More nonsense about online poker.
Topic: Poker

I bought Private Eye this morning and discovered an ad at the back in the 'Eye Bet' section of the classifieds (page 37). It read 'Are you a loser? online poker help. www.get-even.info '

Well obviously I couldn't resist checking the site out. Of course it's a load of bollocks. I feel confident saying that, because it contradicts itself massively. On the intro page, it assures you that it's possible for online players to purchase software to help them cheat. But if you click on the link titled "How to make a six figure income playing online poker" you get to a page written by a 'Danish' online professional, who speaks his mind about online poker on the clickable link (in a mid-West American accent) and he firmly dismisses claims that online programmes can assist players. What a difference a page can make!

I'd love to say that you can take his word for it, but given that he also claims that he can teach you to: 'Win more pots day after day and skyrocket your earnings' and how to 'Never lose to a gambler with lucky cards again', that may not be possible.

PS - the sound file in which 'Kim Birch' claims that online poker rigging software doesn't work is near the bottom of the page, next to his photo and not the one at the top. By the way, does anyone else think that it's two different voices?

Guest contribution, from Frode Gjesdal.
Topic: Poker

Poker tournament deals – why take the money off the top?

By Frode Gjesdal

The other day I was in a poker tournament. Ninety two players had started, which meant the nine last remaining players would be paid. The first prize was some £24,000 while 9th would pay just over £2,000. When we got down to 13 or 14 players somebody (from the table with 40 per cent of the chips in the tournament, incidentally) suggested a deal should be made, taking money off the top two prizes to secure places 10-13 the tournament entry of £750. Everybody agreed, except, as is so often the case, the one Scandinavian at the table - me.

Now I don’t have a problem with deals in principle, but I don’t usually make them. For a number of strategic reasons, which I will not get into here, I think they are a mistake for a person with average or above average chips to agree to. But this is not the point I am trying to make.  What I feel was wrong about the deal proposed, and the deals that are normally proposed, is that you should take money off the top prizes to pay for the all the remaining players in the tournament.

Ask yourself this question; who benefits from this deal at this point? Surely most people would agree that the players with short stacks do. They are, after all, more likely than the big stacks to be knocked out before the money. They are also less likely than the players with more chips to go on and win the tournament. If a deal is struck, it secures money for people who are the most likely to finish just off the money or just into the money. Some of the pressure is off.  

Well if this is the case, money to pay every remaining player in the tournament should be taken from the smaller prizes not the bigger ones. I don’t see what is fair about asking the chip leader to give up equity to pay for the shorter stacks. If, as I pointed out above, the shorter stacks are the beneficiaries of the deal, then the shorter stacks should pick up the tab, instead of asking the chip leader for a free ride.

Errors in my Hendon Mob database entry / Weekly competitions in London
Topic: Poker

I've just looked at my Hendon Mob database entry and am surprised to see some glaring errors. The reason I was looking was that I was trying to remember when it was that I came second to Jac Arama in a £50 or £100 omaha comp at the Vic. That was the day that I got to know Allan Engel (aka Fred Titmus), who came third. The Mob doesn't mention it, perhaps because it was not officially a festival tournament, thought it took place on the Sunday when the festival's main event finished and wasn't a regular weekly fixture. Nowadays the same event is a £300 or £500 hold'em freezeout and does count as a festival event.

My database entry contains the following errors:

I didn't start playing poker until summer 1995, so the bottom two entries relating to events in 1993 and February 95 have nothing to do with me. In the case of the former, it's probably Doug Young from Brighton who should be credited.

Doug Young is probably the person who scored in the Dec 2002 and Jan 2004 Brighton comps. I'm fairly sure I wasn't at either of those festivals.

Similarly I have no recollection of being in Atlantic City in March this year (though I was there in December for a few days on holiday).

If anyone in charge of data integrity at the HM forum is reading this, then please feel free to remove the incorrect entries.

The rest are certainly mine. It's nice to be reminded of some of them. My record doesn't look that exciting once the bogus entries are removed, but I don't actually play that many festival comps like those recorded. There is less need to than ever before. Living in London I have access to the following weekly comps:

Monday

£250 Freezeout at the Sportsman

Tuesday

£100 Freezeout at the Western (new fixture, website shows a £3k guarantee)

£250 Freezeout at the Palm Beach

Wednesday

£100 rebuy comp at the Palm Beach

£30 with one add-on at Gutshot (I would treat this as a £60 freezeout)

Thursday

£250 Freezeout at the Palm Beach

£50 Freezeout at Gutshot

Friday

£100 rebuy comp at the Sportsman

Saturday

£100 Freezeout at Gutshot

Sunday

£300 Freezeout at the Palm Beach

My track record at the Sportsman is very strong - three top 3 finishes in only 5 visits. Sadly I've never made the money in the Saturday Gutshot comp, which I think I've played about 7 or 8 times. Played three times at Palm Beach and never got anywhere.

Gryko - falling in my estimation
Topic: Poker

It doesn't get much more ironic than this.

A few years ago, Rob Hollink was chip leader at the end of day one of the WSOP championship event, back when there was only one day 1! Lots of people piled on to the European poker forums to congratulate him. A rare dissenting voice came from Richard Gryko, who said that Rob had fallen in his estimation, because he was sure that anyone who was chip leader at the end of day one must have played badly.

It was at that point that Gryko truly rose in my estimation. I thought it was a brilliant insight that nearly everyone else had missed. So just what am I to make of the news that this year, Gryko was chip leader at the end of Day1C, with over 125,000 chips?

ps - I've been showing some American friends around London for the last few days and therefore have been too busy to sit down and compose a response to the comments you've sent in about Mark Steyn. I will write a thorough defence of his/my position once their brief trip is over. I will just say that I took them to Gutshot on Monday night and they had a brilliant time. There's nothing like it in NYC!

Scenes from the Vic.
Topic: Poker

 

If there is one puzzle that will torment me until my dying day, it's not 'Why are we here?' or 'What is the meaning of life?' or the riddles of the pyramids or quest for the unified field theory. Long after those mysteries have been sold, mankind will still struggle with the eternal question 'How does Michael Arnold get paid?'

Michael knows how to play, of course, but what marks him out above all others is his incredible ability to get paid off by the occasional visiting stars to the Victoria's hold'em games. If you spot someone who's never played before and they are sitting in a nine handed game with £1,000 in front of them, it's about a 50/50 shot that Michael will take the lot off them. Last night, there was one such individual, who managed to outdraw people for large sums of money and at one stage flopped a straight against my trip sixes (which cost me over £500 because he would have played bottom two the same way). Sure enough having built his stack up to four figures, this happens. He calls a raise from his right and the rest of the table calls. On a flop of 6 8 9 rainbow, he calls the preflop raiser's bet of £125 and Michael raises £500. The preflop raiser folds and our hero now reraises Michael £470 more all-in. Michael calls with his second-nut straight (5-7) and if he had any doubts at all, was soon reassured that the two grand in the middle of the table was rightfully his when the next two cards came runner-runner diamonds to give him a flush.

We weren't shown what the other fellow had but another Vic regular was standing behind him and later told us that it was King-Eight! Is it any wonder that some of us have considered extreme measures like the idea pictured above? It could be the way forward.

Questions for Andy Ward.
Topic: Poker

Andy, I'm delighted that you have time to roam the blogosphere when not too busy getting the lot in the one-tables in Las Vegas. If it's not too much trouble, can I ask you about something you wrote on Secrets of the Amateurs?

http://secretsoftheamateurs.blogspot.com/2006/06/down-but-not-out.html

In which you explain why you would pass with a marginal holding when very shortstacked in early position. My questions are:

'Have you considered the cost of this approach if you would have won both that hand and the next one?

Does the fact that winning both pots would increase your stack much more than only winning the second one make much difference?

Where's the value?
Topic: Poker

I've had a lot of people ask me whether I'm going to Las Vegas for the WSOP. I'm not. There are a few reasons for this, including the fact that some American friends of mine are coming to Britain to see me at the same time as the championship event. But even without that, I don't think I would go. The rake in many of the events is quite high. The structures for the cheaper events are poor. I'm stunned to read about the problems that some British players are having with back-taxes. From the sounds of things Harrah's is just plain incompetent. Andy Bloch got a time penalty for pointing out a marked card and destroying it!

Andy Ward appears to have the right idea - just chugging along in the one-table competitions. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

Meanwhile I'm playing in a $200 competition on Paradise that has a $250,000 guarantee. It only got 1,078 runners. That's a shortfall of $34,400.

UPDATE

I added up the prize pool and noticed that it only came to $227,500. I wrote to ask Paradise where the other $22,500 was and was sent this reply:

thanks for your email. In the event that one of our guaranteed tourneys does not meet the guarantee amount through buyins, we will add money to the pool to top it up to meet the guarantee. Please note that the guaranteed prize pool will be raked at 9% as per our T+C's Good luck at the tables and thanks for choosing ParadisePoker! Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance.  

So it's not quite as good as I thought, but they have still lost $11,900. Alas I won't be getting any of it after my KK got busted by AQo all-in preflop. Amazingly over 300 people were knocked out before the first hour was up. I don't they can all have been as unlucky as I was.

Tales from the Vic.
Topic: Poker
About six months ago a regular recreational player at the Vic told me that he was trying to get the management to change the structure of the £100 game from two blinds of £2 to two blinds of £3. He insisted this was necessary to make the games better and that it would get rid of the 'rocks'. I tried to explain that it would merely make him lose money 50 per cent faster. He wouldn't listen.

Soon after that converasation, the Vic did just what he wanted. Yesterday I met him again. Noting that there was no omaha game running at 8pm and that the omaha action had been pretty weak for some time, he asked me 'David, where are the omaha players? What's happened to the game?'

This isn't the only costly change that the club has made. Back in February, the decision was made to move the cash games to the upstairs floor. It was done on the same day that the card room manager went on holiday. At the time I had minor reservations about whether it would affect the liveliness of the action, as the games would be less accessible. But what really annoyed me was that players were subjected to the piped music from the overhead speakers and that we were also made to hear the music from the restaurant.

After six days in which I lost four times, I decided that I could no longer accept the chance that these irritations were affecting my game. So I told Jeff that I wouldn't be back for a while and settled down to playing online. That was in February. It went OK, but with the arrival of summer I don't want to be sat indoors, as my flat gets very hot and I crave air-conditioning. So I went back to playing at the Vic a couple of weeks ago and found that it was much quieter than it had been in January. The festival week was very poorly attended, apart from the Monday and the cash action on other days was far below the level of a normal festival.

It seems that the Vic has finally noticed the problem and from Monday next week, cash games are moving downstairs. Rejoice! Rejoice! I'm not saying that the downstairs room is a paradise. The air-conditioning is erratic and the room is small for its needs, but it will be a joy not to have to listen to the karaoke waiter who sings in the restaurant every night and the dreary ballad music from the overhead feed.

Glasgow club raid.
Topic: Poker
I saw David Colclough at the Victoria last night and asked him about the stories that the Cincinatti Club had been raided by police. He informed me that:

The police had entered the club and taken cards and chips as evidence. No money was taken.

The police said that they think the operation is illegal.

The police did NOT press charges, nor did they tell the club to cease operations.

Business is continuing.

My world is now theirs.
Topic: Poker
When I first started playing poker in the mid 90s, I couldn't understand why the game wasn't more popular than it was. I explained my new found love to friends and family and was amazed to see their eyes glaze over in boredom.

I can't say my family has changed its opinion much, but the wider British public certainly has. What's more amusing is the influx of celebrities. Last night I went to the Sportsman for its £250 freezeout and found myself playing Teddy Sheringham on the final table.

After picking up some money for finishing third, I headed over to the Vic to see who was in town for the festival week and found Vicky Coren playing an Irish boy-band singer. There are few clearer signs of how much things have changed than seeing someone who's been in the gossip columns and supermarket celeb magazines for years wailing 'How can he call me with eight-five'?

Welcome to my world!

Extraordinary scenes from poker and chess.
Topic: Poker
There's been a lot of rubbish written about online poker on the Gutshot forum recently. I don't know who these people are who think that you get more freak outdraws online than live. I've never seen any evidence for it myself. I can sit and play online for hours and hours and never see much that's out of the ordinary.

Just for the sake of it, here's a hand I saw live in an omaha game at the Western yesterday night. On a flop of:

Jc 9d 8c

two players got all their money in.

A had Qs Ac Qd Td

B had Ad 5d Qc Tc

so they both had the nut straight, while B was freerolling on the clubs. In the event though, the next two cards came Jd, 8d to give A the backdoor straight-flush! What was particularly annoying for B was that he had the nut diamond draw, so he couldn't lose to a backdoor diamond flush. Ouch!

Changing the subject for no reason ...

I look at Chessgames.com every day for their daily puzzles. The problems start off easy on a Monday and get progressively more difficult until Sunday when there is no point in trying to work it out, you just go straight to the answer and find out what 14 move combination Spassky inflicted on so-and-so at the Leningrad interzonal in 1963 etc.

I used to spend ages studying chess. Eventually it annoyed me that I didn't seem to get any better at it. I've wasted a lot of time looking at games played by people much better than me. Much of it goes over my head. But it's worth it every now and then when you find a gem like this one:

Petrosian v Pachman, 1961

Petrosian's final combination is a thing of beauty. Just once in my life I would like to find a killer move like 21.Bg7

About online poker.
Topic: Poker
I get a lot of requests for my view on the alleged fixing of hands in online poker. Here is what I had to say about it two years ago:

https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=187738

I haven't changed my mind since.

But there is another point I want to make while I'm here. And that's that No Limit cash poker is different when played online rather than live, though not for the reasons that most people give. I'm not referring to the fact that people might be less embarrassed to make bad calls when they can't be seen or that there are no tells.

It's the stack sizes.

If I play at the Vic, I will typically start with about £400. Given that the big blind is £3, that's approx 133 big blinds. Others are sitting down with a grand or more. That's 333 big blinds.

Contrast this with the situation on Victor Chandler for instance where you can only sit down with 75 big blinds, or most other sites where the limit is 100 and many people sit down with a lot less. It's a totally different game. The shallowness of the money means that it's 'best-in, best-out' poker. The implied odds aren't there if you want to play unusual cards in raised pots. They do exist however at the Vic.

I have a friend who wins at online SNG. He wins at live cash. But he loses at online NL cash games. And that's because the stack sizes don't suit his style. In live play, he sits with about 500 big bets and plays some wacky cards. In SNG, he plays tight when the blinds are small, but aggresively later on when they are worth winning. But in online NL cash action he's stuck. The money isn't deep enough to reward taking risks with non-premium hands, but the blinds are not worth stealing like they are in an SNG. Add in the fact that winners tend to 'hit and run' in online play because they were only planning to play for short periods anyway and you have a recipe for disaster for those who can't play tight.

He's not alone. There are bound to be plenty of others like him. And many of them bombard forums with the 'I can win live but not online, it must be rigged' blather.

Some random poker thoughts.
Topic: Poker
Bunching in Online play.

I've been playing online solidly for about three months now and am starting to miss playing live (played cash at the Vic once since the start of February). One thing I can't understand about online players is why they all bunch together when games start. What I mean is that if someone starts a new game by sitting down in seat four, there's a very strong chance that the next person joins in seat five or three. If he comes into seat three, there's a great chance that the next person comes in at two or five. And so on.

"So what?" you might ask. Well the reason I think it's silly is that you can get situations where a nine handed table has 5 players seated at seats three through to seven. If someone is scanning through the lobby looking for a game to join and sees this, they might be put off joining if they are going to have to wait for the big blind for several hands because there is no gap. They might go to a game where they can get a seat sooner. That's why if I join a new game I will sit such that there are gaps on both sides of me. I want to leave a seat open for the action junkies. There may not be many people who are so desperate to get straight into action that it will affect their choice of table. But they're the ones I want to play against!

Money Mugged.

I've been thinking some more about 'Deal or No Deal'. Having read the excellent 'Fooled by Randomness', I continue to be impressed by Noel Edmonds' ability to make comments about the process of the game when it's pure chance. Things like 'We're on a knife edge here' and 'This could be the turning point' stand out. But neither is as good as 'If you get money greedy, you could get money mugged'. The latter could make an excellent theme for one of those T-Shirts you see for sale in the back pages of Private Eye or Viz: a picture of Noel Edmonds and the message 'Don't get money mugged'. Can't do any worse than the ones of Jim Bowen and Andrew Marr.

On the subject of T-Shirts, I would love to know whether anyone's got the guts to wear one of Andy Ward's more defeatist poker T-shirts in a big event. I mean the ones with one-line messages like 'Bokked', 'Felted', and 'Rivered'. I reckon that wearing one of them while playing a $10k event is the ultimate sign of confidence. It's telling the world that you're not supersticious and fear nothing. Good on you, if you're brave enough.

Coming back to 'Deal or No Deal' though, why can't people see that there is only one skill in this game of random choices? It's manipulating the banker. If you are prepared to take a deal that's below the value of the average remaining box, then you want that offer to be as high as possible. The banker is watching the player and will take any weakness as a sign that he can get away with a low offer. Players should fight back by dismissing his offers without an apparent consideration in the early rounds. It could make a difference of twenty grand or so later on. Nail-biting could cost you a lot of money here. So why do so many people display weakness?

Debunking a couple of poker myths.
Topic: Poker
Here are two myths concerning the British poker scene that I would like to debunk:

'You'll be all right!'

It's sad to see the otherwise brilliantly well informed Joe Beevers attributing the phrase 'You'll be all right' to Neil Channing. Although the latter uses it quite a lot, the phrase belongs firmly to Francis Rohan. I thought Miros had alluded to this somewhere on his blog, but I can't find it anywhere. Perhaps it was a comment on someone else's. Whatever the case, the next time you rubbish like this:

In the immortal words of the unknown Gutshot member 'You'll be alright'.

You'll know better.


The demise of UKPOKER

Another common myth is that Mark Strahan's poker website fell into decline after he made it pay-per-view. While it's probably true that this led to a fall in traffic, the more significant decline in its popularity and influence happened long before that. It was when he switched forum providers away from Bravenet towards some other system that readers found less user-friendly. Traffic nosedived immediately. Several people wrote in to request that he revert to Bravenet*, but Mark was adamant.

I recall seeing Jon Shoreman (who has rival site Poker In Europe) and hearing him say about it - 'It's great! The more people tell him he's made a mistake, the more stubbornly he sticks to it'. Mark did eventually revert to Bravenet about a year later, but the damage was irreversible. One reason for this was that not longer after the forum change, the Hendon Mob website started. Within a few weeks someone posted a piece about the failure of an attempted online poker site that had sought out investors from the British poker community. The post was taken down after a few days because it was considered defamatory. (I printed it because I could see this would happen). While it was on display, traffic to the Hendon Mob forum exploded and it grew from there. That was where Strahan blew it.

* The reason for the switch was that he wanted to save the $99 per annum fee to keep Bravenet free of pop-ups. I think this proved to be a false economy in the long run.

Poker sponsorship.
Topic: Poker
This is very funny. Because it's all true:

http://www.thepokerchronicles.com/archives/000773.html