Now here's a site that I won't have anything to do with any longer: The Gaming Club Poker Room [often abbreviated TGC]. Customer service is extremely poor here, the promotions poorly explained and containing hidden catches, and in sum, it's just not worth the hassle. TGC is part of the Belle Rock Gaming family, which also includes the River Belle and Lucky Nugget poker houses. The three sites are closely tied together, so accepting a promotional offer or participating in a program on one of the three sites precludes you from a similar other on one of the others. I'd say don't bother: Go ahead and skip all three.
As a mostly unabashed poker whore (though I do play on my preferred sites, regardless of offers), I decided to give TGC a tumble. I signed up through one of their packages, having been promised a cumulative bonus of $300 if I accumulated enough raked-hands action at various levels. Immediately upon making my deposit I had some twinges of concern: The sign-up process did not match the instructions given to put the promised bonus into effect.
That said, my original doubts seemed unwarranted: I was indeed registered into the intended bonus program. However, it stands in retrospect as an early indicator of the later and larger problems I would encounter.
I went ahead and began chopping off sections of the bonus, playing my favorite, the low-risk fixed-limit games at $0.50/1.00, $1.00/2.00, and $2.00/$4.00. On occassion I noted the receipt of an e-mail notifying me that I had earned a $20 chunk of my bonus, and on occasion --- but not always at the same time --- I noticed that my bankroll had indeed been incremented upward.
Now, what happens when a new promotional program is implemented by a site? Traditionally, one of two things happen: either (1) the original promotional terms remain in effect; or (2) the participant is "grandfathered" into the new program. TGC's new program involved --- still involves --- as this is written --- the awarding of a $50 bonus for playing at least 350 raked hands at a high level: $1.00/$2.00 for pot- and no-limit, and $2.00/$4.00 for fixed.
Was I eligible? Well, one would think so; not only was the program presented to me in a customized front-page promotional blurb, but there was also a customized counter for that promotion, counting exactly how many hands I had played. Direct incentive to keep playing those higher-limit hands, right?
As an aside, note the following: this bonus was much more difficult to clear than it seems. The Prima Network has a dearth of action at higher levels of fixed-limit play; perhaps half the time, there wasn't even a full-table 2/4 game to be found. But plug away I did. I cleared my 350 raked hands, and then the front-page screen changed, per TGC's custom-for-user front-page programming: The new front-page replaced the counter with a link to a page that allowed me to submit a form for claim processing through TGC's customer service department.
So I did... and waited... and waited... and waited some more. And after several days, I contacted TGC's customer service in a separate e-mail to find out what was up.
TGC responded thusly --- that I was ineligible for the promotion because I had not made a deposit during their special promotion period. Of course, I had checked the promotional fine print: if a notice of required deposit was there, I couldn't find it. I was then reminded to check their ToC and note the part where it said "only one promotion per customer, original rules apply,..." --- blah-de-blah-blah. Sure enough, that was there, but so was the counterbalancing entry: [TGC] reserves the right to end, begin or replace promotions at any time. That's paraphrased, not quoted.
To make a long story short, TGC denied my bonus but never bothered to notify me of the denial, let alone why, until long after my followup contact --- and their reasons as to "why" continuing evolving to this day. When I learned of the denial, I asked them why their programming would show me customized content showing me my continued eligibilty and progress, if they never had any intention of paying it to begin with. Then the TGC programmers entered the fray.
Lordy, the bullshit started running deeper and deeper, beginning with the standard spew about how they had never, ever received any reports of a programming error of this nature. That's the standard first line of defense for any programming-error issue; it's sort of the modern version of the classic "Bed Bug" letter that marked railroad travel (and complaints) of the 19th century. But back to TGC. The person who contacted me (not the first, at this point!) had also sent instructions on how to do a screen grab, informing me that I needed to send them a screen grab of the original front-page screen showing the promotion and raked-hands information, so they could properly investigate.
I try to maintain professional dignity when conducting e-mails, but I lost it at this. I pointed out to the programmer that his code had changed after I cleared the 350 raked hands, making that code inaccessible and unviewable at this time. I also pointed out the obvious: that if he actually understood how his own code worked and updated itself, he wouldn't have made, as I put it, such "a fucking moronic request".
As long as I was on a roll, I went ahead and blasted away concerning other specifics of some of the earlier e-mails we traded. One point had to do with the administration of the bonus chunks I had previously been paid. This respondent claimed that I had been awarded seven (7) separate $20 bonus payments; I checked the "Poker" folder of my e-mail (I keep all that stuff), and found exactly three (3) corresponding notices.
The response was, essentially, that since some of the $20 bonuses were processed concurrently, separate notices were not sent. Are you kidding me, Gaming Club? The mind reels. I play multiple tables at any hour of the day --- I never know exactly how much is in my bankroll (though I have a darned good approximation in my head) at any given moment. I need those notices to help me keep track of my progress, both toward a given bonus and of my bankroll in general. Or is the admittedly intentional omission of notices a part of this crappy site's business plan, too? Perhaps they'll induce more unnecessary and unwarranted table action by "forgetting" to send out timely notifications on goal-oriented achievements?
Understand this, too: TGC processes no withdrawal requests or bonus payouts with undue haste. The minimum I've seen is slightly under 72 hours, and the maximum is... err... open to interpretation.
Well, anyhow, I told them I was withdrawing my bankroll, and told them I'd be heading off for safer, more truthful pastures. I've received two e-mails since then, each reaffirming that even though their programming may have been in error, I was still ineligible for the $50 bonus as promoted. They also apologized, etcetera, etcetera. Tough boobies.
I accepted the apology from the respondent on a personal basis, but said that as far as TGC, in general, was concerned, they could still go to hell. I don't do business with firms that don't step up and acceptable the responsibility and consequences of their own actions. This despite the fact that even by their own calculations, I'm still due at least one more $20 bonus payment. I'm not holding my damn breath....
Heh. I could tell you about the "Happy Hour" promotion that guarantees that winners will be announced "in the software," but doesn't, yet at some point it becomes a matter of beating a dead horse to death just because you like the sound of flies buzzing. TGC's programming, promotions and customer-service departments appear to operate quite independently of one another. This is part of a general business recipe: just sprinkle with cluelessness and watch the disaster unfold, like too-yeasty bread dough oozing over the sides of the pan.
The Gaming Club Poker Room and (by extension) Belle Rock Gaming should be avoided. You can find similar offers elsewhere, as well as action on the Prima Network, if that's your preference. But use your head: Don't reward a company's inept business practices and bad behavior with your good money.
Or as I said to TGC...
Finis.
Monday, March 13, 2006
SITE REVIEW - BET365 POKER (Prima Skin)
Then there's Bet365poker, a multi-action betting destination whose poker portion seems to be on a rising arc within the greater arc of the Prima Poker family. Bet365 is an aggressive, flashy player: it does about as much as can be expected with its overlay of the standard Prima game engine, with one of the nicest graphic packages and cleanest looks it can derive.
Our standard disclaimer applies: Examining the differences between competing Prima skins usually boils down to looking at the bonus and promotional programs, plus customer service. Bet365' basically has only one signup offer, although it allows most new customers to add $50 to their bankroll with relative ease. If you have bankroll concerns --- who doesn't? --- this pushes Bet365 quite high on the list of new sites to visit; the quick access to a bonus $50 gives you a safety margin to work against if your poker skills aren't as sharp as you'd like. And if your poker skills are good? Guess you just made fifty smackeroos, sharky.
Bet365 is a hit-and-git venture for the most hardcore of the poker whores; since they have traditionally had no reload offers of note, these players tend to flee quickly for greener pastures. However, Bet365 has recently introduced some retention programs that should increase their customer loyalty, including an attractive offer (September '05) that just netted this Bet365 customer an extra $100. Frankly, I'm glad I gave them a chance and kept giving them some action --- they rewarded my loyalty quite generously.
Bet365 also tosses in some nice freerolls, including a weekly $5,000 giveaway that requires nothing more than an active and open account, and a monthly $25,000 freeroll that requires only 250 qualifying raked hands (easy to do) in the previous calendar month. This is on top of the already generous base Prima freerolls. I always find time to play a few laps on Bet365; you should think about it, too.
Customer service? I'd rate it as average-to-above-average among the Prima skins. A mild complaint has to do with withdrawal processing: Since this is done manually and typically includes a two- or three-day wait, it would be nice if when they do get around to processing and paying your withdrawal, they could send you an automated e-mail telling you it's been sent. But no payment happens instantly; as with any of the Prima skins, all the bonuses are also manually calculated and paid, which places pressure on customer-support people as requests fluctuate. Still, Bet365 has an acceptable, if not speedy, turnaround.
(Author's note: I need to add an addendum here --- Bet365's cashout services have been much improved, and I've had a couple that were processed instantaneously. That's just downright excellent.)
Give 'em a try. Maybe you'll cash in, cash out, move on, drop some acid --- I believe the author has just dated herself on that one. (Your humble author has never dropped acid, by the way.) Bet365 gets a passing grade: stop on in.
Our standard disclaimer applies: Examining the differences between competing Prima skins usually boils down to looking at the bonus and promotional programs, plus customer service. Bet365' basically has only one signup offer, although it allows most new customers to add $50 to their bankroll with relative ease. If you have bankroll concerns --- who doesn't? --- this pushes Bet365 quite high on the list of new sites to visit; the quick access to a bonus $50 gives you a safety margin to work against if your poker skills aren't as sharp as you'd like. And if your poker skills are good? Guess you just made fifty smackeroos, sharky.
Bet365 is a hit-and-git venture for the most hardcore of the poker whores; since they have traditionally had no reload offers of note, these players tend to flee quickly for greener pastures. However, Bet365 has recently introduced some retention programs that should increase their customer loyalty, including an attractive offer (September '05) that just netted this Bet365 customer an extra $100. Frankly, I'm glad I gave them a chance and kept giving them some action --- they rewarded my loyalty quite generously.
Bet365 also tosses in some nice freerolls, including a weekly $5,000 giveaway that requires nothing more than an active and open account, and a monthly $25,000 freeroll that requires only 250 qualifying raked hands (easy to do) in the previous calendar month. This is on top of the already generous base Prima freerolls. I always find time to play a few laps on Bet365; you should think about it, too.
Customer service? I'd rate it as average-to-above-average among the Prima skins. A mild complaint has to do with withdrawal processing: Since this is done manually and typically includes a two- or three-day wait, it would be nice if when they do get around to processing and paying your withdrawal, they could send you an automated e-mail telling you it's been sent. But no payment happens instantly; as with any of the Prima skins, all the bonuses are also manually calculated and paid, which places pressure on customer-support people as requests fluctuate. Still, Bet365 has an acceptable, if not speedy, turnaround.
(Author's note: I need to add an addendum here --- Bet365's cashout services have been much improved, and I've had a couple that were processed instantaneously. That's just downright excellent.)
Give 'em a try. Maybe you'll cash in, cash out, move on, drop some acid --- I believe the author has just dated herself on that one. (Your humble author has never dropped acid, by the way.) Bet365 gets a passing grade: stop on in.
SITE REVIEW - PRIMA POKER
Familiar with the Prima site, that online house of many skins? (Note: If you don't know what a "skin" is, you're behind the curve. Check out some of the major online info or bonus-whoring sites for more, and for reviews on the few Prima skins that I've played, click on the associated link on the right.)
The core of the online poker engine that defines Prima comes to the user via any of the following, each a skin that connects (by way of a software overlay) to the core software engine that is the backbone of the Prima Poker Network. These skins include Royal Vegas, Bet365, The Gaming Club, Aztec Riches, Expekt, and on, and on, ad infinitum. Each of these skins has the same core look and functionality, though each dresses up the game engine with its own distinctive color scheme and a unique package of bonus offers. Chances are you know this. Despite the wide variety of access routes -- meaning these skins -- the traffic isn't huge at Prima. Peak hours skew toward European users as much as any of the major sites, perhaps excepting the Crypto family, though there's still a strong North American base most times of the day. Game selection is no better than average.
By way of explaining, Prima offers a standard mix of game and wage choices, though much of it is a mirage: I've played over 10,000 hands here, and I'll opine that 90% or more of the traffic is your plain ol' everyday run-o'-the-mill hold-'em player. Omaha, 7-Stud, and 5-Stud are offered --- (Hi/Lo) on both the Omaha and 7-Stud, too --- but the problem is that there's seldom a selection of active games actually being played. There's nothing like Razz or Pineapple here, and one can't blame Prima: If their theoretically more popular game choices go so underutilized, why should they program for the tiny niches?
General Prima plusses? There are several. First, Prima offers a wide variety of generous sign-up and reload offers through its various skins. Pick and choose as you wish; I started with Royal Vegas, a solid starting point. However, be sure to read the fine print: Some of these sites carry hidden baggage, such as the only-once-per-month withdrawal options on Bet365 and Aztec Riches, or the fact that many of the offers only kick in above certain play levels, often $0.50/1 for NL and $2/4 for fixed. (These tend to be more of an issue from one skin to the next, and will be dealt with in those reviews as applicable.) Yet overall, the cutoff values needed for bonus-carving expose a general Prima problem, at least for fixed-limit players: There are times when one would like to work to clear said bonus, but no game is currently being played, anywhere on Prima, at that limit or higher. Such is life when you're not the biggest kid on the block.
Second, you'll find the occasionally lucrative freebies on Prima more common --- and more lucrative, all told --- than anywhere else. Prima's freerolls, in whole, are second to none: There is actually enough money in these to be worth playing as often as possible. And Prima tosses in things like bad-beat jackpots (relatively low thresholds and frequent payouts), a daily high-hand jackpot (so call down with that made royal, ya doof!), and my favorite, a "Magic Hand" jackpot of $2,500 awarded to a table every 4,000,000th hand. That sounds impregnable, but with a little bit of play you'll learn when that jackpot is awarded: Your odds of sharing in it, if seated and active, might be better than 1 in 500 when that magic hand rolls around. And as the recipient of $156 from one lucky sit-down, I should know!
Third, the mini-screens, found only here and (I believe) at UltimateBet, are to my mind one of the nicest online innovations we've seen. Once you've adapted to the look, rest assured that not only will it be easier, compared to other sites, to keep tabs on two or more tables; you'll also take accidental betting actions less frequently, due to the lack of screen overlaps.
Fourth, chat is more tightly monitored here than on any other major site. I see this as a plus. I detest unpatrolled sites where the chat window becomes a penis-wagging contest with layers upon layers of curses inflicted upon the other players, varying from raw anger to the cheapest possible attempt at intimidation. Nice try, suckers; I don't like it but I don't tilt from it, either. (Even worse, by the way, is a site like Crypto where you can't even easily turn the crap off.) Chat should be for the enjoyment --- read: added entertainment value --- of the players, not allowed to devolve to the lowest common denominator of human communications. Hear that, Pacific?
Minuses? As mentioned, the action isn't as diverse as it seems, and there's a strong emphasis here on shorthanded games. That last may be a plus to an action junkie, but moi, tight and conservative player that aye izz, prefers to settle into the flow of a more traditional 9- or 10-handed game. Also, Prima and its component skins do go overboard on the software updates, often as much on the front-end wrapping paper as on the game functionality itself. Prima's a bit of the HotDog HTML editor of online poker sites; perhaps it's a directive to site programmers, to be able to prove that they are indeed Doing Something! (As an aside, I gave up on HotDog years ago, when that site's overhauls were more frequent than my visits ... and I was a business user. Damn better things to do than re-navigate a site every three weeks when my paid-for macros weren't even integrated properly. So there, you pack of over-geeky Aussies, take that! Grrr.)
But Prima's not that bad ... yet ... though the Labor Day '05 "upgrade" seems a bit of the opposite: my old boat-anchor/computer now seems incapable of running three tables at once, though it could before. (Reports from other users indicate that Prima's current programming has a significant memory leak, causing users' computers to run slower the longer they're in active use.) Worse, an ordinary computer now hangs and lags with only two tables in play, simply unacceptable for me. I've had freezes of 30 seconds or longer in recent weeks, resulting in auto-folds and other worse-than-death horrors. One hopes that Prima and other sites write their software to be servicable for the majority of computer users, rather than only those running the latest high-end machines. After all, obsolescence is so ugly down here in the "charity" bracket.
Cashing in, cashing out: Average to slightly slow, with a larger degree of variance than I've found elsewhere. Bonus payouts are erratic from one skin to the next, depending, one supposes, on the current workload of that skin's customer-service staff... or dedication to customer service in general. The vast majority of payouts are manually processed and paid, which explains some of the lag and occasional oversights. One irritant is that withdrawals are processed through a separate server (per each skin's own financial setup), which is, on occasion, inscrutably inaccessible. Despite this, your bankroll amount is always available, always up-to-date ... if you know how to do it. Hint: It's often easier to view your bankroll by pretending to join a table than by actually visiting the banking area. Weird, huh?
Having fun: Lots of low-entry tournaments here. Plenty of sit-'n'-go action, and even "rounders" and "Monte Carlo" formats for the adventurous. Good stuff, though bad beats in a rounders tourney suck even worse than they do in freezeouts, for some reason. Though the chat is actively monitored, on occasion the table censors get overzealous [see sidebar at lower right]. Most of these poor, bored POKERMGR-assigned souls are reasonably cool, however, and they can occasionally be baited into joining a conversation. Thus, typeth this: "Hey, all, do you know how to make a POKERMGR go crazy?"
Prima allows each player to complete their own "Player Profile," with options to upload a photo and a handful of boring information nuggets, but most players don't, and most of those that do don't have anything important to say. A nice idea, plus points for the effort, but hardly a necessity.
Valium Needed --- Ha-a-a-lp!!
In net lingo, LOL. As noted in the main review, Prima's site operators are by far the most proactive when it comes to policing the user chat taking place on their system. Among the no-no's are cussin', sellin' stuff, advertisin' othah sites, and speakin' in tongues --- that being anything other than English. I watched someone get their chat priveleges revoked simply for sassing back to the POKERMGR (the Prima operator who monitors saveral tables at once) in Swedish. Well, okay... maybe being called a "lutefisk heinie" is grounds for suspension.
That said, on occasion the POKERMGRs do go above and beyond and beyond and beyond some more. The following is a re-creation of an exchange between me, a couple of other players, and the POKERMGR in charge of monitoring our chat one moonlit evening in late August, 2005. Dialogue is paraphrased, not quoted, but if Prima sent me the chat log, I'd be most happy to reproduce it verbatim; it would not vary in amy meaningful way from what you'll see below. I've also omitted junk such as the hand summaries, to ease your boredom:
Player A: I was checking out some reviews on that (poker-related topic) yesterday.
Player B: Yes, I try keeping notes on things and putting them on my site.
Player A: Where's it at?
Me: What's the address?
Player B: It's at www.billfillmaff.com.
POKERMGR: Please refrain from advertising or your chat priveleges may be suspended.
Me: POKERMGR, get a clue. You have know way of knowing whether that's a commercial site or not.
Player B: It's not. I don't sell anything there. I own the site.
[short lapse of a hand or so here]
Player A: Yeah, I was on Party the other day and it was crazy wild.
Me: If you want low variance, Party can drive you absolutely nuts.
Player B: Yup
POKERMGR: Please refrain from advertising or your chat priveleges may be suspended.
Me: Please read for content, POKERMGR. If you read what we typed, you would clearly see that it wasn't advertising.
POKERMGR: When we see the word party typed, it usually refers to another poker site.
Me: Indeed it did --- but we were not talking about that site in a positive way.
POKERMGR: We do not allow either positive or negative advertising. (Methinks: What in the hell is "negative advertising"?!?!?)
Me: I guess we can tell each other "Nice hand" and ask how the weather is?
POKERMGR: That would be fine, yes.
Me: That was sarcasm, POKERMGR.
Funny thing, POKERMGR went silent after that. :-)
The core of the online poker engine that defines Prima comes to the user via any of the following, each a skin that connects (by way of a software overlay) to the core software engine that is the backbone of the Prima Poker Network. These skins include Royal Vegas, Bet365, The Gaming Club, Aztec Riches, Expekt, and on, and on, ad infinitum. Each of these skins has the same core look and functionality, though each dresses up the game engine with its own distinctive color scheme and a unique package of bonus offers. Chances are you know this. Despite the wide variety of access routes -- meaning these skins -- the traffic isn't huge at Prima. Peak hours skew toward European users as much as any of the major sites, perhaps excepting the Crypto family, though there's still a strong North American base most times of the day. Game selection is no better than average.
By way of explaining, Prima offers a standard mix of game and wage choices, though much of it is a mirage: I've played over 10,000 hands here, and I'll opine that 90% or more of the traffic is your plain ol' everyday run-o'-the-mill hold-'em player. Omaha, 7-Stud, and 5-Stud are offered --- (Hi/Lo) on both the Omaha and 7-Stud, too --- but the problem is that there's seldom a selection of active games actually being played. There's nothing like Razz or Pineapple here, and one can't blame Prima: If their theoretically more popular game choices go so underutilized, why should they program for the tiny niches?
General Prima plusses? There are several. First, Prima offers a wide variety of generous sign-up and reload offers through its various skins. Pick and choose as you wish; I started with Royal Vegas, a solid starting point. However, be sure to read the fine print: Some of these sites carry hidden baggage, such as the only-once-per-month withdrawal options on Bet365 and Aztec Riches, or the fact that many of the offers only kick in above certain play levels, often $0.50/1 for NL and $2/4 for fixed. (These tend to be more of an issue from one skin to the next, and will be dealt with in those reviews as applicable.) Yet overall, the cutoff values needed for bonus-carving expose a general Prima problem, at least for fixed-limit players: There are times when one would like to work to clear said bonus, but no game is currently being played, anywhere on Prima, at that limit or higher. Such is life when you're not the biggest kid on the block.
Second, you'll find the occasionally lucrative freebies on Prima more common --- and more lucrative, all told --- than anywhere else. Prima's freerolls, in whole, are second to none: There is actually enough money in these to be worth playing as often as possible. And Prima tosses in things like bad-beat jackpots (relatively low thresholds and frequent payouts), a daily high-hand jackpot (so call down with that made royal, ya doof!), and my favorite, a "Magic Hand" jackpot of $2,500 awarded to a table every 4,000,000th hand. That sounds impregnable, but with a little bit of play you'll learn when that jackpot is awarded: Your odds of sharing in it, if seated and active, might be better than 1 in 500 when that magic hand rolls around. And as the recipient of $156 from one lucky sit-down, I should know!
Third, the mini-screens, found only here and (I believe) at UltimateBet, are to my mind one of the nicest online innovations we've seen. Once you've adapted to the look, rest assured that not only will it be easier, compared to other sites, to keep tabs on two or more tables; you'll also take accidental betting actions less frequently, due to the lack of screen overlaps.
Fourth, chat is more tightly monitored here than on any other major site. I see this as a plus. I detest unpatrolled sites where the chat window becomes a penis-wagging contest with layers upon layers of curses inflicted upon the other players, varying from raw anger to the cheapest possible attempt at intimidation. Nice try, suckers; I don't like it but I don't tilt from it, either. (Even worse, by the way, is a site like Crypto where you can't even easily turn the crap off.) Chat should be for the enjoyment --- read: added entertainment value --- of the players, not allowed to devolve to the lowest common denominator of human communications. Hear that, Pacific?
Minuses? As mentioned, the action isn't as diverse as it seems, and there's a strong emphasis here on shorthanded games. That last may be a plus to an action junkie, but moi, tight and conservative player that aye izz, prefers to settle into the flow of a more traditional 9- or 10-handed game. Also, Prima and its component skins do go overboard on the software updates, often as much on the front-end wrapping paper as on the game functionality itself. Prima's a bit of the HotDog HTML editor of online poker sites; perhaps it's a directive to site programmers, to be able to prove that they are indeed Doing Something! (As an aside, I gave up on HotDog years ago, when that site's overhauls were more frequent than my visits ... and I was a business user. Damn better things to do than re-navigate a site every three weeks when my paid-for macros weren't even integrated properly. So there, you pack of over-geeky Aussies, take that! Grrr.)
But Prima's not that bad ... yet ... though the Labor Day '05 "upgrade" seems a bit of the opposite: my old boat-anchor/computer now seems incapable of running three tables at once, though it could before. (Reports from other users indicate that Prima's current programming has a significant memory leak, causing users' computers to run slower the longer they're in active use.) Worse, an ordinary computer now hangs and lags with only two tables in play, simply unacceptable for me. I've had freezes of 30 seconds or longer in recent weeks, resulting in auto-folds and other worse-than-death horrors. One hopes that Prima and other sites write their software to be servicable for the majority of computer users, rather than only those running the latest high-end machines. After all, obsolescence is so ugly down here in the "charity" bracket.
Cashing in, cashing out: Average to slightly slow, with a larger degree of variance than I've found elsewhere. Bonus payouts are erratic from one skin to the next, depending, one supposes, on the current workload of that skin's customer-service staff... or dedication to customer service in general. The vast majority of payouts are manually processed and paid, which explains some of the lag and occasional oversights. One irritant is that withdrawals are processed through a separate server (per each skin's own financial setup), which is, on occasion, inscrutably inaccessible. Despite this, your bankroll amount is always available, always up-to-date ... if you know how to do it. Hint: It's often easier to view your bankroll by pretending to join a table than by actually visiting the banking area. Weird, huh?
Having fun: Lots of low-entry tournaments here. Plenty of sit-'n'-go action, and even "rounders" and "Monte Carlo" formats for the adventurous. Good stuff, though bad beats in a rounders tourney suck even worse than they do in freezeouts, for some reason. Though the chat is actively monitored, on occasion the table censors get overzealous [see sidebar at lower right]. Most of these poor, bored POKERMGR-assigned souls are reasonably cool, however, and they can occasionally be baited into joining a conversation. Thus, typeth this: "Hey, all, do you know how to make a POKERMGR go crazy?"
Prima allows each player to complete their own "Player Profile," with options to upload a photo and a handful of boring information nuggets, but most players don't, and most of those that do don't have anything important to say. A nice idea, plus points for the effort, but hardly a necessity.
Valium Needed --- Ha-a-a-lp!!
In net lingo, LOL. As noted in the main review, Prima's site operators are by far the most proactive when it comes to policing the user chat taking place on their system. Among the no-no's are cussin', sellin' stuff, advertisin' othah sites, and speakin' in tongues --- that being anything other than English. I watched someone get their chat priveleges revoked simply for sassing back to the POKERMGR (the Prima operator who monitors saveral tables at once) in Swedish. Well, okay... maybe being called a "lutefisk heinie" is grounds for suspension.
That said, on occasion the POKERMGRs do go above and beyond and beyond and beyond some more. The following is a re-creation of an exchange between me, a couple of other players, and the POKERMGR in charge of monitoring our chat one moonlit evening in late August, 2005. Dialogue is paraphrased, not quoted, but if Prima sent me the chat log, I'd be most happy to reproduce it verbatim; it would not vary in amy meaningful way from what you'll see below. I've also omitted junk such as the hand summaries, to ease your boredom:
Player A: I was checking out some reviews on that (poker-related topic) yesterday.
Player B: Yes, I try keeping notes on things and putting them on my site.
Player A: Where's it at?
Me: What's the address?
Player B: It's at www.billfillmaff.com.
POKERMGR: Please refrain from advertising or your chat priveleges may be suspended.
Me: POKERMGR, get a clue. You have know way of knowing whether that's a commercial site or not.
Player B: It's not. I don't sell anything there. I own the site.
[short lapse of a hand or so here]
Player A: Yeah, I was on Party the other day and it was crazy wild.
Me: If you want low variance, Party can drive you absolutely nuts.
Player B: Yup
POKERMGR: Please refrain from advertising or your chat priveleges may be suspended.
Me: Please read for content, POKERMGR. If you read what we typed, you would clearly see that it wasn't advertising.
POKERMGR: When we see the word party typed, it usually refers to another poker site.
Me: Indeed it did --- but we were not talking about that site in a positive way.
POKERMGR: We do not allow either positive or negative advertising. (Methinks: What in the hell is "negative advertising"?!?!?)
Me: I guess we can tell each other "Nice hand" and ask how the weather is?
POKERMGR: That would be fine, yes.
Me: That was sarcasm, POKERMGR.
Funny thing, POKERMGR went silent after that. :-)
SITE REVIEW - POKER STARS
Already familiar with Poker Stars? No doubt it's one of the biggees, currently #2 in terms of cash players. And with the recent turmoil at Party Poker (as I write this, just shy of Halloween 2005), Stars has its sights set squarely on #1.
But Poker Stars wasn't the first site I joined, nor the second... heck, it wasn't even the fifth. Part of this had to do my online poker needs: when I decided to get "serious" about my game, I started with a whoppin' $90 bankroll, which I needed to protect as well as I could. That meant I needed to go after some sign-up bonuses, and I needed to stay away from tournaments, for the most part, at least early on.
And that meant no PokerStars.
Let's clarify this a bit: I am not saying that if you're an online poker newbie, you need to stay away from Stars. For instance, at this writing, Stars does have a sign-up bonus (25% for most deposits), yet it's far from the most generous in the industry. And though Stars also has a goodly selection of ring games (the safest avenue for clearing said bonuses), Stars is, first and foremost, a tournament site. Over 1,000 of the players competing in the main event of the 2005 WSOP earned their way in through a Poker Stars satellite event, or approximately 20% of the total entries for that main event. That's a standout number. And it points to the structure and aim of PokerStars itself, an aim which wasn't mine when I first started out, and might not be yours, either.
It doesn't make Stars a bad site, you see. Stars is actually a good site, one of the best there is. But if you're just starting out and learning how to play, then the best advice is to get your feet wet elsewhere, then come on to Stars; the action here is tougher than on the majority of the largest sites, and without a healthy sign-on bonus as a backboard, your investment would be more in peril. As for me, I was successful in building my bankroll elsewhere, so when I signed up here, my online-poker life wasn't on the line. I've made a little money here, too, so all is well. I live. I breathe. I play a little poker.
Back to Stars. Since their forte is their tournament offerings, you might expect that their ring-game offerings might be a relatively weaker aspect. You would be correct in that assumption. It's not that the ring games at Stars are bad (they're not), it's just that the available selection is limited and unordinary. You get Hold-'Em, Omaha, and 7-Stud, with fixed-limit, pot-limit and no-limit for the first two, and fixed only for the stud games. And in non-peak hours, you might even have trouble in 7-Stud or Omaha finding a game at your most favored stakes. Okay. I am legion; I can adapt.
As for tournaments, though, Stars really shines. You'll find everything here, from major daily "guarantee" events to satellites and supers, from $1 cheapies up to the stuff where the really big boys play. One aside: skip the freerolls, and use your accumulated FPP points for other things (read: merchandise); the freerolls are a horrible investment of your time, relative to the expected payback you might receive.
At first glance, one gets the impression that they're aren't a lot of low-limit tournaments at Stars. But they're there all right; they're just been restructed as multi-table Sit-'N'-Go events, and are found in the plethora of choices available there. Stars, you see, is the hands-down Sit-'N'-Go champ of web poker, both in number and choices of offerings; there ain't no need to even worry about who comes in second. In addition to the regular stuff, including virtually any combination of buy-in amount and seats per table, you'll find that what shows up as a smallish regular tournament elsewhere often plays as a larger SNG here.
You also find tournament formats seldom offered elsewhere. Shootouts are one example, which function something like a Euro "rounders" tournament. Essentially, shootouts are multi-layer SNG tourneys; if you win your first table, you pocket a little something and go on to the next level. The higher you climb, the more you make. Unlike a "rounders" tourney, however, there is no fallback from a higher level if you come in 2nd or 3rd at a table at that point. Win or die, sweetie, scale your catch or be filleted.
Did you ever notice how some sites offer 10-seated action, and others offer 9? (Yes, this is excepting the aggressive 6-table stuff, I know.) Well, as with Party, Stars offers both 9- and 10-seat full-ring games, though their tournaments are --- as far as I've ever seen --- exclusively 9-seat deals.
Hmmm. Software... time to check in on that. Poker Stars has, in the vernacular, gotten their shit together. Not only does their software work, it works whether you've got one table going or several. It doesn't go into spastic flipflops when two or more tables simultaneous require action, as happens on Party, and all the little bells and trinkets work not only as advertised, but as the user hopes and wants them to. Heaven forbid: It seems like the techno-geeks and the idea guys actually Worked Together in assembling the Stars software package, which means that they consider your money (and their efforts to obtain their share of it, for providing the playing venue), a serious matter indeed.
One of the neat little trinkets worth mentioning is that each player can upload a small image to serve as their avatar. That's been done elsewhere, too, but only on Stars can other players block that image if they find it offensive... or, more likely... too stupid to warrant repeated attention from the peepers. Which brings me to an aside that has precious little to do with this review.
When you're 20 or 25, you do things to make the world look at you, just because you enjoy the attention. When you're 45, you look at the people doing those stupid things, and you understand that behind the attention-getting behavior is a simple lack of maturity. (You don't worry, you don't scold, unless the immature sort is the rare type who not fished for your attention, but also confronts you and demands that you give it to him. Then there are other options and concerns.) Some people actually force the confrontations as a way of receiving attention, because they're addicted to the attention itself; notorious examples within the poker world are Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth. But I look at someone like Hellmuth, and all I see is a man who likes like he's never had decent sex in his life. And yes, I know he's married... to a psychiatrist. Then I see Matusow, and all I can think is... "Bubba."
Heh. Back to our regularly scheduled review.
Poker Stars' decision to allow avatar-image blocking is simply a victory for and an acknowledgement of maturity. I like it. Thank you, Stars, the gesture is appreciated.
Stars' software, in total, receives the highest marks across the board. In reviewing my notes, I cannot find a single instance wherein something appears or works counter-intuitively, or where a major aspect of expected site functionality is nowhere to be found. Table selection, betting action --- it's all good, here, all professional. They've got me stumped, frankly; I'd like to point at something and shout a big "GOTCHA!!"... but I can't.
Cashing in and cashing out are slick and solid, too. The usual gamut of deposit options are available, and my test withdrawal occurred smoothly and appeared back in my online bank within 48 hours, an acceptable turnaround, especially considering the first-transaction status.
Finally, Stars is a "happening" venue --- you'll find that a lot of special events and private tournaments are held here as well. The customer support is top-notch, as is the direct feedback between players and the site's operators and designers. If they could add another 10% of fishes to the poker-playin' population it'd be Nirvana, but then again, one can't have everything.
Poker Stars gets one of this site's highest overall ratings. The only slight imperfections are the narrowness of the ring-game offerings and the relatively meager bonus offerings. One wishes that the action was a little weaker, but one always wishes for that, regardless --- it's hardly Poker Stars' fault. It's not a site recommended as the first place to play if you're on a meager budget and just learning the game, but it is a site worth ongoing play.
And so we will.
But Poker Stars wasn't the first site I joined, nor the second... heck, it wasn't even the fifth. Part of this had to do my online poker needs: when I decided to get "serious" about my game, I started with a whoppin' $90 bankroll, which I needed to protect as well as I could. That meant I needed to go after some sign-up bonuses, and I needed to stay away from tournaments, for the most part, at least early on.
And that meant no PokerStars.
Let's clarify this a bit: I am not saying that if you're an online poker newbie, you need to stay away from Stars. For instance, at this writing, Stars does have a sign-up bonus (25% for most deposits), yet it's far from the most generous in the industry. And though Stars also has a goodly selection of ring games (the safest avenue for clearing said bonuses), Stars is, first and foremost, a tournament site. Over 1,000 of the players competing in the main event of the 2005 WSOP earned their way in through a Poker Stars satellite event, or approximately 20% of the total entries for that main event. That's a standout number. And it points to the structure and aim of PokerStars itself, an aim which wasn't mine when I first started out, and might not be yours, either.
It doesn't make Stars a bad site, you see. Stars is actually a good site, one of the best there is. But if you're just starting out and learning how to play, then the best advice is to get your feet wet elsewhere, then come on to Stars; the action here is tougher than on the majority of the largest sites, and without a healthy sign-on bonus as a backboard, your investment would be more in peril. As for me, I was successful in building my bankroll elsewhere, so when I signed up here, my online-poker life wasn't on the line. I've made a little money here, too, so all is well. I live. I breathe. I play a little poker.
Back to Stars. Since their forte is their tournament offerings, you might expect that their ring-game offerings might be a relatively weaker aspect. You would be correct in that assumption. It's not that the ring games at Stars are bad (they're not), it's just that the available selection is limited and unordinary. You get Hold-'Em, Omaha, and 7-Stud, with fixed-limit, pot-limit and no-limit for the first two, and fixed only for the stud games. And in non-peak hours, you might even have trouble in 7-Stud or Omaha finding a game at your most favored stakes. Okay. I am legion; I can adapt.
As for tournaments, though, Stars really shines. You'll find everything here, from major daily "guarantee" events to satellites and supers, from $1 cheapies up to the stuff where the really big boys play. One aside: skip the freerolls, and use your accumulated FPP points for other things (read: merchandise); the freerolls are a horrible investment of your time, relative to the expected payback you might receive.
At first glance, one gets the impression that they're aren't a lot of low-limit tournaments at Stars. But they're there all right; they're just been restructed as multi-table Sit-'N'-Go events, and are found in the plethora of choices available there. Stars, you see, is the hands-down Sit-'N'-Go champ of web poker, both in number and choices of offerings; there ain't no need to even worry about who comes in second. In addition to the regular stuff, including virtually any combination of buy-in amount and seats per table, you'll find that what shows up as a smallish regular tournament elsewhere often plays as a larger SNG here.
You also find tournament formats seldom offered elsewhere. Shootouts are one example, which function something like a Euro "rounders" tournament. Essentially, shootouts are multi-layer SNG tourneys; if you win your first table, you pocket a little something and go on to the next level. The higher you climb, the more you make. Unlike a "rounders" tourney, however, there is no fallback from a higher level if you come in 2nd or 3rd at a table at that point. Win or die, sweetie, scale your catch or be filleted.
Did you ever notice how some sites offer 10-seated action, and others offer 9? (Yes, this is excepting the aggressive 6-table stuff, I know.) Well, as with Party, Stars offers both 9- and 10-seat full-ring games, though their tournaments are --- as far as I've ever seen --- exclusively 9-seat deals.
Hmmm. Software... time to check in on that. Poker Stars has, in the vernacular, gotten their shit together. Not only does their software work, it works whether you've got one table going or several. It doesn't go into spastic flipflops when two or more tables simultaneous require action, as happens on Party, and all the little bells and trinkets work not only as advertised, but as the user hopes and wants them to. Heaven forbid: It seems like the techno-geeks and the idea guys actually Worked Together in assembling the Stars software package, which means that they consider your money (and their efforts to obtain their share of it, for providing the playing venue), a serious matter indeed.
One of the neat little trinkets worth mentioning is that each player can upload a small image to serve as their avatar. That's been done elsewhere, too, but only on Stars can other players block that image if they find it offensive... or, more likely... too stupid to warrant repeated attention from the peepers. Which brings me to an aside that has precious little to do with this review.
When you're 20 or 25, you do things to make the world look at you, just because you enjoy the attention. When you're 45, you look at the people doing those stupid things, and you understand that behind the attention-getting behavior is a simple lack of maturity. (You don't worry, you don't scold, unless the immature sort is the rare type who not fished for your attention, but also confronts you and demands that you give it to him. Then there are other options and concerns.) Some people actually force the confrontations as a way of receiving attention, because they're addicted to the attention itself; notorious examples within the poker world are Mike Matusow and Phil Hellmuth. But I look at someone like Hellmuth, and all I see is a man who likes like he's never had decent sex in his life. And yes, I know he's married... to a psychiatrist. Then I see Matusow, and all I can think is... "Bubba."
Heh. Back to our regularly scheduled review.
Poker Stars' decision to allow avatar-image blocking is simply a victory for and an acknowledgement of maturity. I like it. Thank you, Stars, the gesture is appreciated.
Stars' software, in total, receives the highest marks across the board. In reviewing my notes, I cannot find a single instance wherein something appears or works counter-intuitively, or where a major aspect of expected site functionality is nowhere to be found. Table selection, betting action --- it's all good, here, all professional. They've got me stumped, frankly; I'd like to point at something and shout a big "GOTCHA!!"... but I can't.
Cashing in and cashing out are slick and solid, too. The usual gamut of deposit options are available, and my test withdrawal occurred smoothly and appeared back in my online bank within 48 hours, an acceptable turnaround, especially considering the first-transaction status.
Finally, Stars is a "happening" venue --- you'll find that a lot of special events and private tournaments are held here as well. The customer support is top-notch, as is the direct feedback between players and the site's operators and designers. If they could add another 10% of fishes to the poker-playin' population it'd be Nirvana, but then again, one can't have everything.
Poker Stars gets one of this site's highest overall ratings. The only slight imperfections are the narrowness of the ring-game offerings and the relatively meager bonus offerings. One wishes that the action was a little weaker, but one always wishes for that, regardless --- it's hardly Poker Stars' fault. It's not a site recommended as the first place to play if you're on a meager budget and just learning the game, but it is a site worth ongoing play.
And so we will.
SITE REVIEW - PARTY POKER
(Author's note: The following review was written prior to the recent software revamp at Party. Nonetheless, this review was designed to entertain, and the majority of its points still apply --- hh)
Here's the 900-lb. gorilla of online poker sites, Party Poker. I played here several years ago for a short while, when they first came upon the scene, then returned here only recently. What does one compare Party Poker to: Wonder Bread? Wal-Mart? One-size-fits-all-wet-weather-ponchos? Any and all of these are correct.
True to the commercials, you can always find a game at Party, and you can almost always find one (or many) at your limits and options of choice.
Party offers a comprehensive assortment of limit levels, though only the usual assortment of poker games: Hold-'Em, Omaha, 5- and 7-Stud, the Omaha and 7-Stud with hi/lo variants, and with fixed, pot, and no-limit choices across virtually all. Lots of sit-and-gos, too, but for a site of this size, the multi-player tournament selection is rather paltry, and what is present is geared more to the high-end player than the nickel-dime-finback crowd.
For the most part, Party action is loo-oo-oo-oose at the micro- and small-limit levels. But Party also has a majority interest in North America's manic poker weirdos, which means that even a tight player's variance goes way, way up here, even when using a conservative approach to these very same games. I've had $100 swings playing the small stuff like .50/$1 and $1/2 fixed... and I play tighter than most. Strange, often maddening and ridiculous stuff. I'm reminded of Wilson's Turbo Texas software; one of its house characters for your simulated training games is a fellow named "Capp" who does just that, capping everything from pre-flop on as long as there's a chance to win... or just because a big pot looks nicer and seems like more fun. Sometimes on Party it seems as though the whole Capp clan is having a jamboree at your table. But as you'd expect, in the long run a decent player will do very well at Party or through its skins.
General plusses? A decent enough sign-on bonus, plus occasional --- and (as with the signup bonus) very easy-to-clear --- reload offers. Having a chunk of bankroll in reserve for when a Party reload bonus is issued is never a bad idea. At Party you'll find playable games around the clock, if that's your heart's desire, even in the wee hours when otherwise sane people would be fast asleep. Fast access to the cashier area, and usually to the web page that tracks your bonus offers in live time, or as close to it as is feasible.
If you're a new player, Party even provides you with special access to a "Beginner's Tables" section of the site, supposedly serving up easier competition for your first 45 days. A new player doesn't have to play these tables; they're just an extra option. I've noted no difference in skill level between these and the regular tables at the same stakes. I wonder if Party has a Beginner's section for new "bot" players, too?
Party also offers bad-beat, progressive-bad-beat and royal-flush jackpots, though these require you to play at tables where you're charged proportionately higher rake. I can't call this good or bad; it's a nice lottery bonus if you're the one lucky enough to collect the miracle six-figure pot, but other sites manage to offer equivalents to the smaller jackpots here... without charging extra rake for the privelege to try.
On the minus side, Party populates the poker table on your screen with a selection of truly sad avatars. With ten seats at a table, this means that only 10 male or female avatars are ever in use. It's always a white-bread convention at Party --- if you're of African, Asian, Latin American or Amerindian descent, you'll not find an avatar representing you here. Just some dude wearing a beret that looks rather more like a frisbee that his prankster buddy just pulled out of a microwave oven, and some cowboy dude in a hat whose face you never see. And if, like me, you're a girl, the options are even worse: With only a couple of exceptions, you'll end up as either a spinsterly schoolmarm or a bimbo. Most of the female avatars do, of course, "point" (in the Wonder Woman sense) to bimbo. But since the schoolmarm's hairdo looks like she's wearing a red-colored version of "Wilson the Volleyball" from Castaway, the bimbo look is probably still the better choice.
The quantity of tables and games at Party is so large that the front page of the site often gets a case of the yips trying to keep up with the data and the action. It translates into players often double-clicking on a table, seeking to join or watch, then discovering that the front page's table data has updated and shifted on the page as the user clicked, meaning that the table the user joined isn't even the one he or she wanted. This happens at least 10% of the time, in my experience, and since most of the tables are only identified by a number several digits in length, it's often not quick or easy to catch, either.
The software yips continue to the play itself, if you choose to try two or more tables at once. Multiple actions required? Then expect that the screens will battle for your attention, and these screens do not always recognize the mouse clicks or keystrokes that you make. So you might click three or four times instead of the normal two before a simple "Fold" action takes, or you might instead end up folding those rockets on a hand you hadn't yet had a chance to see. Sayonara, AA!
Cashiered again. Do you like using FirePay? I do, though I also have NETeller and other accounts. Party Poker accepts incoming deposits from FirePay, but doesn't allow you to cash out through the same channel. This is inane. Perhaps there are fee considerations between Party and FirePay, but then again, Party's not likely to care if FirePay's rival NETeller dings users 8.9% for accidentally doing an Insta-Cash withdrawal from their personal account, as a way of bringing money into the cycle to begin with. (Party does allow users to withdraw using NETeller, ho ho ho.) So what it means, in effect, is that you'll probably need two or more electronic-wallet accounts to use Party properly. Let the buyer beware.
Party has several "help" options available for its users, including a live-chat option that is absolutely never available. It's a tease --- don't bother! So I'll guess we'll chalk that one up as a negative, rather than a positive. Nice thought, though... And one last negative: While Party offers the usual selection of hand-history download options, its live player stats are all but worthless. No matter how many hands I've played, this pop-up screen adamantly tells me that I've won 100% of my showdown hands. If only!
Cashing in, cashing out: Faster than average, beginning with your second time through the loop. Bonus payouts are calculated in live time and are released almost instantaneously into your bankroll. That's a plus.
Plenty of action; looser-than-average games. All true --- proof positive that advertising works. But in 900-lb. gorilla, there's plenty of monkeyshines here, too. My final read: Enjoy the action, but be careful.
Here's the 900-lb. gorilla of online poker sites, Party Poker. I played here several years ago for a short while, when they first came upon the scene, then returned here only recently. What does one compare Party Poker to: Wonder Bread? Wal-Mart? One-size-fits-all-wet-weather-ponchos? Any and all of these are correct.
True to the commercials, you can always find a game at Party, and you can almost always find one (or many) at your limits and options of choice.
Party offers a comprehensive assortment of limit levels, though only the usual assortment of poker games: Hold-'Em, Omaha, 5- and 7-Stud, the Omaha and 7-Stud with hi/lo variants, and with fixed, pot, and no-limit choices across virtually all. Lots of sit-and-gos, too, but for a site of this size, the multi-player tournament selection is rather paltry, and what is present is geared more to the high-end player than the nickel-dime-finback crowd.
For the most part, Party action is loo-oo-oo-oose at the micro- and small-limit levels. But Party also has a majority interest in North America's manic poker weirdos, which means that even a tight player's variance goes way, way up here, even when using a conservative approach to these very same games. I've had $100 swings playing the small stuff like .50/$1 and $1/2 fixed... and I play tighter than most. Strange, often maddening and ridiculous stuff. I'm reminded of Wilson's Turbo Texas software; one of its house characters for your simulated training games is a fellow named "Capp" who does just that, capping everything from pre-flop on as long as there's a chance to win... or just because a big pot looks nicer and seems like more fun. Sometimes on Party it seems as though the whole Capp clan is having a jamboree at your table. But as you'd expect, in the long run a decent player will do very well at Party or through its skins.
General plusses? A decent enough sign-on bonus, plus occasional --- and (as with the signup bonus) very easy-to-clear --- reload offers. Having a chunk of bankroll in reserve for when a Party reload bonus is issued is never a bad idea. At Party you'll find playable games around the clock, if that's your heart's desire, even in the wee hours when otherwise sane people would be fast asleep. Fast access to the cashier area, and usually to the web page that tracks your bonus offers in live time, or as close to it as is feasible.
If you're a new player, Party even provides you with special access to a "Beginner's Tables" section of the site, supposedly serving up easier competition for your first 45 days. A new player doesn't have to play these tables; they're just an extra option. I've noted no difference in skill level between these and the regular tables at the same stakes. I wonder if Party has a Beginner's section for new "bot" players, too?
Party also offers bad-beat, progressive-bad-beat and royal-flush jackpots, though these require you to play at tables where you're charged proportionately higher rake. I can't call this good or bad; it's a nice lottery bonus if you're the one lucky enough to collect the miracle six-figure pot, but other sites manage to offer equivalents to the smaller jackpots here... without charging extra rake for the privelege to try.
On the minus side, Party populates the poker table on your screen with a selection of truly sad avatars. With ten seats at a table, this means that only 10 male or female avatars are ever in use. It's always a white-bread convention at Party --- if you're of African, Asian, Latin American or Amerindian descent, you'll not find an avatar representing you here. Just some dude wearing a beret that looks rather more like a frisbee that his prankster buddy just pulled out of a microwave oven, and some cowboy dude in a hat whose face you never see. And if, like me, you're a girl, the options are even worse: With only a couple of exceptions, you'll end up as either a spinsterly schoolmarm or a bimbo. Most of the female avatars do, of course, "point" (in the Wonder Woman sense) to bimbo. But since the schoolmarm's hairdo looks like she's wearing a red-colored version of "Wilson the Volleyball" from Castaway, the bimbo look is probably still the better choice.
The quantity of tables and games at Party is so large that the front page of the site often gets a case of the yips trying to keep up with the data and the action. It translates into players often double-clicking on a table, seeking to join or watch, then discovering that the front page's table data has updated and shifted on the page as the user clicked, meaning that the table the user joined isn't even the one he or she wanted. This happens at least 10% of the time, in my experience, and since most of the tables are only identified by a number several digits in length, it's often not quick or easy to catch, either.
The software yips continue to the play itself, if you choose to try two or more tables at once. Multiple actions required? Then expect that the screens will battle for your attention, and these screens do not always recognize the mouse clicks or keystrokes that you make. So you might click three or four times instead of the normal two before a simple "Fold" action takes, or you might instead end up folding those rockets on a hand you hadn't yet had a chance to see. Sayonara, AA!
Cashiered again. Do you like using FirePay? I do, though I also have NETeller and other accounts. Party Poker accepts incoming deposits from FirePay, but doesn't allow you to cash out through the same channel. This is inane. Perhaps there are fee considerations between Party and FirePay, but then again, Party's not likely to care if FirePay's rival NETeller dings users 8.9% for accidentally doing an Insta-Cash withdrawal from their personal account, as a way of bringing money into the cycle to begin with. (Party does allow users to withdraw using NETeller, ho ho ho.) So what it means, in effect, is that you'll probably need two or more electronic-wallet accounts to use Party properly. Let the buyer beware.
Party has several "help" options available for its users, including a live-chat option that is absolutely never available. It's a tease --- don't bother! So I'll guess we'll chalk that one up as a negative, rather than a positive. Nice thought, though... And one last negative: While Party offers the usual selection of hand-history download options, its live player stats are all but worthless. No matter how many hands I've played, this pop-up screen adamantly tells me that I've won 100% of my showdown hands. If only!
Cashing in, cashing out: Faster than average, beginning with your second time through the loop. Bonus payouts are calculated in live time and are released almost instantaneously into your bankroll. That's a plus.
Plenty of action; looser-than-average games. All true --- proof positive that advertising works. But in 900-lb. gorilla, there's plenty of monkeyshines here, too. My final read: Enjoy the action, but be careful.
SITE REVIEW - PARADISE POKER
Back in my dumb old days, when I fancied myself a fair-to-middlin' poker player (though I'd never cracked open a book on the subject), my one and only online site to play at was Paradise Poker. I'd tried a couple of others, namely Party and Pacific, but Paradise ended up winning the largest share of my business. To my view, Paradise's software was slicker than the the others, they had a decent selection of tournaments and sit-'n'-gos, and I was actually able to turn a modest profit in my few hundred hours of play. Soft games, you say? Well, certainly, Paradise always has had some of the softer ring-game action around. Actually, if memory serves me, I spent most of my time playing seven-stud ring games, some pineapple (!) and occasional fixed-limit hold-'em sit-'n'-gos. (I'm from northern Wisconsin, you see; we come out of the womb up there knowing how to play cribbage and seven-card stud.)
Life events took me away from online poker for a while a couple of years ago. Since I wasn't that good, I didn't miss it. And when I returned to at least a semblance of active online poker-playing, there was Paradise, same as always. The prodigal son --- err, daughter --- had returned to the fold.
Or so it seemed. Today I don't play on Paradise much at all. How could that be? A combination of factors came into play, and despite the relative high quality of the site, it's clear that Paradise is resting on their laurels on reputation.
Paradise proclaims themselves as the oldest of the well-established sites, being around since Marco Polo brought back Chinese handcuffs from the Orient... or at least since 1997. Therefore, the logic goes, you should trust them with your dead prezzies. Paradise is trustworthy enough, in that respect; your deposits go in, your withdrawals come out (without, for the most part, lengthy delays), the sun sets in the west. All is copacetic.
And at Paradise, the more things change, the more they stay the same. There are large numbers of players to be found, including sizeable schools of fish; only during the wee hours will you have trouble finding a game that's comfortable for you to play. The software works well, too. Only occasionally does a lock-up occur, and that's as likely as not to be a problem with WinDoze, not the Paradise software. The graphics are stylish but not obtrusive, their cute "Refreshments" menu serves little purpose but is fun nonetheless, and the game play flows easily from hand to hand and table to table. My favorite drink avatar, should you be wondering, is the rum-and-coke; I've been far luckier with that at my seat that anything else. Not that I'm superstitious or anything, y'know...
So what's wrong? Just this: Until their recent "Million Dollar Freeroll" promotion --- not coincidentally, also the first time I'd seen a Paradise ad on the tube --- Paradise wasn't working very hard at expanding their customer base. They seemed to be quite happy with their 9.09% rake (or whatever), didn't offer a lot in sign-up offers and bonuses, and pretty much let the players be. I'm sure their customer base grew, but note that they're the oldest online poker site, not the largest. They could've done better.
As for attracting new customers, Paradise doesn't really go after the bonus whores among us. They offer a modest $25 sign-up bonus (requiring, if I recall, a $100 deposit), and they have occasional, not-very-lucrative reload offers. As more sites enter the fray, using more aggressive tactics to garner new players, Paradise risks becoming less imperative, perhaps even less relevant.
Which is, I suppose, the reason they went with the Million Dollar Freeroll promotion in the first place. Funny thing, though; it wasn't at all easy to track one's progress in earning a qualification to one of the entry satellites. You'd play and play and play, and --- presto! --- out of nowhere, a pop-up window would appear notifying you that you were again eligible to try to qualify for the main event. Glad you were tracking it for me, Paradise; I sure couldn't.
Oh, yeah, those interminable pop-up windows. Knock it off, Paradise. Whenever a larger tournament is about to commence, Paradise send pop-up windows to every online player, reminding them of the fact. Several times, usually, not to mention the sales pitches obliterating the usefulness of the chat window. "T minus three minutes and counting..." Well, fine. I'm still not joining your $250,000 Guaranteed with re-buys and add-ons, Paradise; check my bankroll before sending the damn pop-ups and you'd see I couldn't even afford the entry fee. And I mutter, under my breath, like that would stem the flood.
So what about this Million Dollar Freeroll thingy? Did anyone else take a look at the fine print? It turns out that Paradise is actually awarding only 3,400 of the 4,000 seats to the main event through the three daily play-in satellites. (I tried twice, made the top 60 both times, but crapped out just short of a seat to the big show.) But about those missing 600 seats --- it turns out that Paradise has reserved them to be used at their discretion to complete the lineup. Hmmm. That one continues to raise my eyebrows. Far be it from me to suspect that they'd privately sell some of these seats to top players for a nominal fee, knowing damn well that those better players would expect a lot of "dead money," relative to the million-dollar pool, to be present in the form of weaker players who lucked their way through the play-ins. Of course, there might be other explanations, though I really can't imagine Paradise giving away SIX HUNDRED COMPLIMENTARY FREAKIN' SEATS to poker media.
Po', po' cynical me. Figured another way, 600 of 4,000, times a million Georgies, equals $150,000. That's a chunk of expected value for those anonymous seats to carry. Got it. Either it's a helluva lot of "goodwill" asset padding, or it's a hidden way to recoup some expense.
Ah, well, back to the ring action. Being able to play pineapple is a definite plus, even if there isn't actually a lot of pineapple action from which to choose. Not only is it a fun variant, it's got high-profit potential as well. Pineapple entices those possessed by chase mentality, making for bigger pots; you'll see tons of people who start with junk like a two-suited 3-4-7 and play it hand after hand. "Bet it up, dude! It's a contrary investment opportunity!"
And, as mentioned, all the action is soft at the lower limits, not just the pineapple. Now that I've finally started to learn how to play this game, after thirty-plus years of dinking around, Paradise offers a lot of potential. And yet I find higher profit potential elsewhere --- so Paradise'll just have to wait.
Who Thinks Up These Table Names, Anyway?
Now there's a job that deserves to be on one of those Miller Brewing radio commercials, extolling the virtues of you, Mr. Underappreciated Paradise Poker Table Namer. You sweat it out, day after day, mixing those vowels and almost-Hawaiian consonants together in faintly exotic ways, coming up with names like "Barobas," "Kaluutu" and "Pelmonta" that might exist in reality or might not, if only we weren't too lazy to check. (Actually, they're all real, as far as I can tell. But this is piece is a satirical farce, so go with it.)
But look what you've started. Now, everybody's doing it; everybody, that is, except my local brick-and-mortar, which still uses designations like "number five".
Absolute uses a lot of generic-sounding street names instead of real and make-believe islands... not that Absolute's ever stolen any of your other gimmicks. FullTilt uses suburbs and subdivisions, because Ultimate Bet has the biggest city names locked up. (Although the capital city of the Philippines is not "Manilla".) And over at Prima they're even running out of servicable categories; they've gone through Beatles Song Titles, Names of Movies, Classic Books, Historical Figures... rumor has it that Medical Procedures and Parts of the Possum That Stick to the Tire Tread are the next ones in the works. God forbid any of you should stumble upon a Pantone color matcher --- or even a super-sized Crayola box --- and start drooling over exotic-sounding hues like Burnt Umber or Royal Mauve. And don't even think about touching an astronomical catalogue --- I don't think I could take it.
Life events took me away from online poker for a while a couple of years ago. Since I wasn't that good, I didn't miss it. And when I returned to at least a semblance of active online poker-playing, there was Paradise, same as always. The prodigal son --- err, daughter --- had returned to the fold.
Or so it seemed. Today I don't play on Paradise much at all. How could that be? A combination of factors came into play, and despite the relative high quality of the site, it's clear that Paradise is resting on their laurels on reputation.
Paradise proclaims themselves as the oldest of the well-established sites, being around since Marco Polo brought back Chinese handcuffs from the Orient... or at least since 1997. Therefore, the logic goes, you should trust them with your dead prezzies. Paradise is trustworthy enough, in that respect; your deposits go in, your withdrawals come out (without, for the most part, lengthy delays), the sun sets in the west. All is copacetic.
And at Paradise, the more things change, the more they stay the same. There are large numbers of players to be found, including sizeable schools of fish; only during the wee hours will you have trouble finding a game that's comfortable for you to play. The software works well, too. Only occasionally does a lock-up occur, and that's as likely as not to be a problem with WinDoze, not the Paradise software. The graphics are stylish but not obtrusive, their cute "Refreshments" menu serves little purpose but is fun nonetheless, and the game play flows easily from hand to hand and table to table. My favorite drink avatar, should you be wondering, is the rum-and-coke; I've been far luckier with that at my seat that anything else. Not that I'm superstitious or anything, y'know...
So what's wrong? Just this: Until their recent "Million Dollar Freeroll" promotion --- not coincidentally, also the first time I'd seen a Paradise ad on the tube --- Paradise wasn't working very hard at expanding their customer base. They seemed to be quite happy with their 9.09% rake (or whatever), didn't offer a lot in sign-up offers and bonuses, and pretty much let the players be. I'm sure their customer base grew, but note that they're the oldest online poker site, not the largest. They could've done better.
As for attracting new customers, Paradise doesn't really go after the bonus whores among us. They offer a modest $25 sign-up bonus (requiring, if I recall, a $100 deposit), and they have occasional, not-very-lucrative reload offers. As more sites enter the fray, using more aggressive tactics to garner new players, Paradise risks becoming less imperative, perhaps even less relevant.
Which is, I suppose, the reason they went with the Million Dollar Freeroll promotion in the first place. Funny thing, though; it wasn't at all easy to track one's progress in earning a qualification to one of the entry satellites. You'd play and play and play, and --- presto! --- out of nowhere, a pop-up window would appear notifying you that you were again eligible to try to qualify for the main event. Glad you were tracking it for me, Paradise; I sure couldn't.
Oh, yeah, those interminable pop-up windows. Knock it off, Paradise. Whenever a larger tournament is about to commence, Paradise send pop-up windows to every online player, reminding them of the fact. Several times, usually, not to mention the sales pitches obliterating the usefulness of the chat window. "T minus three minutes and counting..." Well, fine. I'm still not joining your $250,000 Guaranteed with re-buys and add-ons, Paradise; check my bankroll before sending the damn pop-ups and you'd see I couldn't even afford the entry fee. And I mutter, under my breath, like that would stem the flood.
So what about this Million Dollar Freeroll thingy? Did anyone else take a look at the fine print? It turns out that Paradise is actually awarding only 3,400 of the 4,000 seats to the main event through the three daily play-in satellites. (I tried twice, made the top 60 both times, but crapped out just short of a seat to the big show.) But about those missing 600 seats --- it turns out that Paradise has reserved them to be used at their discretion to complete the lineup. Hmmm. That one continues to raise my eyebrows. Far be it from me to suspect that they'd privately sell some of these seats to top players for a nominal fee, knowing damn well that those better players would expect a lot of "dead money," relative to the million-dollar pool, to be present in the form of weaker players who lucked their way through the play-ins. Of course, there might be other explanations, though I really can't imagine Paradise giving away SIX HUNDRED COMPLIMENTARY FREAKIN' SEATS to poker media.
Po', po' cynical me. Figured another way, 600 of 4,000, times a million Georgies, equals $150,000. That's a chunk of expected value for those anonymous seats to carry. Got it. Either it's a helluva lot of "goodwill" asset padding, or it's a hidden way to recoup some expense.
Ah, well, back to the ring action. Being able to play pineapple is a definite plus, even if there isn't actually a lot of pineapple action from which to choose. Not only is it a fun variant, it's got high-profit potential as well. Pineapple entices those possessed by chase mentality, making for bigger pots; you'll see tons of people who start with junk like a two-suited 3-4-7 and play it hand after hand. "Bet it up, dude! It's a contrary investment opportunity!"
And, as mentioned, all the action is soft at the lower limits, not just the pineapple. Now that I've finally started to learn how to play this game, after thirty-plus years of dinking around, Paradise offers a lot of potential. And yet I find higher profit potential elsewhere --- so Paradise'll just have to wait.
Who Thinks Up These Table Names, Anyway?
Now there's a job that deserves to be on one of those Miller Brewing radio commercials, extolling the virtues of you, Mr. Underappreciated Paradise Poker Table Namer. You sweat it out, day after day, mixing those vowels and almost-Hawaiian consonants together in faintly exotic ways, coming up with names like "Barobas," "Kaluutu" and "Pelmonta" that might exist in reality or might not, if only we weren't too lazy to check. (Actually, they're all real, as far as I can tell. But this is piece is a satirical farce, so go with it.)
But look what you've started. Now, everybody's doing it; everybody, that is, except my local brick-and-mortar, which still uses designations like "number five".
Absolute uses a lot of generic-sounding street names instead of real and make-believe islands... not that Absolute's ever stolen any of your other gimmicks. FullTilt uses suburbs and subdivisions, because Ultimate Bet has the biggest city names locked up. (Although the capital city of the Philippines is not "Manilla".) And over at Prima they're even running out of servicable categories; they've gone through Beatles Song Titles, Names of Movies, Classic Books, Historical Figures... rumor has it that Medical Procedures and Parts of the Possum That Stick to the Tire Tread are the next ones in the works. God forbid any of you should stumble upon a Pantone color matcher --- or even a super-sized Crayola box --- and start drooling over exotic-sounding hues like Burnt Umber or Royal Mauve. And don't even think about touching an astronomical catalogue --- I don't think I could take it.
SITE REVIEW - PACIFIC POKER
Well, let's see... since I've been thrashing and trashing all day while writing these reviews, I may as well sit down and take a few swipes at Pacific Poker, one of my least favorite online poker sites. With a heavy heart and a Diet Dew-flavored sigh, here we go again...
To me, Pacific just isn't worth my time. Despite having some of the easiest online ring games you'll find --- no matter what stakes you choose --- Pacific's drawbacks override the easy action to turn this into a negative for me. That said, there is one situation where I could highly recommend playing at Pacific. I'll get to that in a bit.
So what bugs me about Pacific? It's hard to define, exactly, but there's a back-alley, sorta-sleazy feel about the whole operation. Maybe it's because Pacific is part of the 888/Casino-on-Net family of online gaming interests, and they're habitual spammers: I tend not to keep in high regards those who believe they have some sort of right to deposit their ads, hijacking mail servers and falsifying return paths in the process, onto other people's private property. Had I received any of the 888 spam before I joined Pacific --- or remembered that I had, lol --- I probably wouldn't have given them a shake in the first place. But c'est la vie. And tempis fugit, too.
Let's consider the here-and-now, where we realize just how inadequate Pacific is when compared to its competitiors. When's the last time that Pacific did a significant software upgrade? "Never" seems to be the working answer. As with the first time I played there, several years back, users can still only play one table at a time, and user play is still negatively impacted by those hot-key macros Pacific insists on including for "player ease." If only. What this refers is to is that actions such as call, fold or raise can be taken simply by pressing the appropriate key: a "C" for call, an "F" for fold, and so on.
Das ist nicht gut? Nein, liebchen, nein! Because, let's just say you want to take a note on Fish_Face across the table, who sees half the flops and tries to cap it before the flop every time he does. So you want to type in your "manic pre-flop raiser" type of note --- guess what happens if a new hand starts and it's cycled through to your position when you type the "F" in "flop"? Pray that you don't have rockets; either that or swear off the taking of notes. And it happens the opposite way, too: I can't count the number of times I've made an accidental donkey raise with a hand like the 10 of hearts and the 3 of clubs. I'm bad enough already, Pacific; I don't need the additional help.
Why an open "notes" window on Pacific isn't programmed to lock out the hot-key macros is something left for the historians to debate. All I know is that it really, really sucks. And after about the 100th time of having the wrong action taken accidentally, I'd flat-out had enough. Pacific is easy pickings for a better-than-average player, but it's frustrating to give half or more of your hourly rate away due to keyboard errors you shouldn't be suffering to begin with.
So it doesn't matter if Pacific offers an okay sign-on bonus (it's okay, but not great), or if the programming runs quick and easy --- it's just not worth the aggravation. Pacific's one-table-only poker engine ought to be much easier for the site's programmers to code and maintain, but I think this is a steady-state site: what you see is what you get, and it ain't likely to change any time soon.
Let's "Float" That Baby: A major gripe with Pacific among online players is the abnormally slow turnaround when processing withdrawals. Pacific waits five business before handing over either your winnings or the remainder of your initial investment. I don't know why they need so long, and they're not telling, so you'll just have to deal with it. Again, all these things are contributing factors as to why the action is so easy here: many of the better players have fled for other sites, where they often can achieve a greater throughput for their time. I just think Pacific is cheap: We know they don't stick anything into program upgrades, so there's no reason to think they wouldn't want to take advantage of banking-system float, keeping your money tied up in their account a few extra days for whatever extra interest it earns. Call it that spammer mentality, like some doof claiming $3.2 million in revenue while living in a room in his mom's basement.
Customer service isn't the best, either. I had a fun time while changing my primary e-mail account here --- despite submitting multiple forms and using their live-chat feature twice, I had the hardest time in convincing them that they really couldn't receive a confirmation by sending a note, requesting same, to my old e-mail address. If that account was still in existence, would I need to change where I was having my e-mails sent? Major "duh" points there. This is where worn-out Hardee's employees relocate to, I believe.
I'm done with the trashing, seriously. Maybe it is better to have a site that adheres to the KISS approach --- Keep It Simple, Stupid. And, I said there might be a good time to play Pacific? Well, here's a possibility. If I had two computers hooked at once, one adjacent to each other, I'd consider using the cheaper, junkier computer to play a single table at Pacific while I used my good machine for bigger and better things. And I wouldn't worry a snoot about taking notes; I'd just find a cheap fixed-limit table, glance at it every so often, and slap the C, F or R key, as needed.
Pacific is an okay place to visit, but it should not be your primary site, regardless of its easy games. There's just so much more to online poker than what Pacific offers.
Remember, there's just not a whole lot of tender lovin' care here. And since they don't care, neither should you.
To me, Pacific just isn't worth my time. Despite having some of the easiest online ring games you'll find --- no matter what stakes you choose --- Pacific's drawbacks override the easy action to turn this into a negative for me. That said, there is one situation where I could highly recommend playing at Pacific. I'll get to that in a bit.
So what bugs me about Pacific? It's hard to define, exactly, but there's a back-alley, sorta-sleazy feel about the whole operation. Maybe it's because Pacific is part of the 888/Casino-on-Net family of online gaming interests, and they're habitual spammers: I tend not to keep in high regards those who believe they have some sort of right to deposit their ads, hijacking mail servers and falsifying return paths in the process, onto other people's private property. Had I received any of the 888 spam before I joined Pacific --- or remembered that I had, lol --- I probably wouldn't have given them a shake in the first place. But c'est la vie. And tempis fugit, too.
Let's consider the here-and-now, where we realize just how inadequate Pacific is when compared to its competitiors. When's the last time that Pacific did a significant software upgrade? "Never" seems to be the working answer. As with the first time I played there, several years back, users can still only play one table at a time, and user play is still negatively impacted by those hot-key macros Pacific insists on including for "player ease." If only. What this refers is to is that actions such as call, fold or raise can be taken simply by pressing the appropriate key: a "C" for call, an "F" for fold, and so on.
Das ist nicht gut? Nein, liebchen, nein! Because, let's just say you want to take a note on Fish_Face across the table, who sees half the flops and tries to cap it before the flop every time he does. So you want to type in your "manic pre-flop raiser" type of note --- guess what happens if a new hand starts and it's cycled through to your position when you type the "F" in "flop"? Pray that you don't have rockets; either that or swear off the taking of notes. And it happens the opposite way, too: I can't count the number of times I've made an accidental donkey raise with a hand like the 10 of hearts and the 3 of clubs. I'm bad enough already, Pacific; I don't need the additional help.
Why an open "notes" window on Pacific isn't programmed to lock out the hot-key macros is something left for the historians to debate. All I know is that it really, really sucks. And after about the 100th time of having the wrong action taken accidentally, I'd flat-out had enough. Pacific is easy pickings for a better-than-average player, but it's frustrating to give half or more of your hourly rate away due to keyboard errors you shouldn't be suffering to begin with.
So it doesn't matter if Pacific offers an okay sign-on bonus (it's okay, but not great), or if the programming runs quick and easy --- it's just not worth the aggravation. Pacific's one-table-only poker engine ought to be much easier for the site's programmers to code and maintain, but I think this is a steady-state site: what you see is what you get, and it ain't likely to change any time soon.
Let's "Float" That Baby: A major gripe with Pacific among online players is the abnormally slow turnaround when processing withdrawals. Pacific waits five business before handing over either your winnings or the remainder of your initial investment. I don't know why they need so long, and they're not telling, so you'll just have to deal with it. Again, all these things are contributing factors as to why the action is so easy here: many of the better players have fled for other sites, where they often can achieve a greater throughput for their time. I just think Pacific is cheap: We know they don't stick anything into program upgrades, so there's no reason to think they wouldn't want to take advantage of banking-system float, keeping your money tied up in their account a few extra days for whatever extra interest it earns. Call it that spammer mentality, like some doof claiming $3.2 million in revenue while living in a room in his mom's basement.
Customer service isn't the best, either. I had a fun time while changing my primary e-mail account here --- despite submitting multiple forms and using their live-chat feature twice, I had the hardest time in convincing them that they really couldn't receive a confirmation by sending a note, requesting same, to my old e-mail address. If that account was still in existence, would I need to change where I was having my e-mails sent? Major "duh" points there. This is where worn-out Hardee's employees relocate to, I believe.
I'm done with the trashing, seriously. Maybe it is better to have a site that adheres to the KISS approach --- Keep It Simple, Stupid. And, I said there might be a good time to play Pacific? Well, here's a possibility. If I had two computers hooked at once, one adjacent to each other, I'd consider using the cheaper, junkier computer to play a single table at Pacific while I used my good machine for bigger and better things. And I wouldn't worry a snoot about taking notes; I'd just find a cheap fixed-limit table, glance at it every so often, and slap the C, F or R key, as needed.
Pacific is an okay place to visit, but it should not be your primary site, regardless of its easy games. There's just so much more to online poker than what Pacific offers.
Remember, there's just not a whole lot of tender lovin' care here. And since they don't care, neither should you.
SITE REVIEW - FULLTILT POKER
Here's the mondogonzowacko entry among the internet's poker venues. With bizarre, color-rich graphics that owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Williams (if not an LSD flashback or two), one of FullTilt's foci is immediately clear: serving up the eye candy as a way to keep customers interested in the site's action.
Of course, there's more to FullTilt than the mondo-flashy feel and slicker-than-average software; the site also boasts a top-heavy marketing approach, with a large American advertising budget and a paid-huckster lineup of many of the game's biggest poker names. Even better, these players --- instantly identifiable by name and customized avatar --- make random appearances on the garbage tables, presumably as part of their endorsement contracts. (More on that elsewhere on this page.) So you have a chance to watch the pros, games and strategies bared for all to see, that you don't get anywhere else. This isn't to say that the big names aren't online anywhere else, but for the most part, you can't tell... unless you've rubbed your Magic Divining Poker Chip and gleaned that the user with the handle "SN_Nord_164" on ShvedePoker.com is, say, Gus Hansen.
That said, go to FullTilt if you want to learn their complete lineup of endorsers; said huckstering is their job, not mine. Except for a personal tale of me at a table with Phil Ivey [second sidebar at right], you'll not find a whiff of a FullTilt plug here.
So, top-end advertising aside, how has FullTilt been drawing users to its site? The tried-and-true method, of course: offering a nice signup bonus to new users. In fact, FullTilt offers one of the biggest new-user bonuses around, a 100% match bonus up to $600. And it seems there's always a 50% reload offer to be had, too.
And yet... (Notice how there's always an "And yet..." to these stories?) FullTilt's bonuses are generous, but are notoriously tough to clear. I was still learning the ropes of bonus-whoring and working on a miniscule budget when I gave FullTilt a whirl, with the result that I made a first deposit of only $150, rather than $600. In retrospect, it was one of the wisest decisions I've made. More than once I almost cut my losses and ran, though I came out all right at the end of my time in FullTilt BonusPurgAtory.
Because, it turns out, your FullTilt bonus clears in a significant way only when you win a hand, so there's no hanging around, leaving the LAG's (Loose-Aggressives) to do the dirty work and pay for the rake. And owing to this, the low-limit fixed games are about as tight/weak as they come. Despite these being 9-player tables, not 10, you'll still have a hard time finding a table with a flops-seen percentage much over 30. And I'm talking about games as low as .25/.50! Squeeze those quarters, kiddies; I know I do, though usually at mildly higher stakes! Play gets a bit skittish, too, with players jumping from one table to the next searching for some sort of an edge, or just from being tired of taking bad beats from some talking eggplant boasting a snarly grin from petal to petal. So even though you've got a 9-player max, you won't find very many tables where the seats stay full; you'll end up jumping around, just like everyone else, trying to find the action.
As for the effects on play, I was getting out-tight/weaked for a long time, my bankroll struggling to stay steady as my incremental bonus payouts barely matched the mild losses incurred by my play, and at the slow clearance rates, the annoyance factor is magnified. But hey, I'm learning how this game works myself: I recognized the effects of the tight/weak party, began making the adjustment to a more aggressive post-flop style, and started to turn the corner. I can therefore state that playing on FullTilt, bankroll issues aside, did improve my game. My game has lots more room for improvement, too. By the time I cleared my $150 match bonus, my overall bankroll (including that $150 bonus) was up to about $380. I've done worse. But at .50/1 and 1/2, it's like pulling teeth.
Heh. Speaking of teeth, that brings us back to those mondogonzowacko avatars and background images. Each user can select an avatar for usage from a library of 50 or more choices. Not only is there a selection of crazed-but-sterotypical images, but you can also choose various animals or inanimate objects, such as a rock. Get it, a "rock"? Rimshot, please. Here's the "ba-da-bing" as well. Shark, fish, and all the other poker syllogisms are therein personified, too. (As an aside, there's one black-boxer avatar that looks more than a bit like Mike Tyson, and when that avatar's mood is set to "angry" (next paragraph) I swear you can see a bit of Evander Holyfield's ear in the pseudo-Tyson's mouth.)
Each of the avatars can also be made to appear in one of four emotional states: normal (usually mildly happy in appearance), happy (for this, think of PeeWee Herman on a sugar high), angry (ditto with PeeWee, but now when the cops storm the porn theatre) and confused. The pros, when you encounter them, have their own customized avatar-caricatures. So do all four Chris Ferguson avatars look the same?
As for game variety, FullTilt adds razz (7-card "lowball" stud) to the standard mix of games. Is it the only site offering this game? Being a razz player must be a "cult" thing, after all: I remember T.J. Cloutier at the final table of ESPN's 2004 WSOP Razz coverage, saying, "I hate this damn game." I might be misremembering the "damn" part, or I might not. Still, he was in the final three (with Ferguson and Moneymaker) when he said it. No wonder razz didn't make the '05 ESPN schedule.
Again, I'm not sure if any other sites offer razz, so if you want to learn this variant, FullTilt might well be the place to go. They even run occasional tourneys, usually promoted with chat-window text like the following: "Hurry up and join our $1 Razz Tourney before you come to your senses!" Now that's a game with an image problem.
Back to the software --- its slickness fits well with the in-your-face graphics. I've played three tables at once without problems, despite my running an old clunker, and it's possible to have fourth and fifth windows open and working as well. Sneak a peek between hands to check out the merchandise in the FullTilt store; I snagged a hat with my bonus points, free of charge. (Thank you, FullTilt. It's a nice gesture on your part. Though that poster showing the stars posed in the alley --- oops, that's Fremont St. --- is still the nth degree of poker dorkiness.)
Another nice touch: For any bonus you're working on, you can view your progress in real time. A few other sites can match this, but none exceed it. And the bonuses are paid out in real-time increments, too, complete with popup-window notification. That's the way to do it.
Cash and carry? No problems depositing or withdrawing. I always have that first-time-dread syndrome when trying either a deposit or a withdrawal, never quite knowing (or trusting) what I'm getting myself into. But the deposit was fast and easy, and both of my system withdrawals were processed in a little over a day... nice plus marks there, as well.
Overall? Playing at FullTilt can only be described as a unique experience. It's not a quick path to riches, due to the extreme tightness of the games, but it does have other rewards. FullTilt has a long way to go before they'll become a dominant online force, but they're doing lots of things right. One wonders about their bankroll, in the long run; with their reliance on top-heavy advertising celebrity endorsers and splashy gimmicks, even the most well-funded of operations dances a finer wire than the rest. It'll be interesting to watch FullTilt's future.
Time For a $&%^tail?
One thing you'll discover after playing for a bit at FullTilt is that the chat window employs auto-censoring software, replacing George Carlin's seven deadly words (and then some!) with their $%^&#%@ equivalents. Whether this is a plus or a minus is left to the user; I consider swearing in a chat window to be one of the most cheapest, moronic forms of intimidation a player can attempt. Whether the player doing the cussin' is on tilt isn't the point; others do at as a way to try to tilt their opponents. It doesn't work on me, though, thanks! :-)
Anyhow, FullTilt's censoring software is a bit aggressive, wiping out a whole lot of otherwise legitimate stuff in the interest of keeping the sight of an erstwhile "$%@&!" from our otherwise-pure-as-an-angel's orbs. So one day, after my internal light bulb flickered to life, I clued in my table on the FullTilt programmers' excess.
"Hey, all," I typed --- or, at least, this is what appeared -- "I think I'm in the mood for a #*@!tail tonight. Then I'm going to watch some reruns on NBC... always loved that pea%&#& logo of theirs. There's going to be a marathon of old Baretta reruns --- always loved his pet $*#%ateel, Fred, too!"
Me, Ivey and the Railbirds of a Feather
I mentioned in the main review that at FullTilt you, too, might get a chance to play with a pro. This carries a hefty chunk of intrinsic "neatness" value, since the vast majority of us are never going to be able to sit down in the upper level of the poker room at the Bellagio and play some $1,000/$2,000 with Ivey in person. Why is Ivey doing this? Because he's getting paid to, of course; he and the other celebrity players on the FullTilt roster have signed on to do this penance as a way to reap their (probably hefty) financial rewards.
Penance is the right word, too. Surfing on down to the garbage tables where players like me chop away might not be as putrid a skill level of game action as it sounds, but when it comes to the flock o' (rail)birds that accumulate, well, as the saying goes, "There's got to be a better way."
Backfill time. One Friday night in the middle of July, after just having left a 1/2 table that dropped from nine to four players in the wink of an eye, imagine my surprise, scanning the front-page boards, to see the title of a neighboring table turn red. This is FullTilt code for "Pro Player Seated Here." I clicked on in, and sure enough, Phil Ivey (?!?!) was at the table. The table was full, of course, but since it was my stakes and not much else was available, I joined the waiting list. This put me first in line, but soon enough there 60 or so others right behind me. Sixty friggin' people thinking they're going to get a chance to play?? In yer dreams, people! But one can hardly blame the attempt --- after all, who doesn't want to rub shoulders with greatness?
Which is exactly why FullTilt does this, after all; it's damn good for business. Or, as Phil carefully stated it when someone queried him as to why he was slumming with us losers: "There was a request."
Now, we'll take it at face value that the person behind the customized "Phil Ivey" icon was indeed Phil, despite this being a Friday night, when the fish action on a live floor could be presumed to be at its peak. After all, some buddy of his could, in theory, log on using his account, do some of this table-appearance hopping, and make everyone happier all around. (As someone who's worked with professionals and endorsement contracts, I'd say it's a given that each pro poker player under contract to FullTilt has to spend a pre-specified number of hours playing trash poker with the hoi polloi like me.) (As an aside, never get me started on the veracity quotient of famous athletes like E.R. or B.R. or J.M.,Jr.; I have rather more than third-person knowledge of a myriad of celebrity hijinks... and am even bound by a nondiscloure agreement or two.)
Anyway, here was Phil, playing away, politely answering some of the questions inevitably tossed his way. And I soon got my seat, as one of the other players at the table --- maybe player "Acadian" (a friendly sort, most of the time) --- allowed the first waiting person (me) to share in the experience.
I sat down, said hi to Phil and all, thanked him for his time --- because I knew the score of why he was there. And I had an inkling of what was about to happen.
It didn't take long.
Like the crescendo of drunks outside an overcrowded football stadium restroom, the railbird chat became ever more incessant and antagonistic. "Hey, Phil!" said one. "Can you waggle your big ears for us?" (This referred to the custom Ivey avatar on display at the table; it also has four "moods", should Ivey choose to show them off. But as for the chat, it quickly started scrolling so fast one couldn't keep up, especially Ivey, the target....
"You and me, Ivey! You're not so tough!"
"I've got $50. Let's go heads-up at the Omaha table!"
"$50? I've got $100! Let's get it on, Phil!"
"Loved it when Moneymaker gave you that bad beat!"
"You ain't so tough. I've got your $^& covered!"
... and more, much more, and nastier, ever nastier.
Fucking morons, all. Mindless taunts aside, does any person not verifiably of "idiot" mentality believe that Phil Ivey actually needs Joe Blowhard's $50 of heads-up action? That Phil couldn't do just fine walking down to the floor of the Bellagio or the Mirage, there relieving some of the ever-present fish of a whole lot more than that? Those fishies would only be too happy to donate as long as they can bathe themselves in the fame of playing with an Ivey or a Ferguson or a Lederer... just as we enjoy playing them on FullTilt, sucking up to them and telling you about it all on sites like this.
Sigh.
Well, to dispense with the game part of the story, I played my normal tight/still-too-passive style, then managed to win a big pot from Ivey when I ran him off a hand where a Q-J-10 rainbow flopped and an 8 came off on the turn. I had Q-Q that hand, and I believe he had A-Q suited, but I'll never know, will I? He could have had 9-9, but we'd capped it pre-flop, so I was pretty sure he wasn't on K-9, and I bet hard trying to sell him on my pretend A-K while hoping he didn't have the same. And I guess he didn't have the 9-9, either, though I was quite willing to pay him off to see it or the dreaded slick, knowing that I had at least a solid second-best.
Anyway, back to the railboors. By this time the chat window was nearing uselessness due to the overflowing morondation; morons are effervescent, you know, bubbling up to the surface when sufficiently agitated. So, after about three laps, I thanked Phil again, and gave up my seat to the next maybe-fortunate soul in that nearly endless waiting list.
As for poor Phil --- or poor Phil's Doppelganger, perhaps --- he gave it up after another lap himself. And who can blame him? As it stands now, FullTilt's "play with the pros" idea is a wonderful idea that's woefully counterproductive in practice. I had a mixed experience, not a great one; this is a concept that screams to be reworked. Frankly put, there needs to be a way for a pro to turn off the railbird chat when he's undertaking one of these charity tours. Or, at the least, for the pro to have a "limit" function on call, where only the first five or so names on the waiting list can actually fire away with their questions. Remember, dear reader, that these poker-pro guys and gals hear the same questions thousands of times; there is precious little any of us can ask or say that they haven't already heard. It's fun for us to do the asking and sucking-up, but for them it's just a tedious lesson in politeness and public relations.
We can intrepret it as such: If FullTilt had its corporate head screwed on straight, they wouldn't subject their contract players to the levels of abuse that I witnessed. They'd find a workaround.
My guess is that sometime down the road, they'll need to.
Of course, there's more to FullTilt than the mondo-flashy feel and slicker-than-average software; the site also boasts a top-heavy marketing approach, with a large American advertising budget and a paid-huckster lineup of many of the game's biggest poker names. Even better, these players --- instantly identifiable by name and customized avatar --- make random appearances on the garbage tables, presumably as part of their endorsement contracts. (More on that elsewhere on this page.) So you have a chance to watch the pros, games and strategies bared for all to see, that you don't get anywhere else. This isn't to say that the big names aren't online anywhere else, but for the most part, you can't tell... unless you've rubbed your Magic Divining Poker Chip and gleaned that the user with the handle "SN_Nord_164" on ShvedePoker.com is, say, Gus Hansen.
That said, go to FullTilt if you want to learn their complete lineup of endorsers; said huckstering is their job, not mine. Except for a personal tale of me at a table with Phil Ivey [second sidebar at right], you'll not find a whiff of a FullTilt plug here.
So, top-end advertising aside, how has FullTilt been drawing users to its site? The tried-and-true method, of course: offering a nice signup bonus to new users. In fact, FullTilt offers one of the biggest new-user bonuses around, a 100% match bonus up to $600. And it seems there's always a 50% reload offer to be had, too.
And yet... (Notice how there's always an "And yet..." to these stories?) FullTilt's bonuses are generous, but are notoriously tough to clear. I was still learning the ropes of bonus-whoring and working on a miniscule budget when I gave FullTilt a whirl, with the result that I made a first deposit of only $150, rather than $600. In retrospect, it was one of the wisest decisions I've made. More than once I almost cut my losses and ran, though I came out all right at the end of my time in FullTilt BonusPurgAtory.
Because, it turns out, your FullTilt bonus clears in a significant way only when you win a hand, so there's no hanging around, leaving the LAG's (Loose-Aggressives) to do the dirty work and pay for the rake. And owing to this, the low-limit fixed games are about as tight/weak as they come. Despite these being 9-player tables, not 10, you'll still have a hard time finding a table with a flops-seen percentage much over 30. And I'm talking about games as low as .25/.50! Squeeze those quarters, kiddies; I know I do, though usually at mildly higher stakes! Play gets a bit skittish, too, with players jumping from one table to the next searching for some sort of an edge, or just from being tired of taking bad beats from some talking eggplant boasting a snarly grin from petal to petal. So even though you've got a 9-player max, you won't find very many tables where the seats stay full; you'll end up jumping around, just like everyone else, trying to find the action.
As for the effects on play, I was getting out-tight/weaked for a long time, my bankroll struggling to stay steady as my incremental bonus payouts barely matched the mild losses incurred by my play, and at the slow clearance rates, the annoyance factor is magnified. But hey, I'm learning how this game works myself: I recognized the effects of the tight/weak party, began making the adjustment to a more aggressive post-flop style, and started to turn the corner. I can therefore state that playing on FullTilt, bankroll issues aside, did improve my game. My game has lots more room for improvement, too. By the time I cleared my $150 match bonus, my overall bankroll (including that $150 bonus) was up to about $380. I've done worse. But at .50/1 and 1/2, it's like pulling teeth.
Heh. Speaking of teeth, that brings us back to those mondogonzowacko avatars and background images. Each user can select an avatar for usage from a library of 50 or more choices. Not only is there a selection of crazed-but-sterotypical images, but you can also choose various animals or inanimate objects, such as a rock. Get it, a "rock"? Rimshot, please. Here's the "ba-da-bing" as well. Shark, fish, and all the other poker syllogisms are therein personified, too. (As an aside, there's one black-boxer avatar that looks more than a bit like Mike Tyson, and when that avatar's mood is set to "angry" (next paragraph) I swear you can see a bit of Evander Holyfield's ear in the pseudo-Tyson's mouth.)
Each of the avatars can also be made to appear in one of four emotional states: normal (usually mildly happy in appearance), happy (for this, think of PeeWee Herman on a sugar high), angry (ditto with PeeWee, but now when the cops storm the porn theatre) and confused. The pros, when you encounter them, have their own customized avatar-caricatures. So do all four Chris Ferguson avatars look the same?
As for game variety, FullTilt adds razz (7-card "lowball" stud) to the standard mix of games. Is it the only site offering this game? Being a razz player must be a "cult" thing, after all: I remember T.J. Cloutier at the final table of ESPN's 2004 WSOP Razz coverage, saying, "I hate this damn game." I might be misremembering the "damn" part, or I might not. Still, he was in the final three (with Ferguson and Moneymaker) when he said it. No wonder razz didn't make the '05 ESPN schedule.
Again, I'm not sure if any other sites offer razz, so if you want to learn this variant, FullTilt might well be the place to go. They even run occasional tourneys, usually promoted with chat-window text like the following: "Hurry up and join our $1 Razz Tourney before you come to your senses!" Now that's a game with an image problem.
Back to the software --- its slickness fits well with the in-your-face graphics. I've played three tables at once without problems, despite my running an old clunker, and it's possible to have fourth and fifth windows open and working as well. Sneak a peek between hands to check out the merchandise in the FullTilt store; I snagged a hat with my bonus points, free of charge. (Thank you, FullTilt. It's a nice gesture on your part. Though that poster showing the stars posed in the alley --- oops, that's Fremont St. --- is still the nth degree of poker dorkiness.)
Another nice touch: For any bonus you're working on, you can view your progress in real time. A few other sites can match this, but none exceed it. And the bonuses are paid out in real-time increments, too, complete with popup-window notification. That's the way to do it.
Cash and carry? No problems depositing or withdrawing. I always have that first-time-dread syndrome when trying either a deposit or a withdrawal, never quite knowing (or trusting) what I'm getting myself into. But the deposit was fast and easy, and both of my system withdrawals were processed in a little over a day... nice plus marks there, as well.
Overall? Playing at FullTilt can only be described as a unique experience. It's not a quick path to riches, due to the extreme tightness of the games, but it does have other rewards. FullTilt has a long way to go before they'll become a dominant online force, but they're doing lots of things right. One wonders about their bankroll, in the long run; with their reliance on top-heavy advertising celebrity endorsers and splashy gimmicks, even the most well-funded of operations dances a finer wire than the rest. It'll be interesting to watch FullTilt's future.
Time For a $&%^tail?
One thing you'll discover after playing for a bit at FullTilt is that the chat window employs auto-censoring software, replacing George Carlin's seven deadly words (and then some!) with their $%^&#%@ equivalents. Whether this is a plus or a minus is left to the user; I consider swearing in a chat window to be one of the most cheapest, moronic forms of intimidation a player can attempt. Whether the player doing the cussin' is on tilt isn't the point; others do at as a way to try to tilt their opponents. It doesn't work on me, though, thanks! :-)
Anyhow, FullTilt's censoring software is a bit aggressive, wiping out a whole lot of otherwise legitimate stuff in the interest of keeping the sight of an erstwhile "$%@&!" from our otherwise-pure-as-an-angel's orbs. So one day, after my internal light bulb flickered to life, I clued in my table on the FullTilt programmers' excess.
"Hey, all," I typed --- or, at least, this is what appeared -- "I think I'm in the mood for a #*@!tail tonight. Then I'm going to watch some reruns on NBC... always loved that pea%&#& logo of theirs. There's going to be a marathon of old Baretta reruns --- always loved his pet $*#%ateel, Fred, too!"
Me, Ivey and the Railbirds of a Feather
I mentioned in the main review that at FullTilt you, too, might get a chance to play with a pro. This carries a hefty chunk of intrinsic "neatness" value, since the vast majority of us are never going to be able to sit down in the upper level of the poker room at the Bellagio and play some $1,000/$2,000 with Ivey in person. Why is Ivey doing this? Because he's getting paid to, of course; he and the other celebrity players on the FullTilt roster have signed on to do this penance as a way to reap their (probably hefty) financial rewards.
Penance is the right word, too. Surfing on down to the garbage tables where players like me chop away might not be as putrid a skill level of game action as it sounds, but when it comes to the flock o' (rail)birds that accumulate, well, as the saying goes, "There's got to be a better way."
Backfill time. One Friday night in the middle of July, after just having left a 1/2 table that dropped from nine to four players in the wink of an eye, imagine my surprise, scanning the front-page boards, to see the title of a neighboring table turn red. This is FullTilt code for "Pro Player Seated Here." I clicked on in, and sure enough, Phil Ivey (?!?!) was at the table. The table was full, of course, but since it was my stakes and not much else was available, I joined the waiting list. This put me first in line, but soon enough there 60 or so others right behind me. Sixty friggin' people thinking they're going to get a chance to play?? In yer dreams, people! But one can hardly blame the attempt --- after all, who doesn't want to rub shoulders with greatness?
Which is exactly why FullTilt does this, after all; it's damn good for business. Or, as Phil carefully stated it when someone queried him as to why he was slumming with us losers: "There was a request."
Now, we'll take it at face value that the person behind the customized "Phil Ivey" icon was indeed Phil, despite this being a Friday night, when the fish action on a live floor could be presumed to be at its peak. After all, some buddy of his could, in theory, log on using his account, do some of this table-appearance hopping, and make everyone happier all around. (As someone who's worked with professionals and endorsement contracts, I'd say it's a given that each pro poker player under contract to FullTilt has to spend a pre-specified number of hours playing trash poker with the hoi polloi like me.) (As an aside, never get me started on the veracity quotient of famous athletes like E.R. or B.R. or J.M.,Jr.; I have rather more than third-person knowledge of a myriad of celebrity hijinks... and am even bound by a nondiscloure agreement or two.)
Anyway, here was Phil, playing away, politely answering some of the questions inevitably tossed his way. And I soon got my seat, as one of the other players at the table --- maybe player "Acadian" (a friendly sort, most of the time) --- allowed the first waiting person (me) to share in the experience.
I sat down, said hi to Phil and all, thanked him for his time --- because I knew the score of why he was there. And I had an inkling of what was about to happen.
It didn't take long.
Like the crescendo of drunks outside an overcrowded football stadium restroom, the railbird chat became ever more incessant and antagonistic. "Hey, Phil!" said one. "Can you waggle your big ears for us?" (This referred to the custom Ivey avatar on display at the table; it also has four "moods", should Ivey choose to show them off. But as for the chat, it quickly started scrolling so fast one couldn't keep up, especially Ivey, the target....
"You and me, Ivey! You're not so tough!"
"I've got $50. Let's go heads-up at the Omaha table!"
"$50? I've got $100! Let's get it on, Phil!"
"Loved it when Moneymaker gave you that bad beat!"
"You ain't so tough. I've got your $^& covered!"
... and more, much more, and nastier, ever nastier.
Fucking morons, all. Mindless taunts aside, does any person not verifiably of "idiot" mentality believe that Phil Ivey actually needs Joe Blowhard's $50 of heads-up action? That Phil couldn't do just fine walking down to the floor of the Bellagio or the Mirage, there relieving some of the ever-present fish of a whole lot more than that? Those fishies would only be too happy to donate as long as they can bathe themselves in the fame of playing with an Ivey or a Ferguson or a Lederer... just as we enjoy playing them on FullTilt, sucking up to them and telling you about it all on sites like this.
Sigh.
Well, to dispense with the game part of the story, I played my normal tight/still-too-passive style, then managed to win a big pot from Ivey when I ran him off a hand where a Q-J-10 rainbow flopped and an 8 came off on the turn. I had Q-Q that hand, and I believe he had A-Q suited, but I'll never know, will I? He could have had 9-9, but we'd capped it pre-flop, so I was pretty sure he wasn't on K-9, and I bet hard trying to sell him on my pretend A-K while hoping he didn't have the same. And I guess he didn't have the 9-9, either, though I was quite willing to pay him off to see it or the dreaded slick, knowing that I had at least a solid second-best.
Anyway, back to the railboors. By this time the chat window was nearing uselessness due to the overflowing morondation; morons are effervescent, you know, bubbling up to the surface when sufficiently agitated. So, after about three laps, I thanked Phil again, and gave up my seat to the next maybe-fortunate soul in that nearly endless waiting list.
As for poor Phil --- or poor Phil's Doppelganger, perhaps --- he gave it up after another lap himself. And who can blame him? As it stands now, FullTilt's "play with the pros" idea is a wonderful idea that's woefully counterproductive in practice. I had a mixed experience, not a great one; this is a concept that screams to be reworked. Frankly put, there needs to be a way for a pro to turn off the railbird chat when he's undertaking one of these charity tours. Or, at the least, for the pro to have a "limit" function on call, where only the first five or so names on the waiting list can actually fire away with their questions. Remember, dear reader, that these poker-pro guys and gals hear the same questions thousands of times; there is precious little any of us can ask or say that they haven't already heard. It's fun for us to do the asking and sucking-up, but for them it's just a tedious lesson in politeness and public relations.
We can intrepret it as such: If FullTilt had its corporate head screwed on straight, they wouldn't subject their contract players to the levels of abuse that I witnessed. They'd find a workaround.
My guess is that sometime down the road, they'll need to.
SITE REVIEW - BODOG POKER
Another site visited, with high expectations.
Another disappointment.
BoDog Poker is among the sassiest and brassiest of the newer poker venues to hit the 'Net. The offshoot of a well-established bookmaking concern --- spearheaded by the omnipresent head honcho of all things Bodog, Calvin Ayres --- BoDog Poker offers plenty of flash and attitude, but lacks the substance to get where it wants to go. Advertising only carries a poker site so far, and, for what it's worth, BoDog has lots more work to do if it wants to be a really serious playa.
First, let's give BoDog whatever credit it deserves for creating a site with a distinctive persona. From its ads to its gaming site Bodog goes for the flash and sizzle, the in-your-face feel. Featured site endorsers include Josh Arieh and David Williams --- need I say more? (Ah, to be young, hip and macho --- I'm zero-for-three on that scale.) At first glance the interface looks sleek and streamlined, with plenty of techno-gizmos to aid your play. Once you figure them out, that is, for they're not clearly organized, nor well-defined. But I digress.
It is a sleek, streamlined site, and the software works as advertised, as far as it goes. The problem is that the BoDog interface doesn't do the basics right, and because of that, you might find the site --- sleek-'n'-streamlined or not --- darn near unplayable and unusable. No other site I've used does as terrible a job of using the available screen space, and no other site goes so far to skip what needs to be in place... just for the sake of looking cool. That's a trade-off that this results-oriented person rates rather lowly.
On the flip side, a major plus for BoDog is the flattened and lengthened blind structure in its tournaments; the overall effect is that the blinds increase much more slowly here than on most other sites. It gives you room to make some plays, and it makes for longer-duration tournaments. So if you measure your poker entertainment value in hours spent (rather than dollars won), BoDog's tourneys are definitely worth a look.
The worst transgression? It's the multi-tabling. Or rather the lack of it, in any usable form. BoDog's interface allows up to three tables to be played simultaneously, and offers a one-click way to switch the positions of the tables on the screens. In essence, the interface allows you a full view of only one of the three tables, with the other two shrunk down into mini-view formats at the far left. And what miserable mini-views they are, too, lacking such important basics as the size of a bet that any individual opponent at the table has made during the current round of betting, showing only the collective total bet during that round by all opponents to that moment. Only by clicking that screen into the "main" screen position can you actually determine who's bet what. In addition, the icon that indicates that a player is still active in a hand is so small as to be illegible; you'll not be able to pick it up from a quick glance at the action. And if you're playing fixed-limit, don't worry about the size of your own chip stack: in the mini-view it's not present.
The strange part is that, though the mini-views are too small to be useful, they still include a ton of wasted space. Congratulations, BoDog! I'm not quite sure how you managed it, but you did: your mini-screens manage to suck in two opposite and conflicting ways at the same time. And the main screen is even worse, in terms of wasted space. But at least it's a clean, sleek look.
You know what's absolutely the funniest? The fact that in the interest of coolth, Bodog's interface has intentionally been designed to be extra-lean and horizontal, leaving an inch or more of blank space at the top and bottom of the user's monitor. In practice, it looks much the way a wide-screen film does when projected onto most theatres' standard-sized screens... a wasteful, poorly designed fit.
And one more significant omission: For all the user tools and technical showmanship, nowhere, when you're in the midst of a tournament, can you find a screen that tells you what your current position is. If there's 50 people remaining in a tourney that pays 27 spots, and you're in the middle of the pack, it's worth knowing exactly where you are in that pack, to better time your moves. But the only way to do it on BoDog would to be to tab to each table, then calculate who's above and below. and it'd all change by the time you finished, anyway.
BoDog loses itself in the flash and the sizzle and ends up producing something not very good at all. For instance, the site makes a point of having lots of statistical information available for the player. And the stats and tracking info are there, too, even if sometimes they don't work right. (According to their stats, I've never lost a showdown. But I digress.) However --- and this is particularly true in tourneys --- the information is available on not one but multiple separate screens, each screen itself replete with hidden tabs and resizing options. The information is there, but it's a hopeless morass, unable to be accessed in a timely manner in the midst of your intended multi-tabling play. You can access and re-size your tournament info until it's just what you want to see, and if you're switched to another table --- poof! -- you start again from scratch with your choices.
Until you give up on multi-tabling at BoDog, which you will. You'll still be annoyed, but you'll stop trying to play two or more games at once.
What's left when you can't play two or more tables effectively? For me, a lot of boredom. But I actually have two computers I run simultaneously, and if I'm not writing something, checking e-mail or designing a crossword, I'll often have a second site active on my older boat anchor, playing a single table or small tourney. One would think that since it (BoDog) doesn't offer effective multi-table performance, it ought to at least be able to single-table without too much processor overhead. But, alas, that doesn't work either. BoDog's software requires at least Windows 200 and a 200-megahertz processing speed; my old clunker is Windoze '98/165MhZ, and it can't run BoDog. (I've tried.)
When all is said and done, I can't think of a reason that I'd want to spend a lot of time playing at BoDog, except (in BoDog's pipedreams) to tell my friends that I'm cool because I do play there. (And hope that my friends don't snicker at me behind my back.) But functionally speaking, this site has a long, long way to go before it's a serious contender. BoDog needs to take its money guys and its poker guys and its coder guys, put them all in a big room... and at least introduce them to one another. A merging of the minds might not be possible, but it's better than this dilettante stuff.
Software quirks abound here, the natural outcome of having a complex site put together by a group that doesn't really yet understand the complexities of the game. As an example, I'm writing this as I play in a tournament on BoDog that's a $5,000 Guarantee, $15 + $1 no-limit freezeout. The number of the entrants did not reach the level necessary to meet the guarantee, which should cause an overlay. Under Tournament Lobbies / Tournament Details / Player Progress the "Prize Pool" shows as $4,180. Hmmm, shouldn't that be $5,000?? BoDog's software dudes don't seem to know that "Prize Pool" is an "outflow" term; they need something like "Entry Fees Paid" here instead. And it is vitally important to get these things right --- the only way that I was able to determine that BoDog was indeed meeting its guarantee was by manually adding the 27 prize figures in the Payouts window, upon the advice of a more experienced BoDog-er. (Which was a bit embarrassing, actually!)
Understand that I didn't really expect to learn that BoDog wasn't meeting guarantees --- they are, so forget about that. But it is BoDog's responsibility to create a comfort zone, not confusion, and here they've dropped the ball.
Summing up, I give BoDog high marks for effort, but rather significantly lower marks for execution. They ain't where they need to be, if they wanna be who they claim to be. Because, of this, I'd say that their "chip" rating below is as volatile as any I've ever done; ther's some significant upside potential.
Never forget, though: There's a difference between potential and reality.
Another disappointment.
BoDog Poker is among the sassiest and brassiest of the newer poker venues to hit the 'Net. The offshoot of a well-established bookmaking concern --- spearheaded by the omnipresent head honcho of all things Bodog, Calvin Ayres --- BoDog Poker offers plenty of flash and attitude, but lacks the substance to get where it wants to go. Advertising only carries a poker site so far, and, for what it's worth, BoDog has lots more work to do if it wants to be a really serious playa.
First, let's give BoDog whatever credit it deserves for creating a site with a distinctive persona. From its ads to its gaming site Bodog goes for the flash and sizzle, the in-your-face feel. Featured site endorsers include Josh Arieh and David Williams --- need I say more? (Ah, to be young, hip and macho --- I'm zero-for-three on that scale.) At first glance the interface looks sleek and streamlined, with plenty of techno-gizmos to aid your play. Once you figure them out, that is, for they're not clearly organized, nor well-defined. But I digress.
It is a sleek, streamlined site, and the software works as advertised, as far as it goes. The problem is that the BoDog interface doesn't do the basics right, and because of that, you might find the site --- sleek-'n'-streamlined or not --- darn near unplayable and unusable. No other site I've used does as terrible a job of using the available screen space, and no other site goes so far to skip what needs to be in place... just for the sake of looking cool. That's a trade-off that this results-oriented person rates rather lowly.
On the flip side, a major plus for BoDog is the flattened and lengthened blind structure in its tournaments; the overall effect is that the blinds increase much more slowly here than on most other sites. It gives you room to make some plays, and it makes for longer-duration tournaments. So if you measure your poker entertainment value in hours spent (rather than dollars won), BoDog's tourneys are definitely worth a look.
The worst transgression? It's the multi-tabling. Or rather the lack of it, in any usable form. BoDog's interface allows up to three tables to be played simultaneously, and offers a one-click way to switch the positions of the tables on the screens. In essence, the interface allows you a full view of only one of the three tables, with the other two shrunk down into mini-view formats at the far left. And what miserable mini-views they are, too, lacking such important basics as the size of a bet that any individual opponent at the table has made during the current round of betting, showing only the collective total bet during that round by all opponents to that moment. Only by clicking that screen into the "main" screen position can you actually determine who's bet what. In addition, the icon that indicates that a player is still active in a hand is so small as to be illegible; you'll not be able to pick it up from a quick glance at the action. And if you're playing fixed-limit, don't worry about the size of your own chip stack: in the mini-view it's not present.
The strange part is that, though the mini-views are too small to be useful, they still include a ton of wasted space. Congratulations, BoDog! I'm not quite sure how you managed it, but you did: your mini-screens manage to suck in two opposite and conflicting ways at the same time. And the main screen is even worse, in terms of wasted space. But at least it's a clean, sleek look.
You know what's absolutely the funniest? The fact that in the interest of coolth, Bodog's interface has intentionally been designed to be extra-lean and horizontal, leaving an inch or more of blank space at the top and bottom of the user's monitor. In practice, it looks much the way a wide-screen film does when projected onto most theatres' standard-sized screens... a wasteful, poorly designed fit.
And one more significant omission: For all the user tools and technical showmanship, nowhere, when you're in the midst of a tournament, can you find a screen that tells you what your current position is. If there's 50 people remaining in a tourney that pays 27 spots, and you're in the middle of the pack, it's worth knowing exactly where you are in that pack, to better time your moves. But the only way to do it on BoDog would to be to tab to each table, then calculate who's above and below. and it'd all change by the time you finished, anyway.
BoDog loses itself in the flash and the sizzle and ends up producing something not very good at all. For instance, the site makes a point of having lots of statistical information available for the player. And the stats and tracking info are there, too, even if sometimes they don't work right. (According to their stats, I've never lost a showdown. But I digress.) However --- and this is particularly true in tourneys --- the information is available on not one but multiple separate screens, each screen itself replete with hidden tabs and resizing options. The information is there, but it's a hopeless morass, unable to be accessed in a timely manner in the midst of your intended multi-tabling play. You can access and re-size your tournament info until it's just what you want to see, and if you're switched to another table --- poof! -- you start again from scratch with your choices.
Until you give up on multi-tabling at BoDog, which you will. You'll still be annoyed, but you'll stop trying to play two or more games at once.
What's left when you can't play two or more tables effectively? For me, a lot of boredom. But I actually have two computers I run simultaneously, and if I'm not writing something, checking e-mail or designing a crossword, I'll often have a second site active on my older boat anchor, playing a single table or small tourney. One would think that since it (BoDog) doesn't offer effective multi-table performance, it ought to at least be able to single-table without too much processor overhead. But, alas, that doesn't work either. BoDog's software requires at least Windows 200 and a 200-megahertz processing speed; my old clunker is Windoze '98/165MhZ, and it can't run BoDog. (I've tried.)
When all is said and done, I can't think of a reason that I'd want to spend a lot of time playing at BoDog, except (in BoDog's pipedreams) to tell my friends that I'm cool because I do play there. (And hope that my friends don't snicker at me behind my back.) But functionally speaking, this site has a long, long way to go before it's a serious contender. BoDog needs to take its money guys and its poker guys and its coder guys, put them all in a big room... and at least introduce them to one another. A merging of the minds might not be possible, but it's better than this dilettante stuff.
Software quirks abound here, the natural outcome of having a complex site put together by a group that doesn't really yet understand the complexities of the game. As an example, I'm writing this as I play in a tournament on BoDog that's a $5,000 Guarantee, $15 + $1 no-limit freezeout. The number of the entrants did not reach the level necessary to meet the guarantee, which should cause an overlay. Under Tournament Lobbies / Tournament Details / Player Progress the "Prize Pool" shows as $4,180. Hmmm, shouldn't that be $5,000?? BoDog's software dudes don't seem to know that "Prize Pool" is an "outflow" term; they need something like "Entry Fees Paid" here instead. And it is vitally important to get these things right --- the only way that I was able to determine that BoDog was indeed meeting its guarantee was by manually adding the 27 prize figures in the Payouts window, upon the advice of a more experienced BoDog-er. (Which was a bit embarrassing, actually!)
Understand that I didn't really expect to learn that BoDog wasn't meeting guarantees --- they are, so forget about that. But it is BoDog's responsibility to create a comfort zone, not confusion, and here they've dropped the ball.
Summing up, I give BoDog high marks for effort, but rather significantly lower marks for execution. They ain't where they need to be, if they wanna be who they claim to be. Because, of this, I'd say that their "chip" rating below is as volatile as any I've ever done; ther's some significant upside potential.
Never forget, though: There's a difference between potential and reality.
SITE REVIEW - ABSOLUTE POKER
Thinking about trying Absolute Poker? If you're the bonus-whorin' type, their generous sign-up and reload offers are an attractive enticement to play. These offers aren't the toughest to clear, either, compared to something like FullTilt or the piddling little bonus-points-poo paid out by Pacific. So, hey, Absolute, aw-rigght!!
Now that's how to get a review off to a stylin' start! Suck up to the max! But as for Absolute, it goes downhill from there.
Let's go from the big positive to the big negative: Absolute's game programming sucks. It's clearly the worst I've encountered, and even though my hourly rate (including bonus) was higher here than at some of the other sites I've samples, by the time my bonus offer had completed, I ran screaming into that eternal Internet-hued night.
How does it suck for thee? Let me count the ways. Most of the difficulties here stem from waiting-list maintenance; it seems to follow the "Italian Postal Service" theory of line management, rather than FIFO or LIFO or anything else you'd might expect. (The classic "Italian Postal Service" allegory has to do with what happened, in days of yore, when Italy's mail-delivery service fell too far behind: They just backed their mail-laden trucks up to the sea, dumped the contents into the briny, and started over.) It happens at Absolute, too. You can --- and will --- be frequently bumped from waiting lists that you've already spent a good deal of time enjoying... and you'll be bumped for no other reason than that the site software seemed to think it was a good idea at the time. That'll tend to zero out the hourly rates for good and bad players alike. ;-)
And don't even think about getting on more than one table's waiting list at a time --- you do not want to tempt fate in this way. Most often you'll be dumped from all the lists and have to start over, but you also might be stuck at the top of a table's list, unable to join, even as empty seats dance before your eyes. You might even encounter that choice poker rarity: being able to take seats at the same table, and therefore play hands against yourself.
Software programmers have a nickname for a standard programming practice called "garbage in, garbage out." It refers to that fact that when a module of code encounters data which it doesn't understand, it goes ahead and processes that data anyway, sending it on to the next step of the process. It might not care (or even check) as to the accuracy as the "garbage" that emerges. Such programming practices are why you encounter tales of shipping clerks receiving random $1.37 million interest payments from banks; it's a garbage-handling process run amok.
At Absolute, you can't help feeling that to the programmers doing the work, the customer is the garbage. No one who really cared about the product they were offering would attempt to make a splash in the online poker market with something this bug-infested... and if they did care, they'd fix the problems damn quick. As far as I've been able to determine, Absolute's junk software is endemic; it always has been, and always will be. And soon enough, I'd had enough, abandoning play just shy of the bonus points I'd need to earn some piece of Absolute-themed merchandise through their bonus awards program.
The game play's no gravy train, either. Absolute offers some of the tightest low-limit ring games around --- the true fish is a rarity here. This confirms that bonus-whorin' truism: The bigger the bonus (in relative terms), the tougher and tighter the action will be at the lowest limits necessary to clear that bonus. True fish don't survive even long enough to clear their signup bonuses before going bust at sites like these.
Additionally, game activity at Absolute dwindles to nearly nothing in the off-peak hours; I've seen less than 1,000 active players there on several occasions. Add in the twin considerations of ongoing tournament action and the activities of other bonus whores, and the picture one gets is of a site where not much else is happening. In fact, it's the no-limit hold-'em action at Absolute that draws the most active users; the rest of us have to work hard at times to find a comfortable game.
The graphics package at Absolute is fair-to-middlin'. It's not the flashiest, not the worst --- each user has the chace to import a mini-image to use as an avatar, and if anyone ever wanted to have a field day with penny-ante copyright violations, this would be a great place to start. But any concern with graphics and flash has to be secondary to the problems with the game play itself. You just never know when the whole works will turn to stone, leaving you to reboot. But you'll get to do that, I promise!
Cash processing is the one area where Absolute earns clear plus-marks. Both cash-in and cash-out transactions were easy and clean, and the time to process my withdrawal was under two days. I can live with that level of service. And despite its other problems, the portion of Absolute's software the tracks your bonuses in real time works quite well, and those bonuses are paid in real time, too. Good job, Absolute.
But overall, I can do better. I was disappointed enough in the game play and the software that Absolute has dropped way down on the list of sites I'll select for continued play, attractive reload offers or not. It's just not worth it to me.
We Never Said Our Ideas Were Original...
You'd think a site with software problems on the scale of those at Absolute would have better things to do than trying to integrate their own version of Paradise Poker's "menu" of refreshments, but that didn't stop Absolute in the least. Sure enough, there's a click-open menu on each table showing a list of snacks and drinks and such. I don't mind it, per se; I'm always looking for a lucky charm of some sort, and a drink avatar of one weird color or another is as likely as anything else.
But geez, what a blatant ripoff. I can't imagine that the folks at Paradise have a whole lot of positive things to say about this one.
C'mon, Absolute, think. Use your brains to develop and implement a new useless add-on that you can call your own, rather than hijacking an old one from somewhere else. Here's an idea, admittedly lame, but take it and run with it: Program a little sub-routine that sends out the pit boss, every few dozen hands, with a new deck set-up and chip tray for the dealer. Not that I care, but since you can't get your core gaming software to run properly, at least fritter away your extra programming hours on something useless that's new.
Now that's how to get a review off to a stylin' start! Suck up to the max! But as for Absolute, it goes downhill from there.
Let's go from the big positive to the big negative: Absolute's game programming sucks. It's clearly the worst I've encountered, and even though my hourly rate (including bonus) was higher here than at some of the other sites I've samples, by the time my bonus offer had completed, I ran screaming into that eternal Internet-hued night.
How does it suck for thee? Let me count the ways. Most of the difficulties here stem from waiting-list maintenance; it seems to follow the "Italian Postal Service" theory of line management, rather than FIFO or LIFO or anything else you'd might expect. (The classic "Italian Postal Service" allegory has to do with what happened, in days of yore, when Italy's mail-delivery service fell too far behind: They just backed their mail-laden trucks up to the sea, dumped the contents into the briny, and started over.) It happens at Absolute, too. You can --- and will --- be frequently bumped from waiting lists that you've already spent a good deal of time enjoying... and you'll be bumped for no other reason than that the site software seemed to think it was a good idea at the time. That'll tend to zero out the hourly rates for good and bad players alike. ;-)
And don't even think about getting on more than one table's waiting list at a time --- you do not want to tempt fate in this way. Most often you'll be dumped from all the lists and have to start over, but you also might be stuck at the top of a table's list, unable to join, even as empty seats dance before your eyes. You might even encounter that choice poker rarity: being able to take seats at the same table, and therefore play hands against yourself.
Software programmers have a nickname for a standard programming practice called "garbage in, garbage out." It refers to that fact that when a module of code encounters data which it doesn't understand, it goes ahead and processes that data anyway, sending it on to the next step of the process. It might not care (or even check) as to the accuracy as the "garbage" that emerges. Such programming practices are why you encounter tales of shipping clerks receiving random $1.37 million interest payments from banks; it's a garbage-handling process run amok.
At Absolute, you can't help feeling that to the programmers doing the work, the customer is the garbage. No one who really cared about the product they were offering would attempt to make a splash in the online poker market with something this bug-infested... and if they did care, they'd fix the problems damn quick. As far as I've been able to determine, Absolute's junk software is endemic; it always has been, and always will be. And soon enough, I'd had enough, abandoning play just shy of the bonus points I'd need to earn some piece of Absolute-themed merchandise through their bonus awards program.
The game play's no gravy train, either. Absolute offers some of the tightest low-limit ring games around --- the true fish is a rarity here. This confirms that bonus-whorin' truism: The bigger the bonus (in relative terms), the tougher and tighter the action will be at the lowest limits necessary to clear that bonus. True fish don't survive even long enough to clear their signup bonuses before going bust at sites like these.
Additionally, game activity at Absolute dwindles to nearly nothing in the off-peak hours; I've seen less than 1,000 active players there on several occasions. Add in the twin considerations of ongoing tournament action and the activities of other bonus whores, and the picture one gets is of a site where not much else is happening. In fact, it's the no-limit hold-'em action at Absolute that draws the most active users; the rest of us have to work hard at times to find a comfortable game.
The graphics package at Absolute is fair-to-middlin'. It's not the flashiest, not the worst --- each user has the chace to import a mini-image to use as an avatar, and if anyone ever wanted to have a field day with penny-ante copyright violations, this would be a great place to start. But any concern with graphics and flash has to be secondary to the problems with the game play itself. You just never know when the whole works will turn to stone, leaving you to reboot. But you'll get to do that, I promise!
Cash processing is the one area where Absolute earns clear plus-marks. Both cash-in and cash-out transactions were easy and clean, and the time to process my withdrawal was under two days. I can live with that level of service. And despite its other problems, the portion of Absolute's software the tracks your bonuses in real time works quite well, and those bonuses are paid in real time, too. Good job, Absolute.
But overall, I can do better. I was disappointed enough in the game play and the software that Absolute has dropped way down on the list of sites I'll select for continued play, attractive reload offers or not. It's just not worth it to me.
We Never Said Our Ideas Were Original...
You'd think a site with software problems on the scale of those at Absolute would have better things to do than trying to integrate their own version of Paradise Poker's "menu" of refreshments, but that didn't stop Absolute in the least. Sure enough, there's a click-open menu on each table showing a list of snacks and drinks and such. I don't mind it, per se; I'm always looking for a lucky charm of some sort, and a drink avatar of one weird color or another is as likely as anything else.
But geez, what a blatant ripoff. I can't imagine that the folks at Paradise have a whole lot of positive things to say about this one.
C'mon, Absolute, think. Use your brains to develop and implement a new useless add-on that you can call your own, rather than hijacking an old one from somewhere else. Here's an idea, admittedly lame, but take it and run with it: Program a little sub-routine that sends out the pit boss, every few dozen hands, with a new deck set-up and chip tray for the dealer. Not that I care, but since you can't get your core gaming software to run properly, at least fritter away your extra programming hours on something useless that's new.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
The Poker Idiot #2 --- Phil Hellmuth
With a hearty sigh, we now bring you our pre-requisite Phil Hellmuth piece. Its appearance here is due to bylaw #16 in the Official Rules of Poker Commentary Handbook, currently and perpetually back-ordered at Cardoza Publishing. Since "we" didn't qualify for the exemption listed in subsection (b) of this bylaw, dealing with established "player-writers" (who are therefore allowed to skip the creation of the Hellmuth piece), we're stuck with the thing, as are you:
As an good real estate agent would tell you, it's location, location, location. I'm reminded of this when I think about Phil Hellmuth... or, rather, my reaction to Phil Hellmuth. Three facts tie all this together: I play poker, I write, and I'm from Wisconsin, the land of Harleys, beer farts, and whiny poker assholes. And that's just us girls, kiddo.
Ah, well, it still beats Chicago.
Irrelevant? Of course. But it leads into this discussion rather neatly, for on more than one occasion, when my locale and my writing comes up, the discussion turns to Bad-Boy Phil. Watching his antics unfold --- whether they've been edited for entertainment value or not --- kinda makes me wish I were from elsewhere, any elsewhere, as my profile informs my tablemates that I am indeed from the Land O' Cheese.
All I can say is, we do grow them well up here, don't we? But I'm not really here to trash Hellmuth; I'm here to categorize him. I don't care about his personality disorders, if any, other than to note a guffaw at Hellmuth's notion that Leo DiCaprio is the right choice to play him [Hellmuth] as an up-and-coming poker star in a would-be movie about his life. In yer dreams, you chubby Cheesehead. Set your sights on Jon Lovitz, maybe, or Joe Pesci (with some fixed-perspective camera work to deal with the height problem). "It's the first all-'head shot' movie poker bio! Starring Joe Pesci as Amewwica's Wuv-v-vable Brat, and Cameron Diaz as the Extraneous Eye Candy! With lust in his eyes and sweaty chips in his hands...."
I think it's the Wisconsin water --- it makes good beer but causes an abnormal frequency of disassociative fantasies. But let's get away from the hyperpsychoanalysis and peel it down to the basics: What Hellmuth is, after all, is nothing more than the world's most famous example of what I call Poker Idiot #2. Taken a step further, Hellmuth is one of the best examples of a game-theory "minimax" there is. But let's do some backfillin', for the sake of this story, if nothing else.
In the climactic scene of "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly," Clint Eastwood's character, Joe (also called Blondie, or, wrongly, The Man With No Name), turns the tables on his sometimes partner, Tuco (Eli Wallach). After getting the drop, Joe forces Tuco to dig for treasure buried in an unmarked grave. "You see," he proffers, gun drawn, "in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig."
And, likewise, we have two basic types of Poker Idiots in the world, and the flareups between the two make up the lion's share of the heated table exchanges in poker.
Poker Idiot #1 is our classic target le torche --- sometimes the purest of fish, but more often just your ordinary over-aggressive-and-too-loose player who's caught drawing thin on a chase hand or who simply doesn't have any respect for what his opponents might have. And sure enough, he sucks out his bad-beat wunderriver and earns the wrath of his victim... that being Poker Idiot #2. Poker Idiot #2 can't stand the loose play and the bad beat, despite the poker surety that eventually, Poker Idiot #1's bad play will distribute his chips into the stacks of his opponents. Even worse is when the bad beat doesn't come, but Poker Idiot #2 still feels the social responsibility to inform Idiot #1 of the weak chase-y play.
As someone who's done the Idiot #2 outbursts myself, I confess to both my sins and to the fact that I hate myself in the very next instant. Because, as we all know from our poker basics, not only have I educated the fish about their fishy play, I've risked driving the fish from the table and making the table that much tougher. And my money's then not likely to come back to me, is it?
Anyhow, with apologies for the two-paragraph trip into the land of Duhhh!, we return to Hellmuth, our idiot prince, our Groundhog Day Phil. All the metaphors fit, because he's become a the foremost "niche specialist" in the game. No, he's not the self-proclaimed "best player in the world," he's not likely in the top 20. Bracelets aside, cash winnings be damned, he doesn't seem to hold up under the demands of the ring game, whether the game is fixed-limit, a capped-ceiling no-limit game, or whatever. So how do we solve the enigma? Excellence aside, we can see that he's not always in control. We all know what Hellmuth is, but we're curious about how he manages to get away with it as well as he does.
Is Phil Hellmuth a magic trick, an optical illusion? The evidence, probed deeply, suggests the answer is yes. Numerous reports indicate that in high-stakes ring games, Hellmuth, if not a fish, nevertheless sprouts fins and scales and makes a dive for the nearest water fountain. (Understand that we're taking these reports at face value, since --- as a pre-requisite poker writer --- we're supposed to naturally hate the dude anyway!) So what do these "reports" mean? Hellmuth must really suck at fixed-limit, right?
Magic trick or not, the answer to that is an emphatic "NO!" So read on --- the point of this lies elsewhere. Three of Hellmuth's nine WSOP bracelets have come in fixed-limit events, another in pot-limit, hardly what one would expect for someone so purportedly fishy in a ring-game environment. We haven't forgot about no-limit ring games either, but they also fall somewhere into this continuum. Fact is, Phil Hellmuth is a diversely talented, highly skilled poker player.
Get the feeling that something just doesn't fit? You're on the right track. And that brings us to the non-escape factor and the minimax solution to poker's process of natural selection that is our Ultimate Phil.
Let's start with that ring-game "fish" stuff. If Hellmuth is indeed a ring-game fish, it's only because he's a victim of his own uncontolled Idiot #2 urges. Idiot #2 types are skilled at breaking up the pleasant games; no one wants to play with the one who's winning all the money if he always has to be such an asshole about it. And if Hellmuth is the ultimate Idiot-2 ass, it stands to reason that he could break up bigger games than anyone else --- he probably can't get as many game against the types of players he would regularly beat --- even if they can afford the stakes --- because he insults them too much. And if you're one of the very best in terms of technical poker skills (as Hellmuth is), this eventually evolves to a point where the only opponents who remain are the very best, having both a comparable skill set and the ability to be impervious to your antics. Consider the top-level players at the famed Bellagio games. Were Hellmuth to try the frantic-antic, cheap-intimidation stuff there, it wouldn't fly... and Hellmuth would come out the worse in the bargain. This is the point that Barry Greenstein --- with caveat about his bias in the matter duly noted --- makes when comparing the toughest ring games to the toughest tourneys, and why Greenstein correctly judges the ring games to be tougher.
So what are the great poker assholes --- the very best players among the Idiot #2 types --- to do, once faced with this dilemma? Just what Hellmuth did: They play tournaments. Lots and lots of tournaments. Because, returning to Hellmuth, not only is he a great player, he can be in the tourney, insult the fish, garner the riches and fame... and feed his Idiot #2 jones all at once. And the kicker, ensuring the extra juiciness or overlay, is that the fish can't leave... at least with chips. In this way tournaments are a neverending fishfest, because once in, the fish swim there for the duration.
The flipside of this dynamic suggests that we'll always see more of the poker-asshole Idiot #2 types in tourneys; besides Hellmuth, the label easily fits Mike Matusow, Josh Arieh, Ellix Powers, Mimi Tran... add your own favorite dink or dinkette here as you wish. Many of these purport to be cash-game "specialists," too --- an overworked phrase if ever there was one, as if there's a game of meaning that's not for cash?!?! But anyhow, the point stands clear.
Some of you will point of that this is just another (if extreme) example of the psychological-warfare aspect of high-level poker, and of course, that's oh so true. Yet, more specifically, Hellmuth's success shows us the striking difference between such "warfare" antics in tournaments when contrasted against ring games. Peeled open, we can see the "Hellmuth Process" as an internal form of natural selection, the preeminent example of how some personalities are just better fitted to the tournament format than other types of play.
But wait, you say. Aren't the tournaments the most risky type of investment for a poker player? And the answer is not at all, for the tourney is the better investment for the poker asshole on two levels, not one. As mentioned above, we know that many of the best players of all types favor the tournaments, due to the proponderance of weaker players that creates a huge edge in expected return. But we also have to consider the added push in this direction that the Hellmuth types receive: their own actions have made the ring-game approach a tougher-than-normal way to make a living, and therefore, the tournaments are an even more conducive and inviting option. It's skew, times two.
Putting it in perspective, it then makes sense that the Hellmuth-type of player --- not necessarily Phil himself --- is more likely to have big-time success in tourneys, just because that's where more of these players end up. And it's finally time to wedge in that definition of "minimax," a game-theory term. From the American Heritage Dictionary: minimax: ADJECTIVE: Of or relating to the strategy in game theory that minimizes the maximum risk for a player.
That's exactly what we have in Hellmuth (and the others of similarly shortened fuse). For these players, their risk would be much higher if they played in high-stakes ring games where their shortcomings would be exposed. The tournaments --- despite the low percentage of players who cash in a given event --- offer the lowest risk over the long term, and so they congregate here. Tourneys are a great value for any top-level player, but in some ways they are the only great value available for Hellmuth and the best of the Poker Idiot #2 players.
One wonders about this phenomenon's placement within the current surge in poker popularity --- one could argue that poker's bad boys are being unjustly rewarded for their less-than-perfect set of skills. The opposing argument is that truism of modern entertainment: Cheap titillation pays the bills. Idiot #2 behavior, therefore, is a contributing factor to the popularity rise of poker itself. Bad boys like Hellmuth become famous because other people make money by making them famous. Never, ever forget that much.
The wheel turns, grows, sprouts other wheels. And, as Ouroboros proved, "You are what you eat." Hellmuth is both the pinnacle and nadir of televised poker. He is imm-pohh-tant, not because of who he is, but because of what he is. As to why he is, that's as much the timing of Dame Fortune's hand as it is a celebration --- or indictment --- of who we are. Tom Petty once sang, "You got lucky, babe," and that applies as much to Hellmuth as anyone else. He's a great poket player, but still a Poker Idiot #2.
Perhaps the best one ever.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Haley's Poker Blog II... and More!
Hey, all, two new interactive, poker-themed crosswords are now available for your enjoyment! Click these links to test your crossword skills and poker knowledge:
http://www.hintzes.com/poker/rvp02.html>Royal Vegas Poker's Expert Series
http://www.hintzes.com/poker/poker01.html>At the WSOP
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Haley's Poker Blog II... and More!
Today's entry focuses on a recent hand I played in a recent "Expert Series" tournament on Royal Vegas Poker. Sometimes one has to play the cards; sometimes one plays the situation. This is the latter, of course, and your comments are welcome. We'd just cracked the bubble into the land of (small) pay, but don't think we were talking untold riches here --- this is a promotional tourney with a $20+2 entry fee and $10 re-buy and add-on options. It's a publicity tool for the site and the pro players involved, and this tounrament is also a bounty tournament: Knock out a pro, collect $50, a t-shirt and maybe an autographed book, if the pro you knock out is an author. As it was, the final 20 made the cash, and spots 11-20 were all scheduled to receive the same --- $50. (First place was $1,500, so there was significant reward for reaching the final table.) We were down to 19 players, and I was rather short-stacked, in 17th position with about 7,400 chips. The blinds were 500/1000, almost ready for another jump, and I was in the small blind. Site host and poker author Lou Krieger was one of two pros at my table; he was a couple of seats to my right. To my immediate left was Matt Lessinger, author of The Book of Bluffs, in the big blind, and he was in 18th place, even a bit more short-stacked, with about 7,100 chips. I'd played with Matt extensively in the previous week's tourney, so he had some basic feel for my style --- no major advantage for me there. Anyhooo... Despite the fact that Matt and I are the short stacks, it's folded all the way around to me in the small blind. I have J-9 of diamonds. I have four options, near as I can tell: (1) dump the hand; (2) limp in and hope Matt lets me play (not veddy damn likely, wot?); (3) come in for 2,000-3,000 and hope Matt has bricks... and tosses them; (4) move all in. What would you do here? Well, anyone with half a brain would guess that I tried Door #4 --- if I hadn't, I wouldn't have anything to write about, would I? And Matt called me with his A-4 off, neither of us improved, and I was down to nearly zero and eliminated two hands later. So be it. But here's the interesting part: Even though my hand was mediocre and I had four ways of playing it, in reality this was my only good option, due to the tournament situation. The final-table bubble looked like it would pop at between 20,000 and 25,000 chips, meaning that even with a double-through, either Matt or I would still have an uphill battle to the table, but at least have a reasonable chance of succeeding in that battle with a doubled stack of chips. I went out in 19th place, but spots 18th through 11th paid nothing extra. In addition, I had Matt slightly outchipped, so if he did look me up and lose to me, I'd be guaranteed $100 plus swag, rather than just the 19th-place $50 payout. So in an important way I was getting better than 2-to-1, but on the hand payoff, not the hand itself. Toss in whatever "bluff equity" (one of Lou's pet terms, I've discovered) I had, and I suggest that this play goes into the category of an almost-automatic all-in. Not with any two, but with any two reasonable to have a chance, which I did. And I did it knowing that my bluff equity was smaller than normal, too: I put the odds of Matt's folding here at 10% or less. Without attempting to speak for someone who's a helluva lot better player than I am, I'll simply note that Matt knew that I wouldn't be afraid to make a play, rightly or wrongly on my part. I expected Matt to look me up, and I expected to be behind once he did, but the situational rewards were simply too great to pass up. I made the play. The expected outcome occurred: I was out of the tourney. And I have no regrets. Nonetheless, the fact that I was able to make this secondary analysis on the fly suggests that I'm making some basic strides as a poker player. As I mentioned above, Lou Krieger chatted with us at the table about how the pros have little or no "bluff equity" in a bounty-style tournament. He even wrote an article about it a few months back in Card Player. His hypothesis, briefly paraphrased, is that the pros in a bounty tournament are at a relative disadvantage because it's seldom possible for them to pull off a great bluff; the bounties on their heads mean that other players will look them up with any reasonable holding. Lou's article then posits that it ultimately means that the pros will be, sooner or later, knocked out of the proceedings. I agree largely, but not totally. While it's undeniable that the pros' ability to bluff is greatly diminished in a bounty tournament, I pointed out to Lou that the opposite is true as well: When the pro in a bounty tournament does possess a made hand or a solid pre-flop holding, he is likely to receive a greater-than-normal reward for his hand. (I quipped it to Lou as "made-hand equity," and it does exist --- one need look no further than the situation with my final hand against Matt above to see how it benefitted Matt there.) While I might make the same play against someone else, I'd be far less likely to do so without the bounty in place and at hand. The counterbalance to the loss of "bluff equity" is there, but whether it's an equal counterbalance is something better left to the experts. As always, it's a learning experience for me. Agree? Disagree? Don't be afraid to drop me a line --- that e-mail address is around here somewhere! --- Haley :-)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)