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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.)

Something for the Short Stacks

Online poker players falling into the “micro” or “low” stakes groups probably noticed a few tourney series happening in March that include events that potentially jibe with our short-stacked budgets.

The one over on the Merge network of sites, called Poker Maximus, started a couple of days ago and features 70 different events over the next three weeks. A lot of these tournaments have small entry fees which encourage those of us with tiny rolls on the sites to participate.

The first Poker Maximus event happened on Sunday, a $10+$1 no-limit hold’em tourney that had a $15,000 guarantee. A total of 5,055 entered, which meant a prize pool of more than $50K, with the winner earning a cool $7,384.85. Looks like there are about 15 more of these $11 buy-in events, as well as a few with smaller buy-ins, too. Meanwhile, other events go as big as $200+$15, with a $500+$30 one at the end.

I’ve mentioned before I do have a little bit of scratch on two Merge sites, Carbon and Hero, having won my rolls there in freebies last year (post-Black Friday). I continue to toil for pennies and nickels on both sites. Occasionally I’ll hover the cursor over my opponents’ avatars to see what countries they are from, and invariably all or nearly all are United States players. Not surprising, given how Americans looking for where to play poker online have so few options.

I’ll probably risk a few bucks here and there to play in a couple of these Poker Maximus events, although I’ll need to be careful not to risk so much as to find myself out on my gluteus maximus should I bust.

Another series even more squarely aimed at the micros is the one recently announced by PokerStars, the MicroMillions (which, sadly, we Yanks cannot play). That one will feature 100 different events with buy-ins ranging from $1 to $22, including a $0.11 rebuy tourney to kick it off.

The Stars series will run from March 15th through March 25th. Here’s the full schedule, if you’re curious. You know they’ll be attracting some monstrous fields -- way, way bigger than the Merge ones -- meaning some decent prize money despite the low buy-ins. There will also be an ongoing leaderboard with the top 100 performers winning additional goodies, including $109 SCOOP tickets (11th-100th), $1,000 SCOOP tickets (2nd-10th), and a full 2013 PCA package for the 1st-place finisher.

This would be the sort of series I would’ve loved to play if it had come around on PokerStars a year earlier. Indeed, just about all of my multi-table tourney play online has been of the low buy-in, big-field variety, which really is one of the cooler things online poker can provide that makes it different from live poker.

Finally, the eighth annual Grand Series of Poker is happening right now over on Betfair Poker, another site unavailable to us Yanks. This one began last week and will be continuing through March 11, and features 18 different events covering a variety of games and buy-ins.

And for the short-stacked types, there is a parallel "Mini-GSOP" happening at the same time in which the same events are playing out in which all of the buy-ins range from $5.50 to $22. My buddy Matthew Pitt is playing all 18 of the events (in both the regular GSOP and the Mini version) and writing about his experiences over on the Betfair Poker blog.

Meanwhile I will have to settle for a few, carefully chosen shots in the Merge series, though, where we Americans play with those additional, vague worries about cashing out should we win. Not to mention the site remaining open to us, period.

Bodog Catcher

Nearly a year after the Black Friday indictments -- and a long, long time since the feds first took an interest in Calvin Ayre and his Bodog gambling website -- Bodog’s dot-com domain was seized yesterday by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. And this morning we have learned that Ayre has been indicted for operating an illegal gambling business offering sports betting and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

News of the domain seizure came last night, about two months after Bodog had shuffled everyone over to its new Bovada.lv site where Americans continue to play anonymous poker and bet on sports unimpeded.

It was just a few hours ago that news of the Ayre indictment being unsealed appeared over on Forbes. According to Nathan Vardi, the U.S. Attorney in Baltimore is charging Ayre with having violated Maryland state law by running (with others) his illegal gambling business “from June 2005 to January 2012.” Vardi explains that the indictment also highlights the moving of funds to and from various international accounts as well as “the hiring of media resellers and advertisers to promote Internet gambling.”

The fact that the feds have finally gotten to the point of acting with regard to Ayre and Bodog is noteworthy. Indeed, for a lot of observers one of the early follow-up thoughts regarding the Black Friday indictment and civil complaint targeting PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute/UB was “What about Bodog?”

The feds had seized funds from accounts being used by Bodog way back in 2008, and of course had been watching the site long before that. And even if Bodog was small scale, poker-wise, there was the sports betting. But it took 10-plus more months for any action against Bodog to arrive.

It will be interesting, of course, to see whether or not these moves will preface further efforts by the U.S. government to deal with Bovada’s continued acceptance of U.S. bets, or if their last-minute move back in December will successfully shield the operation from any interruption of service.

Some are responding to the news about Bodog and Ayre with cries of “Merge is next,” although it seems like the fact that Bodog/Bovada has always offered sports betting makes it a different animal than the other, small poker-only sites continuing to serve Americans. The allegations concerning advertising are interesting, too, perhaps having to do with the continued prominence of Bodog’s sportsbook in the U.S. as well as its popularity among American sports bettors.

Merge’s days in the U.S. may well be numbered, especially if any of the cashout procedures being used by the network’s sites make them vulnerable to those conspiracy to commit money laundering and/or bank fraud charges. Recall that alarm sounded Subject:Poker last September that the “DOJ Plans Action Against Merge.” While nothing ever came of that, those whispers that were then loudly relayed apparently emanated from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland, too.

Since this Ayre indictment specifically references sports betting, the only form of online gambling unequivocally covered by the Federal Wire Act according to the DOJ’s revised opinion back in December, I don’t necessarily think this news has too much to do with the current prospects for Merge or other U.S.-facing poker sites. Other than to indicate in a general way what we already knew, namely, that the policing of online gambling continues to be of interest to prosecutors. (For more on the Ayre indictment, see Michael Gentile’s analysis over on PokerFuse.)

Still, even if the status of Merge and the other sites hasn’t changed, it remains tenuous. Maybe Bovada will post a line for us to bet on how long the remaining sites’ will last.

Still About Even

President Obama delivers his State of the Union address tonight. Pokerati Dan today is posting about the “State of the Poker Union.” I guess it’s as good a day as any to think about the state of my own online poker game.

Am still piddling away on a couple of Merge network sites from time to time, playing with those funds won via freerolls. Most nickel-and-dimin’ it at the PLO tables, or sometimes playing limit hold’em where I am also mainly just passing quarters back and forth. Occasionally I will hop into low-limit sit-n-go, though not that often. Meanwhile I’m not terribly anxious to try to deposit anywhere, as I imagine is likely the case for most U.S. players these days.

I was talking with a friend over the weekend, a recreational player who first got interested in poker after seeing it on television over recent years. He’d opened a PokerStars account a while back on which he played for play chips for a few months. He was right on the verge of making a deposit and starting to play the micros when Black Friday hit. Interestingly, he doesn’t play at all on Stars anymore, even though technically he still can in the free games.

“How do you still play online?” he asked. Not a simple question to answer.

I told him the story of winning a few bucks in freerolls on Hero and Carbon and how I’ve kind of held steady on both. I actually ran the Hero roll up to a point where I might’ve considered trying to withdraw a little, but never quite pulled the trigger. Then I fell back down to where I no longer want to try to take any out. If I even can, that is, without enduring too much hassle.

But in truth, as I’ve suggested here before a few times over the recent months, it doesn’t even feel like I’m playing the game we all enjoyed for the several years prior to last April. So when my friend asks how I am still playing, I almost feel like answering that I’m not. Not really.

If you scout around you can still find a number of online poker sites that are serving Americans. For instance over on the Cards Chat site there’s a list of poker sites that are still serving U.S. players. (Anybody ever play on Juicy Stakes?)

Actually most other poker news sites and forums have similar listings, in most cases highlighting a half-dozen or so sites in an effort to get sign-ups as affiliates. One of the more comprehensive lists (that gets updated fairly frequently) can be found over at Compatible Poker.

I did finally get around to balancing my online poker ledger for 2011 last week. Used to be I kept that stuff constantly updated after each session, but the urgency to do so has lessened considerably as the stakes got smaller and the frequency of play slowed down. Was mildly happy to find I’d ended the year in the black, although not by a lot. In fact, the final figure essentially represented just a tad more than what I’d won in those freerolls.

I think my online poker career has probably followed an arc very similar to others, with the best years coming shortly after the boom (through about 2007 or so), then things flattening out a bit after that once the UIGEA came and opponents became less plentiful (and less fishy).

The height of my graph is of course way, way below that of many, though perhaps above some, too. But the shape is probably similar, with the peak coming around the same point on the timeline.

Right now, though, at least for Americans, most of those lines are strictly horizontal. And have been for a good while.

Such is the state of things at present as we hope for online poker to revive back to life.

A Matter of Perspective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Online Poker e-MERGE-ncy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.