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I Get Paid for This?!: Week of January 15, 2012

By Mark Gahagan on January 19, 2012 in

My Epic Poker column is getting some extra attention this week because I called out (I guess) Steve Brecher for his blog post about the Bike being unfair. The point I was trying to make was that there was enough notice out there that he may have been able to just not show up, thus avoiding the situation. As such, I called the idea that the Bike wouldn’t be doing this “silly” because there were several locations to get this info, including 2 press releases, the structure sheets, and the site that was hosting the broadcasts. I thought, whatever, throwing a little jab at Mr. Brecher for causing a stir at The Bike didn’t make him one of my Losers, just worth mentioning. Well, apparently, “silly” is synonymous with “fucking stupid”, because people pounced on that word like there was no tomorrow, and the arguments are WELL beyond my point and have strayed that way pretty much the whole time. The discussion has gone all over the place, from twitter to the post itself, so you can check it out if you want to weigh in. But really, there isnt much to it, and even if the Bike had made a mistake its not likely to repeat the error, and other casinos will take note, so its not likely to become a real issue (again, if there even is one).

Oh yea, and I talked about actual Winners (Duhamel for instance) and Losers (Duhamel’s ex for instance) as well.

Epic Poker - Winners and Losers: PCA Winners, Criminal Court Losers, and Rebellions (sort of)

Things are at least a little bit tamer on Rabbit Hunt. This week we have started to release permanently on Thursdays, if only because Tuesday nights were getting harder for me to fulfill. We talked about Phil Galfond’s blog on the state of online poker and needless to say, for a couple guys that can’t even play right now, we sure had a lot to say about the issue. In the second segment we remark on karma working in Jonathan Duhamel’s favor, a new UB lawsuit from the Superuser Scandal era (doesn’t that seem quaint now?), and Ira Rubin is (probably) going to prison for Black Friday related charges.

Cardrunners - Rabbit Hunt: 82 - (iTunes Download Page)

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The Fight Against Winning

By Mark Gahagan on January 12, 2012 in

Pokerstars recently attempted to change the rake as well as the VPP distribution method, and as a result, poker forums such as 2+2 have been in crisis mode ever since. As was stated on my podcast by Joss Wood earlier this week, Pokerstars is effectively the “lone superpower” in the online poker industry, and as such they have the ability to dictate policies that help both players and the industry as a whole. While the discussion on how the 2+2 representatives to the Isle of Man are in the early stages, signs that Pokerstars is listening to players can be seen in their recent concessions to French players. And while these concessions still leave high-volume players in a worse position than in 2011, its at least something. But over the last few months poker rooms across the industry have been limiting options for winning players in an effort to “level the playing field”. This has taken various forms:

  • Bodog (Anonymous tables): This was probably in part to combat the data mining efforts of sites like PokerTableRatings, but Bodog also stated that this combated bum-hunting and leveled the playing field. Never mind that I think anonymous tables are anything but poker, but Bodog made this an implementation across every table on the site. There was a (rather easy) workaround that allowed people to get user ID numbers from the client, which was a huge security risk in its own right, but that wasn’t by design.
  • Everleaf Network (restricting access based on winnings): If you play on Everleaf (and yea I know there aren’t many of you that do), then you have to be careful about how much you win. If you win more than 750 euros in a given week, you are subject to being restricted from tables because “your player rating is too high.” Everleaf claimed it affected only a minute percentage of their player base, and would allow for “easier” games now that the sharks have a limited allowance. The cap was reset weekly, and it didn’t limit Everleaf players from playing on all tables, but it was still pretty bad.
  • Pokerstars (Lower VPP generation, changes to rake): This one we know about, as it is the most recent occurrence of a site getting “back” at winning high-volume players. Addressed in the intro, the Pokerstars changes included a shift from the dealt method to the weighted contributed method for determining VPPs for a given hand. On top of that, Pokerstars moved to switch to a more linear system of getting rake, rounding to the cent instead of 5 cent increments like in the past. The latter was removed shortly after protests were getting louder on forums, but the fact that high-volume players are seeing a 10-20% drop in VPPs has, to date, not been resolved. Unlike the last two, Pokerstars does seem amenable to hearing player concerns, and 2+2 is sending people to the Isle of Man to put forth their proposal.

As you can see though, many sites are tightening their grip on winning and high-volume players one way or another. Players are concerned that with win rates being what they are, it’s hard to maintain a presence in the big games if the sites are going to make it harder for them to stay in business. From the site’s perspective, with Black Friday effectively cleaving the player pool by 30%, there is a bigger desire to keep afloat with what they’ve got left, and certainly in Pokerstars’ case you have to acknowledge they are probably gathering quite the legal bill.

I think though, at this point, is that many sites are following the same path that another industry I follow does, the video gaming industry. Yes, its a vice, but I play a lot of video games, and particularly ones that involve playing with others (read: MMOs and first person shooters). Like clockwork, a wave of complaints always occurs when the content is perceived to be “dumbed down” in order to create a level playing field. “Hardcore” players deride this as making the game more suitable for “casuals” and I can’t help but feel similar statements are being used in the fight 2+2 posters are making here. Which, is a shame, because it ignores a key reason video game and online poker companies alike do things like this: they are trying to make money, and its better to appeal to the 99% than the 1%  (to abuse a OWS cliche). In gaming, everyone pays a static amount into the system, so raw increases in subscriptions or sales is going to drive this push toward the recreational gamer.

The analogy breaks down, admittedly, when discussing online poker businesses and their changes to make games more “recreationally” friendly. Sure, more players is a good thing and all, but if all they are doing is playing 25NL because the rake is too much and winning is, for all intents and purposes, punished, then you probably aren’t going to make more money as a site in the long run. Subsequently, you know that a certain percentage of the players you are attracting by “punishing” the sharks will then themselves become sharks, so it punishes the successful players at the expense of the novices (to abuse some sort of Tea Party cliche, just to show I play both sides).

What is the answer to this? Given the number of players on sites like Bodog and Everleaf, I doubt anonymous tables and restricting winnings will ever truly catch on, so I am not too worried about that. What I am worried about is the kinds of changes Pokerstars is making. They are the undisputed ruler of the online poker world right now, and usually being the superpower causes you get a bit arrogant at times. Fortunately, Pokerstars has shown they are willing to give a little, it just depends on how much they will listen to the 2+2 crew when they arrive in the Isle of Man for a discussion on rake.

Its an odd balance that sites like Pokerstars have to address. How do you make your high volume players (which arguably contribute more rake as an individual) happy while increasing your business by making your tables friendly to new players (which will increase revenue as a collective group). The War on Winning that poker sites was starting to get a little ridiculous, but it may take a poker titan and a ragtag group of forum posters to try to put a stop to it.

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I Get Paid for This?!: Week of January 8, 2012

By Mark Gahagan on January 11, 2012 in

Every week I do have obligations to various (read: two) media outlets for which I do media work about poker. It’s not much (compared to the people that do this for a living), but its enough to keep me informed of what’s going on in the poker industry while the Dark Ages of Poker (patent pending) persist in the United States. That said, here’s what we have for this week.

For writing I write for the Epic Poker League’s news site, and go over the week’s stories and distill them into a “Winners/Losers” format. Obviously there will be a heavy amount of bias, but that’s the point, its an op-ed as to what I would think people in the poker industry would consider the winners or losers in a particular news cycle. This week I took a look at various pros that were doing well at PCA and WSOP-C: Los Angeles, why some Nevada casino bosses need to shut up, and why I am glad some judges can deny bail.

Epic Poker - Winners and Losers: Tournaments Heat Up, Nevada Cools Down, Crime Doesn’t Pay

Cardrunners has been gracious enough to let me and my co-host Matt Kaufman rant for an hour a week about the latest poker news, and as the link below suggests, we’ve done over eighty of these things. This week we discussed how 2+2 was “fighting for the common poker player” after Pokerstars offered to fly people to the Isle of Man for discussions on how rake is generated for the site, and Joss Wood (username: xPeru), was kind enough to drop by to give us his take on the issue. He is one of the people that will be going to Pokerstars to address the issues, and it looks like they have a solid plan in place, we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out. The second half is (admittedly) a bit of a rehash of my Winners/Losers column, but since I write on Monday and record on Tuesday, its not like there is much time for anything else to happen in the news, so it seems fair.

Cardrunners - Rabbit Hunt: 81

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Diablo 3 Beta: First Impressions

By Mark Gahagan on December 8, 2011 in
Avatar Knockoff, or Blizzard Masterpiece?

I managed to get my hands on the Diablo 3 beta the other day, with the timing disturbingly similar to my finals schedule (only one more quarter of these things…). Not about to let that deter me I played through the monk class and played through to the skeleton king, and I feel it worth to give my first impressions after my first 3 hour playthrough of Diablo III. These thoughts are based on not pouring over new details when they happen or looking at prior beta runs, so if they seem intuitive to you well, congratulations.

Things I Liked

  • The “mana” system: OK, so I only played the monk, I’m purposely saving some of the other classes for streaming because I haven’t seen very many of them (which means you wont see me play through with a demon hunter either…at least not at level 1). That said, I really liked the system of building using general attacks and then throwing out some burst damage for tougher/tight groups of enemies. One of the best parts of Diablo was being able to just spam your skills, and in essence that is all you do. Unlike Diablo 2 though, you arent starving for mana for the first 20 levels (I played a paladin, we ran out of mana fast in the beginning). A nice improvement
  • The crafting system, as well as shared gold and stashes: Just from the standpoint that the game is all about scavenging for stuff all day long in the hopes of getting that one perfect item, and gold is trivial and always has been. This way, you can break stuff down to specific components and craft them account-wide. Makes it a lot easier to level alts, because until people figure out how to bot their way to inferno, you’ll have to do it the normal way.
  • Quest selection: Thank you. For some reason this is awesome…and at least I dont have to start from scratch when running Skeleton King again.
  • How the monk plays: I can see myself playing this class, very fluid, lots of AoE attacks (this is a Diablo game…so thank God for those), and high damage. My only caveat is why is my monk allowed to have dual-wielding swords?
  • Achievements: There is a reason I have a TrueAchievements bar on my stream. I think this will help keep completionists in the game, as most of these achievements appear to be account-wide.
  • New Follower System: Henchman were only customized by the weapon, their helm, and armor in Diablo 2. Here, while you are given even less to work with (jewelry, weapons, and maybe a shield) your “followers” are much more customizable. You can pick skills that complement your playstyle. We only get to try out the templar in the beta, but I like the idea of constantly being healed every second even if, at level 11, I’m already stomping the Act.
Things I Didn’t Like
  • Forcing Us To Use Battle.Net: Battle.net crashed under the weight of the new testers, and that is understandable and part of the beta process. What bothers me is that without battle.net being up, I can’t play the game. It’s something they introduced with Starcraft and are codifying here: without Bnet you can’t play. Its an annoying issue that is a command decision, but we should be able to do something if Blizzard screws us over by being down.
  • Arcane beams: Those things tore me up when I first experienced them at level 6,  not so much now, but methinks that is a balance issue because its not like I got some arcane resistance in the interim.
  • Targeting Issues: I would hope there is a way to lock your target, if only because I dont care about the minions, I want to kill the unique mob that is rocking my face. If this already exists, I haven’t found it yet.
I will be streaming Diablo 3 on Saturday, as the rest of the weekdays involve me being busy and as such my playtime is unreliable. If you don’t know what my gaming stream is it is here, and all announcements for when the stream starts show up in my gaming-specific twitter. Once I have played all 5 classes through, I will see which ones I like the most and which one I will likely to level up first when the game comes out…at some point in 2012.
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Full Tilt Poker Sale Inches Closer
Sale Not Done, Despite Reaction

By Mark Gahagan on September 30, 2011 in ,

Full Tilt has been on an up-and-down clusterfuck roller coaster this past week and right off the bat I will say that they have no one to blame but themselves. It all started with the additional complaints against Full Tilt board members, with the DOJ claiming that Full Tilt owners paid themselves $443 million, largely out of player funds. It was followed on the same day by the US Attorney Preet Bharara calling Full Tilt Poker “a global ponzi scheme.” Irrespective of the fact that it might not be a ponzi scheme in the strictest sense, it led to a heap of coverage that cast poker in a negative light, and it showed in interviews with Greg Raymer and Tom Dwan. By the time Full Tilt managed to release a press statement stating that, in fact, they weren’t a ponzi scheme, the damage had largely been done. To make matters worse for them, the AGCC finally got around decided to revoke Full Tilt’s license for 3 of its 4 subsidiaries, with the fourth, designated for a “new geographical area” and yet to be used, remained suspended. Hippy80 on Quadjacks had contended that this was not all bad news, that this back door the AGCC left allowed for a way back in for Full Tilt. I would argue that if Alderney wants to salvage what little reputation it has within the gaming community that it stick to its statement, where they said Full Tilt was “out of their jurisdiction”. Full Tilt fired back the next day saying that the AGCC’s move “severely hurt” their changes of getting a deal put in place, and that they harmed the players as a result. Pretty sure my tweet on the matter sums up my thoughts on that claim.

So Full Tilt is screwed right? I mean, their deal must be shot in the wake of the AGCC’s ruling? Well…then there’s this.

Never mind that twitter is abuzz about Tapie having connections with match fixing and tax fraud (new boss same as the old boss?). Never mind that just the day before Full Tilt sounded like the deal was pulled out from under them by the very regulatory body that should have shafted them months ago.  When Pokerstrategy first released the press statement, people immediately jumped on it with the hashtag “#FullTiltSold”. Some of the tweets were arguably tongue-in-cheek, but maybe people were cheering that their “ONE TIME” actually worked. The reality, as it started sinking in when career cynics Dan (@Pokerati) Michalski and BJ (@BJNemeth) Nemeth started chiming in, was that we are no closer than before when you really think about it. I’m normally not a huge downer on things like this, but I’ve gotten pretty sick of the way Full Tilt has been handling the situation, and something just doesn’t seem right. Fortunately, Full Tilt laid it out for us: they have acknowledged that Laurent Tapie and his firm haven’t even met with the DOJ yet. [Note: Matt Kaufman, my co-host and Pokerstrategy writer, pointed out to me that saying they haven't talked implies no conversation has been made, which is false and wasn't my intent. They haven't met with the DOJ to figure out all of the issues, which is the actual status of things.]

I really have to question a businessman’s judgment when they sign an acquisition agreement without talking to the very legal body that can tell you “add $1 billion to that sale price, because we want it”. I acknowledge that they will likely buy Full Tilt for $1, so that probably removes any hurdle the DOJ may have with the owners profiting from FTP’s demise. And the acquisition agreement may include a requirement they infuse the company with the money necessary to pay the players, certainly something the DOJ would like to see as their target was never the players. However, you have to remember that the DOJ feels that Full Tilt Poker was just called a ponzi scheme, and that the DOJ has said, albeit without any solid affirmation, that they may pay players themselves as they are “victims of a crime”. If the DOJ operates under the assumption that they can just take all of FTP’s assets and then divide the spoils, why would they give a damn about a deal like this? The best Tapie could hope for is that the DOJ won’t go after the company immediately, but that $1 billion figure for the amount of money the company is being sued for really is difficult to ignore.

And then there’s the UB aspect. Remember with Russ Hamilton (or whomever) fucked players out of $20 million? Yea, those were the good ole days, nowadays the amount that gets stolen is closer to 20 times that. I know that Adidas may have to thank the Tapie family for turning the company around and making them a decent alternative to Nike…but this is NOT the same thing at all. [Editor Note: A rudimentary Google search brings up Adidas' history, which shows Bernard Tapie is a much less positive light. Yea, its Wikipedia, but what are you going to do. The company was valuated at much more when he left than when he bot it, so you be the judge of what that means.] You are about to take over a company that is accused of stealing, at minimum, $300 million from players. A company that, for all intents and purposes, has taken the UB torch and run miles out in front. Can you seriously expect Full Tilt to reemerge in the same way that they left? I think Pokerstars (whom, lets not forget, did many of the same things Full Tilt did that the DOJ frowned upon) will come out of this as the sole “top tier” room, and Full Tilt is going to have to get used to being a second-tier site, at best. With a company as wrecked reputation-wise as Full Tilt, hearing the words “oh but we are the new FTP!” rings a similar way to what UB did. And people didn’t buy it then either.

Simply put, the sale is nowhere near final. The DOJ can stop the deal merely by speaking, whatever the other “conditions” are in the acquisition statement might not be met, and the firm could even decide that US players can get the shaft for whatever reason. Either way, I wouldn’t celebrate the sale until American players start seeing money in their accounts. Until then, its more “announcements of an announcement.”

 

Note: Oh, and there is one other thing that has happened so far today with FTP. Ray Bitar is challenging the seizure of some of his accounts, claiming they never had funds that are related to the current DOJ case. I would think that, while they may strictly not have been from FTP, the fact you have money in those accounts may stem from the fact you took $40 million from FTP coffers. Absent that $40 million, you might not have anything in those accounts, ergo, that money did benefit from your fraud, and should stay locked up. This is a totally non-legal (and probably nonsensical) argument, but I don’t really feel like giving Bitar a break at this point.

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This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

By Mark Gahagan on September 20, 2011 in

The Nuclear Bomb

Oh boy, has the last week been one drama-filled spew fest for poker. Between Epic Poker and Full Tilt, its no wonder Congress doesn’t just go the opposite direction and make poker illegal in the United States. You think they don’t have a case for it? After this week I’m not so sure. I’ll leave speaking about Epic Poker for my previous post on the subject, but needless to say it will tie in nicely to what just happened this morning.

Full Tilt has been given another slap to the face today by the Department of Justice’s SDNY, with an amended federal civic complaint that alleges that Full Tilt’s board took millions of dollars in player funds and defrauded players in what was, in essence, “a global ponzi scheme.” In the complaint, the DOJ alleges that Full Tilt not only engaged in all of the Black Friday charges, but additionally intentionally misled its player base in order to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars to owners of the company. There are four players in this that are named in the complaint, and here is the exact amended text in the complaint regarding the actors involved:

E. That a money judgment be entered against Raymond Bitar in an amount not less than $40,954,781.53;
F. That a money judgment be entered against Howard Lederer in an amount not less than $41,856,010.92;
G. That a money judgment be entered against Christopher Ferguson in an amount not less than $25 million;
H. That a money judgment be entered against Rafael Furst in an amount not less than $11,706,323.96;

Ouch…(though I will notice there are exact amounts for everyone EXCEPT Chris Ferguson…whom I will be amused if he did get exactly $25 million from the company.) This isn’t the only people the DOJ describe either. In an earlier explanation, there is a paragraph that sounds eerily similar to Phil Ivey:

The other approximately 19 owners of Tiltware LLC received the remainder of the approximately $443,860,530 distributed. For example, a professional poker player and Full Tilt Poker owner (“Player Owner 1”) received at least approximately $40,078,646.64 in distributions, as well millions of dollars characterized as loans from Full Tilt Poker. At least approximately $4.4 million of these loans have not been repaid.
The fact that Ivey(?) has not been directly charged even though they have fairly exact amounts on him suggests that either the DOJ does not believe he was directly involved in the Ponzi Scheme aspect of the business, or they just have more rock solid evidence against the other players.

And as if this is a huge surprise…not only did the company take the money, but they knew how dire their financial situation was when people started withdrawing. The following paragraphs (first found by Subject: Poker) highlights this issue:

Following the execution of the Arrest Warrant In Rem and the unsealing of the Indictment, Complaint, and Restraining Order on April 15, 2011, Full Tilt Poker terminated its United States operations. Full Tilt Poker continued, however, to operate its online gambling business outside of the United States and continued to collect deposits from non-U.S. players. Full Tilt Poker continued accepting player funds despite the fact that it had liabilities to players around the world for over $300 million, yet held only a small fraction of that amount in its bank accounts. Indeed, in early June 2011, Lederer reported to others at Full Tilt Poker that there was only approximately $6 million in left.

Full Tilt Poker’s CEO, Bitar, was well aware of the need for new deposits after April 15, 2011, and knew that even a few million dollars’ of unexpected withdrawals could reveal Full Tilt Poker’s true financial situation. For example, in an internal Full Tilt Poker e-mail dated June 12, 2011, Bitar expressed concern that a company announcement regarding lay offs and the Board (including himself) being replaced would be seen as bad news, which would cause a “new run on the bank,” adding that “it could be a huge run” and that “at this point we can’t even take a five million run.”
(Source for all legal material: Department of Justice Civil Complaint via Pokerstrategy.com, emphasis mine)

I did a little additional digging to see when it was first announced that Ray Bitar may be heading out, and it doesn’t exactly coincide with the internal email, but at the same time by then (July 6) the site had already been shut down by the AGCC so its not like they could lose any (more) money.

The Fallout: Your Full Tilt Money

So what does all of this mean? Well, if true, that money you have on Full Tilt is now 99.9% gone. On top of that, I find it highly unlikely that even if the DOJ managed to take some money from the individual defendants that they would turn and give it back to the players, its likely going to stay in government coffers (lets face it, they need the money too these days…) If you treated your Full Tilt poker account as a bank account, let this be a lesson to you for the next time, even in a regulated environment…don’t do it.

The Fallout: Congress

Which brings me to the title of this post “This is why we can’t have nice things.” The fallout from this is going to be long lasting and painful. Players that up to now were clinging to hope that eventually they were going to get paid are now incensed. People that bought Full Tilt funds are now going to realize how bad of an investment they have made. And Congress, who is being implored by the PPA to look at Online Poker as a way to reduce the deficit, are certainly going to be turned off when news like this breaks, regardless of this being evidence of regulation. It makes it not worth the political risk in a politically polarized environment to take up something that should be a simple freedom issue.

The Fallout: Community Reputation

Let’s face it, the poker community (both players and companies), have been acting like a bunch of petulant children for the last few years. Full Tilt and UB have gotten caught stealing red-handed and pretend that we didn’t see them do it. Players insta-rage over the smallest things and blow them up into mega-controversies that continue to punch at poker’s already black eye. For the poker industry, its basically anarchy on the streets right now. We certainly aren’t acting like we deserve regulated poker here in the US, and when news comes out of Full Tilt, or Epic Poker, or even individual players, it makes the entire industry look bad. Now I’m not saying that the community is wrong to be outraged, but seeing as we are getting outraged almost every day, I’d almost say we are more angry mob than industry these days. Given the news cycle, not sure there is anything the players can do about it though.

The Fallout: Epic Poker

As Epic Poker’s conduct committee is proving, nothing is black and white, and the shades of grey get interpreted differently by different people. I’ve already seen calls for Epic to remove Full Tilt owners (specifically, and possibly intentionally, Howard Lederer’s) tour card as a result of this. Its a double-edged sword. While the evidence certainly suggests guilt here, no actual court (save for the public opinion one) has convicted anyone of anything, even Full Tilt. Once again the committee finds itself in a no-win situation. The community will scream for blood, and very likely could get it in this case. But if they do, then we’d have to reopen Mike Matusow’s and Dutch Boyd’s cases, because they are “current” league members with “past” issues. (You could argue that since June 29th Full Tilt has not had the ability to pay out its owners OR customers and thus hasn’t committed current wrongdoing since the league started). Or you could do nothing, which will cause players to scream to the rooftops, and call both DiVita and Chino Rheem’s cases to the forefront (after all, at least they didn’t allegedly steal $100s of millions from players.

Anyone Got Radiation Meds?

The Full Tilt news is just the latest in a long list of bad press for poker, easily overshadowing the fact that the WSOP just had another record breaking year for attendance and still one of the most-attended Main Events in history. It overshadows the fact that in the immediate aftermath of Black Friday American poker players actually got up and started doing something about the fact their government considered online poker illegal. And it overshadows the fact that this is (or I guess was…) a way of life for many people who now have to choose between moving away from the US or having to find (*gasp*) real jobs.

Then again, maybe this airing out of our dirty laundry is a good thing. Perhaps this will allow us to get over the growing pains that the industry was due to have as a result of its meteoric rise. We now know what can happen when people with less than ideal intentions run companies, and what can happen when we have murky legal situations to deal with. Maybe we can emerge from this in a safer environment for poker, if we just let all the dumb shit people have done the last 10 or so years come out.

Either way, poker is a mess right now, and I’m not entirely sure anyone has the answer for how to fix it. At least not at the moment.

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Short Statement on Epic Poker

By Mark Gahagan on September 14, 2011 in , ,

Note: I had a much longer post on this but I feel like at this point, most of the topics were covered ad nauseam. And because I feel like I have to say this, my opinions are my own, and have nothing to do with Epic Poker or the fact I write once a week for them.

It seems like no matter what happens people will always try to find black eyes with the Epic Poker League and then “LOL” at it, more because of people’s pre-conceptions of people within the league than about the success of the league itself. And to the people that cheer for anything that goes wrong with the league or call it “expected” because of “certain people (read: Annie Duke)” that are part of the league, I will tell you that you can go fuck yourself. There are so many hard working dedicated people that I know that are a part of this league, and I’m positive the last thing on their minds is how they can screw the poker community over. I get it, UB happened, FTP is happening, etc, but Christ maybe the tinfoil hats can be put down once in a while.

As for my stance on the DiVita case, its pretty simple:

It’s worth mentioning that Epic Poker didn’t “steal” $20,000 from the player and pocket it, the money went to the next player, so its not like they made anything on this, which I get the feeling some people think is the case. As for whether they did the wrong thing, I’m not interested in speculating on what happened and what transpired because I wasn’t there. I’ve read the rules that suggest they can do what they did, but I don’t know whether they apply here, I’m not a lawyer.  If what is starting to get reported is true, and that DiVita is legally owed $20k, then I hope the Epic Poker League does the right thing and just gives it to him. If it turns out that it is much ado about nothing, and he isn’t owed the money because of legitimate legal reasons, then I hope others do the right thing and drop it. But bad press…isn’t good for the League, and this is the second time in as many events they’ve had to involve their Conduct Committee in a gray-area situation.

I really hope that Epic Poker can sort out what it’s Conduct Committee can do. As of right now, its too murky in determining what does and does not deem you ineligible. If they can clear up that focus, the idea is sound. But when people are rushing to the defense of a convicted sex offender, something that admittedly rarely happens, that’s not good for you.

 

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State of Affairs: August 2011

By Mark Gahagan on August 31, 2011 in , ,

This is a personal blog so, and I know this sounds weird, I actually will do personal posts sometimes. Most of it is still relevant to poker..because otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything on my twitter, but the non-poker sections are tagged as such so you can safely ignore them if you so choose.

Poker

August is normally the month that news is relatively light, and as such we are kinda screwed over at the Rabbit Hunt and now with my Winners/Losers column I am desperately looking for news, and have to result to talking about tournament results…if there are any of that. Fortunately, given my connections with Epic Poker, we were about to fill the void from last week with an interview with Annie Duke that at least I thought went pretty well. We aren’t in the business of softballing OR being overly critical, but you can tell me how ridiculous I was by downloading the podcast and checking it out for yourself. Most of the stuff that we talked about retread familiar ground: the tournament beat expectations, players are happy, the next event is forthcoming, Chino Rheem needs to pay his debts, etc. The only piece of info that I hope they take away from the interview is Annie’s acknowledgement of people talking about Epic’s business plan by stating that they do NOT expect to make a profit for a few years, and have planned for that being an issue before they even got things started. While this is a logical conclusion to make for a business that has to have some serious VC money to even last this far, it was interesting to finally here that from Annie herself. Now, its not going to stop people like Daniel from piling on the League’s problems, but it should at least get people to realize that no one should expect profitability from FS+G to start, but that the tour isn’t only going to last one season and vaporize because they have money to last a while.

Speaking of Daniel, I actually had one person accuse me of “taking sides” in the neverending Annie vs. Daniel feud. First off, I acknowledge such a feud exists and have sounded off on that subject a couple times. In fact, one of my first articles that actually got some widespread attention was about Daniel’s “c-word” interview last year. I may have recommended that the two of them fight it out in a cage match…and Tony G took issue with that, but I digress. The second point I need to make that the simple fact is that Annie has actually spoken to me, in person, and ended up offering me work in the media, while Daniel has maybe @replied me a few times, but otherwise hasn’t said anything to me. And it’s not like I hold that against him, given my near-constant harping on his statements it certainly looks like I’m out to get him and am in “Annie’s camp”. But aside from the fact that I work for Epic poker (for a single weekly column might I add), I wouldn’t consider myself as having “taken a side”. I actually like both Annie and Daniel, and while I find Daniel’s issues with her a little, uh…weird, I can acknowledge that she is a divisive figure and can totally see how she rubs people the wrong way. But the fact of the matter is Annie does talk to me, and Daniel doesn’t. Believe me, its not for lack of trying. Having Daniel for an interview would be amazing, if nothing else than because having someone that can carry on an entertaining interview and debate would do wonders. Its an invitation I leave open, in the interest of journalistic fairness, to have someone that doesn’t think Epic Poker will succeed to come on the show to voice their concerns. That said, I don’t think its very likely to happen. It’s probably a higher probability that Chops would respond than Daniel, and I think Wicked Chops doesn’t like me too much either (how the fuck you can make enemies in poker when you take a moderate stance on things is beyond me…)

 

The WPT has joined the “live coverage with hole cards” bandwagon started by PCA this year. I didn’t watch any of it this go around, simply because I was too busy, but my feelings about this concept are very…meh. Its a good idea, in my mind, to expand coverage of events (if it can be done cheaply) and allow people to see more of the action than just live updates currently provide (not that live updates should become obsolete mind you). The hole cards aspect of it all rather, does deserve more discussion. On the one hand, it allows casual fans to watch the action without being completely lost in what is going on, because they can see what the players have. On the other hand, it leads to players hiring scouts to watch the other players at the table and watch what they have in given spots. At that point, if you are at a TV table, you might as well turn your cards face up after every fold, because everyone is going to find out within an hour anyway. Its difficult to say which I prefer, but I generally feel that live poker is more likely to be watched by the 2p2 crowd over the casual poker crowd, particularly for something like the WPT vs. the WSOP. If that’s the case, and the 2p2 crowd likely doesn’t care whether they can see the hole cards, then why have them? I understand a need for having more casual players watching…but unless you are monetizing the stream in some way I find it hard to argue in favor of more casual viewers. This, coupled with the fact that it does give an advantage to players that can get someone to scout for them….just leads me to believe this isn’t necessary right this second. I’m not saying they shouldn’t do it, but for me it doesn’t make too much sense.

That website I said I was going to do? Yea, its on the backburner right now. If there is anyone interested in providing (free) content for a poker-opinion website let me know. But just know that until things quiet down I’m unlikely to move fast on this.

Lastly, on the poker front anyway, I will not be around for the next Epic Poker event, I was not asked to help out, which was in part because I said I would likely be busy, and I am. Tentatively available in December, that is if the Live Updates team has need of a person that does better with overviews and article writing than running around the floor (read: exercise? overrated.)

Non-Poker Stuff

  • Research is a pain in the ass, especially when you are trying to not only re-invent the wheel, but convince people that their idea of what a wheel does is flawed. I suppose you can’t get a Ph.D. by doing something unoriginal though..(no seriously, you can’t, that’s what Master’s students are for).
  • I was a gamer long before, during, and probably long after poker, and have decided to give streaming what I play a crack. After dealing with capture card issues and ensuring that my streaming won’t completely screw over my girlfriend and roommates, I’ve gotten things going on that front. I have two streams at the moment, though only one gets any attention right now, but you can find both here. Follow my new gaming-related account @SpartanGaming for info on when I stream, if you are interested in that sort of thing. Mostly its whatever XBOX game I’m interested in at the time and the game League of Legends (its a DotA clone, if you dont know what DotA is you probably won’t care either way).
  • Hopefully I will start posting more than just poker here, but I have it set up to post on my twitter when I do a new post, so sometimes something non-poker related will creep onto your feed. Its up to you whether you want to see it.
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Embedded in the Poker Media: A Week in Review + My Feelings on the EPL Haters

By Mark Gahagan on August 15, 2011 in

Trip Report

As I write this, I’ve already been back for a couple days. The main event has ended, and Chino Rheem defeated Erik Seidel heads-up in the inaugural Epic Poker League main event. Since the coverage of that is fairly well established in the above link, I won’t go into too much detail about that, because its old news. I will however wrap up my thoughts on the event as well as some general commentary on the trip I had:

  1. Don’t ask me how day 3 went, because I honestly don’t know. I was there for the first level, realized I had way more than enough material for my weekly column, wasn’t getting paid a daily, and bolted. I actually spent most of the day in my hotel room working on my research, which, while that sounds sad, is the unfortunate reality of being in the computer science field. Your work is a mere (secure) internet connection away.
  2. The crowd was definitely into it when I was around for the first three levels of the final table. It seemed like a good portion of the crowd were Jason Mercier supporters, or it might have just been because they were the loudest. The rail gave decent support to pretty much everyone out there, and all my jokes about Chino Rheem aside, he definitely had decent representation that didn’t move whenever he won a pot. In all, it definitely felt like a major event final table.
  3. Speaking of major event, holy shit was that final table packed. I mean, we kind of knew no matter what was going to happen the final table was going to be an all-star table, but that was a very “A-list” heavy final table. And, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the final table was very “old school”-centric. Gavin Smith, Huck Seed, Hasan Habib (“you say Hasan…”), and Erik Seidel were clearly representing the “old guard” in poker. Jason Mercier and Chino Rheem on the other hand had to hold things down for the newer faces in poker, and given they finished 3rd and 1st respectively I’d have to say that definitely did their job well. Still, for people that were complaining that there might not be enough big names showing up, this first final table should have done a good job or quelling that. I think, depending on your definition of recent memory, this was the biggest final table in a long time. Even if its not the biggest, certainly its very high up there. And that was just for the first event.
  4. I feel like I have to say this because I’m not going to get another chance, but the live updating crew not only did a great job covering the event, but also taking care of a party crasher like me and showing me the ins and outs of reporting an actual event. The November Nine…I kind of winged it, and while I won’t say I did a bad job with that, I definitely didn’t cover anything from start to finish. So hands off to the following people for making me feel welcome and for making me not regret the fact I worked most of my “vacation” in Vegas (in no particular order, and you can find the entire list of the Epic Poker crew on twitter here):
    1. Jay (@WhoJedi) Newnum
    2. Al (@AlCantHang) Rash
    3. Jen (@WriterJen) Newell
    4. Michele (@MicheleLewis) Lewis
    5. Tim (@tim00) Fiorvanti
    6. Michael (@merchdawg) Reed
    7. Rob (@veeRob) Perelman
    8. Michael (@MikeCraigIsAmok) Craig
    9. BJ (@BJNemeth) Nemeth
    10. Matt (@SavagePoker) Savage
    11. Eric (@FSGFaulkner) Faulkner (<– He’s the boss man…or at least the CIO)
    12. Annie (@AnnieDuke) Duke
    13. Jeffrey (@JeffreyPollack) Pollack

A couple more personal, non Epic Poker related things before my almost guaranteed rant about people’s perceptions about Epic Poker:

  1. The person who told me “ZOMG McCarran is packed run for your lives!” (you know who you are) will pay. I don’t particularly like waiting in an airport, and the fact I got there well over an hour early made me…unhappy.
  2. It’s official, I make more money playing pai gow than I do playing poker. When is the next World Series of Pai Gow again?
  3. To the 5-year-old child that was flying by herself from Las Vegas to San Diego, first off, I don’t know how you found my blog but I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t be reading this. Secondly, while I applaud you for not being scared of flying by yourself, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NEXT TIME DON’T SCREAM HAPPILY THE NEXT TIME WE BANK LEFT OR RIGHT. That is all.
  4. The flight really was a brag, beat, and variance thread waiting to happen. I got on the plane fast because I won the Southwest lottery and sat in the 4th row. The beat came from the child and the obligatory “guy that’s too big for the middle seat” taking the middle seat. The variance was that the flight took off late yet landed early. Maybe that’s a brag too, I’m not sure.

Now It Feels Personal

OK, so I feel like I have to address the whole “will the league succeed” thing. And under full disclosure I am paid by Epic Poker to write once a week for them, and that’s the extent of my obligations. That said, I do NOT understand some of the hate it gets. The points that are out there are valid. Where is the money coming from? What is the business plan for the company? What are their motives? Where people lose me is the near-fanatic chanting for the league to fail. Andrew Feldman was actually called out for heavily endorsing the league merely by reporting on it. Really? I mean…really?! Like I get how its cool in politics to take the hyperbolic position on something, but I totally do not understand this one. It was the biggest buy-in tournament of the week with the most recognizable pros…it would be a disservice to any reader not to at least mention it. The best part? People that actually played the event where overwhelmingly positive about it. The only complaints were Kessler-induced structure issues with will hopefully be fully addressed for the second event. The people there were actually there said they’d never been treated this well before, and that it was a step in the right direction.
You know who the people that are complaining about the event and deeming it a failure? People that weren’t there. Not just people that haven’t been to an event, people that refuse to even go. And I want to make this clear, once again, that I understand some of the concerns related to the league and I have them myself. But I do not understand why some have already dismissed this as a failure when pros that played are stating the exact opposite. In fact, I didn’t even have to read anything from detractors to know that two things were going to come up:

  1. That there were extras in the audience.
  2. That Chino Rheem hasn’t exactly been the most upstanding citizen according to other pros.

And behold, if you read Wicked Chops’ blog on it, the first two words are “how fitting.” Seriously? You might as well just not covered it, posted a photo gallery, and said “We’d tell you who won the Epic Poker event, but we feel its a waste of our time. So, instead, here’s a photo gallery of women.” In fact, I would have actually probably applauded and said “well played” if they did that. To me, this says two things. One, that your “concerns” are a lot more personal than you are willing to vocalize in public. I don’t know who wronged you, or who touched you in a place you didn’t want to be touched, but seriously its almost transparent, and in the case of Daniel he’s been called out already on that. And two, you will go out of your way to criticize the league. Chino didn’t win because he cheated and lied his way through. (I can’t speak to how he got his buy-in, I will give you that…) He won fair and square….maybe a little rungood given some of the hands I saw, but nothing out of the ordinary. It might sound like a little much, but its almost as far as telling the reader “you should have expected a cheater to win in a shady league.”

I’m trying very hard to understand the rational for all this, but I can’t. I really like Wicked Chops, and I really like Daniel, so it’s not as if I’m taking the internet stance of “they disagree with me, so fuck them and the horse they rode in on.” But I just seriously cannot understand why the vitriol for the league is so intense, especially when its coming from people that aren’t participating. And really I look at all the people that have played and have worked on this and I have to wonder “are you calling all of us fools too?” Are you telling Jason Mercier, Huck Seed, Erik Seidel, Phil Hellmuth, etc,  that they were stupid to even buy into the event? Are you telling Doyle Brunson that his endorsement was ridiculous? Are you telling 441 Productions, the media that covered the event, and the personnel that worked their asses off for a week that this was all a waste of their times? If you are, then I just have three words for you.

Hope you’re wrong.

Because honestly, the idea at its core is great, and its a common complaint that the WSOP and the WPT don’t give enough back to the players. If there is a tour out there that is trying to do something like that, I don’t care if they plan on having a US-facing online poker site come regulation. I don’t care if Annie Duke is the commissioner of the league, and that some people are simply turned off to everything she touches. And I certainly don’t care that as of right now they are hemorrhaging cash, because if this works and they can somehow show a profit, it just might force other tours to realize the players really do expect better.

And in a post-Black Friday poker economy, everyone in the industry needs all the help they can get.

(Edit: I’ve been informed that people from WCP were around at the time the event took place, but to the best of my understanding were only there briefly, so I think largely my point still stands. Then again I don’t know what they did and maybe they talked to pros that said different things from what I heard, people on twitter heard/said, and a recent Pokernews article quoted.)

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Embedded in the Poker Media: EPL 6-Max Main Event Day 2

By Mark Gahagan on August 11, 2011 in ,

The last time I had a 13 hour day was…well…it was last week actually…but still it was a particularly long day as we had to burst the bubble in the inaugural Epic Poker League event. I actually spent the entire day on site covering the action, which was probably me feeling guilty because I intend on spending very little time covering things the next two days. Officially I’m here for material for my weekly “Winners and Losers” column and while I could have probably easily written an article a day that was actually informative (meaning not this one), I just opted not to. If they need me for article writing in September…I dunno, we’ll see, but I’ve already made my opinions on live updating clear. More on that later though:

  1. I wish I had kept better stats on the number of bustouts and I suppose I could just catch the Epic Poker site (that was sneaky wasn’t it) to find out for sure, but the bustouts were relatively flat for the day. On average pre dinner break we had about 8 people bounce per level, and it really that was a pretty stable pace. Perhaps not surprisingly it took almost 3 levels to get rid of the last 11, indeed it took well over an hour to burst the bubble, but in a tournament like this that really is to be expected. Throughout the entire tournament the average stack was over 70 BBs and in most cases hovered around 90 BBs. Due to the bubble actually slowing down the pace of eliminations and costing us a full level the average stack is now “only” 64 BBs large once we hit the next level, assuming no bustouts occur.
  2. Someone that doesn’t have that average stack is Justin Bonomo, who is the small stack by with 42,000 chips. The reason why I bring him up is because he is quite possibly the most patient short stack I have ever seen, which may or may not be saying something, given the quality of the field. He went all in all of two times after after he doubled Chino Rheem up. At one point he had roughly 96,000 chips, so he lost over half his stack during the bubble. I was tasked with watching his table (which was weird because I wasn’t on the live updates crew but I have now figured out how my shorthand would work if I ever did do live updates) and I couldn’t tell if Justin was just trying to fold into the money. I suppose he may have figured some other short stack was going to make a mistake first, and indeed there are 3 other players (Dan Fleyshman, Huck Seed, and Brandon Meyers) at or below 20 BBs, but who knows?
  3. Level 13 only has about 10 or so minutes left, which means things are going to kick up a notch and put even more pressure on the short stacks. To take Justin as an example, with blinds at 3000/6000 with a 1000 ante, that means Justin has an M of 3. Yea…gonna need to make a move soon. Things aren’t really that good for Brandon Meyers (109,500) either. He only has an M of 7.
  4. Now the chip leader by a country mile is Sam Trickett, the first and so far only player to crack one million chips in an EPL event. Sam has been a machine at his table, and I believe he was parked at table 1 for the entire day. The other person I will state was a machine was the person massaging him (or persons). Pretty sure they never left his back the whole day.
  5. Annie Duke stole my Epic Poker patch. Our commissioner ladies and gentlemen. (In fairness stolen isn’t the right word, but since people have been giving me shit for calling out Savage’s abuse I might as well run with the hyperbole.)
  6. Any configuration of players at the final table is going to cause one of the sickest final tables ever. Whether you pull from the top six, the bottom six, the middle six, grab them out of a hat, whatever, it’s going to be a stacked field.
  7. Podcasting remotely is a certain circle of hell that I wish on no one, unless you have the equipment (which I don’t). First is finding a quiet spot to do the podcast. So that takes out the media room and the floor of the tournament right away. The hallway next to the bar? Dumb idea. The business center? That’s a little better. But then your computer decides “no, screw you, you can’t record your co-hosts voice and your own at the same time”, so you have your co-host do it, on top of hosting. Then you remember that you didn’t do research on the stories of the day because you’ve been cooped up at the Live Updates media desk all day and you sound like an absolute idiot, particularly when you have to talk about a coach that just got fired because of his “poor judgment” in connection with the Girah 2+2 scandal. Then the recording software on the other side kills your podcast (but mercifully saves the data) and you have to redo a good few minutes of material. Lastly, you, the podcast producer, are a Grade A dumbass and forget to get Camtastia set up so you can make the flash video for your bosses to make life easier for them, so you have to just send the podcast as an MP3 and you still haven’t seen it go up on the site even though its usually up by 10AM. Of course, at this point you realize its your fault, not theirs. Yea…I was a bit unprepared for that one, but at least that rant made me feel better.

I haven’t figured out what I’m going to do today because everyone I would want to hang out with is…well….still working. Their work though is awesome and you should once again check out the live updates page on epicpoker.com as well as follow their twitter @EpicPokerLeague. The goal for me today is to relax, and since tomorrow is a travel day I will likely not be writing, so I hope you enjoy these trip reports and I will be sure to write more often in the future. (I say that now, but you know…) At any rate…perhaps the Venetian is calling me again, but we’ll see, gotta figure all that out first.

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