*sigh*
While perusing some tournament offerings connected with the "Summer Champs" series on poker.com, I discovered I was eligible for the $500 Guaranteed Seniors event.
I'm not sure if I should be depressed or happy. Nothing left but Geritol and sippy cups, methinks...
:D
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Monday, July 02, 2007
Hasenpfeffer is Indeed a Stew....
There is so much crappy and pointless writing in the poker world that's it hard to remember that the good stuff exists as well. One site that I'd forgotten all about was the 'Bigger Deal' poker blog, featuring Anthony Holden, Al Alvarez, Lee Jones and several others. Catching up on Short-Stacked Shamus's postings --- and where does that guy find the time?? --- I remembered that I hadn't visited that other site in a good long while.
I was poorer for it, too.
Those guys can write. Anthony Holden has up a wonderful 'Nixon in China' piece that's way too good to be wasted on us poker cretins, while Lee Jones tossed in a well-constructed piece on something he thinks is going to occur in online poker in the next few years: the adaptation of anonymous user IDs by the online sites. This means that you wouldn't know the identities of the other players at any given table, and the logic behind it is to short-circuit all the third-party software add-ons (like PokerHUD and PokerTracker) that are in many ways the bane of the average online player's existence... even if they don't know it.
What Lee correctly points out is that the shark-to-fish ratio in the online game is getting out of whack and is only going to get worse, in large part due to these third-party products. I couldn't agree more. There are some that are largely innocuous and have value in a historical way, while others were designed solely as technical system 'cheats' and really have no place in a 'fair' poker game.
But the devil's in the details. Lee added in some additional thoughts in a follow-up comment to one of the site's visitors, and it's here where I disagree. Not the first time I've ever disagreed with Lee, either, in the form of a post. One of the very first pieces I ever did for the Kick Ass Poker site was an examination of a Card Player piece Lee did that was in essence of a haranguing of players who stall at the online bubble. I don't like stalling, but the way it occurs online is something that Stars has always had it in its powers to alleviate, but has chosen not to. That post is available here (scroll down a bit); it's a real blast from the past.
I actually had a line in that old post, reading back through it, that I'm rather proud of:
There is no difference between a poker player who "takes the clock," and a winning football team, in the last minutes of a game, that lets the play clock wind down to "1" before snapping the ball. Both are playing within the constructs and rules of the game, at a time when the situation demands strategies markedly different than during most other periods of play. That the play is tedious and maddening is a sign that the structure and rules of the game itself are imperfect, not that the participants are "cheaters."
Anyhow, back to the current Lee Jones post, and another point where this unfortunately-not-modest voice from the peanut gallery disagrees with Lee. Lee says this:
Comment from Lee Jones
Time: June 29, 2007, 11:53 pm
Reply to tuff_fish…
Hi Tuff - multi-tabling is a fact of online poker life, and we can no more eliminate it than we could (e.g.) the chat box. Note that even if a site offered “no-multitabling” tables, a player could still play at such a table on that site, and as many other sites as he wished. So a “no multi-tabling site/table” is an impossibility.
Furthermore, multi-tabling is actually *better* for individual fish. Let’s say that player Shark456 is capable of 2.5 BB/100 (”big bets per hundred hands” - a common metric among serious online players). Wanting to increase his hourly income, he plays two tables instead. It’s a virtual certainty that he will *not* make 2.5 BB/100 at both tables. Instead, he’ll make perhaps 2.0 or 1.8 BB/100. Well, he’s happy because he’s making much more money per hour. But the fish at his tables will be happier because he is taking less money off each individual table. The more he multi-tables, the lower his per-table income, but until he hits some threashold, the greater his hourly income. As long as his per-table income drops, the fish get happier (and healthier).
Ultimately, yes, Shark456 is taking more money away from the poker site, but by spreading the pain over many fish rather than just a single table’s worth, he probably leaves the fish population healthier.
At least, that’s my perspective.
Regards, Lee
And I responded to it like this, long-winded to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point:
Hi, Lee,
Noticed your argument in the response to Tuff; pardon me for saying this, but that's where your logic breaks down. Your argument about the per-table rate by sharks leaving the fish comparatively healthier would only work in the case of a single shark (or a small, finite number of sharks) in the pool.
Unfortunately, your original post quite dramatically indicates the opposite, that the shark-to-fish ratio is increasing, and because of this, the fish aren't likely to keep voluntarily diving in. If all of a sudden there are eight multi-tabling sharks at each and every table, then the fish are going to get pounded... no matter what.
I mentioned the Malthus thing for a reason, as a way of hinting that the issue here is indeed one of diminishing resources, otherwise known as new fish. Perhaps a more relevant reference would have been the example of the effects of hunting on populations of rabbits and coyotes (or wolves, in some instances) in controlled-population studies. In those, it's been repeatedly shown that left on their own, rabbit and coyote populations will repeatedly cycle from high to low, as long as a base source of food for the rabbits is available. The rabbits keep on breeding --- as rabbits are wont to do --- and after a couple of seasons lag the the coyote population also takes off, because there are so many juicy bunnies to eat.
The coyotes have happy times, so they keep on breeding, too, and build up so fast that they also overpopulate, eating too many rabbits. Both populations collapse --- the rabbits first, then the coyotes (or wolves), who experience starvation --- and the whole process starts anew.
The cycle can be influenced from outside, too. Usually the studies introduce a hunting season, showing that by allowing the culling of the predator base (the coyote or wolf), both populations can be maintained at artificially high levels.
What's happened in poker is an influence from the opposite side, translating the bunnies to fish and the coyotes to sharks. The difficulties encountered by new fish in funding accounts or in reaching a point of competitiveness with the ever-evolving sharks is like a drought for the rabbits in the above: it removes the base food source and is likely to make the population crash occur earlier --- it chops off the high point of the cycle.
Your argument re: multi-tabling also leaves room for debate. Yes, players could multi-table by playing one table each at a multitude of sites, but that would be a bit more difficult to manage in the massive quantities that some multi-tablers perform. I'm not sure that there are 24 distinct poker networks out there, but there sure are 24-table players. And trying to get the software of 24 different sites to work in harmony would be... interesting, wouldn't it?
What you haven't touched on at all is the fact that opening up multi-table play in the first place was a case of the poker sites wanting to (a) increase rake and (b) grab a -relatively- bigger slice of the online pie. Unfortunately, business pressures are a part of that, but I can't imagine a world where "grow the business" pressures don't exist. No one -forced- poker sites to allow multi-tabling; they did it to make money.
The biggest flaw in your theory that I can see is that it implies a voluntary cooperation on the part of all sites to allow anonymous-ID poker. The only reason some sites would have to go to anonymous-ID poker would be to short-circuit the third-party products that exacerbate the shark-to-fish problem, but a lot of those sites add money into the poker cycle as well. Given that there are sites out there that actively allow the promotion of ads for these products, it seems unlikely that the entire poker world is going to turn altruistic all at once. Poker's always been an "I got mine" type of existence, but the players aren't the only ones doing it. The sites do it as well.
Would I play on a site that featured anonymous ID's? In a heartbeat. But there's a whole class of players out there that would consider it an affront to their existence --- and they do generate lots of rake.
At least for the time being....
I respect Lee very highly, but the argument he makes still seems a bit myopic. It's not just the players who've created the current imbalance, but a whole slew of market factors working in concert. It's also why, though I'd absolutely love to see Lee's idea come to pass, I'm less confident that it'll occur in the time frame Lee envisions.
I hate playing devil's advocate. Unfortunately, I'm good at it. (*sigh*) Back to the prison, now.
I was poorer for it, too.
Those guys can write. Anthony Holden has up a wonderful 'Nixon in China' piece that's way too good to be wasted on us poker cretins, while Lee Jones tossed in a well-constructed piece on something he thinks is going to occur in online poker in the next few years: the adaptation of anonymous user IDs by the online sites. This means that you wouldn't know the identities of the other players at any given table, and the logic behind it is to short-circuit all the third-party software add-ons (like PokerHUD and PokerTracker) that are in many ways the bane of the average online player's existence... even if they don't know it.
What Lee correctly points out is that the shark-to-fish ratio in the online game is getting out of whack and is only going to get worse, in large part due to these third-party products. I couldn't agree more. There are some that are largely innocuous and have value in a historical way, while others were designed solely as technical system 'cheats' and really have no place in a 'fair' poker game.
But the devil's in the details. Lee added in some additional thoughts in a follow-up comment to one of the site's visitors, and it's here where I disagree. Not the first time I've ever disagreed with Lee, either, in the form of a post. One of the very first pieces I ever did for the Kick Ass Poker site was an examination of a Card Player piece Lee did that was in essence of a haranguing of players who stall at the online bubble. I don't like stalling, but the way it occurs online is something that Stars has always had it in its powers to alleviate, but has chosen not to. That post is available here (scroll down a bit); it's a real blast from the past.
I actually had a line in that old post, reading back through it, that I'm rather proud of:
There is no difference between a poker player who "takes the clock," and a winning football team, in the last minutes of a game, that lets the play clock wind down to "1" before snapping the ball. Both are playing within the constructs and rules of the game, at a time when the situation demands strategies markedly different than during most other periods of play. That the play is tedious and maddening is a sign that the structure and rules of the game itself are imperfect, not that the participants are "cheaters."
Anyhow, back to the current Lee Jones post, and another point where this unfortunately-not-modest voice from the peanut gallery disagrees with Lee. Lee says this:
Comment from Lee Jones
Time: June 29, 2007, 11:53 pm
Reply to tuff_fish…
Hi Tuff - multi-tabling is a fact of online poker life, and we can no more eliminate it than we could (e.g.) the chat box. Note that even if a site offered “no-multitabling” tables, a player could still play at such a table on that site, and as many other sites as he wished. So a “no multi-tabling site/table” is an impossibility.
Furthermore, multi-tabling is actually *better* for individual fish. Let’s say that player Shark456 is capable of 2.5 BB/100 (”big bets per hundred hands” - a common metric among serious online players). Wanting to increase his hourly income, he plays two tables instead. It’s a virtual certainty that he will *not* make 2.5 BB/100 at both tables. Instead, he’ll make perhaps 2.0 or 1.8 BB/100. Well, he’s happy because he’s making much more money per hour. But the fish at his tables will be happier because he is taking less money off each individual table. The more he multi-tables, the lower his per-table income, but until he hits some threashold, the greater his hourly income. As long as his per-table income drops, the fish get happier (and healthier).
Ultimately, yes, Shark456 is taking more money away from the poker site, but by spreading the pain over many fish rather than just a single table’s worth, he probably leaves the fish population healthier.
At least, that’s my perspective.
Regards, Lee
And I responded to it like this, long-winded to be sure, but I wanted to illustrate the point:
Hi, Lee,
Noticed your argument in the response to Tuff; pardon me for saying this, but that's where your logic breaks down. Your argument about the per-table rate by sharks leaving the fish comparatively healthier would only work in the case of a single shark (or a small, finite number of sharks) in the pool.
Unfortunately, your original post quite dramatically indicates the opposite, that the shark-to-fish ratio is increasing, and because of this, the fish aren't likely to keep voluntarily diving in. If all of a sudden there are eight multi-tabling sharks at each and every table, then the fish are going to get pounded... no matter what.
I mentioned the Malthus thing for a reason, as a way of hinting that the issue here is indeed one of diminishing resources, otherwise known as new fish. Perhaps a more relevant reference would have been the example of the effects of hunting on populations of rabbits and coyotes (or wolves, in some instances) in controlled-population studies. In those, it's been repeatedly shown that left on their own, rabbit and coyote populations will repeatedly cycle from high to low, as long as a base source of food for the rabbits is available. The rabbits keep on breeding --- as rabbits are wont to do --- and after a couple of seasons lag the the coyote population also takes off, because there are so many juicy bunnies to eat.
The coyotes have happy times, so they keep on breeding, too, and build up so fast that they also overpopulate, eating too many rabbits. Both populations collapse --- the rabbits first, then the coyotes (or wolves), who experience starvation --- and the whole process starts anew.
The cycle can be influenced from outside, too. Usually the studies introduce a hunting season, showing that by allowing the culling of the predator base (the coyote or wolf), both populations can be maintained at artificially high levels.
What's happened in poker is an influence from the opposite side, translating the bunnies to fish and the coyotes to sharks. The difficulties encountered by new fish in funding accounts or in reaching a point of competitiveness with the ever-evolving sharks is like a drought for the rabbits in the above: it removes the base food source and is likely to make the population crash occur earlier --- it chops off the high point of the cycle.
Your argument re: multi-tabling also leaves room for debate. Yes, players could multi-table by playing one table each at a multitude of sites, but that would be a bit more difficult to manage in the massive quantities that some multi-tablers perform. I'm not sure that there are 24 distinct poker networks out there, but there sure are 24-table players. And trying to get the software of 24 different sites to work in harmony would be... interesting, wouldn't it?
What you haven't touched on at all is the fact that opening up multi-table play in the first place was a case of the poker sites wanting to (a) increase rake and (b) grab a -relatively- bigger slice of the online pie. Unfortunately, business pressures are a part of that, but I can't imagine a world where "grow the business" pressures don't exist. No one -forced- poker sites to allow multi-tabling; they did it to make money.
The biggest flaw in your theory that I can see is that it implies a voluntary cooperation on the part of all sites to allow anonymous-ID poker. The only reason some sites would have to go to anonymous-ID poker would be to short-circuit the third-party products that exacerbate the shark-to-fish problem, but a lot of those sites add money into the poker cycle as well. Given that there are sites out there that actively allow the promotion of ads for these products, it seems unlikely that the entire poker world is going to turn altruistic all at once. Poker's always been an "I got mine" type of existence, but the players aren't the only ones doing it. The sites do it as well.
Would I play on a site that featured anonymous ID's? In a heartbeat. But there's a whole class of players out there that would consider it an affront to their existence --- and they do generate lots of rake.
At least for the time being....
I respect Lee very highly, but the argument he makes still seems a bit myopic. It's not just the players who've created the current imbalance, but a whole slew of market factors working in concert. It's also why, though I'd absolutely love to see Lee's idea come to pass, I'm less confident that it'll occur in the time frame Lee envisions.
I hate playing devil's advocate. Unfortunately, I'm good at it. (*sigh*) Back to the prison, now.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
'Net Kiddies at WSOP Felt en Masse, If Not Individually
I've seen several blog and forum postings in recent days bemoaning what is perceived as the relative lack of big names winning bracelets at this year's WSOP. I don't know if the 'name pro' crowd feels the same way, but if they do, it might be reminiscent of Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid pointing out at the ever-trailing posse and asking Sundance (Robert Redford), "Who are those guys?"
The answer is that a lot of them seem to be 'Net kiddies of the poker variety, taking their online winnings and having a go at the WSOP. It's not that the successes have necessarily been by the biggest of the online names, but there have been several bracelets claimed by the James Mackey and Steve Billirakis crowd, kids probably barely able to shave (like Mackey) who nonetheless likely learned their poker chops in the online version of the game.
A couple of years ago, Phil Laak wrote something rather telling in the midst of one of his otherwise mediocre stories; Phil's a poker player, not a poker writer, but once in a while in the midst of pooing on the page he makes a telling point. In this case he was reporting on a rather unsuccessful poker trip to Aruba for the Aruba Classic, where he basically watched some kids too young to enter U.S. casinos --- because they were over 18 but under 21 --- as they smoked the competition at the highest cash games in Aruba.
I'm not gonna dig out the magazines to get the exact quote, but Laak remarked to the extent that he had seen the future of poker, and it was 'terrible,' or 'frightening,' or somesuch. The players he saw freely admitted to building their skills and their bankrolls online, and because of the nature of that online game, they were able to do it in a big hurry.
We're seeing it this year at the WSOP. Lots of young, anonymous, baby-faced kids are snatching WSOP gold, and I expect the trend to continue in years to come. One thing that would be interesting to see is a graph tracking the average age of bracelet winners on a year-by-year basis, tossing out the Seniors winner (for obvious reasons). I can't do that right now, but I'd love to know how much truth this supposition holds.
The answer is that a lot of them seem to be 'Net kiddies of the poker variety, taking their online winnings and having a go at the WSOP. It's not that the successes have necessarily been by the biggest of the online names, but there have been several bracelets claimed by the James Mackey and Steve Billirakis crowd, kids probably barely able to shave (like Mackey) who nonetheless likely learned their poker chops in the online version of the game.
A couple of years ago, Phil Laak wrote something rather telling in the midst of one of his otherwise mediocre stories; Phil's a poker player, not a poker writer, but once in a while in the midst of pooing on the page he makes a telling point. In this case he was reporting on a rather unsuccessful poker trip to Aruba for the Aruba Classic, where he basically watched some kids too young to enter U.S. casinos --- because they were over 18 but under 21 --- as they smoked the competition at the highest cash games in Aruba.
I'm not gonna dig out the magazines to get the exact quote, but Laak remarked to the extent that he had seen the future of poker, and it was 'terrible,' or 'frightening,' or somesuch. The players he saw freely admitted to building their skills and their bankrolls online, and because of the nature of that online game, they were able to do it in a big hurry.
We're seeing it this year at the WSOP. Lots of young, anonymous, baby-faced kids are snatching WSOP gold, and I expect the trend to continue in years to come. One thing that would be interesting to see is a graph tracking the average age of bracelet winners on a year-by-year basis, tossing out the Seniors winner (for obvious reasons). I can't do that right now, but I'd love to know how much truth this supposition holds.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
They Shoulda Called It the 'Poker Porch'
pavilion
Spelling: note the single l.
© From the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia.
Helicon Publishing LTD 2007.
All rights reserved.
I spend a bit of time each day trying to soak up the latest news from the world of poker, even though most everything right now, as you can see from the above, emanates from Harrah's and the WSOP. Which means I've read a little bit of everything by everyone. One of the things that is most decidedly missing is a standardized guide for the basic use of poker terms and symbols, not that the spelling above is a part of that --- it's just one of those things I've noticed. Who knows, maybe even Harrah's has it spelled wrong in the first place --- their event names are more than a bit clunky in grammatical terms.
As for a poker 'style guide,' maybe I'll write one. Lord knows, I'm nitty enough at times to do it.
Spelling: note the single l.
© From the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia.
Helicon Publishing LTD 2007.
All rights reserved.
I spend a bit of time each day trying to soak up the latest news from the world of poker, even though most everything right now, as you can see from the above, emanates from Harrah's and the WSOP. Which means I've read a little bit of everything by everyone. One of the things that is most decidedly missing is a standardized guide for the basic use of poker terms and symbols, not that the spelling above is a part of that --- it's just one of those things I've noticed. Who knows, maybe even Harrah's has it spelled wrong in the first place --- their event names are more than a bit clunky in grammatical terms.
As for a poker 'style guide,' maybe I'll write one. Lord knows, I'm nitty enough at times to do it.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
But Just Inside the Door it's 26% Real Juice
Too busy to post, but I can't stop laughing. Mean Gene has just posted in the PokerNews.com 'Live Reporting' that the Rio had so much overflow for today's $1,500 NL event that they filled up the Poker Pavilion and the far-distant poker room itself...
... so they've set up tables in the hallway outside Buzio's restaurant, just north of the casino proper.
ROFLMFAO right now.
... so they've set up tables in the hallway outside Buzio's restaurant, just north of the casino proper.
ROFLMFAO right now.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
WSOP Up Close and From a Distance
The backline support thing for PokerNews, as most of you can guess, takes up almost all my waking hours at the moment. 'Tis okay, you know --- it's my job and I get paid for it.
It's odd, though, to be up close to the WSOP and yet not be there at all, because physically I'm nearly 2,000 miles away. As disconnects go, it's a strange one. I knew about a certain event the other night at least 45 minutes before it became public, but I might -not- hear at all about something else, newsworthy or not.
One of the things I learned in person was the need to erect a sensory filter of some sort to be able to survive any length of time at the WSOP. There is simply too much mundane weirdness going on, quite literally at any given moment to be able to keep taking it all in, meaning the sort of things that happen when you stuff several thousand eclectic personalities into a finite space for weeks on end. It gets weird at times.
It gets beyond weird at times, to be more accurate.
In a way, the electronic barrier serves as that filter, though the cost of that is the ambience, the feel, the flavor of whatever it is that makes it the WSOP. And having been there to experience it first-hand, I know now that I just don't trust this electronic filtering, even though I play a part in it myself. You're reading dribs and drabs, bits and pieces. But it's like listening to the Muzak version of "Stairway to Heaven": the notes are the same, but the song sure isn't.
A lot of what makes the WSOP so special just does not work its way out, excepting the truly odd tales that pick up lives of their own. Stuff like Richard Brodie's short-term banishment or Vinny Vinh's inexplicable disappearance or Eskimo Clark's medical difficulties... that gets picked up, of course, because it's easy pickings. So do whatever items that happen to draw the most complaints --- this year the Bluff Tent looks like it'll be the long-term winner, but I've got a hunch that the Poker Pavilion might make a late surge toward the top of everyone's 'most despised' list as the weather warms up over the next few weeks. The long lines and general disorganization during the earliest days seems to have ebbed, and the dreadful Poker Peeks are gone --- though I may purchase a deck or two of them if they pop up on eBay later on. (Just because. I'm a craphound that way.)
The one thing I'll probably miss most about not being there in person is the chance to compare and contrast this year's WSOP to last, in regards to the UIGEA's effects. From the big stuff like the lack of online-room suites and a different mix in players through smaller issues like the expected reduction in the "sea of branded shirts" from last year, it would still have been interesting to see. Last year one dared not use the restroom for 20 minutes before the start of a session because the Absolute/Bodog/Doyle's Room/Voodoo Lounge 'girls for hire' had all the stalls occupied at that time and were four deep at the sinks and mirrors. This year it's probably all Beast Light girls, but only two or three deep. I guess I won't miss that part of it, but the clinical side of me wants to take notes on the little stuff, the bits and pieces that all have to be assembled to make the darned clock tick.
Meanwhile, I have tons more work to do. Posts here will be sporadic (as you've noticed), but posts there will indeed be. Don't desert me folks, because I'm not deserting you. I'm just getting used to the goggles.
It's odd, though, to be up close to the WSOP and yet not be there at all, because physically I'm nearly 2,000 miles away. As disconnects go, it's a strange one. I knew about a certain event the other night at least 45 minutes before it became public, but I might -not- hear at all about something else, newsworthy or not.
One of the things I learned in person was the need to erect a sensory filter of some sort to be able to survive any length of time at the WSOP. There is simply too much mundane weirdness going on, quite literally at any given moment to be able to keep taking it all in, meaning the sort of things that happen when you stuff several thousand eclectic personalities into a finite space for weeks on end. It gets weird at times.
It gets beyond weird at times, to be more accurate.
In a way, the electronic barrier serves as that filter, though the cost of that is the ambience, the feel, the flavor of whatever it is that makes it the WSOP. And having been there to experience it first-hand, I know now that I just don't trust this electronic filtering, even though I play a part in it myself. You're reading dribs and drabs, bits and pieces. But it's like listening to the Muzak version of "Stairway to Heaven": the notes are the same, but the song sure isn't.
A lot of what makes the WSOP so special just does not work its way out, excepting the truly odd tales that pick up lives of their own. Stuff like Richard Brodie's short-term banishment or Vinny Vinh's inexplicable disappearance or Eskimo Clark's medical difficulties... that gets picked up, of course, because it's easy pickings. So do whatever items that happen to draw the most complaints --- this year the Bluff Tent looks like it'll be the long-term winner, but I've got a hunch that the Poker Pavilion might make a late surge toward the top of everyone's 'most despised' list as the weather warms up over the next few weeks. The long lines and general disorganization during the earliest days seems to have ebbed, and the dreadful Poker Peeks are gone --- though I may purchase a deck or two of them if they pop up on eBay later on. (Just because. I'm a craphound that way.)
The one thing I'll probably miss most about not being there in person is the chance to compare and contrast this year's WSOP to last, in regards to the UIGEA's effects. From the big stuff like the lack of online-room suites and a different mix in players through smaller issues like the expected reduction in the "sea of branded shirts" from last year, it would still have been interesting to see. Last year one dared not use the restroom for 20 minutes before the start of a session because the Absolute/Bodog/Doyle's Room/Voodoo Lounge 'girls for hire' had all the stalls occupied at that time and were four deep at the sinks and mirrors. This year it's probably all Beast Light girls, but only two or three deep. I guess I won't miss that part of it, but the clinical side of me wants to take notes on the little stuff, the bits and pieces that all have to be assembled to make the darned clock tick.
Meanwhile, I have tons more work to do. Posts here will be sporadic (as you've noticed), but posts there will indeed be. Don't desert me folks, because I'm not deserting you. I'm just getting used to the goggles.
Monday, June 11, 2007
A Bot is a Bot is a Bot, of Course
And now, the rest of the story....
I'd been playing in that late-night $3K Guaranteed on the Merge Network, to use its proper name, and having one of those fortunate runs. First, I'd survived getting the last of my chips in bad with A-A against 10-10 after a 3-3-10 flop early in the tourney; that one wouldn't have knocked me but it was a lot easier to play with 3,500 chips than 900. Thank you, ace on the... turn.
And I bumbled around with 3,000-5,000 chips for a while, not making ground as the blinds grew higher and higher. Finally, with the blinds moved up to 400/800 and me with only about 4,200 in the cutoff, I tried to steal with Q-7 of spades. The button had A-K, but the flop paired my seven and I was over 9,000. The button then called me all sorts of things, most of them variations on "donkey," at which point I gave him permission to pet my furry ears.
Funny, in both of the last times I've made nice runs, I've made a steal attempt that's run into something bad but worked out all right anyway. (I'm still making aggression adjustments in my game, based on several factors, but recent results have been promising. More on this in a future post.)
But after catching pocket aces to take down another big pot, I was suddenly in the hunt. One big down and two big ups later, I looked around to see one other big stack and four shorties at my table, and with ten making the money it was darn near a sure thing I'd have a nice cash. The other deep stack was named 'NoLimit6,' and by the time I got around to checking, I was in first and IT was in second, both around 30,000 in chips.
I didn't go too crazy at the final table; the short stacks didn't want any part of me and I picked off a couple of small pots as they dropped out. As always happens, one of them won a couple of showdowns to move into the hunt. There were four of us left, finally, with me holding a mild lead as we moved into a five-minute break.
"I didn't really realize we had the table so imbalanced there, NoLimit," I typed, "I wasn't paying very close attention."
And 'legendmcat,' another of the last four, said something like, "He won't answer you. Everyone thinks that's a bot. At least that's what it says on the forums."
To which I said something like, "Good. Hope it is a bot. Bots are eeee-zzzzz." Braggadocio me.
I'd get my chance. I picked off the fortunate short stack from earlier, 'chilliwilli07,' and then legendmkat, both in the same way: getting to see a cheap flop and catching garbage trips. And as we were short-handed, I noticed a few more things about the supposed bot to my left.
Soon enough, heads-up action, me ahead by about 90K to 40K. First hand, it folds the button/small blind to me. Wha-a-a?
So I raise my own button, with random junk. Two-second pause, fold.
I take down the next three pots the same way, and the next time I min-raise from the button, insta-push from NoLimit6. I mean INSTA-push. So I toss it, and steal another couple of hands. Then, insta-push again. And that's all I ever saw, either a two-second delay and a fold or an insta-push.
I'm grinding the thing down, like a good bot-killer should. I know that I can keep stealing the blinds and getting away from the all-in pushes it makes, because sooner or later it'll do it when I have a real hand. I can also min-raise every time because it pushes or folds, nothing in-between. And finally, I make a min-raise, it pushes, and I have J-J, so I call.
The bot shows K-7 off, and catches a king on the flop. So it's up to 48K or 50K or something, with me around 75-80K.
A couple of hands later, I have 7-7 with the button, make the min-raise on the button and it whams me again. I think it through --- only the bigger pairs, seven of 'em, have me in trouble --- and that's roughly half of a 1-in-17 chance, or about 3%. Most stuff I'm slightly ahead, and if it the bot is programmed to push any A or any K pre-flop heads-up, I could be well ahead. And you know what, friends? I beleive it was.
Still a tough call, but I figured I could grind it back against the thing if I had to.
It shows K-Q off. A king is in the window on the flop, but the seven for my set (and a meaningless eight) lies underneath. I'm gold when a jack hits on the turn, and I don't even remember what the river was.
legendmkat had railed the end of the thing after being knocked and congratulated me on swatting the thing, which was nice. I was curious, though, about the bot. I had it marked with an "easy" flag, and had noted a couple of other weird plays and trends in the few times I had seen it, but legendmkat said the thing was always in the money. Was my read that wrong? I went over to Sharkscope, which I don't visit often but is a good place to do a search for something of this nature, and found this:
The shorter version was that it had played over 4,000 events and had a Return On Investment (ROI) of something like 25%, with a net profit of over $8,000.
Wha-a-a? ... verse two.
As you can see by the detail, the thing makes its money in the $10 events, and starts getting swatted against better competition. But I was absolutely flabbergasted by how much profit it's showing, so I can only guess that it's set up to push hard with a small selection of hands at earlier stages of play. It's clearly taking advantage of newbies not knowing that it is a bot --- as I didn't, and I'm no newbie --- and knocking off a whole string of in-the-money finishes. But $8,000 worth?
If a bot this bad can make money like that, there's still a lot of really, really bad poker players out there.
I'd been playing in that late-night $3K Guaranteed on the Merge Network, to use its proper name, and having one of those fortunate runs. First, I'd survived getting the last of my chips in bad with A-A against 10-10 after a 3-3-10 flop early in the tourney; that one wouldn't have knocked me but it was a lot easier to play with 3,500 chips than 900. Thank you, ace on the... turn.
And I bumbled around with 3,000-5,000 chips for a while, not making ground as the blinds grew higher and higher. Finally, with the blinds moved up to 400/800 and me with only about 4,200 in the cutoff, I tried to steal with Q-7 of spades. The button had A-K, but the flop paired my seven and I was over 9,000. The button then called me all sorts of things, most of them variations on "donkey," at which point I gave him permission to pet my furry ears.
Funny, in both of the last times I've made nice runs, I've made a steal attempt that's run into something bad but worked out all right anyway. (I'm still making aggression adjustments in my game, based on several factors, but recent results have been promising. More on this in a future post.)
But after catching pocket aces to take down another big pot, I was suddenly in the hunt. One big down and two big ups later, I looked around to see one other big stack and four shorties at my table, and with ten making the money it was darn near a sure thing I'd have a nice cash. The other deep stack was named 'NoLimit6,' and by the time I got around to checking, I was in first and IT was in second, both around 30,000 in chips.
I didn't go too crazy at the final table; the short stacks didn't want any part of me and I picked off a couple of small pots as they dropped out. As always happens, one of them won a couple of showdowns to move into the hunt. There were four of us left, finally, with me holding a mild lead as we moved into a five-minute break.
"I didn't really realize we had the table so imbalanced there, NoLimit," I typed, "I wasn't paying very close attention."
And 'legendmcat,' another of the last four, said something like, "He won't answer you. Everyone thinks that's a bot. At least that's what it says on the forums."
To which I said something like, "Good. Hope it is a bot. Bots are eeee-zzzzz." Braggadocio me.
I'd get my chance. I picked off the fortunate short stack from earlier, 'chilliwilli07,' and then legendmkat, both in the same way: getting to see a cheap flop and catching garbage trips. And as we were short-handed, I noticed a few more things about the supposed bot to my left.
Soon enough, heads-up action, me ahead by about 90K to 40K. First hand, it folds the button/small blind to me. Wha-a-a?
So I raise my own button, with random junk. Two-second pause, fold.
I take down the next three pots the same way, and the next time I min-raise from the button, insta-push from NoLimit6. I mean INSTA-push. So I toss it, and steal another couple of hands. Then, insta-push again. And that's all I ever saw, either a two-second delay and a fold or an insta-push.
I'm grinding the thing down, like a good bot-killer should. I know that I can keep stealing the blinds and getting away from the all-in pushes it makes, because sooner or later it'll do it when I have a real hand. I can also min-raise every time because it pushes or folds, nothing in-between. And finally, I make a min-raise, it pushes, and I have J-J, so I call.
The bot shows K-7 off, and catches a king on the flop. So it's up to 48K or 50K or something, with me around 75-80K.
A couple of hands later, I have 7-7 with the button, make the min-raise on the button and it whams me again. I think it through --- only the bigger pairs, seven of 'em, have me in trouble --- and that's roughly half of a 1-in-17 chance, or about 3%. Most stuff I'm slightly ahead, and if it the bot is programmed to push any A or any K pre-flop heads-up, I could be well ahead. And you know what, friends? I beleive it was.
Still a tough call, but I figured I could grind it back against the thing if I had to.
It shows K-Q off. A king is in the window on the flop, but the seven for my set (and a meaningless eight) lies underneath. I'm gold when a jack hits on the turn, and I don't even remember what the river was.
legendmkat had railed the end of the thing after being knocked and congratulated me on swatting the thing, which was nice. I was curious, though, about the bot. I had it marked with an "easy" flag, and had noted a couple of other weird plays and trends in the few times I had seen it, but legendmkat said the thing was always in the money. Was my read that wrong? I went over to Sharkscope, which I don't visit often but is a good place to do a search for something of this nature, and found this:
The shorter version was that it had played over 4,000 events and had a Return On Investment (ROI) of something like 25%, with a net profit of over $8,000.
Wha-a-a? ... verse two.
As you can see by the detail, the thing makes its money in the $10 events, and starts getting swatted against better competition. But I was absolutely flabbergasted by how much profit it's showing, so I can only guess that it's set up to push hard with a small selection of hands at earlier stages of play. It's clearly taking advantage of newbies not knowing that it is a bot --- as I didn't, and I'm no newbie --- and knocking off a whole string of in-the-money finishes. But $8,000 worth?
If a bot this bad can make money like that, there's still a lot of really, really bad poker players out there.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Frantically Busy, But a Funny Bit ... err Bot to Share
Folks that know what I do know I've been phenomenally busy the last 10 days, hence the dearth of posts. I'm somewhere beyong Pauly hours and in the Jonno range, for those that understand the reference, and doing it while staring at four blank walls makes it much, much tougher --- I can't draw any adrenaline from the event.
Anyhow, while wrapping things up tonight and turning my attention to personal e-mails, I said awww-$^&$&^$-it and fired up the very late night $3,000 Guaranteed over on Poker.com. It's not so much that I took it down --- which I did, and that's pleasing --- but that my heads-up opponent was reported to be a suspected bot by one of the other final tablists. (There ya go, BJ, I used your pet phrase.)
Anyhow, my opinion of this mystery opponent was that not only that it was indeed a bot, but it also was a very bad one, at least head-to-head. It looks like NL MTT bots do exist, but if this is the state of the art, bring 'em on. God, did it suck, although I guess it is $600 richer.
More details to follow.
Anyhow, while wrapping things up tonight and turning my attention to personal e-mails, I said awww-$^&$&^$-it and fired up the very late night $3,000 Guaranteed over on Poker.com. It's not so much that I took it down --- which I did, and that's pleasing --- but that my heads-up opponent was reported to be a suspected bot by one of the other final tablists. (There ya go, BJ, I used your pet phrase.)
Anyhow, my opinion of this mystery opponent was that not only that it was indeed a bot, but it also was a very bad one, at least head-to-head. It looks like NL MTT bots do exist, but if this is the state of the art, bring 'em on. God, did it suck, although I guess it is $600 richer.
More details to follow.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
The Slump and the Surge
One of the things I've notice recently is several bloggers reporting an extended downturn in their game... and bankroll. Whether it's due to an external cause such as the UIGEA causing games to toughen up or simply a matter of random variance among bloggerly types, the end result's been the same: a lot of sob stories as of late.
I've been in a similar funk throughout the year, unable to make a big score of any sort. I'd taken a hit in cash games --- and haven't always had any interest in trying to grind out hundreds or thousands of hands. SNGs and MTTs had been iffy as well, with not a single deep run.
Another thing that had been bothering me is that every time I've tried to take a stab at a higher buy-in tourney as of late, the results have been disappointing. Perhaps the most frustrating of all was a time on Full Tilt a month or two back when I parlayed a handful of points all the way into an entry into the Sunday $400,000 Guaranteed. In that one I puttered along and stayed alive. Never deep-stacked, but only in a couple of spots really short, either.
Finally, in that one, just after doubling through, we were in distant sight of the bubble --- maybe 16% or so of the original starters remained, and I was in an okay but not great spot where if I could double through once, I'd likely make the money. On the cutoff with a little over 10,000 in chips, and with A-Q suited, I made a move at a pot, and was called by a LAGgy player behind me who held 8-8. I was in great shape when a queen flopped, but the resuck eight on the river ended my run.
Typical late-tourney poker. You're gonna end up in a race or two most times to make the money or to go deep, and you need to win those confrontations. I didn't on that occasion. To me, though, it was both part of a bad poker winter and spring and a wondering if I had the game to play in better, higher tourneys. That second is an open topic, of course; I claim basic poker competence, nothing more.
But who knows? Maybe there is hope. I futzed around last Sunday on Poker.com/Carbon Poker last Sunday, decided at the last minute to enter the $20,000 Guaranteed with a $55+5 buy-in, and... did all right. My first decent final table in many months, wth me finally finishing in fifth after I pushed UTG with deuces, with an M that was about 5 but was one hand away from dropping to about 3.5, due to a blinds jump. I got called by a fairly loose player who had about twice my chips and took a shot with A-J, and he found both an ace and a jack as the board played out.
Actually, he was more than loose, but we also had a Gavin Smith type (who won the thing, by the way), who was raising pre-flop with almost anything and went up and down like the proverbial yo-yo, buying and bluffing his way off the felt on more than one occasion. He had position on me at an early table, and pounded me a bit before I figured out his game, though at the final table he was on my right and I had a bit of revenge. On four straight laps where it was passed around to him on the button he made a position raise; four straight times I moved over the top on him, three times with half-good hands but once with 10-9x as well. Four straight times he postured a bit and went away.
So I stole my way into the deeper payouts myself. I feel a bit better about my game, too.
I've been in a similar funk throughout the year, unable to make a big score of any sort. I'd taken a hit in cash games --- and haven't always had any interest in trying to grind out hundreds or thousands of hands. SNGs and MTTs had been iffy as well, with not a single deep run.
Another thing that had been bothering me is that every time I've tried to take a stab at a higher buy-in tourney as of late, the results have been disappointing. Perhaps the most frustrating of all was a time on Full Tilt a month or two back when I parlayed a handful of points all the way into an entry into the Sunday $400,000 Guaranteed. In that one I puttered along and stayed alive. Never deep-stacked, but only in a couple of spots really short, either.
Finally, in that one, just after doubling through, we were in distant sight of the bubble --- maybe 16% or so of the original starters remained, and I was in an okay but not great spot where if I could double through once, I'd likely make the money. On the cutoff with a little over 10,000 in chips, and with A-Q suited, I made a move at a pot, and was called by a LAGgy player behind me who held 8-8. I was in great shape when a queen flopped, but the resuck eight on the river ended my run.
Typical late-tourney poker. You're gonna end up in a race or two most times to make the money or to go deep, and you need to win those confrontations. I didn't on that occasion. To me, though, it was both part of a bad poker winter and spring and a wondering if I had the game to play in better, higher tourneys. That second is an open topic, of course; I claim basic poker competence, nothing more.
But who knows? Maybe there is hope. I futzed around last Sunday on Poker.com/Carbon Poker last Sunday, decided at the last minute to enter the $20,000 Guaranteed with a $55+5 buy-in, and... did all right. My first decent final table in many months, wth me finally finishing in fifth after I pushed UTG with deuces, with an M that was about 5 but was one hand away from dropping to about 3.5, due to a blinds jump. I got called by a fairly loose player who had about twice my chips and took a shot with A-J, and he found both an ace and a jack as the board played out.
Actually, he was more than loose, but we also had a Gavin Smith type (who won the thing, by the way), who was raising pre-flop with almost anything and went up and down like the proverbial yo-yo, buying and bluffing his way off the felt on more than one occasion. He had position on me at an early table, and pounded me a bit before I figured out his game, though at the final table he was on my right and I had a bit of revenge. On four straight laps where it was passed around to him on the button he made a position raise; four straight times I moved over the top on him, three times with half-good hands but once with 10-9x as well. Four straight times he postured a bit and went away.
So I stole my way into the deeper payouts myself. I feel a bit better about my game, too.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Pokerati Dan and Gary C. Go A-Squawkin' About Content Thieves
[IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: The following post represents my personal opinion only. It is in no way is intended to reflect the opinion or position of any of my employers or the various sites for which I write. -- Haley]
Of course, I saw this and this, and having been rather prominently featured in the discussion --- hell, being part of it myself --- I'd like to toss out a couple of more nuggets here. No, no, not the lawsuit stuff. I've been that mad myself on previous occasions, as has anyone with the common sense to be offended by thieves. I also had no advance knowledge of Dan's or Gary's recent posts, except to point out some months ago to Dan the existence of that youwannapoker site, though he may well have been aware of it himself before that.
Rather, I'd like to make an open statement to the online sites' affiliate managers. I now know a few of these folks, and I have no reason to believe that they are unreasonable; I simply believe that there are few of these managers not thinking these things through, chasing raw affiliate signup numbers while failing to understand other dynamics.
First, any site that thinks that having 1,250 affiliates instead of 1,100 (and these are imaginary numbers, made up for the sake of this post) without looking at the quality and veracity of those affiliates, is simply fooling themselves. If these affiliate managers have performance marks and bonuses tied only to the number of affiliates they generate, then that is dumbassed and counterproductive to the process. I also don't know that this is the case, but it's a possibility.
Sites such as youwannapoker are a cancer on the affiliate system and on the Internet in general; they add nothing of original value to the Internet and, in fact, steal value from the other sites who are trying to provide something of worth. That theft impacts everyone, from the very biggest sites like CardPlayer or PokerNews or Bluff or Two Plus Two on down. The ability of a vampire site to leverage its way to the higher parts of various search engines is not a point of added value to the online poker sites, which those sites seem loathe to understand. All these sites are doing is knocking down the legitimate sites to lower spots on various search-engine lists, but they haven't changed the overall mix of the online site's presence in the search engines at all.
Full Tilt-linked sites, as a made-up example, would tend to show up at the same relative mix of spots overall. This is again all totally made up, not any sort or real example, but a search for term 'xxyyzz poker' might bring up a Full Tilt-sponsored site at spots 2,5,6,8,11 in a batch of sites that might include vampire sites, but if all vampire sites were removed in total, the search would likely still bring up Full Tilt-affiliated links at spots 3,4,6,7,10... or whatever. The point is, the overall mix would be approximately the same. Vampire sites such as youwannapoker do not add visibility or sales; they just shift it from its rightful owners.
It is a true fallacy to believe that the affiliate sales 'generated' by youwannapoker and its ilk wouldn't go to other sites in youwannapoker's hoped-for absence. The only way a site like that makes any money at all is from a newbie who discovers that most of the sign-up offers available through sites like that are just about the same anyhow, and the newbie clicks through on that vampire site more or less at ramdom. But maintaining that these vampire sites actually create new business instead of redirecting and siphoning sales from its valid owners is flatly wrong; I hope no online site is silly enough to champion such a claim.
And that's yet another reason why sites such as Full Tilt should want to get rid of these lampreys. Because these sites reduce the amount of sales [re: affiliate bonuses] that should be going to 'white-content' sites, they force the good sites to work with less dollars and fewer resources than these sites should be entitled to for their work. The end result of that has to be cheapened, devalued, flatly worse poker product... for everyone. Is that really what the online poker sites want? "To hell with quality, shit's okay if it's got our name on it?"
I've had several discussions with big-name bloggers and many of my own bosses about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and every single one of them is knowledgable about the process. It's also not a problem with an easy solution. But for online sites to feign ignorance in the matter isn't going to solve anything --- it's high time for a few of these folks to wake up and do things right.
I'll also mention this: A few months ago when I took the lead in tearing down a very large RSS site-scraping operation, I worked through several avenues to get it nuked. I ended up speaking by phone with the lead lawyer for one of the very largest online poker sites, who called me one Friday after I started making noise, and he told me quite frankly that the sites don't want these vampire affiliates in their networks anyway. The vast majority of them don't generate signifcant revenue, and in whole these sites cause far more trouble than they are worth. The sites don't want them, but they are also hamstrung in some instances by laws that prevent them from terminating a site without due cause. It can be done, though, but the site normally needs to receive a letter or some such threatining a copyright-infringement case, and there are both EU and WTO digital copyright acts with provisions that can be used as the basis for the claim.
The major site I'm blind-referencing here made it quite clear that they would be more than willing to turn that information over to me upon receipt of said letter, but it never needed to be written; my efforts in nuking that bad boy from the domain-registrar side were completely successful the very next day. It was a Dutch dude, as I recall, who issued an apology and stated that he had been more or less taken in by one of those "SEO Black Hat" operations that basically sell you plans on how to steal. Not that I wholly believed him or felt sorry for him, but anyway...
That sort of brings up another related tale, and since I seem to be on a roll -- like buttah, baby -- I may as well keep typing. Over at the KAP blog last week, I've had some fun skewering some sort of money-making poker system being offered by someone named Johnny Rothman, who maintains something approximating a blog at blog.sitngopro.com. Johnny, it seems, is a wee bit of an entrepreneur.
Anyhow, Johnny is marketing whatever product that is that he's pitching now, complete with some spammage linkage that connects it to the PokerBot Pro operation. (Johnny denies that it's his spam wave, but says he uses the PokerBot Pro's operation for payment procesiing, per a KAP blog comment. Like, okay, I'm impressed. He's a saint.) Also, Johnny Boy's new product claims to be a compilation of advice from five different poker extras, but searching on the four other names doesn't show any different poker links at all. I think it's the poker version of 'Multiplicity,' sort of a 'Non-Hendon Mob' thing --- and you'd have to visit the site and see one of the graphics there to understand that little jab.
But here's what's funnier still: Johnny Boy is deeply offended at the fact that I've skewered his spam-offered product, including a major component which seems to outline a RSS site-scraping or content-theft operation of the same type I've been battling all along.
And I called B.S. on it.
In Johnny's first complaint, made as a post comment, I was accused of not giving his product a 'fair review,' which is technically true. However, Samuel Clemens' famed quote certainly applies. (At least I think it was him -- correct me if I'm wrong.) It's the one that goes something like, "One does not have to eat an entire apple to know it is rotten."
I also issued a challenge in a follow-up post: Let me see the contents of just the part of the package that looked so dubious and unethical, and I would fully review that portion, good or bad. Instead of accepting my challenge, Johnny decied he was gonna go after my bosses and have me dealt with properly:
From: "Johnny Rothman" (johnny.rothman@gmail.com)
To:support@kickasspoker.com, support@atlantapokerclub.com,
plf-support@kickasspoker.com, pls-support@kickasspoker.com,
dit-support@kickasspoker.com, dt-support@kickasspoker.com,
aff-support@kickasspoker.com ...
Please tell me why you constantly are posting negative reviews about my
site bashing it?
Jason at KAP forwarded it to me with the following lengthy comment:
:)
I think you can see why I like those guys.
Nope, no trouble sleeping at all.
It's perhaps one of the reasons why I decided to accept the Online Poker text-link ad from Bodog when they offered it to me. It's not that I've never had issues with Bodog, nor they with me, but Bodog is actively trying to reward white-content sites, rather than sites that steal, in a difficult market time. And I appreciate that gesture.
Of course, I saw this and this, and having been rather prominently featured in the discussion --- hell, being part of it myself --- I'd like to toss out a couple of more nuggets here. No, no, not the lawsuit stuff. I've been that mad myself on previous occasions, as has anyone with the common sense to be offended by thieves. I also had no advance knowledge of Dan's or Gary's recent posts, except to point out some months ago to Dan the existence of that youwannapoker site, though he may well have been aware of it himself before that.
Rather, I'd like to make an open statement to the online sites' affiliate managers. I now know a few of these folks, and I have no reason to believe that they are unreasonable; I simply believe that there are few of these managers not thinking these things through, chasing raw affiliate signup numbers while failing to understand other dynamics.
First, any site that thinks that having 1,250 affiliates instead of 1,100 (and these are imaginary numbers, made up for the sake of this post) without looking at the quality and veracity of those affiliates, is simply fooling themselves. If these affiliate managers have performance marks and bonuses tied only to the number of affiliates they generate, then that is dumbassed and counterproductive to the process. I also don't know that this is the case, but it's a possibility.
Sites such as youwannapoker are a cancer on the affiliate system and on the Internet in general; they add nothing of original value to the Internet and, in fact, steal value from the other sites who are trying to provide something of worth. That theft impacts everyone, from the very biggest sites like CardPlayer or PokerNews or Bluff or Two Plus Two on down. The ability of a vampire site to leverage its way to the higher parts of various search engines is not a point of added value to the online poker sites, which those sites seem loathe to understand. All these sites are doing is knocking down the legitimate sites to lower spots on various search-engine lists, but they haven't changed the overall mix of the online site's presence in the search engines at all.
Full Tilt-linked sites, as a made-up example, would tend to show up at the same relative mix of spots overall. This is again all totally made up, not any sort or real example, but a search for term 'xxyyzz poker' might bring up a Full Tilt-sponsored site at spots 2,5,6,8,11 in a batch of sites that might include vampire sites, but if all vampire sites were removed in total, the search would likely still bring up Full Tilt-affiliated links at spots 3,4,6,7,10... or whatever. The point is, the overall mix would be approximately the same. Vampire sites such as youwannapoker do not add visibility or sales; they just shift it from its rightful owners.
It is a true fallacy to believe that the affiliate sales 'generated' by youwannapoker and its ilk wouldn't go to other sites in youwannapoker's hoped-for absence. The only way a site like that makes any money at all is from a newbie who discovers that most of the sign-up offers available through sites like that are just about the same anyhow, and the newbie clicks through on that vampire site more or less at ramdom. But maintaining that these vampire sites actually create new business instead of redirecting and siphoning sales from its valid owners is flatly wrong; I hope no online site is silly enough to champion such a claim.
And that's yet another reason why sites such as Full Tilt should want to get rid of these lampreys. Because these sites reduce the amount of sales [re: affiliate bonuses] that should be going to 'white-content' sites, they force the good sites to work with less dollars and fewer resources than these sites should be entitled to for their work. The end result of that has to be cheapened, devalued, flatly worse poker product... for everyone. Is that really what the online poker sites want? "To hell with quality, shit's okay if it's got our name on it?"
I've had several discussions with big-name bloggers and many of my own bosses about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and every single one of them is knowledgable about the process. It's also not a problem with an easy solution. But for online sites to feign ignorance in the matter isn't going to solve anything --- it's high time for a few of these folks to wake up and do things right.
I'll also mention this: A few months ago when I took the lead in tearing down a very large RSS site-scraping operation, I worked through several avenues to get it nuked. I ended up speaking by phone with the lead lawyer for one of the very largest online poker sites, who called me one Friday after I started making noise, and he told me quite frankly that the sites don't want these vampire affiliates in their networks anyway. The vast majority of them don't generate signifcant revenue, and in whole these sites cause far more trouble than they are worth. The sites don't want them, but they are also hamstrung in some instances by laws that prevent them from terminating a site without due cause. It can be done, though, but the site normally needs to receive a letter or some such threatining a copyright-infringement case, and there are both EU and WTO digital copyright acts with provisions that can be used as the basis for the claim.
The major site I'm blind-referencing here made it quite clear that they would be more than willing to turn that information over to me upon receipt of said letter, but it never needed to be written; my efforts in nuking that bad boy from the domain-registrar side were completely successful the very next day. It was a Dutch dude, as I recall, who issued an apology and stated that he had been more or less taken in by one of those "SEO Black Hat" operations that basically sell you plans on how to steal. Not that I wholly believed him or felt sorry for him, but anyway...
That sort of brings up another related tale, and since I seem to be on a roll -- like buttah, baby -- I may as well keep typing. Over at the KAP blog last week, I've had some fun skewering some sort of money-making poker system being offered by someone named Johnny Rothman, who maintains something approximating a blog at blog.sitngopro.com. Johnny, it seems, is a wee bit of an entrepreneur.
Anyhow, Johnny is marketing whatever product that is that he's pitching now, complete with some spammage linkage that connects it to the PokerBot Pro operation. (Johnny denies that it's his spam wave, but says he uses the PokerBot Pro's operation for payment procesiing, per a KAP blog comment. Like, okay, I'm impressed. He's a saint.) Also, Johnny Boy's new product claims to be a compilation of advice from five different poker extras, but searching on the four other names doesn't show any different poker links at all. I think it's the poker version of 'Multiplicity,' sort of a 'Non-Hendon Mob' thing --- and you'd have to visit the site and see one of the graphics there to understand that little jab.
But here's what's funnier still: Johnny Boy is deeply offended at the fact that I've skewered his spam-offered product, including a major component which seems to outline a RSS site-scraping or content-theft operation of the same type I've been battling all along.
And I called B.S. on it.
In Johnny's first complaint, made as a post comment, I was accused of not giving his product a 'fair review,' which is technically true. However, Samuel Clemens' famed quote certainly applies. (At least I think it was him -- correct me if I'm wrong.) It's the one that goes something like, "One does not have to eat an entire apple to know it is rotten."
I also issued a challenge in a follow-up post: Let me see the contents of just the part of the package that looked so dubious and unethical, and I would fully review that portion, good or bad. Instead of accepting my challenge, Johnny decied he was gonna go after my bosses and have me dealt with properly:
From: "Johnny Rothman" (johnny.rothman@gmail.com)
To:support@kickasspoker.com, support@atlantapokerclub.com,
plf-support@kickasspoker.com, pls-support@kickasspoker.com,
dit-support@kickasspoker.com, dt-support@kickasspoker.com,
aff-support@kickasspoker.com ...
Please tell me why you constantly are posting negative reviews about my
site bashing it?
Jason at KAP forwarded it to me with the following lengthy comment:
:)
I think you can see why I like those guys.
Nope, no trouble sleeping at all.
It's perhaps one of the reasons why I decided to accept the Online Poker text-link ad from Bodog when they offered it to me. It's not that I've never had issues with Bodog, nor they with me, but Bodog is actively trying to reward white-content sites, rather than sites that steal, in a difficult market time. And I appreciate that gesture.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Forgiveth Me, Lawd, For I Haff Sinned...
It was a month or so back when I was perusing one of my favorite poker-bloggy reads, Pokerati, when I stumbled into the comments section of one of Dan's posts and noticed something truly unique --- he'd been the recipient of an incredible long, rambling, whack-o letter from a party unknown.
I received a similar one myself at this blog a few days back; thank heaven for comments moderation, which I have so spam and other weirdness like this doesn't clutter the place unknowingly. Nor, I believe, was our mysterious proselytizer visiting only me, as a quick phrase check on Google suggests he might have hit Up For Poker and several mainstream blogs/news outlets as well. The missive offered 6,500 words of delusional goodness, proving once again that despite the over-prescribing of psychological medications in our society, there's at least one person out there not getting a proper dose. It started out with, "The Italian boot proves their premeditation," and rambled ever onward from there.
On rare occasions I enjoy perusing this manure, though it seems clear that our unknown friend must view poker and gambling as some sort of special wickedness, similar to the attitude shown by that weird far-right faith organization that's suddenly viewing rigid over-interpretation and over-enforcement of the UIGEA as their key to eternal salvation. Focus on Family, I believe their name is, and they're a bunch of kooks; there's a slightly-better-than-infinitismal chance that this came from one of that or a similar cause's sycophants.
But back to my comment visitor. A few choice nuggets for our enjoyment, presented [SIC] as always:
"This reflects poorly upon their reals on the other planets, despite the clone's different name and altered DNA."
"Of course Hitler was Austrian:::An Austrian-born leading a foreign nation. Glock, maker of the semi-automatic gun favored by black street gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips, is Austrian. RedBull Energy drink, Buwdeiser both Austrian. What role do Austrians play in the cigarette industry??"
"Oshkosh is a clue just as Lake Michigan and Green Bay are clues::::Oshkosh is the ejaculate clue:::Life springs forth from this region."
By the way, I used to live 20 minutes north of Oshkosh... darned if I knew all this stuff was going on under my nose....
"ANYTIME you feel 'peaked', experience craving or ANY thought disturbance where you want or like something irrationally (ex:::Halloween, Harley Davidson (theme:::Halloween colors), Dale Earnhardt, Christmas) IT IS THEM TRYING TO HURT YOU!!!!!! "Magic" is used EXCLUSIVELY to hurt the disfavored; it is the fuel of disfunction::::::addiction, homosexuality, crack babies."
Seriously, no same person could come up with that stuff....
"Kosher is a favor bestowed upon the Jews. The South eats LOTS of pork and there is an oyster bar on every corner:::::It's like liquor stores in the ghetto. This is the kind of irony the gods laugh about."
Cool. Equal-opportunity bashing. Even redneck 'Pubuhkins get it in this thing, too.
"Anybody on Earth who rides a motorcycle is subject to these percentages based on whatever category of disfavor they fall within. Far more homeless will die on a motorcycle than those who are comfortable, but they will still claim a certain percentage of the latter who ride motorcycles. gods will claim % of ALL who ride"
... and on and on and on and on... trust me when I say you haven't seen a tenth of it.
It'd been a while since I'd encountered one of these crazies first hand. Back in the day, I was privy to the monthly "nut files" mailing that Jim McLauchlin used to send out, back when he was the news editor of Wizard: The Guide to Comics. Comics-fan nutjobs (and I'm referring to the truly crazed ones) are a special breed, and the monthly selection of the weirdest and wildest that Jim assembled was something to behold.
But nut-case letters find their way to almost all forms of media. Back when I worked at Tribune Media Services in Milwaukee, we once received a letter from someone on the East Coast who sent out three copies of a long, rambling missive; one to the President, one to his Senator, and one to us at TMS. You'd think, given his choice of targets, the subject was something political, right?
Hardly. This thing was a tin-foil special, meaning that our letter writer had stumbled upon our use of TV antennae as a conduit for a source of some free and unlimited energy source, but he was only willing to share his secrets with us and the Prezzy and all for billions of dollars. The letter, too, was crammed full of odd symbols and wandered off for paragraphs at a time in exploration of the secret 'holy triune' that had delivered this wondrousosity unto him... and him unto us.
Prime reading, lemme tell ya; true schizophrenia is in some ways a wonder to behold. It way outclassed the guy who demanded a refund of 97% of his magazine susbscription price because he only watched Fox News and the Country Music Channel and the rest of his service was crap, anyway.
But back to my new pet commenter and his, ummm, thoughts. The whole thing wraps up with what I can only take as a threat, laughingly --- there's 100,000 more words of this stuff on the way. Oh my, whatever will I do? Maybe just keep laughing --- after all, someone out there thinks that stuff is related to a poker blog.
I received a similar one myself at this blog a few days back; thank heaven for comments moderation, which I have so spam and other weirdness like this doesn't clutter the place unknowingly. Nor, I believe, was our mysterious proselytizer visiting only me, as a quick phrase check on Google suggests he might have hit Up For Poker and several mainstream blogs/news outlets as well. The missive offered 6,500 words of delusional goodness, proving once again that despite the over-prescribing of psychological medications in our society, there's at least one person out there not getting a proper dose. It started out with, "The Italian boot proves their premeditation," and rambled ever onward from there.
On rare occasions I enjoy perusing this manure, though it seems clear that our unknown friend must view poker and gambling as some sort of special wickedness, similar to the attitude shown by that weird far-right faith organization that's suddenly viewing rigid over-interpretation and over-enforcement of the UIGEA as their key to eternal salvation. Focus on Family, I believe their name is, and they're a bunch of kooks; there's a slightly-better-than-infinitismal chance that this came from one of that or a similar cause's sycophants.
But back to my comment visitor. A few choice nuggets for our enjoyment, presented [SIC] as always:
"This reflects poorly upon their reals on the other planets, despite the clone's different name and altered DNA."
"Of course Hitler was Austrian:::An Austrian-born leading a foreign nation. Glock, maker of the semi-automatic gun favored by black street gangs such as the Bloods and the Crips, is Austrian. RedBull Energy drink, Buwdeiser both Austrian. What role do Austrians play in the cigarette industry??"
"Oshkosh is a clue just as Lake Michigan and Green Bay are clues::::Oshkosh is the ejaculate clue:::Life springs forth from this region."
By the way, I used to live 20 minutes north of Oshkosh... darned if I knew all this stuff was going on under my nose....
"ANYTIME you feel 'peaked', experience craving or ANY thought disturbance where you want or like something irrationally (ex:::Halloween, Harley Davidson (theme:::Halloween colors), Dale Earnhardt, Christmas) IT IS THEM TRYING TO HURT YOU!!!!!! "Magic" is used EXCLUSIVELY to hurt the disfavored; it is the fuel of disfunction::::::addiction, homosexuality, crack babies."
Seriously, no same person could come up with that stuff....
"Kosher is a favor bestowed upon the Jews. The South eats LOTS of pork and there is an oyster bar on every corner:::::It's like liquor stores in the ghetto. This is the kind of irony the gods laugh about."
Cool. Equal-opportunity bashing. Even redneck 'Pubuhkins get it in this thing, too.
"Anybody on Earth who rides a motorcycle is subject to these percentages based on whatever category of disfavor they fall within. Far more homeless will die on a motorcycle than those who are comfortable, but they will still claim a certain percentage of the latter who ride motorcycles. gods will claim % of ALL who ride"
... and on and on and on and on... trust me when I say you haven't seen a tenth of it.
It'd been a while since I'd encountered one of these crazies first hand. Back in the day, I was privy to the monthly "nut files" mailing that Jim McLauchlin used to send out, back when he was the news editor of Wizard: The Guide to Comics. Comics-fan nutjobs (and I'm referring to the truly crazed ones) are a special breed, and the monthly selection of the weirdest and wildest that Jim assembled was something to behold.
But nut-case letters find their way to almost all forms of media. Back when I worked at Tribune Media Services in Milwaukee, we once received a letter from someone on the East Coast who sent out three copies of a long, rambling missive; one to the President, one to his Senator, and one to us at TMS. You'd think, given his choice of targets, the subject was something political, right?
Hardly. This thing was a tin-foil special, meaning that our letter writer had stumbled upon our use of TV antennae as a conduit for a source of some free and unlimited energy source, but he was only willing to share his secrets with us and the Prezzy and all for billions of dollars. The letter, too, was crammed full of odd symbols and wandered off for paragraphs at a time in exploration of the secret 'holy triune' that had delivered this wondrousosity unto him... and him unto us.
Prime reading, lemme tell ya; true schizophrenia is in some ways a wonder to behold. It way outclassed the guy who demanded a refund of 97% of his magazine susbscription price because he only watched Fox News and the Country Music Channel and the rest of his service was crap, anyway.
But back to my new pet commenter and his, ummm, thoughts. The whole thing wraps up with what I can only take as a threat, laughingly --- there's 100,000 more words of this stuff on the way. Oh my, whatever will I do? Maybe just keep laughing --- after all, someone out there thinks that stuff is related to a poker blog.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Drunky-Wunky in Dayton
Some poker content, and some not-poker content. Just like life.
I snuck away from the blahs of Chicago suburbia two days ago to go to... Dayton? Indeed, but no reason other than to just get away. I accompanied a friend who's heavily into the ham-radio thing, and I've now learned that the third weekend in May is always the Dayton Hamvention, the world's largest flea-market/bourse/gathering of the ultimate in pocket-protectordom. I is knee-deep in geeks, lemme tell ya.
But, in an odd way, I enjoy these snapshot visits to other lifestyles. From seeing things like GenCon in the Milwaukee days to other specialty conventions, I actually enjoy watching the fuss and the fun, even if I don't necessarily dig the topic at hand. I'd actually be posting from that Hamvention right now, except for the fact that the free Wi-Fi advertised by major sponsor ARRL isn't working as advertised this morning. Therefore, I had to boogie back across Dayton to handle some poker work this morning.
One cannot fully comprehend the mountains of electronic crap available here without seeing it first hand, and I went over to the thing for a couple of hours yesterday, betwixt and between my normal poker duties, which kept me logged in from the world's smallest Hampton Inn (adjacent to Wright State University) for much of my stay. And of course, I've made it out for a nice evening meal or two, hence the 'Drunky-Wunky' of the title.
Right now I'm creating this post from the lobby of the Hampton after already having officially checked out, like they're ever gonna know. I expect the next two months to teach me quite a bit about remote networking. I won't physically be at the WSOP this year, but I will be working live (but remote) on WSOP stuff every single day. And I'll do that mostly from my Illinois apartment, but from a few other locations as well.
It's actually been a bit of a test run to see how well this remote Internet access is going to work. This trip has shown that it can be a bit of a fuss, so I now know what to expect. That can be summed up in two words: backup plans.
* * * * * *
Another thing I've had a small role with in recent days is helping bring another good writer into the PokerNews fold. His name's Martin Harris, and I think he's going to provide some quality pieces. Give him a read.
I'm always keeping my eyes open for other fresh faces, too, and I'm curious if anyone knows any transcribers with poker experience, for a different type of project. On yet a third matter, there is another huge announcement that will be able to made public any day, concerning a project I've been working on for quite some time. Just a little bit longer on that one, okay?
I snuck away from the blahs of Chicago suburbia two days ago to go to... Dayton? Indeed, but no reason other than to just get away. I accompanied a friend who's heavily into the ham-radio thing, and I've now learned that the third weekend in May is always the Dayton Hamvention, the world's largest flea-market/bourse/gathering of the ultimate in pocket-protectordom. I is knee-deep in geeks, lemme tell ya.
But, in an odd way, I enjoy these snapshot visits to other lifestyles. From seeing things like GenCon in the Milwaukee days to other specialty conventions, I actually enjoy watching the fuss and the fun, even if I don't necessarily dig the topic at hand. I'd actually be posting from that Hamvention right now, except for the fact that the free Wi-Fi advertised by major sponsor ARRL isn't working as advertised this morning. Therefore, I had to boogie back across Dayton to handle some poker work this morning.
One cannot fully comprehend the mountains of electronic crap available here without seeing it first hand, and I went over to the thing for a couple of hours yesterday, betwixt and between my normal poker duties, which kept me logged in from the world's smallest Hampton Inn (adjacent to Wright State University) for much of my stay. And of course, I've made it out for a nice evening meal or two, hence the 'Drunky-Wunky' of the title.
Right now I'm creating this post from the lobby of the Hampton after already having officially checked out, like they're ever gonna know. I expect the next two months to teach me quite a bit about remote networking. I won't physically be at the WSOP this year, but I will be working live (but remote) on WSOP stuff every single day. And I'll do that mostly from my Illinois apartment, but from a few other locations as well.
It's actually been a bit of a test run to see how well this remote Internet access is going to work. This trip has shown that it can be a bit of a fuss, so I now know what to expect. That can be summed up in two words: backup plans.
Another thing I've had a small role with in recent days is helping bring another good writer into the PokerNews fold. His name's Martin Harris, and I think he's going to provide some quality pieces. Give him a read.
I'm always keeping my eyes open for other fresh faces, too, and I'm curious if anyone knows any transcribers with poker experience, for a different type of project. On yet a third matter, there is another huge announcement that will be able to made public any day, concerning a project I've been working on for quite some time. Just a little bit longer on that one, okay?
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The Delayed Victory Stomp
No, no, I can't tell you about all the losses recently. What would be the fun in that? Instead, I'll try to make a repeat run tonight in the Wheatie, where I chopped first-place money (despite what the graphic below indicates) in last week's event. I'd also like to extend a courtesy thank-you --- if belated --- to SeedyV, who I had never played against before but turned out to be both a polite and honorable opponent.
SeedyV was seated immediately to my left at the very first table, where I put an all-in hurt on someone with the Nerf Hammer, then deposited our gracious host railside with some mightily donkified play, hence tonight's Wheatie naming rights. Wil's scalp claimed, I hung in the top three the rest of the night with the fear of the Hammer forcing my foes to cower into submission.
Sure is deep around these parts....
Speaking of Wil, after reading this post I'm willing to step up with a backing offer for his future donkaments of up to 50 cents per event. :-) That's well done, though, no matter how small the stakes; I know I've never won one that large myself.
SeedyV was seated immediately to my left at the very first table, where I put an all-in hurt on someone with the Nerf Hammer, then deposited our gracious host railside with some mightily donkified play, hence tonight's Wheatie naming rights. Wil's scalp claimed, I hung in the top three the rest of the night with the fear of the Hammer forcing my foes to cower into submission.
Sure is deep around these parts....
Speaking of Wil, after reading this post I'm willing to step up with a backing offer for his future donkaments of up to 50 cents per event. :-) That's well done, though, no matter how small the stakes; I know I've never won one that large myself.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Tagged, Eh?
Thanks a lot, Falstaff. ;-) I don't mind too much, and though I'm personally private by nature I'll share a few random memories and thoughts.
1) My grandparents came from opposite sides of the tracks, literally. (I loved all of them.) My paternal grandfather was a railroad engineer who held a reasonably well-paying and steady job throughout the Depression --- his own first railroad work involved the building of the original railroad lines through Montana two decades earlier. My maternal grandparents always struggled, stuck on the other side of the Great Depression coin. But rich or poor, both sides shared. I remember my maternal grandmother saving up the pennies she'd find on the street on her walks, and putting them into a rubber-banded, reused envelope for my sister and I to split. We'd snag 15 or 23 cents each that way every month or six weeks. My maternal grandmother and I also played a lot of cards when I was very young, mostly rummy with a little bit of gin rummy mixed in. Once I was old enough to shuffle, I had to do the shuffling for both of us. Her hands were thoroughly crippled for the last two decades of her life with rheumatoid arthritis, and she could barely hold the cards, much less shuffle them.
2) The first time I played poker in a casino for real money was at the Indian casino in Keshena, WI, not even in the same building their rather larger operation resides in today. The only game spread was seven-card stud, and that only at two tables. I played at the cheaper one, and went on a huge rush despite a husband/wife team working from opposite sides of the table. My worst suckout was catching a ten on seventh street to make quad tens, to top an opponent who I had put on a full boat, nines over sumpin', but actually had quad nines. That Keshena operation only lasted for a few months before the state made them shut it down.
3) I love fishing, particularly floating in a small boat snagging bluegills, crappies, and the occasional bass from Northwoods Wisconsin lakes. I've done quite a bit of trout fishing, too, and have caught most everything catchable in a fresh-water, non-Great Lakes sense.
4) When I was very young, I was a freak for... pickled beets. Both of my grandmothers and my mom put them up with stunningly delicious skill. Amazingly, I loved them so much I guess I finally got sick of them, for I've barely had a pickled beet in twenty years.
5) I know exactly how much Brett Favre's first MVP trophy weighs, from personal lugging experience. 56 damn pounds. It came to me and another worker one day, while working with that small Fox Valley sports-consulting firm, to make the emergency drive to Green Bay and pick the trophy up from Deanna, Brett's wife, then help package the thing off to Charlotte for the NFL's Super Bowl MVP show. (We insured it as 'photographic equipment' to get $25,000 of coverage, the most that was available.) Working with Brett a few times I had the chance to have him personalize a football for my dad, which my dad still treasures, even if the ink in the sig has since faded. I gave a signed ball to my sister and her husband on their wedding day, too. (They're both rabid Packer fans, so it was cool.) We joke to this day about the 'leather toaster' gift.
6) I came to writing for my bread money rather late in life after dabbling with it for years. My mother is an unpublished authoress who wrote several novels, which I imagine she has tucked away somewhere to this day. She did have one accepted after unknowingly submitting it to one of those 'vanity press' printers, and we all had a riotous laugh over the $7,000-plus the place wanted to do the first print run. In this day and age she'd be published, in web form at least, but that was a different era. She also become longtime friends with famed British romance authoress Catherine Cookson, who was moved by my mother's fan letter, and even travelled there with my older sister once for an afternoon lunch. My dad hated the long-distance phone bills to Britain; we were never richer than small-town middle class. Catherine was very happy for both me and my mom when I started snagging a few paid writing credits, some twenty years ago. Were that I had more than just idle novelist ambitions. I just don't have the patience for it.
7) I was once very, very good at math. I was on our high school's traveling team which competed in advanced math-problem competitions, and my junior year I took third in my division which was worth the royal sum of $10, IIRC... in the form of a savings bond, of course. I also played on our school's 'High Quiz Bowl' team, being on six shows over three years. So I had this weird competitive edge; if I were a truly mundane, ordinary person, would I be a poker writer?
I'm not going do to any chain-tagging, however. It's a cute idea, but most of the ones I'd pick are probably already in the process of being tagged by others. At the least, y'all got an offbeat post out of me.
1) My grandparents came from opposite sides of the tracks, literally. (I loved all of them.) My paternal grandfather was a railroad engineer who held a reasonably well-paying and steady job throughout the Depression --- his own first railroad work involved the building of the original railroad lines through Montana two decades earlier. My maternal grandparents always struggled, stuck on the other side of the Great Depression coin. But rich or poor, both sides shared. I remember my maternal grandmother saving up the pennies she'd find on the street on her walks, and putting them into a rubber-banded, reused envelope for my sister and I to split. We'd snag 15 or 23 cents each that way every month or six weeks. My maternal grandmother and I also played a lot of cards when I was very young, mostly rummy with a little bit of gin rummy mixed in. Once I was old enough to shuffle, I had to do the shuffling for both of us. Her hands were thoroughly crippled for the last two decades of her life with rheumatoid arthritis, and she could barely hold the cards, much less shuffle them.
2) The first time I played poker in a casino for real money was at the Indian casino in Keshena, WI, not even in the same building their rather larger operation resides in today. The only game spread was seven-card stud, and that only at two tables. I played at the cheaper one, and went on a huge rush despite a husband/wife team working from opposite sides of the table. My worst suckout was catching a ten on seventh street to make quad tens, to top an opponent who I had put on a full boat, nines over sumpin', but actually had quad nines. That Keshena operation only lasted for a few months before the state made them shut it down.
3) I love fishing, particularly floating in a small boat snagging bluegills, crappies, and the occasional bass from Northwoods Wisconsin lakes. I've done quite a bit of trout fishing, too, and have caught most everything catchable in a fresh-water, non-Great Lakes sense.
4) When I was very young, I was a freak for... pickled beets. Both of my grandmothers and my mom put them up with stunningly delicious skill. Amazingly, I loved them so much I guess I finally got sick of them, for I've barely had a pickled beet in twenty years.
5) I know exactly how much Brett Favre's first MVP trophy weighs, from personal lugging experience. 56 damn pounds. It came to me and another worker one day, while working with that small Fox Valley sports-consulting firm, to make the emergency drive to Green Bay and pick the trophy up from Deanna, Brett's wife, then help package the thing off to Charlotte for the NFL's Super Bowl MVP show. (We insured it as 'photographic equipment' to get $25,000 of coverage, the most that was available.) Working with Brett a few times I had the chance to have him personalize a football for my dad, which my dad still treasures, even if the ink in the sig has since faded. I gave a signed ball to my sister and her husband on their wedding day, too. (They're both rabid Packer fans, so it was cool.) We joke to this day about the 'leather toaster' gift.
6) I came to writing for my bread money rather late in life after dabbling with it for years. My mother is an unpublished authoress who wrote several novels, which I imagine she has tucked away somewhere to this day. She did have one accepted after unknowingly submitting it to one of those 'vanity press' printers, and we all had a riotous laugh over the $7,000-plus the place wanted to do the first print run. In this day and age she'd be published, in web form at least, but that was a different era. She also become longtime friends with famed British romance authoress Catherine Cookson, who was moved by my mother's fan letter, and even travelled there with my older sister once for an afternoon lunch. My dad hated the long-distance phone bills to Britain; we were never richer than small-town middle class. Catherine was very happy for both me and my mom when I started snagging a few paid writing credits, some twenty years ago. Were that I had more than just idle novelist ambitions. I just don't have the patience for it.
7) I was once very, very good at math. I was on our high school's traveling team which competed in advanced math-problem competitions, and my junior year I took third in my division which was worth the royal sum of $10, IIRC... in the form of a savings bond, of course. I also played on our school's 'High Quiz Bowl' team, being on six shows over three years. So I had this weird competitive edge; if I were a truly mundane, ordinary person, would I be a poker writer?
I'm not going do to any chain-tagging, however. It's a cute idea, but most of the ones I'd pick are probably already in the process of being tagged by others. At the least, y'all got an offbeat post out of me.
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