Online Poker in the New Year

Been perusing some of the “Top Stories of 2013” lists on the various poker sites, including PokerNews where the reintroduction of online poker in the U.S. claimed the top spot on the list. The only other online poker-related story to make that list was the one concerning the process finally getting started for Americans who played on Full Tilt Poker to petition for the return of their funds (#4).

Of the 10 “most read poker articles” on Pocket Fives during 2013 (presented in two parts: 6-10 and 1-5), none really had to do with online poker.

PokerListings did a list of “The 20 Best Moments in Poker in 2013” (20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-1), five of which concerned online poker: “Isildur1 Wins SCOOP $10k Main Event” (#20), “Online Poker Becomes Inclusive to Rec Players” (#13), “Moorman Hits $10m in Career Online Earnings” (#7), “US Full Tilt Poker Player Claims Processed” (#3), and “Online Poker Returns to US” (#1). They also threw in the release of the BET RAISE FOLD documentary (#15), which chronicles online poker’s glory days.

Meanwhile on PL’s list of “The 20 Worst Moments in Poker in 2013” (20-16, 15-11, 10-6, 5-1) six had to do with online poker: “WSOP Fails to Get Online Poker Running by Main Event” (#12), “Delays Continue in Never-Ending durrrr Challenge” (#11), “Full Tilt Poker Remission Process Drags On” (#8), “PokerStars Does Not Get NJ Approval” (#6), “Sheldon Adelson Takes Aim at Poker” (#2), and “Gus Hansen Posts Epic $8.4 Million Loss” (#1).

And of BLUFF’s Top 10 videos of the year (by the great SrslySirius) just one concerned online poker -- a funny satire about the “rogue” U.S. sites presented as a “Shamelessly Honest Online Poker Ad” -- not that the format really lends itself to reports focusing on the online game. Though it does lend itself readily to lots of grins (check all of ‘em out).

(Have to say I’ve yet to listen to the TwoPlusTwo Pokercast’s episode recounting their Top 10 list of poker stories from 2013 -- I’m looking forward to seeing how Mike and Adam constructed their list.)

Glancing at PokerScout’s rankings of online poker traffic here at the start of 2014, PokerStars predictably continues to reign supreme with about eight times the traffic of the nearest competitors with the iPoker network -- which includes sites like William Hill Poker and others -- currently leading the chase pack.

Searching the rankings for U.S.-facing sites, Bodog/Bovada continues to find a place in the upper half of the list (according to PokerScout’s best estimates). But all of the others are unsurprisingly way, way down the page, with traffic in the hundreds (or tens).

I suppose comparing these lists could be said to highlight the American-centric nature of the poker news sites (or at least the ones I tend to visit). In terms of people actually playing online poker, there aren’t too many Americans doing so. Thus stories about online poker have become predictably scarcer on the news sites on which Americans do a lot of the writing and reading. (Indeed, that the return of online poker in the U.S. has topped some lists indicates as much as well.)

That said, it’s interesting also to think about how online poker has moved away from the center of the poker world over the last several years, in particular since Black Friday. I haven’t gone back to see, but I’d wager most “top poker stories” from a few years ago were related to online poker in at least a tangential way, with the online game seemingly affecting just about every aspect of the game not that long ago.

But now online poker is over to the side, big picture-wise. Will be interesting to see if it ever returns to the center, and if so whether that happens sooner or later.

On the Exodus

These tweets, blog posts, articles, and other items relating how players are leaving the United States in order to play online poker elsewhere are starting to become increasingly prevalent. With the WSOP in the rearview and things like the World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars coming up soon (in a little over a week), more and more players are announcing that they have either already made the move or are intending to do so soon.

In just in the last few days I’ve read articles or have seen messages alluding to more than a dozen different players who have either left or are about to, among them Justin Bonomo, Steve Gross, Isaac Haxton, Jason Koon, Phil Galfond, Tom Marchese, Daniel Negreanu, and Steve O’Dwyer.

The newly-enganged, WSOP Main Event-crushing couple David “Doc” Sands and Erika Moutinho are heading out of the country as well. “Up early tomorrow lots to do before Vancouver!” tweeted Moutinho earlier this week. “Excited for a new adventure :)”

PokerStars has now added to its Frequently Asked Questions page for U.S. players a section addressing those who are moving elsewhere and trying to set themselves up with non-U.S. addresses. And you probably heard something about that “Poker Refugees” player relocation service launched by Pocket Fives a couple of weeks back.

We also keep hearing reports of the smaller online sites choosing to leave the U.S. This week it was the Poker Pros Network (PPN), one of the Cake Poker skins, that announced it was cutting loose.

Looking at PokerScout, the Merge Network of sites (including Carbon, Hero, and others) currently ranks highest as far as U.S. facing sites/networks go, although they still aren’t accepting new U.S. sign-ups at the moment. Word is they will soon reopen their doors, although with each passing day that seems increasingly uncertain. And I know Hero Poker, for example, is not planning to open things back up to U.S. players (though I’m not sure what the plan is for those of us still playing over there). Incidentally, I believe I read something else from PokerScout noting that something like 90% of the U.S. players shut out following Black Friday have not moved to play on any of these remaining sites.

For those of us remaining behind, it’s hard not to feel some misgivings about all of this poker-related movement away from the U.S. I mean, it’s all perfectly understandable, but it still feels a little like being at a party that started out awesome, then a big ugly fight broke out and now everyone is suddenly leaving.

But, well, I live here. Somebody’s gotta stay behind and clean up and deal with all this.

So I can’t really say I’m enjoying hearing all the stories of folks leaving too much. But I certainly wish them well as they embark on their new adventures.

Beyond Repair

Yesterday I mowed our lawn. As I did, the air turned cool and the sky dark. Moments after I’d finished we were hit by one of those late afternoon showers that’ll often happen during the summer months. I went inside to do a little work, then when the weather cleared I got in the car to take a short drive over to the grocery to pick up something for dinner.

I was nearly at the store when I heard a weird crunching sound coming from behind my head. Took a quick peek back as I turned into the parking lot and noticed the small back window on the left-hand side in back had been shattered. Not the big one that can be rolled down, but the little triangular one behind it.

Took me approximately one second to realize what had to have happened. We have a gravel drive, and I must have gotten too close to it at one point with the mower, thereby hurtling a rock about 15 feet or so in the car’s direction and breaking the glass.

The shamus in me did note there didn’t seem to be any water inside the back seat along with the many irregularly-shaped pieces of greenish-edged, tempered glass. But actually only about half the small window had landed in the seat there, meaning the opening was hardly big enough to allow much water in anyway.

Feeling sheepish, I drove to the far side of the lot and parked with the broken window facing away from the store. Got out and spent a short while examining the damage there, then after returning home spent some time clearing out the remaining glass and disposing of it, then fastening a plastic bag in the space.

The car is an old 1998 Saturn. Has about a million miles on it. And has been through it all. The power windows are only partially functional, and the locks don’t really work, either. We routinely travel with jugs of coolant as from time to time it’ll overheat. Additionally, the car still bears scars from having been rudely sideswiped once while parked on the street. Had to replace driver’s side mirror after that, I recall. In fact, I believe the car was technically totaled following that incident, the cost of repair (with which we never bothered) exceeding the vehicle’s worth.

The Saturn has long been demoted to second-car status. Really third-car, as we have an old diesel Ford truck available to use that’ll surely outlast it. So while I wasn’t thrilled to see what I’d done to the window, I was hardly broken up about it (pun intended).

Later on yesterday evening I listened to Adam Small, co-founder of Pocket Fives, be interviewed over on QuadJacks. I used to listen to the Pocket Fives podcast (which Small co-hosted) quite regularly, and was intrigued to hear him narrate his experiences with online poker and P5s (which launched in January 2005). (They’ve already archived the conversation over there at QuadJacks, if you’re curious.)

Most interesting were his comments about the whole affiliate/rakeback model and all of the problems that (in his view) were caused by many sites’ poor decisions regarding it. As we all know now, there were a host of serious problems/issues with online poker in the U.S. dating back to the industry’s earliest days, all of which together helped cause the wreck it’s become today.

Small also talked about how he and his colleagues had thought about selling Pocket Fives shortly after the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 was signed into law. “We were kind of at time uncomfortable with the direction the industry was going and our place in it,” he said. They did end up selling the site to PokerSourceOnline (or Protos Marketing) in 2007, I believe, though it was a long-term payment plan and Small ended up moving to Costa Rica to work with Protos, meaning he was never completely separated from P5s.

Then came Black Friday, after which it was decided that Protos would stop with the payments and just give P5s back to its original owners. Then, about a week ago, P5s finally announced it was no longer going to advertise traditional (i.e., rakeback-based) U.S.-facing sites. Commenting on that latter decision, Small noted how significantly the situation for online poker in the U.S. has changed over recent years.

“It’s gone gradually -- with a few big hits -- from a situation where five or six years ago everyone felt extremely confident about putting money into and taking money out of poker sites... [to] nowadays, in the U.S. at least, it’s a very uncomfortable process for most people to go through....”

As Small spoke, I found myself thinking about the Saturn. I thought about how, like when it was sideswiped a couple of years ago, we might not even bother to repair that window. I suppose we’ll probably at least find out what it would cost to do so, but I’m guessing when we do we’ll likely decide it’s too much.

In other words, we’ll keep driving the thing. But we ain’t fixing it anymore. No, when the time comes, it’ll have to be replaced altogether with something new.

The Ultimate UltimateBet Post

Quick show of hands. Who else here is gettin’ tired of UltimateBet? Just goes on and on, this stuff. In the last few days, I realize everywhere I look or listen I am being confronted with more UB “news.”

I’ll be completely honest. I am just about done with writing about UB. As I have mentioned before, the search stats tell me a lot of folks come around Hard-Boiled Poker looking for information on the insider cheating scandals at UltimateBet. Those that do land on a number of posts (although frankly, the real, hard information is better found on the forums and elsewhere). Those posts do provide okay summaries, though, and some point to other, better sources. These are the ones the seekers normally hit:

March 8, 2008: “Cheating ‘Scheme’ Confirmed at UltimateBet”
May 6, 2008: “Report on UltimateBet Cheating ‘Scheme’ Due Soon”
May 16, 2008: “Multiple ‘Super-Users’ Cheated on UltimateBet”
May 23, 2008: “UltimateBet Cheating Scandal Finally ‘News’ (Sort of)”
July 23, 2008: “On the Horizon: The Future of UltimateBet?”
September 18, 2008: “Former UltimateBet Owners Face $75 Million Claim”
October 1, 2008: “Hamilton, UltimateBet, & the WSOP”

Like I say, seems like over the last couple of days all I’m hearing is UltimateBet this and UltimateBet that. So here’s one last recap of the latest. Then, like I say, I may have to let this here subject go for a while. As I was writing about yesterday, I have a lot of other interests I’d like to be pursuing.

First, over the weekend I listened to the latest Pocket Fives podcast (the 12/11/08 episode), the first half of which included a brief interview with Tokwiro Enterprises Chief Operating Officer Paul Leggett.

The first three minutes of the interview involve questions about the 11/30/08 segment on 60 Minutes reporting on the insider cheating scandals Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. As he has done at length elsewhere (such as on his new UltimateBet blog), Leggett roundly dismissed the segment as “superficial,” “inaccurate,” and “biased,” adding that the producers “tried to sensationalize everything about Tokwiro and the KGC [the Kahnawake Gaming Commission].” (Not to defend UB or the KGC, but Leggett ain’t completely off-base with these charges, actually.)

Then, after a quick question about Cliff “JohnnyBax” Josephy leaving UltimateBet, the last half of the interview (five minutes or so) is taken up with talking about all the great things associated with the launch of the new Cereus network. Basically a commercial, that. Feel free to skip.

Next, on Sunday (12/13), David Sklansky started yet another enigmatic thread over in the “News, Views, and Gossip” forum on Two Plus Two which he titled “Major Player Doubts Russ Hamilton’s Guilt.”

You’ll recall Russ Hamilton, the 1994 World Series of Poker Main Event champion and a consultant-slash-possible-part-owner of UltimateBet, was specifically implicated by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission as “the main person responsible for and benefiting from the multiple cheating incidents” (from the KGC’s September 29th presser). Hamilton was also a focus of sorts for part of that 60 Minutes segment.

Ever the provocateur, Sklansky begins his post saying the player “specifically told me I can’t use his name but you all know him.” He then goes on to say that while he himself doesn’t know enough about the situation to have an opinion on the matter, this “major” player said he believed Hamilton was not, in fact, guilty (presumably) of the KGC’s charge, adding “that he [the unnamed player] believed that Russ was a convenient scapegoat for the present owners.”

For what it’s worth, Barry Greenstein hops in the thread on the second page to inform the world that what Sklansky heard wasn’t all that newsworthy. Or even gossipworthy. “People come up to me every day with their theories about why Russ wouldn't be involved or how he was too greedy and is involved,” writes Greenstein.

Then yesterday morning I saw another piece over on the Poker News Daily site (dated 12/15/08), an interview with Phil Hellmuth by Dan Cypra (also part of the PocketFives staff).

Here is the first question of the interview: “You’re the main face of Ultimate Bet. What makes the online poker site so attractive?” You can guess how the piece goes from there. (Not incidentally, the article -- like all articles on the site -- is full of affiliate links to UB.) Hooray for Hellmuth! Hooray for UltimateBet! So attractive!

Finally, I heard Annie Duke interviewed on PokerRoad Radio (the 12/14/08 episode). Unlike Hellmuth, who barely addresses the fact that the site has had “some issues,” Duke willingly discusses the situation with the PokerRoad guys.

As if to counter directly Sklansky’s second-hand report, she professes her steadfast belief in Hamilton’s guilt, saying there “isn’t any question that he’s at the center of the storm.” She hopes he ends up in jail and/or the “seventh ring in hell [with] fire and having sulphurous crap poured over [him] and fingernails pulled out and things like that.” To be fair, Duke has tongue in cheek with that last fantasy. And yes, the seventh ring of hell is the one Dante reserves for those guilty of fraud.

Duke also throws out a number of other interesting items regarding the UB scandal (though fatigue prevents me from addressing them all here). She says the company has “made everyone whole” -- i.e., has fully refunded all who were cheated. However, Duke also says other accounts involved in the cheating could still be found, though that is “unlikely.” Thus, the case isn’t necessarily “closed” and more refunds could still be made if other such accounts were discovered.

Along those lines, Duke says all players who have played on UltimateBet can request their hand histories from the site, and “we’ll send anybody who requests it their lifetime hand histories.”

I found that statement especially interesting, since back in October I did, in fact, request my lifetime hand histories from UltimateBet, and was told then that “due to the amount of information, we are not able to send you all your hand histories.” I only played on the site for about a year (perhaps less), and sporadically at that, so I cannot believe the “amount of information” for which I am asking is that overwhelming. We’re probably talking less than 10,000 hands, total. I mean, damn, when I asked PokerStars the same question they promptly sent me four years’ worth of hand histories -- over a quarter million hands!

So I thought I’d try again. Here’s an email I sent to UB this morning:



I’ll add a postscript here with their response, so I won’t have to bother with yet another post on UB. ’Cos like I say, I’d rather post about other stuff. Such as sites I like, e.g., PokerStars, where I’ll be playing in this evening’s World Blogger Championship of Online Poker event.

Okay, that’s it. UB done now.

(EDIT [added 12/17/08, 4:30 p.m.]: I heard back from UB and they tell me they are indeed willing to send me my hand histories, although the process may take up to two weeks.)

Report on UltimateBet Cheating “Scheme” Due Soon

In a post appearing on Two Plus Two this morning, one finds Nat Arem, a key figure in exposing the Absolute Poker “super-user” cheating scandal last fall, providing an update on the current status of Ultimate Bet’s internal investigation into allegations of a similar cheating “scheme” having occurred on its site.

Some may recall that the online poker site issued an “interim statement” back on March 6th in which UB announced it had “launched an extensive inquiry involving an independent third-party expert” to investigate the abnormally high win rate of a user named “NioNio.” The statement appeared to confirm that some sort of cheating “scheme” had been perpetrated, and the site promised to examine closely hand histories involving the then-deleted NioNio account as well as any other accounts that may have been involved in the scheme.

Arem, who is in contact with the “guy who is, basically, leading the investigation at UB,” says “there is significant evidence that there were superusers on Ultimate Bet as well as Absolute Poker. The evidence comes from around the same time period as the AP cheating.”

Arem expresses confidence that the current management team at UB has “done a very thorough investigation and they’re committing some very significant resources to make sure that it never happens again at AP or UB.” That being said, Arem says “If I were you, I probably wouldn’t play at UB or AP right now.”

Even if the sites both successfully clean up their acts, Arem still understands why some players may well choose never to play on either site ever again. “Make no mistake about it,” writes Arem, “there was blatant cheating on both AP and UB in 2007 and if the players never spoke up, nothing would have ever gotten refunded or fixed.”

Annie Duke, one of Ultimate Bet’s paid pros, has also weighed in on the matter this morning. It was recently announced that Duke had taken on a larger role with UB, overseeing the site’s tournament schedule and helping further promote the brand.

In a post over on Pocket Fives (from about an hour ago), Duke says she’s “satisfied with both the intent of the management team to deal honestly with the allegations, as well as with the integrity of the management team itself.” She hopes that the team will “make its findings public within the month,” or perhaps even “within two to three weeks.”

Still amazes me how little has been reported on this entire spectacle over the past two months. While much depends on what the report says, my sense is it will do little damage, relatively speaking, to Ultimate Bet.

Meanwhile, 60 Minutes apparently continues to pull together its story on the Absolute Poker scandal. (I heard Gary Wise reporting on his podcast last month he had been interviewed for the segment.) Remains to be seen whether that story will touch on the cheating that has occurred at Ultimate Bet or not. (The company that owns Absolute Poker [Blast Off Limited] bought out the company that owned Ultimate Bet [Excapsa] back in October 2006.)

In any event, as I’ve already made clear here several times, none of these reports is going to affect my relationship with either AP or UB. ’Cos I ain’t going back, no way no how.

(EDIT [added 5/7/08]: In other eyebrow-raising news, this morning the Poker King reports that yesterday's Bad Beat Jackpot winner on Ultimate Bet, a player named “dhc2lovr,” also won the BBJ back in March. The player picked up over $448K for yesterday's jackpot, and over $171K two months ago.)

WSOP to Create “Sequel” for Main Event Final Table?

Nobody likes sequels. Not really. Unless we’re talking The Godfather or Dawn of the Dead, sequels just about always disappoint.

Besides failing to live up to whatever made us like the originals, sequels also tend to change the nature of the relationship between creator and audience. I say that because usually sequels make much more explicit the commercial side of the exchange. That’s not to say, for instance, in the case of movies, making money wasn’t part of what was going on before. However, when we buy the ticket to a sequel, we enter the theater with a more conscious acknowledgement of our “consumer” status.

You’ve no doubt heard by now about the apparent plan to delay the final table of this year’s World Series of Poker Main Event until October in order to air it live (or sort of live) on ESPN. If we fans of poker weren’t sure we were mostly regarded as consumers before, we are being reminded of that pretty loudly today.

Tried not to rush to judgment on this one. But I keep thinking what is happening here is a commercially-motivated manufacturing of a weird sort of “sequel” to this year’s WSOP. And while I appreciate the earnestness of those arguing in favor of the idea, I just can’t bring myself to buy it.

I’d seen that brief bit on Michael Craig’s blog last October about such an idea, but frankly dismissed it at the time as one of those sorta-interesting-but-hopelessly-flawed schemes that might sound nice in theory but would never work in practice. Craig had been at the WSOPE talking to officials like Ty Stewart, and on October 16th Craig went ahead and shared Stewart’s having told him about the idea “to play down to the final table and then adjourn the Series” for a couple of months in order to make arrangements to air the FT live.

Craig came back the next day to relate (somewhat sheepishly) that Stewart hadn’t been too crazy about his having publicized the plan. Craig neverthless added a few more details in his second post, including some info from an email Stewart sent to him expressing a belief that he did “not believe that ESPN will dedicate more than a three hour window to the stunt” or “that a mainstream audience will have interest watching for a period longer than that anyway.”

Stewart needn’t have worried too much about Craig letting the cat out of the bag, as the whole issue essentially disappeared from public consciousness until late last week when the story again popped up in a few different places. Then Dan “Scoop” Michalski (of Pokerati) gave us all some further specifics about what might happen. In a post Saturday morning, Dan made it sound as though it were pretty much a done deal, saying that “on the big pro-con list, the left side of the board has it all but locked up.”

Says Dan, the idea will be to play down to the final nine as planned (the current schedule has that happening by July 14th), then shut ’er down for 90 days while ESPN gears up for a two-day, “plausibly live” presentation of the finale. They’ll play from nine down to two the first day, then handle heads-up the next. Officials won’t let ESPN monkey around with blind/ante structures (they say), although according to Dan, “Timing will be carefully coordinated so most people will be watching to see who will win, not how one wins (the Olympics broadcast model).”

A smart, lengthy discussion going on in the comments to that Pokerati post. They’re also buzzing about it on Two Plus Two, Pocket Fives, Card Clubs, and elsewhere. Noticed one poster on Card Clubs liken the idea to NASCAR’s season-ending, ten-race “chase” instituted a few years back. “Big sell out but huge for ratings,” he said.

You can check out them links for various arguments for and against this sucker (ain’t gonna rehearse ’em all here just now). I continue to hold out hope that despite Dan’s report, this idea ain’t gonna actually happen. As for my objections to the idea, they mostly resemble those same complaints whenever producers decide to pump out a sequel to the movie you thought was pretty damn good as it was . . .

It mucks with yr memory and/or enjoyment of the original.

It’s anticlimactic.

And it’s all about the money.

Considering the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, Preface

Now that I have moneys back in Full Tilt Poker, I was able to pony up the buy-in for my first Ante Up Intercontinental Poker Series (AIPS) event yesterday -- Event No. 5, 6-handed NL Hold ’em. Not as versed these days in the multitude of strategies needed to succeed in no limit tourneys. Still, I was somewhat satisfied with my performance (finishing 23rd out of 51 entrants). Didn’t embarrass myself, at least. Was bounced by the eventual winner, in fact, when he won a duel with ace-king versus my pocket jacks. Win that coin flip and I’m middle of the pack at least with that final table not too far in the distance.

Aside from the very first hand of the tourney -- when I was dealt pocket kings (and won a whopping 105 chips with ’em) -- I didn’t see much of anything in the way of premium hands until those jacks came around nearly an hour later. Still managed to keep my stack level by stealing blinds now and then, then built it up a bit via a couple of fortunate flops and some fortunately-timed bluffs. Looking back through on Poker Tracker, I see that in the 88 hands I played prior to the last hand, I never lost more than 350 chips on a single hand, and never won more than 650. Talk about small-pot poker. I certainly played tighter than is probably recommended for a short-handed game. Like I said, I was out of my element a bit . . . . Still, a lot of fun. I may try one or two more events here before they finally award that big banana trophy on November 4th.

Meanwhile, I’ve been looking through all of the forums and whatnot in an attempt to educate myself a bit about the impending legislation. 2+2 remains the place to go for up-to-date info. You can waste some time on certain threads, but it isn’t hard to find good reporting over there. I've listened to several of this week’s podcasts as well. Ante Up! and Pocket Fives were both particularly informative. I recommend both of ’em to anyone wanting updates and/or analyses of where things stand at present. I've read I. Nelson Rose’s analysis of the Act, the response of Allyn Jaffrey Shulman (of CardPlayer) to the Act, and even the Act itself -- i.e., Article VIII (pages 213-244) of the Safe Port Act, titled the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.” Hell, I’ve even read Bill Frist’s victory speech-slash-column offering his view of what he managed to engineer in Congress that night.

I think I now have some idea of what is going on, and even some clues about what might be happening down the road. This week I’m going to write three posts in which I’ll offer my thoughts about the Act and what it means. I’ll also be speculating a bit about how I think it might further affect my ability to play online poker (and keep a poker blog, for that matter).

The first post will talk about how the Act tries to redefine a “bet or wager.” What was passed on September 29th is a version of the Leach Act (which was a revision of the Goodlatte Act) minus that section attempting to update the 1961 Wire Act to include more than just sports betting. Even though the attempt to update the Wire Act was taken out, there remains in this new Act an attempt to redefine “bet or wager” to include not just sports betting, but also “risking . . . something of value upon the outcome of . . . a game subject to chance.” As Nelson Rose explains, that phrase “a game subject to chance” is specifically meant to include poker.

The second post will concern that part of the Act that discusses “Interactive computer services” -- a legalistic way of referring to Internet Service Providers (or ISPs). It is notable, actually, that the former name of the Act -- the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act -- was revised last week to become the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The new version of the Act that Congress passed is mostly about how to enforce what some believe to be preexisting laws forbidding online gambling. One of the mechanisms described concerns federal agents being able to order ISPs to remove internet sites that are transmitting money to gambling sites. ISPs can also be ordered to block sites with hyperlinks to gambling sites (such as the one you are reading right now).

In the third post I’ll try to assess how various poker sites reacted to what happened in Congress last week. No one saw that coming, it seems. I imagine that Bush will have signed the Act into law by the time I post that one, so we may have even more news by then to consider.

In the meantime, I’m still playing . . . . In fact, I’ll be talking about one crazy hand in particular in my next post, one that I think helps to address this notion that poker is, indeed, “a game subject to chance.”

Image: Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006.

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

An announcement relayed over on the Pocket Fives website now tells us Bush will be signing H.R. 4954 -- the so-called “Safe Ports Act” that contains as an amendment the Internet Gambling Enforcement Act -- into law on Friday, October 13th. Well, ain’t that killer?

In the meantime, I might well stick a few more funds back into Full Tilt Poker with which to reanimate my angry chicken avatar. I’ll stay with Stars for awhile, too. I suppose I’ll be letting the Party go on without me.

I’m a little bummed because I missed out on Party Poker’s September reload bonus that expired earlier this week. Having heard the news that Party would be cutting off us Americans, I decided not to take advantange by making a deposit (on 10/2), fearing the plug would be pulled before I would have been able to play the requisite number of hands. Now I see I could have made it. Sort of like laying down your club flush draw on the turn, then seeing that fifth club appear on the river after you’re out.

Even though neither Stars nor FTP have made their plans known, I still think at least Stars likely will be cutting us Yanks loose once the Act is signed. Less sure about FTP, but I ain’t too optimistic. I’ve seen some of these movies. For most of the cast, they usually don’t end well . . . .

Image: Friday the 13th - The Final Chapter (1984) (adapted), Amazon.

Funny Business

All grins here at Hard-Boiled Poker just now. Had some SNG successes today -- something I haven’t really even tried in months -- which is always fun. (Will write about that in the next post.) Also in the past few weeks I’ve come across some poker-related raillery I thought it might be time to share. The yuks begin paragraph after next, so get ready to start laughin’ . . . .

A little while back I finally found Pocket Fives, a website devoted to online poker that’s been around since early 2005. They host a very active forum, post articles containing strategy advice and other items of interest, and produce a highly-listenable weekly podcast. Even though the site has been up and running for less than two years, Pocket Fives has already built up a significant presence not just online but in the poker world at large. Several regular contributers to the Pocket Fives’ forums achieved major success at this year’s WSOP, including three who won bracelets: Jon Friedberg (Pokertrip) in the $1,000 NLH event (Event No. 17), Ian Johns (Ian J) in the $3,000 LH event (Event No. 23), and Scott Clements (JRAvila) in the $3,000 Omaha 8/b event (Event No. 24). Also, back in April there was a bit of a dust-up when Full Tilt Poker sent out one of its regular “Tips from the Pros” containing material plagiarized from a Pocket Fives post. The pro in question was Clonie Gowen, and her tip about playing re-buy tourneys contained an entire paragraph taken almost verbatim from a post by jsup on Pocket Fives. (Here’s a well-written summary of the sordid affair posted on the poker blog O-Town.)

The July 20th episode of the Pocket Fives podcast features a couple of interviews. One is with WSOP bracelet-winner Friedberg (who sounds like an intelligent, likable guy). The other is with someone introduced as “one of the funniest posters ever to grace the site,” a fellow who goes by the name of “BigHems.” His post “OMG?!?! YOU LIKED THE LAST ONE THIS ONE IS 83957894x WORSE!” won the site’s award for funniest post of 2005. Here’s the post followed by all the responses. Check it out.

Here are a few other funnies I’ve come across lately (via forums and blogs): Click here for undisputable proof that online poker is rigged. Click here to read a list of ways to know when you’re running bad. Click here to see one of those hilarious online poker videos by TuffFish (the guy who rants himself into a stupor while playing NL online at Party). Click here to read an old thread on the 2+2 Forums begun by a enterprising young man soliciting advice about starting his own home casino. And finally, click here to see Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show explain H.R. 4111, that version of the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act passed by the House last month.

Hope them links all worked for ya. Remember, when in doubt, do like BigHems and go all in to see where you’re at.