker was its source. Obviously I could doctor the Excel file, but such could be easily cross-referenced and I assume that will be done in every case as part of the petition-checking process. I uploaded the Excel file, went through a couple more steps including one last “are you sure?”-type page, then submitted my petition.

Afterwards I realized I might have added my personal information to the Excel file, or perhaps done something further to associate myself more obviously with the username. So I called the toll-free number at GCG and spoke with a representative who explained to me that as part of the process to review every petition, each petitioner will be contacted to provide any additional, needed info or to update their claim in any way.

I don’t know if my petition is sufficient as is or not, but I’m somewhat assured to know that I’ll have a chance to update it if there’s anything lacking. For those thinking about submitting their own petitions, know that it has to be done by November 16. Also be aware that once you submit a petition you cannot go back and add to it or revise any of your information, so it’s worth triple-checking things before you actually hit the button to submit (even though there will be that opportunity later on to submit further info or update anything).

Am I confident that I’ll get my money back? Not so much, but a two-and-a-half-year waiting period to withdraw is probably a reasonable cause to make a person skeptical.

Still, there’s obviously a better chance today that I will get my money than had been the case from April 2011 to late July 2012 when there was no clear solution to the problem of getting back money the jokers then running FTP had already squandered, or even during the year-plus since after PokerStars’ acquisition of FTP and the agreement was forged to help settle these debts.

And at least I’m not trying to withdraw money from Lock Poker.

Lock’s Stock in Peril

I continue to follow the worsening situation at Lock Poker which I wrote about last week. More details regarding the non-payouts, ever-shifting policies, Two Plus Two refusing their adverts, and various other dramas concerning sponsored players (and their perceived responsibility/culpability) continue to emerge every day.

For a good catch-up on the situation since last week, check out Haley Hintze’s most recent articles on Flushdraw regarding Lock: “Lock Poker Malaise Deepens as Trade Values Crash, More P2P Restrictions Allegedly Introduced” and “Monitoring the Lock Poker Spiral: The Shane Bridges Blowout.” (There’ll probably be more on Flushdraw to come.)

Also, Todd “DanDruff” Witteles’s thread-starting post (as “Kilowatt”) on Two Plus Two from Monday titled “Lock Shady Practices 101” provides another thorough summary of the situation up until a couple of days ago.

There are numerous, rapidly-growing threads on Two Plus Two regarding Lock. In some ways I’m surprised to see so much response, not because complaints aren’t warranted but because I hadn’t necessarily realized the site had earned so much traffic. It certainly seems that within the crippled U.S. online poker scene of the last two years, Lock had carved out a significant place.

And now with Lock’s final crash starting to appear imminent, there’s a certain canary-in-the-coalmine feeling that the whole “rogue” approach of small sites trying still to serve U.S. players is about to blow up once and for all.

I was intrigued a little this morning by a post from 2+2 moderator “SGT RJ” in the humorously-named “Lock Poker Crisis Containment Thread.” I say the name is funny because the thread -- begun less than a week ago -- is now approaching 1,400 posts.

In her post, SGT RJ offers some advice to posters as well as to those burdened with the unenviable task of trying to get funds off of Lock. She also makes a distinction between 2+2 posters and others who might have played on Lock. Or who, I suppose, might even be thinking of signing on and depositing on Lock.

“If you are knowledgable about poker in general, and frankly if you’re on 2p2 and following these mess of threads,” writes SGT RJ, “you’re probably more tuned into the poker world than 95% of the regular joes who play.”

She goes on to say “I think it’s part of our responsibility as poker players to not give business to owners and sites who have demonstrated, time and again, that they do not have the players’ best interests at heart.”

We circle back, once more, to that unavoidable conflict in poker, namely, the fact that it is a game based on self-interest that also requires cooperation among competitors in order to exist at all.

The idea of more informed players being “responsible” for the community as a whole in a situation like Lock is certainly more obvious to us post-Black Friday than it was before. I’m thinking back to Bill Rini’s provocative post from a while back titled “Who to Blame for Black Friday?” which I opined on here a bit in “Talking Black Friday and Blame.”

This notion that for online poker to work at all there has to be a sincere working together among all parties -- including a shared responsibility and trust -- is a new thing, I think, at least for those of us in the U.S. The tone of responses from players to Ultimate Poker’s first week of operation perhaps reflects this changed mindset, with many seeming to demonstrate patience and a willingness to remain hopeful and supportive of the site as it experiences various early growing pains.

In any case, I tend to agree with SGT RJ about players needing to avoid Lock if possible. And perhaps there’s a further need, too, for those who know about Lock’s problems to make an effort to publicize those issues to those who don’t (an idea reflected in the new “#LockPokerSucks” hashtag on Twitter).

Whose Turn Is It, Again?

What a weird week already, and it’s only Wednesday. And I guess it’s May already, too, which means the World Series of Poker is just around the corner to start distracting us all even further.

Been trying to follow all of the online poker-related developments, although it’s starting to feel a little like I’ve accidentally sat down at a table where they’re dealing some brand new variant with multiple flops and extra streets where I’m not sure about hand values and I don’t even really know how many betting rounds there are.

Kind of makes me want to sit back and take a hand or three off, just to avoid playing out of turn or any other missteps.

On Monday I was writing about the current troubles at Lock Poker, the latest issue to emerge symbolizing the confusing and highly uncertain world of so-called “rogue” offshore U.S.-facing online poker sites. Easy enough to draw a conclusion there to steer clear of Lock and other such sites, although it’s still a bit headachy trying to delve into the specifics of what is happening with the communications and cashouts (or lack thereof) and ever-shifting landscape for players.

Then yesterday came the sudden launch of Ultimate Poker, which created some huge buzz and various conversations and commentary throughout the day and night.

Again, lots of questions linger as the site moves into its second day of offering actual U.S. licensed and regulated real money games to players in Nevada. PokerScout reported a peak of 136 players on the site during its first day of dealing, and a quick check of the “Hand ID” numbers at the moment suggest more than 25,000 hands have been dealt at the cash tables and in sit-n-gos.

Amid all of the talk of triangulation -- a word that always sounds short of breath -- and other matters related to players’ attempts to get up and running on Ultimate Poker, I wondered some more about how quickly the sucker went live, with only a few hours in between players being able to make initial deposits and the games getting underway. (No free play games, either, to test out things beforehand.)

But like the great majority of those talking about Ultimate Poker right now, I’m not actually playing on the site as I am not in Nevada. Thus am I hesitant to say much at all regarding how things appear to have gone during UP’s first day, although I have been following with interest the various posts, forum comments, tweets, and other talk about what’s happening.

Then last night came what appeared to be another item of apparently uncertain significance as Alexandra Berzon of The Wall Street Journal reported that the deal between PokerStars (or, rather, the Rational Group) and the Atlantic Club Casino Hotel (or, rather, Colony Capital LLC) had reached an impasse thanks to the passing of an important deadline established between the two entities.

According to Berzon, the deal had been contingent on Rational obtaining a Preliminary Casino Authorization (i.e., a temporary license) to operate in NJ by last Friday. That day came and went, and thus the agreement between the two parties expired. While the significance of the news was initially unclear -- neither side had offered any on-the-record comments for Berzon’s article -- this morning it sounds like the deal is well and truly nixed, as the Atlantic Club’s CEO is confirming that to be the case. Though again, it is hard to pin down what it all means for New Jersey and/or PokerStars going forward. (Hard for me, anyway.)

Finally, there was one more item popping up this morning over on Politico suggesting that yet another federal online gambling bill was about to be proposed by House Rep. Peter King (R-NY). Actually that item initially suggested another Congressman (Jay Rockefeller) was to propose the legislation before a correction soon followed.

Of course, it seems like just about every story we’re hearing at present having to do with online poker seems in need of correction. Or at least revising to add further clarification. And the fact that half of these stories are hidden behind pay walls doesn’t make it any easier for the majority of us wanting to know what’s up.

I’ve made the analogy before here about how reporting on poker -- like poker itself -- is often a “partial information game,” although when I have it has been in the context of reporting on tourneys in which those of us on the side cannot see hole cards or know players’ thoughts, entire shared history, and so on.

Such a characterization seems appropriate with regard to stories about the status online poker in the U.S. at present, too. Like I was saying above, the whole scene regarding online poker’s present and future in the U.S. is getting so muddled it’s becoming increasingly difficult even to follow the order of play.

Makes the game more unpredictable, I guess, and thus more apt to surprise us. Even so, I think I might just sit out and watch for a while before getting further involved.

Put Your Funds on Lock Poker (And Throw Away the Key)

Like most American online poker players -- particularly those of us who were fairly dedicated prior to Black Friday -- I’ve remained aware of the ever dwindling options available to us for the last two-plus years. And like many in that group, I’ve been wary about sending money to any of the so-called “rogue” sites serving U.S. customers during that period.

I had a conversation with someone a week ago about online poker, a person entirely unfamiliar with its history as well as all of the recent legal machinations here in the U.S. He couched his questions to me within the very reasonable skepticism a lot of people have had about any form of online gambling.

“Is it really safe?” he asked.

People asked the same question before Black Friday, thinking about all sorts of potential issues that gave them pause when it came to online poker. Indeed, they asked the same question even before the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 came along to force all of us to start adding certain disclaimers when arguing for the relative safety (or legality) of our favorite game.

There was a period prior to the emergence of the insider cheating scandals on Absolute Poker (news of which first broke in October 2007) and UltimateBet (which surfaced soon after, finally acknowledged by the site in March 2008) when I think most of us would answer such a question defensively. “It’s totally safe,” we quickly retorted, noting how cheating was unlikely -- why cheat when so much money can be made without doing so?!? -- and how depositing and cashing out posed little problems, if any.

Sure, after the UIGEA the business of moving money on and off sites became slightly more troublesome than before. But few harbored much concern about the games being safe to play.

The scandals certainly introduced seeds of doubt, but even then -- from early 2008 to early 2011 -- most of us continued to play without much fretting, some even on Absolute and UB. There’d be occasional problems with certain sites when it came to moving money, with those issues starting to multiply considerably during the last months of 2010 and first part of 2011. But few players felt too much concern, and indeed, there existed thousands of American players who were secure enough with the situation to consider themselves full-time online professionals.

Thus was the shock of Black Friday made all the more intense (for most). Going forward, nothing seemed certain about playing online poker from the United States, even if the many smaller sites continued to operate without interruption. Indeed, for a short period -- say six weeks or so -- it almost felt like a few of those tiny sites might soon be moving up to claim the spots formerly occupied by the giants who’d been suddenly struck down and driven from the U.S. market.

A lot of us spent those first few weeks exploring those other options, including the Merge sites (especially Carbon), Cake, and Bodog (yet to become Bovada).

It wasn’t always simple, but some of us managed to get some cabbage onto those sites and continued playing. I personally looked into it, found the whole process less than inviting, and quickly gave up. However I did win some money on a freeroll over on Hero (a Merge skin), and so kind of kept my hand in that way playing for nickels and dimes without having to deposit.

Lock Poker was then part of the Merge Network, too. Lock had first launched back in late 2008 on Cake, and not too long after signed noted pro Eric “Rizen” Lynch as a representative who I believe also had a position as a VP in the company. They also signed about a dozen more players to sponsor in 2009, then in April 2010 made the move over to Merge.

By 2011, Lock had become slightly better known thanks in part to sponsoring the BLUFF Online Poker Challenge (starting in 2009) which got the site some extra publicity. Not all of that attention was positive, however, especially when one of the players allowed to participate in that initial challenge was noted multi-accounter Josh “JJProdigy” Field. Previously Field had been caught and prohibited from playing on other sites, then went on PokerRoad Radio (in early 2008) to say he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t find a way back onto the sites from which he’d been banned.

But Field ended up not partaking in the challenge after all once “a situation” arose regarding possible account-sharing on Cake. In any event, by the spring of 2011 that’s pretty much all I knew about Lock Poker. Then a few months later came that whole ugly “Girah” saga on the site, another negative story partly concerning a site-sponsored competition that seemed to show the site failing to act responsibly in response to a cheating scandal.

All that was more than sufficient to reduce my interest in possibly playing on Lock Poker to nil. Actually for a brief period in there (from around June 2011 to October 2011), Lock wasn’t even accepting new U.S. signups. But they did begin taking Americans again, and during the last year-and-a-half I noted in passing the site gradually building a large roster of nearly 30 sponsored pros, among them Lynch, Michael Mizrachi, Chris Moorman, Paul Volpe, Melanie Weisner, Casey Jarzabek, Brett Jungblut, Matt Stout, and Annette Obrestad.

It was just about a year ago that Lock popped back up on the radar a bit, right about the time they signed Obrestad. That’s when the whole brouhaha erupted between Lock and the Merge Network involving the canceling of the LOCKOPS series and Lock bolting from Merge altogether to buy up Cake and start their own Revolution Network.

Now the situation at Lock has apparently taken an especially unpleasant turn. Complaints from players facing lengthy cashout delays -- as in several months -- have recently come to dominate all current news about the site. And after a long time simmering, that situation presently appears to have reached a kind of boiling point with reports of players being informed they can no longer cash out funds received via player-to-player transfers on the site.

The sudden introduction of the new ban on cashing out transferred funds -- the news of which was delivered to players via an email last week -- considerably heightened already significant player concerns about the money currently sitting in their Lock Poker accounts. You can read some details of the current situation over on 4Flush. Haley Hintze has a story on it for Pokerfuse as well (although you can only read the first half of that one without a “PRO” account).

Skimming the various 2+2 threads concerning players’ present predicament, it sounds as though there were a decent number of full-timers in the U.S. who had found themselves ultimately choosing Lock Poker as a current option for playing significant volume and at meaningful stakes. Weighing all of those risks discussed above, a number appear to have stubbornly taken to Lock and tried to treat it as a replacement for Stars, FTP, Absolute Poker, and/or UB.

Considered in a vacuum, a prohibition against withdrawing funds that have been obtained via transfer is not unreasonable. I remember once long ago getting paid for an article I had written via a transfer on an online poker site, and when I tried to withdraw the money immediately I was informed that I could not do so without first playing a certain number of hands.

I understood the purpose behind the policy. The site felt obligated not to allow willy-nilly transfers and withdrawals as though it were a financial transaction provider -- not to mention one with zero transaction fees -- and not an online poker site. In fact, even though the exchange of funds between players has always been a significant part of poker, generally speaking, I’ve always thought it would be perfectly within reason for sites not to allow player-to-player transfers at all.

Such a prohibition certainly seems like it could be in the sites’ interest from a legal perspective, as talk of money laundering and other questionable practices that sometimes get associated with sites would become less applicable. It also would probably help lessen problems with collusion, multi-accounting, and other terms-and-conditions-defying behaviors if swapping funds back and forth between player accounts weren’t possible.

I’m not entirely up on how the regulations have been drawn up in Nevada (or where they are headed in New Jersey), but I am guessing player-to-player transfers aren’t going to be an option when it comes to Online Poker in America 2.0. (Perhaps someone better informed on this can let me know what to expect along those lines.)

That said, this new policy move by Lock is not happening within a vacuum, but within a full-blown crisis, it appears, when it comes to the site being able to facilitate withdrawals. For the American online poker player who wants to play full-time and try to earn a living, this last, desperate example of the impossibility of doing so should provide a kind of ultimate deterrent, I’d think. To go back to my friend’s question (“Is it really safe?”), the answer these days for those of us here in the U.S. -- when it comes to the offshore, U.S.-facing sites, that is -- is most assuredly that it is not.

As I say, I was never too tempted by Lock to try them out, but I can’t imagine anyone would be today. Thinking back, the name of the site probably turned me off right away.

I mean, sure, I might have been able to figure out how to get some funds on there. But was I ever going to be able to withdraw money from a site called Lock?

A Necessarily Small Revolution

Was hearing a bit over the weekend about this Lock Poker move away from the Merge Network, a move which also appears to involve Lock acquiring the Cake Poker Network and renaming the whole kit-and-kaboodle the Revolution Gaming Network.

The weekend rumors appear to have been backed up with more official word this morning from the concerned parties. There’s presser from Cake reporting it “is in the process of selling selected assets” to Lock, and mirror-image one from Lock saying it “is in the process of acquiring assets from Cake.” The latter also notes how the transition will officially be occurring on May 31, at which time players on the sites will encounter “a simple software update” reflecting the newly-created partnership between the Cake network sites and Lock.

I’m a bit swamped at the moment -- caught between SCOOP stuff and wrapping up my “Poker in American Film and Culture” course -- and so can’t really spend too much time pondering this here development. Truth be told, it kind of feels a bit like talking about a trade involving minor league players or future draft picks. In other words, just a faint echo of the “big league” talk from a couple of weeks ago concerning the possible purchase of Full Tilt Poker by PokerStars, even if here we have actual quotes and such rather than all the second- and third-hand fuzziness.

Certainly seems as though Lock’s decision to break away from Merge might have had something to do with that brouhaha a couple of weeks ago over the LOCKOPS tournament series the skin had been planning but the network cancelled. Not completely up on all of the details there, although it did sound as though approval to run the series had been given to Lock, then taken away somewhat surprisingly.

Was reading one article about the Lock-Cake partnership (I realize I’m weirdly avoiding using the word “merger” so as to avoid a pun) that referred to Lock as the “largest US-friendly poker room... on the largest US-friendly poker network,” namely Merge.

The article also suggests the deal and creation of the new Revolution Gaming Network “will likely tip the scales of power for the current US online poker industry,” an impressive-sounding suggestion when one doesn’t think too specifically about how little traffic all of those involved actually get.

Merge is certainly the largest U.S.-facing network, but its 60-plus skins together only attract a fraction of the traffic on other small networks like iPoker and Ongame, all of whom are of course just teeny, tiny blips compared to PokerStars. And Lock is certainly the biggest skin on Merge, accounting for something like 40% of the traffic there from what I’ve read.

It looks like from PokerScout’s numbers that the Cake network only grabs a third or less of the traffic Merge as a whole did -- probably something similar to Lock’s total traffic, which would mean the joining of the two would indeed create a player pool that would jump ahead of Merge’s after losing Lock.

But still, we’re talking about just a few hundred cash game players total. Meanwhile, yesterday’s first day of SCOOP events saw nearly 70,000 entrants signing up for the six tournaments on offer there.

So sure, I guess Lock acquiring Cake does “tip the scales of power” in a relative sense -- as far as U.S.-facing online poker sites go. But globally speaking, online poker has for a good while already been... well... locked up.

(Got over that pun-shyness PDQ.)

On the “Girah” Saga; or, Online Poker Tied Up in a Knot

Spent a little time this morning rooting around over on Two Plus Two and elsewhere, getting somewhat caught up on this “Girah” saga that appears to involve just about every form of cheating one can imagine in online poker, including multi-accounting, collusion, chip-dumping, and hole-card viewing. The story also features a lot of other examples of ethically suspect behavior, most of which appearing to involve the fabrication of identities online (both for playing poker and for other forms of interaction, including forum posting).

For those with an interest in learning more about it all, the “Cliff notes” post over on 2+2 is a good place to start. There you’ll find a readable synopsis that also links out to many other sources for the sordid tale’s various characters and episodes. Might also dial up the most recent episode of the Two Plus Two Pokercast (episode 184), where they talk a lot about the story as well as interview both Ben “sauce123” Sulsky and “King” Dan Smith about it.

I had started to write a post attempting to cover all the various ins and outs, but after fussing with how best to present the tale’s complicated twists and turns I realized I only had a few substantive observations to add. So rather than clutter the air with another (necessarily incomplete) account of what appears to have been going on over the last seven months or so with this José “Girah” Macedo character (pictured above), I’ll just fire off three observations about it before moving along.

The first concerns one of those involved, Haseeb Qureshi (a.k.a., “DogIsHead” or “INTERNETPOKERS”), loser of that crazy running prop bet with Ashton Griffin earlier this year and recently let go by CardRunners as an instructor.

One “WTF” moment among the many that crop up in this story comes amid Haseeb Qureshi’s BLUFF interview, posted late yesterday. In the interview -- after Qureshi has admitted to multi-accounting, chip dumping, posting multiple times under a different name on Two Plus Two, and getting caught in a lie about being Macedo’s “agent” -- Qureshi is asked a question about Macedo’s original story, the one suggesting the 18-year-old had won more than $1.6 million in a remarkably short stretch even though those results were never corroborated anywhere.

Qureshi (and others, among them Dan “jungleman12” Cates) had maintained in the forums that Macedo’s results were legit, though now that seems likely not to have been the case. Qureshi is asked why he insisted Macedo’s results were genuine without there being any evidence to support that claim.

He “believed them,” Qureshi says, “because people faking results is such a ridiculously rare thing in the poker world. I would never suspect that someone would do anything like that unless they were a massive con artist, which I obviously didn’t imagine.”

Faking results in poker “ridiculously rare”? Probably more accurate to say it’s rare for players not to misrepresent their results. (That graph to the left is one that Macedo -- and/or Qureshi, actually, who says he helped Macedo with the post -- shared early on to show his results, a screenshot that omitted reference to screennames or sites.)

And, it goes without saying, Qureshi himself has many times over shown a readiness to misrepresent, lie, obfuscate, fake, what have you. How does Qureshi himself believe such a statement, let alone expect others to do so?

What is rare, I suppose, is for players to get away with faking results in their online play, particularly in the high-stakes games that are mostly (though not always) tracked by external sites. That leads to my second observation, which is simply to express amazement at how many appear to have been duped by the story of the “Portuguese poker prodigy.”

Lock Poker gave him a sponsorship. Brandon Adams tried to hire him as an instructor at his new Expert Insight website. And numerous other high-profile pros and posters -- not to mention all of the poker media reporting on his dazzling yet undocumented rise to the highest-stakes games -- readily bought in as well.

Sure, in some ways the story resembled that of Isildur1, Cates, and others. And all the various “vouching” going on by others with regard to Macedo played a significant role here as well. But without screen names or any confirmation of accounts played by Macedo, how does it happen that so many accepted his story as legitimate?

Interestingly, it seems as though the great majority of interactions with Macedo took place over Skype or via other online methods of communication -- i.e., there was little face-to-face contact with him by anyone involved, including his most vocal endorsers. Thus does this story demonstrate how the “virtual” world of online communication provides ready opportunities for the creation of personas as well as the potential to build elaborate fictions that are plausible enough to be regarded as fact.

My third observation is simply to reiterate a point already made by others with regard to the “Girah” saga. Without regulation, online poker will certainly continue to attract scammers and others looking to take advantage of a still highly vulnerable environment for financial transactions. Even with regulation, attempts by some to cheat and/or angle-shoot will (unfortunately) remain “part of the game,” although one would hope the chances of their getting away with such would be reduced.

The story made me wonder what exactly “girah” meant, and so I looked it up. Used to refer to a unit of measurement (in India and Pakistan), though with the metric system it is no longer used. Can also refer to a short passage that has been inserted into a song, often an allusion to another song (a kind of “sampling,” one could say).

But apparently the word also literally means “knot,” which I guess would be the most appropriate reference here. A lot of untangling yet to be done with regard to the “Girah” story.

Also a good way to refer to online poker, generally speaking, circa summer 2011. One big messy knot.