Up/Down

It's funny the things you remember when you're spending a night in a twenty-fifth floor hotel room in Vegas for a life-nit reason connected to “gift-wrap points” overlooking that structure that is absolutely not a “Ferris wheel” because, well, I forget. Vegas is classier than that? No idea.

And because you're spending a night in a twenty-fifth floor hotel room which does not include your cat, Louis, because Vegas hotels are really weird about cats (and Louis is equally weird about hotels), even though the The Linq, which you can see from your twenty-fifth floor window, maintains the old Imperial Palace dog “rest area” which is probably why, despite all the renovations, it still smells of pee, you cannot sleep.

Fortunately hotel rooms in Vegas include little note-pads and pens, so after I had carefully inscribed “All Hail Eris, All Hail Discordia,” in the book left behind by that Gideon dude, I got to scribbling. Which is what I do when I can't sleep, largely because I have a diagnosed mental health issue.

And the scribbling led to the memory of a promise.

Partly because of my diagnosed (by two independent mental health professionals and eight ex-girlfriends) mental health issue, I am the first to admit that my memory for details is both scant and susceptible to embellishment that typically casts me in a better light. So I somewhat indistinctly recall finding myself, somewhen around 2006, in an auditorium on the campus of the remarkably generic state university that sent me a monthly pay-check, with a guitar and no plan and sixty honors students.

I didn't really do plans from 2003-2007, possibly as a result of my diagnosed mental health issue; technically a “disorder” which is a term I am okay with since it dovetails nicely with the Eris business.

I suspect that the faculty coordinator for the honors program was either an anarchist or had simply decided that she couldn't take the shit anymore either, so that inviting the professor of astrophysics, who had recently seriously annoyed ADMIN (they think of themselves in block caps) by announcing God was a product of the insufferable hubris of humankind and saying “fuck” a lot in an interview in the city's leading indie newspaper, would help get her fired, thereby freeing her to do something useful with her life.

(People still think I'm making this up, but half-way through my “performance” the aforementioned faculty coordinator of the honors program left the auditorium to throw up, not because I am that bad on guitar but because she had recently become a future parent.)

So I'm in this auditorium with a guitar and all our 18-22 brains, who I check for brain-ness with a knock-knock thing:

“Knock-knock.”

“Who's there?”

“To.”

And they all reply “to WHOM” so I guess they'd heard it, whatever, Jim, I was an astrophysicist not a stand-up comedian, you know. And so I'm planless and just talking to them and my ex-colleague is curled up in a nearby bathroom stall vomiting, and there's this energy because some of the kids have this look like maybe this is a bit off-the-rails and dangerous and conceivably what university was supposed to be about before those unspeakable bean-counters in ADMIN fucked it up, and other kids are ignoring me because they're figuring out how they're gonna get laid this weekend.

And I play four songs.

One is about gin and friends.

One is about a specific transgender friend of mine who was fatally stabbed.

And, yeah, I forget, I coulda done the one about my junkie girlfriend Jessica who smelled of death (that's not a metaphor, it's opiates) and probably... oh wait. It was “Waiters.” The song about one of the times I went mad.

Which I did periodically due to my mental health issue.

Anyway, everybody claps and I look around for Prof. Puking and this is the first time I notice she's not there, so I wish everyone happy feral cat awareness day and I guess we're done here.

And writing this now I realize it was rare days like these that made dealing with ADMIN and CURATORS and PROVOST'S OFFICE almost worth it because as I vaguely dismissed somebody else's honors class a handful of students coalesced around the podium where I was bolting my Taylor back in its shell and hung out for a while asking questions about everything from astrophysics to Marxism to my mental health issue to whether Johnny Marr was so fucking good with his fairground hands and unearthly riffs that he was living proof aliens had engineered some post-punk guitarists.

Then there is just one young man in front of me. And I realize we have the same eyes.

He asks me how many milligrams of Lamictal I am on a day and it turns out he is ramping up to the same target dose as me, but you have to be careful and go slow with the stuff because of Stevens-Johnson syndrome, and we laugh because like me he is constantly checking himself for rashes on the not unreasonable grounds they are an indicator for imminent death if you are one of the unfortunate 0.5%. And then he tells me he has been worrying he is not going to amount to anything, but today he discovers a tenured professor of astrophysics is in the same boat as him, and to be a tenured professor you must be doing pretty good, right?

I have this realization that of the sixty students today I have entertained maybe half of them and, right on the verge of leaving academia, I have helped one.

And I drive home and cry my eyes out because I am not strong enough to deal with that kind of responsibility.

Ten years later. I look out of the twenty-fifth floor window at that not-Ferris wheel and remember the promise. Cats. That's going okay. I'm helping them. But somewhere along the line I forgot the part about helping vulnerable people.

This post represents the beginning of my re-engagement with that process.

The next morning after three hours sleep and the knowledge that three hours sleep is exactly the sort of thing that aggravates my diagnosed mental health issue I leave my twenty-fifth floor hotel room for the elevator. It stops half way to the casino level and the doors swish open.

“Up or down?” asks a man in a suit and lanyard.

I explode into laughter.

The doors close.

The less things change the more they stay the same

In which we conclude that WSOPcom isn't even trying.

Those of you who read this blog with far more care and attention than it is written may have noticed that Part 3 of this series seemed to peter out unexpectedly. Specifically, neither the problem of mine that had been "escalated" nor its resolution were ever described.

Believe it or not, there was an excellent reason for this. Almost two years to the day since the problem in question arose, it re-arose [1]. And since I wanted to wait and see how everything panned out the second time, I decided to save the details for this final installment. Not surprisingly, the waiting took a while.

Rewind to a few weeks after the WSOPcom launch. Word began spreading [2] that the online site would "tier match" the loyalty level players had reached in the bricks-and-mortar properties of the Caesars Empire [3]. Of particular interest was the fact that the higher your tier level at WSOPcom, the higher your rake-back. (As I described in "A tale of two sisters" the more action you give a room, real or virtual, the bigger the benefits.)

Many of us who play poker at Caesars properties put in enough hours to earn the coveted "Diamond Card" which gives customers daily access to free chicken wings. We quickly ran the numbers and realized that a tier match to Diamond at WSOPcom would be worth enough to pay for a couple of dinners a month at a more pleasant venue than our usual choices [4].

I promptly wrote to WSOPcom support asking for a tier match.

Support thanked me for my e-mail and cut-n-pasted a bit from the website describing how many APPs [5] were required to reach each tier level.

I replied to the e-mail in considerable detail.

The reply to my reply made it clear the customer rep had no idea what I was talking about.

The topic appeared at the WSOPcom 2+2 thread in which the forum rep suggested we e-mail support with our Total Rewards number and WSOPcom screen-name.

Seventy-three posters found different ways to tell the rep we'd already tried that, six of whom also managed to work in flattering remarks about Allen "Chainsaw" Kessler.

A mere forty-eight hours later the rep returned with new, exciting information. After a couple of paragraphs that seemed mostly concerned with how hard the rep had worked doing this wonderful thing for us (i.e., giving us access to a promo his company had allegedly launched), and several other innuendos that we had no idea how lucky we all were, the exciting information was revealed. It was an e-mail address that was to be used specifically to request the tier match and for no other purpose.

Nobody asked why this was necessary.

Actually there really wasn't time for much further discussion because almost immediately we all discovered exactly the same thing.

The fucking e-mail didn't work.

I don't mean that sending the required information to this new, super-special e-mail address failed to produce the desired tier match. That would be wholly unremarkable and frankly par for the course. No. The e-mail address didn't exist.

I forget how this was eventually sorted out. I think we were advised to e-mail regular support again and ask them to forward the e-mail to "bonuses and promotions." Suffice it to say that even once the correct party got the information it took another seven days for the tier match to go into effect. And during the intervening period none of us were getting our increased rake-back. It was costing us money, and costing WSOPcom action and any remaining credibility it might have had with its customers.

Then we found out the tier match was only good for a month.

It almost appeared that WSOPcom was doing its best to be so utterly incompetent that it forced its fuming customers back to its own bricks-and-mortar card rooms. Which is where I was a few weeks ago when a fellow grinder mentioned to me that the tier match was back on! It was again for a limited time, with the boost to rake-back applying for the calendar month in which it was granted plus the entire following month.

Being something of a nit, I e-mailed in my request for a tier match a few minutes after midnight, June 1st.

I won't reproduce all the e-mail exchanges since some of you may have just eaten, but here are the salient details and a few excerpts.

June 1st: I requested a tier match and sent all required information.

I got a response within a few hours which I will include in full because it hopefully demonstrates I'm not making this up, plus getting such a speedy response is something of a record.

Hey Meowlzebub,

Thanks for contacting us; my name is Brandon and I'll be helping you today.

I understand you would like to have your WSOP.com status matched with your Total Rewards Account.

Please be advised, I have escalated your request to our Promotions team to be reviewed. There is a timeframe of 7-10 business days for this to be completed/ an update sent to you.

On another note, I have reviewed your account and see you have been doing well with us so far. I would like to wish you continued success at the tables.

It's a pleasure to have you as a player, and we look forward to helping you again in the future.

Okay, I included it because Brandon for some reason felt it was necessary to look at my win-loss record and frankly I'd been crushing it.

It occurred to me that if WSOPcom employees chose to mind their own business it might cut down on the 7-10 business days required to comply with this simple request, but I was so surprised to get a competent response at all I let it go.

It was a little disappointing to not hear from them again until June 8th, when I was sent instructions on how to link my WSOPcom and Total Rewards accounts. Since they were already linked (the former shows up on my monthly summary from the latter), it was apparent to me that we were in the early stages of a fuck up. However, in an effort to minimize any further delay I followed the supplied link to an obscure part of their website and filled out a form linking the accounts that had been linked for the last two years.

On the third attempt at pressing the button I did not receive a stream of C++ and a browser freeze. Instead the pop-up told me I'd been a good boy.

On June 10th I received an e-mail apologizing for something and which informed me my accounts were now linked.

I replied that they had been linked for the last two years and that what I actually wanted was a tier match.

One June 11th I received another apologetic e-mail:

Hey Meowlzebub

Thank you for contacting us. My name is Marcia and I will be assisting you today.

Let me take this time to commend you on being at Gold status. It is indeed a pleasure to see you doing so well.

In regards to your query, the Tier Credits for a given month will be credited by the second week of the following month.

This is why you are not seeing anything as yet.

Nonetheless, for every 1 APP earned on WSOP.com, you will be given 1 Tier credited.

It's a pleasure to have you as a player, and we look forward to helping you again in the future.

I appreciate that if you don't live in this sort of hell it may be a little difficult to follow the details here. You may therefore simply prefer to take my word for the fact that what is being described in this e-mail has absolutely nothing to do with getting my WSOPcom tier status matched to my Total Rewards Diamond status. And while you, the reader, may not know that, it is something that customer service reps for WSOPcom would readily understand if only they were given the necessary training and information.

I explained that the APP-TC exchange rate was completely irrelevant to what I had, for the past eleven days, been trying to accomplish, and got another e-mail:

Hey Meowlzebub,

Thanks for contacting us; my name is Clinton and I'll be helping you today.

With regards tyo your request, I have forwarded this off to be looked into. Please allow up to 72 hours for an update on this. 

We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience in this matter.

Forwarding things off to be looked into sounds like sending a tissue sample to a lab for a biopsy. Except for a WSOPcom tier match it apparently takes longer. And by the morning of June 13th I was steaming:

This matter has still not been resolved. It's absolutely pathetic that you offer a TR/WSOPcom tier match for a month and nearly half the month has already expired without the match being made. Either discontinue the promotion or expect to explain this laughable incompetence to the Nevada Gaming Control Board.

Seventeen minutes later I received the reply:

Hey Meowlzebub,

Thanks for contacting us, and please accept our apologies for the delay in responding. My name is Imani and I will be assisting you today.

Please be advised that your WSOP account matched to your Diamond status on your TR.

I logged on and found that, indeed, my WSOPcom account now showed as Diamond.

And I concluded that WSOPcom is just fucking with us. Getting this tier match should be as simple as pressing a button, even if it takes three tries. It should not take thirteen days. And I can only speculate how much more time and money I would have lost had I not uttered the magic incantation.

Nevada... Gaming... Control... Board.

That's how you get your problem "escalated" kittens. You threaten them with the grown ups.


[1] I tried that word without the hyphen and it looked like a reference to some sort of colonic irrigation therapy. Since I feel I have conclusively demonstrated that WSOPcom can't (or won't) get its shit together, this struck me as overkill. 

[2] I use this construction deliberately. There was considerable doubt as to the reality of this offer for a couple of weeks because it was apparently announced on part of the website that would periodically disappear.

[3] I'm sure I'm not the only one to imagine departing, corpulent supremo Gary Loveman wearing a toga and playing a violin as flames from The Mirage volcano set fire to the roof of the Forum Shops.

[4] Most of us can only afford to eat out if we use comps; typically a pastrami sandwich at Nosh.

[5] I have no fucking idea.

Escalating Problems

In which we discover that the customer is always wrong

There was a time in the not too distant past when businesses put a premium on customer service. I'm told that this fundamental principle began to erode around the Reagan era, when Americans were so busy standing tall that they frequently tripped over things and spilled soup in the laps of patrons [1]. 

I've spent a significant fraction of my life in bars, night clubs and casinos, and have dated several cocktail waitresses and hair stylists. Consequently I feel I am on pretty solid ground when I acknowledge that the customer is not always right. Based on direct experience as well as listening, occasionally with genuine interest, to former girlfriends complaining about "work," I can safely say that the customer is frequently an overbearing, rude, drunk scumbag with all the charm of a dozen live leeches that have been poured for obscure reasons into one's underpants. 

The puzzle, however, is which MBA programs are recommending that customer service personnel should endeavor to sink to the same depths as their worst customers.

I suspect part of the problem is outsourcing [2] which, as noted in part two of this series, is how WSOPcom has elected to handle customer service. If you are careful in preventing your reps from having access to pertinent information, compound this with a website that is vague and frustrating to use, and finally build in long delays between all communications with complaining customers, you cleverly guarantee that, by the time these customers find outlets such as the 2+2 forums or a personal blog, they are spitting equal measures of nails and vitriol.

Within a few weeks of WSOPcom joining the market, it became impossible to avoid the conclusion that the truly spectacular incompetence was not some highly-sophisticated, level-four thinking developed to charm and amuse us, and that the outfit really did intend to insult its paying customers either by ignoring them, directing them to e-mail addresses that didn't actually exist, or by having reps in the far-flung reaches of the American Empire cut-and-paste responses from arbitrarily-chosen pages of their ghastly website.

It was at this point that I was introduced to the concept of escalating problems.

Many of the cocktail waitresses and hair stylists that I dated were also alcoholics [3], and as a result the word "escalate" has almost exclusively negative connotations for me. All the manuals and counselors made it clear that the desired goal was de-escalation. Thus it was with considerable trepidation that I received the news that one of my problems with WSOPcom was going to be escalated.

It turns out that in this Orwellian business lingo, escalating means the person who received the problem is not getting paid enough to solve it, thus they pass it on to someone else. What is less well advertised is that in order to get something escalated (which you will have to do since the customer service reps have no useful information at all), you have to make a real nuisance of yourself on social media and/or at the sponsored forum on the 2+2 boards [4].

When WSOPcom established its official presence at 2+2, the reps, apparently having joined the company from FedEx, immediately adopted a defensive position, parrying most complaints with business-speak that roughly translated as "you have no idea how difficult it is to run a poker site," and "we don't see why anyone would want that feature."

So I learned that escalation could be... well. not terrible, and I learned that WSOPcom treated its customers as if they were parasites that were scuppering an otherwise well-oiled machine [5], and I concluded I wasn't going to give them a wooden nickel.

And then their competitor went tits up.

And I went back to WSOPcom.

And, as I'll detail in part four of this series, absolutely nothing has changed.

[1] For brevity I'll restrict my observations to the USA.  In the United Kingdom, customer service does not technically exist, unless one includes the bizarre blend of unctuous obsequiousness and pomposity personified brilliantly by the two sides of Basil Fawlty.

[2] One notable exception that deserves special mention is the remarkable performance of the FedEx company. This odious collection of goats and lizards does not outsource its customer service department, nor its recovery mechanisms when, as is usually the case, the parcel it is entrusted with is lost, stolen, destroyed, eaten by bears, or falls into a volcano. Nevertheless, in a complete volte-face to pre-Reagan principles, FedEx customer service reps begin phone calls by making it abundantly clear that, irrespective of the details of your complaint, it is you, the customer, who has done something terribly wrong. And they will shout at you until you apologize or hang up.

[3] Before any former girlfriends in these professions stumble across this piece and contemplate legal action, I should point out that many of them were not alcoholics. I did, however, during a hypomanic episode, become fascinated with the correlations and intersections of career and substance abuse choices, and summarized my research through Venn diagrams made out of fuse wire to which I would attach silver posts and give them to the relevant girlfriends as earrings. 

[4] I have to say I initially had some sympathy for the WSOPcom reps at 2+2. There is a long tradition of posters there being assholes, almost as if there is a monthly competition. Expecting reps to field customer queries when their promotions and products were so poorly-conceived and executed was never going to be pretty.  That sympathy soon evaporated thanks to the imperious and condescending tone of the reps. The WSOPcom 2+2 board was abruptly closed a few weeks ago. I suspect they didn't want the bad publicity it tends to generate right before the World Series of Poker kicked off here in Vegas. Customers can now share ideas, complaints, and be alerted to improvements at a brand new WSOPcom forum which is worse than their website and almost completely deserted. Oh and the bricks-and-mortar WSOP needn't have worried about the 2+2 forums generating bad publicity - they have done that themselves through their completely predictable incompetence, such as making players who cashed in the Colossus stand in line for several hours to get paid. Frankly it's embarrassing to be part of a profession that has a huge build-up every year to its annual jamboree and then, regular as clockwork, royally fucks it up.

[5] I'm offering a $5 reward to anyone who can find the metaphor I was trying to use here. I think it has something to do with rust. Also possibly a boat.

A Tale Of Two Sisters

In which we discover why Ultimate Poker retained its player base and what WSOPcom might learn as a result

In April 2013 Ultimate Poker rolled out the first legal, albeit bare-bones, real-money online poker site in Nevada. WSOPcom, who [1] in my previous post I characterized as Ultimate's herpetic younger sister, flashily appeared on the scene later that summer, with off-the-shelf software that had been battle-tested and refined in the European market, and the commercial power of the mighty World Series of Poker brand.

Everything associated with the WSOP is, of course, owned [2] , trademarked, exploited, and generally sold down the river by Caesars Entertainment Corporation [3]. However, even detractors would agree that the corporation's marketing division has an absolutely enormous budget that is more than sufficient to overcome the lack of imagination of its management and staff.

WSOPcom promotional material was suddenly everywhere. The stained and thinning felt on the poker tables at CET properties was somehow scraped off and new coverings appeared, gaudily bedecked with the WSOPcom logo and cunningly designed to camouflage blinds posted by players in the end seats.  New swivel chairs sprung up, again sporting the online site's logo, that crashed into adjacent ones whenever a player left the table. Pamphlets were distributed by attractive young women in fishnets and bustiers, who set a trend for all future WSOPcom employees by having virtually no useful information about the site when quizzed on the topic.

As the PR juggernaut rolled through Nevada, I revised my estimate for the survival of Ultimate Poker from months to weeks.

And I was completely wrong.

Poker players, mostly out of necessity, rarely exhibit loyalty to anyone but themselves. Many, I am glad to say, have a respect for The Game and for honesty that keeps the ecosystem functioning and has the added benefit of avoiding unpleasantness late at night in parking lots. But loyalty is something that casinos have long known is a commodity that typically has to be paid for. Hence loyalty programs.

Casinos and their online spin-offs all offer some kind of kick-back to players in order to keep those players on their bricks-and-mortar or virtual premises rather than those of their competitors. A standard method employed by online poker sites involves deposit bonuses. At certain times, players depositing money on a site will have that deposit matched at some percentage and up to some limit by the house. The player releases that bonus by playing on the site. The more you play, the more the house makes in rake, and the more of your bonus is released. In essence it is one of those symbiotic relationships that real journalists usually illustrate with small birds removing food lodged in the teeth of alligators.

A few weeks after launch, WSOPcom announced a deposit bonus. I immediately flapped over to my computer, pulled up the client, and after a few minutes pecking at the keyboard had successfully transferred a few hundred dollars from my bank to the site.

A great deal more pecking through the snarling maw of the cashier page [4] provided no evidence that my bonus had been registered by the system. I reread the e-mail announcing the program and noticed at the bottom that I should have included a bonus code.

Bonus codes have been a feature of these bonuses even at real sites like PokerStars and I have never fully understood them. They are not used to track how a player learned about the promotion and thus serve no purpose other than additional keyboard pecking. However, since I rarely read instructions carefully [5], I had forgotten to enter such codes on multiple occasions before Black Friday. The problem had always been quickly rectified by telling support I was a dummy and could they please manually activate the bonus.

I should remind readers at this point that I grew up in London and consequently am more comfortable with accented English spoken by Sunil from Sasaram than Sully from South Boston. Nevertheless, I was a little perturbed to find that my "problem" as it had now become was to be handled by someone twelve time-zones from Las Vegas. I was more than a little perturbed when I was informed by e-mail that my bonus could not be activated.

Now I suppose it is just about conceivable that the oversight of the Nevada Gaming Commission is so stringent and repressive that it bars any agent of WSOPcom from manually flicking a switch to trigger a bonus. Far more likely, however, is that in outsourcing customer support to some third party with employees sitting on another continent, the system is unable to handle the slightest deviation from an absurdly rigid process.

Or it could be that nobody gave a rat's ass about my deposit bonus.

I'll return to WSOPcom's almost unique views on customer service and support in the next installment, but for now I leave you to contemplate this. I am not the only idiot who forgets to enter bonus codes. I checked. Further, and as explained above, the reason online poker sites offer such bonuses is because it benefits them. Thus the fact that WSOPcom would not or could not activate this bonus suggests a hole in their understanding of the business they are in.

More importantly, at least to me, was that this episode alerted me to the fact WSOPcom outsourced its customer support. Ultimate Poker had its support right here in Vegas. I realized that I didn't care that WSOPcom's software was miles ahead of the Ultimate product. I would rather give my action to a company that created local jobs and generated local revenue.

Former readers of my Blind Straddle column may recall my ground-breaking article on table image inspired by a young lady named Hope. I once remarked to Hope that "if you don't have herpes by the time you're thirty-five, you're sleeping with the wrong people." I mention this because my characterization of WSOPcom as the younger sister with herpes would not, in itself, be a deal-breaker for most poker players, particularly given she was prettier and faster [6] than her older sister Ultimate.

But you really have to re-evaluate the situation when you realize the younger sister is both obstinate and as dumb as a rock.


[1] If corporations are people, grammarians better get used to these kinds of constructions.

[2] Technically dependent on the current status of CET debt restructuring, the merry-go-round of subsidiaries and holding companies, and a bunch of other financial wizardry that would require far more research on my part than is likely to be supported by my latest royalty check from Kendall-Hunt for $11.49.

[3] When the company changed its name from Harrah's Entertainment in 2010 - a move usually made for PR reasons by nuclear waste processing facilities such as Windscale - the new corporation lost staff, credibility, and - for reasons that are mystifying even to Chapter 11 legal specialists - its apostrophe. 

[4] It is traditional for the cashier area of online sites to make deposits extremely simple. WSOPcom adopts the philosophy that any other information relating to player bonuses should be part of an amusing game of hide-and-seek.

[5] The exception being high-amperage household appliances since the incident in 2005.

[6] I am told this usage of faster will confuse anyone under the age of fifty. Boo hoo.

Let Sleeping Cats Snooze

In which we begin to uncover how a license to print money turned into a 28 billion dollar deficit.


As will be apparent from the frequency of posts on this blog, I have mellowed since turning fifty to the point where the stupidity of background events rarely causes me to comment. But just when I felt confident that intellectually I had curled up on a cushion, some damn fool came along and poked me with a stick.

The damn fool in question is slightly amorphous, but since I live in a land where corporations are people, it can be roughly identified as WSOPcom.

I'll use that rather ugly string when referring specifically to the online poker site. Not the website of the online poker site, because wsop.com, while sometimes appearing to be the site that you'd want to consult with queries about WSOPcom, will, at the press of a button, suddenly transform to the website covering the WSOP. And by WSOP I don't just mean what the WSOP meant for decades - a tournament series held in Las Vegas before it got so damned hot everybody wanted to stay inside - but also WSOP-C, WSOP-E, and WSOP-WTF.

The point being that one can be attempting to ascertain the e-mail address for Nevada support for WSOPcom and seamlessly get transported to a list of chip counts for a tournament in Prague. The wonders of modern technology.

When online poker returned to Nevada, I was one of the first to sign up at Ultimate. It was exciting. It was slightly less exciting when the game client showed all the sophistication of PokerRoom.com circa 2002. When it became apparent the traffic at the site was never going to crawl above horse-and-buggy status the word "exciting" became pretty much surplus to requirement, but I won a few tournaments and played some PLO8 cash and generally it was better than nothing.

Then WSOPcom launched. Ooooohhh. Shiny shiny!

I confidently predicted on one of those poker forums where 95% of the posts are "+1" "in before 'Doug Lee is a tool'" and "HU4rollz!!!" that the superiority of WSOPcom's software would bury Ultimate in a matter of months.

Eventually Ultimate did go tits up for a variety of reasons, but before that occurred many of us played there exclusively, shunning her prettier, younger sister like she had herpes.

Why?

Stay tuned.

Dear Cake Poker

Hello Kat, 
Thank you for your email. 
Due to the current delays we are experiencing with cashouts, I'm afraid we cannot confirm a timeframe as we could not guarantee a timeframe and we do not wish to mislead you. We are hoping you won't be waiting much longer and we will email you as soon as the funds have been sent. I'm very sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Please let us know if we can be of further assistance

Kind Regards,

Murray
CakePoker Support

 


Dear CakePoker Support:

Concerning your previous e-mail and the continued "pending" status of my withdrawal... I appreciate your desire "not to mislead" me, but given the ridiculous amount of time this withdrawal is taking to process I'd prefer you to give me a timeframe even if it is a complete guess. If this turns out to mislead me at least I will have a fleeting period of hope that I might actually see these funds, whereas the current situation offers no hope whatsoever.

Thanks ~ Kat

Tales From The Riviera Bank: The Ball

First hot day and tempers frayed in the Riviera poker room. Steve is breaking up with one of his girlfriends via text and seems by far the happiest at the table. I have just been reprimanded by the cocktail waitress for ordering my bottle of water too slowly and the new guy directly to my left is muttering to himself darkly. There is an unnerving undercurrent to this guy. Tension and displeasure radiate from him like the insistent heat from glowing hibachi coals. He is overweight, balding, a less attractive and possibly more violent version of Tony Soprano. Looking up from the table he glares at the pickets.

The poker room is a shallow flight of steps from the Las Vegas Boulevard doors, outside of which pickets with placards march at a commendable clip in the 108F temperatures. 

Senior VP Noah Acres wanders out and is met with cries of "shirt, shirt, shirt..." (isn't "suit" more standard?) and the assertion that something is unfair. Brief pangs of guilt since I am instinctively pro-union. Maybe if I played blackjack for a bit and counted cards it'd be showing solidarity with the strikers?

Then The Ball appears.

It is hard for The Ball to look anything other than cheerful thanks to the beautifully stylized fifties grin stretched from arm to arm, and on its arrival even the gloomiest of grinders at the table briefly look less miserable. The Ball ambles around the blackjack pit waving at the punters, then pulls up short at the bottom of the steps to the main doors, apparently transfixed by the striking casino employees.

It is about this time that the gentleman to my left slams his fist onto the felt. I had lost track of the hand, being more interested in The Ball, but based on the board it seems Tony Soprano just got outdrawn. As the cards for the next hand fly around the table a vein starts to pound in his neck. Everyone has become very quiet. I can hear his dental enamel delaminate and think of Scrabble. The future victim of a massive coronary folds flamboyantly out of turn and storms off.

I glance at Steve who is watching the receding broad back of the unhappy customer. Then he leans over the table to read his name from the Bravo system.

"Jeremy!? He can't be a Jeremy. Maybe a Butch."

"Or a Vinny," I suggest.

"Yeah, but not a Jeremy," says Steve. "'Raging Jeremy?' It just won't do."

"He seems to have issues."

As does The Ball.

It's not entirely clear how The Ball got outside because the doors are not wide and The Ball is, but get outside it did. And according to a player to my right who had responsibility for watching The Ball rather than Raging Jeremy, it seems The Ball said something out-of-line to the strikers. And this is why three or four of them are now taking shots at The Ball with their placards.

The Ball doesn't care! The Ball is bad ass! The Ball wanders outside in 108F ambient (135F track?) and starts opining on industrial relations with Local 495. And sticks and stones are having no affect on The Ball thanks to the considerable padding.

Then even from my vantage point directly above a pair of fives I notice that The Ball has realized its own weakness. And as the anti-Ball contingent concentrate their attack on its north side, it has dawned on The Ball that it is a 4.3 mile roll down Las Vegas Boulevard to the Luxor where the ground finally levels out.

"On you Kat!"

I apologize, realize the open-raise from Clem-the-Rock ranges him [QQ+, AKs, AKo?] on a loose day and that he's short-stacking. I pitch my fives.

"Where's The Ball?" I say, looking up and only seeing strikers marching with their placards.

"Just passing Peppermill," says Steve as he folds and picks up his phone.

Hiatus

It's been so long since I posted the tools have changed.

This is what the never-ending sale of a house will do to you. And it's still not sold, so I can't stop, but...

If you've missed my observations on poker, most can be found at Blind Straddle except one issue where there's something weird with the indexing and I'd hate you to miss the cross-dressing article.

I've also started writing about music again, except... seriously, the house sale has skewered this too, but if you want to know about the greatest band Vermont has to offer, my piece about Persian Claws at The Musician Network is a must read.

And what about Feline 9ine?

I thought I'd take a hint from my own blog title and devote this site to cats.

Stay tuned.

Sex In The Dark?

Over the last couple of weeks I have been asked if I was (i) dead; (ii) writing erotica. I used to get asked if I was dead a lot, but I'm glad to say that changes in my lifestyle over the last few years seem to have resulted in fewer inquiries about my continued existence. Either that or people have ceased giving a crap. I haven't been blogging primarily because I am so hacked off at the DoJ and Full Tilt Poker for making my life and that of hard-working friends way more difficult than it need be. Concerning the erotica...

No. But that is the second reason I've been blogging less.

Blind Straddle is an online monthly poker publication and has nothing to do with mounting your partner with the lights off [1]. My June contribution can be found here.

[1] Although given the editors broad-reaching media interests, that may change in future issues.

Since I'll be writing a monthly column for Blind Straddle for at least the next year, most of my poker musings will appear there rather than here. I'll save my blog for my bitter complaints about all the sorts of things I usually complain bitterly about.

If you're worried about missing anything I encourage you to sign up for Blind Straddle e-mail updates through the website. Actually, even if you're not as neurotic as me, I encourage you to check out the site for links to excellent poker resources and like the Facebook page.

The July issue comes out next week and includes some of my thoughts on how to exploit losing players by understanding their psychological weaknesses.

Department of Justice Indicts Golf Course Owners - FBI Seizes Flag Sticks

In a move that has sent shock waves through the world of golf, the Department of Justice today charged owners of Augusta National, Pebble Beach and a dozen other well-known courses with wire fraud, money laundering, and high treason. Players arriving for early morning tee times were confronted by yellow police tape and the sign:

"Ha ha ha! You're screwed - The Feds"

In a DoJ press release that critics described as "smug with a touch of neo-fascism," it was revealed that golf courses that enable millions to enjoy this past-time have been facilitating a multitude of crimes for decades. Not only have players been wagering on the outcomes of games, the DoJ also presented evidence that the results of such wagers were often paid off in ways that violate, circumvent, and generally make a mockery of the 1961 Wire Fraud Act. While no specific examples were cited in the press release, legal analysts agree this is more than likely since the act is so vaguely worded that asking a non-Government employee if they have a postage stamp to sell could result in a three billion dollar fine and twenty-five years in prison.

Golf enthusiasts are baffled by these developments.

"I thought this was the Land of the Free!" observed Felix Baknein. "How am I threatening national security by wandering around in awful pants with my clubs?"

We posed this question to the DoJ.

"Freedom?" replied a spokesperson. "Freedom doesn't come under our jurisdiction. You should talk to... hmmm... Actually that's not really a federal matter at all. Ask the ACLU."

The Wit And Wisdom Of The Poker Gods

Rather than incur the further wrath of the deities mentioned in the title, let me simply state that I was banging out a very healthy ROI in a certain game offered at Stars when it went poof! Further details below.

Dear PokerStars:

I'd like to congratulate you on what I believe is a first in the history of online poker. By abolishing the SNG Double-or-Nothings you have actually REDUCED consumer choice! Well played! I imagine you were concerned that with all the exciting possibilities you offer, some of us might get dizzy or flee in panic.

You have prominently announced in the SNG lobby that the new Fifty50s are pretty much the same thing as DONs. This is, of course, complete nonsense from a game theoretical point of view. If you could interrupt that jabbering nitwit Negreanu from making abysmal TV commercials he could explain the differences. Although one difference that doesn't need explaining is that, for the turbos, the rake is higher for the Fifty50s than the DONs! Oh man, you've really made my day.

And may we expect the Fifty50s to include Pot-Limit Omaha? Because currently they do not appear to and I would hate for something like this to get overlooked in your latest attempts to revolutionize online poker.

Flushed and royally pissed off,

Kat Martin

A Heretic's View Of The Holdem Hegemony

Every time I hear No-Limit Texas Holdem described as "The Cadillac of Poker," I reach for my water pistol [1]. I imagine the phrase is supposed to communicate the idea of sophistication, luxury, exquisite engineering, performance, and so on. The reality is that Holdem is a stripped-down, simplistic variant of the Holy Game. It has quite a bit of horsepower and torque, but very little finesse. Rather than a Cadillac, I have always thought of No-Limit Holdem as a pick-up truck. Something like a basic-package F-150.

[1] I am a pacifist, but own a small stockpile of water weapons in an attempt to maintain some order in the Kattery.

But for literally billions [2] of players, "poker" and "Holdem" are now synonymous. At poker forums and training sites, all other forms of poker get shuffled (*cough*) off to boards with titles such as "Other Games" and, even worse, "Variations." Indeed one forum where I make a nuisance of myself has a weekly "Variation Night" at which one of the weird games that isn't NLHE is played. It's as if everyone downs poker tools for an evening, so that instead of playing REAL POKER we all bugger about with way too many cards while following rules apparently designed to harsh everyone's mellow.

[2] Despite being born in England, I follow the American convention of using "literally" when I mean "figuratively."

So how did this sorry state of affairs come about? My thorough and totally unbiased research in this area has revealed that the villains are a bunch of fat Texans [3]. These unscrupulous tubbies realized that, in order to separate the average tourist from his (never her; see "Super System I") money in the fastest possible time, they would need to play a game that only took a minute to learn. It's the oldest rule in the book. The Shell Game, for example, would have been a total disaster had it involved twenty-five shells, several beads of varying colors, and rules derived in some cunning manner from the Fibonacci Sequence.

[3] The term "Texas rounder" is assumed by most to be derived from Texans "driving around" looking for sheep to fleece. In fact the etymology reflects the fact that all were corpulent.

I can even offer some anecdotal evidence that supports this hypothesis. Specifically, before the No-Limit Holdem Boot Boys took over card rooms in this and other countries [4], NLHE cash-games were almost unheard of. The limit version of Holdem was played for the eminently practical reason that weak players busted out far too rapidly when playing the no-limit form. A good LHE player could leave his victims standing in their underwear while sympathizing with them about their "rotten luck." The approach of the Fat Texans was to leave their victims naked in the parking lot, sometimes bleeding from head wounds. While the latter makes for better movies, it does very little to encourage customers to return to the felt.

[4] I include Canada in this category despite the ongoing debate, originating with Dave Barry, as to whether Canada is technically a country.

From a personal stand-point, the situation is not all bad. On the one hand, I am somewhat insulted that the Omaha-8 table at The Mirage is invariably the one in the drafty corner, as if it is being cordoned off from the "real poker." On the other hand, its location places it next to a large ashtray and the bathrooms, thereby making it ideal for someone who chain-smokes and drinks half a dozen club-sodas-two-limes-no-ice per hour.

But what does this say about our poker culture and the future of the Holy Game? Are the generations that follow us really going to be condemned to the simplistic, one-dimensional bullying of NLHE? Will the great poker tales of the years ahead be dominated by "I ran KK into AA! Can you believe it!? Talk about a bad beat!"

Orwell got it backwards. Two cards good, four cards better. 31Hz 'nuff said.

Excerpts from The Sunday Swish I: The Genesis Of Omaha

Many of you will be aware that The Swish was recently given exclusive access to the Dead Draw Scrolls that were discovered in a grain silo in Nebraska in 1986. Our main task at this time is to translate The Book of the Holy Quaternity. Members of TSS/Omaha Division have been immersed in this sacred text for weeks like mudskippers that have totally miscalculated the rate of tidal influx in a mangrove swamp. It is anticipated that a complete translation may take several years since the Scrolls include the lengthy gospels of Saints Ciaffone, Cappelletti, Zee and Hwang. However, we are in a position to provide a preliminary translation of a few verses from the preamble to this work which we hope will be enlightening to our readers.


The Book of the Holy Quaternity (Trans. TSS/OD (c) 2009)

1. In the beginning the number was Two and the possibilities were flat and without form.

2. Our Lord Pogos [1] looked down upon the felt and saw that it was not good.

3. For man did mucketh about with The Two interminably and often blindly like the beasts of the field when the weather shifteth unexpectedly from warm and sunny to dense fog.

4. And angered by the monotonous regularity of the stealing of the blinds from late position Pogos did unleash upon the felt two plagues. [2]

5. Thus man did experience suck-outs that runner runnereth straights and flushes for seven years till they were coming out the wazoo.

6. Then followed seven years of eighty-twenties going tits up on the flop except when the shekels got in on the turn in which case the underpair would spiketh the set on the river.

7. And there was a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and laptops flying through windows like that dove with the twig when it raineth a great deal.

8. But through these plagues man continued in the ways displeasing to Pogos.

9. And Lord Pogos said: for fucketh sake, I thought I buggered up the game when I invented the draweth of the five but this is the stone cold pitzorz.

10. Thus Our Lord frowned upon The Two and since both did lacketh a spare rib said: presto!

11. And The Two became The Four.

12. YaY!


[1] Due to the lack of vowels in ancient Nebraskan the original is simply "PGs." The translation "Pogos" strikes us as easy to pronounce and pleasantly punk.

[2] It has been suggested that we may be missing a few plagues here since two falls far short of the constant misery inflicted by deities of other faiths.

December 1st Doomsday?

The first freeze hit the U.S. Midwest last week reminding us that this could be a long, cold winter for online poker. UIGEA is scheduled to be enforced on December 1st and while the ramifications of this are still unclear the poker world is more than jittery. So what are the best-case and worst-case scenarios when we wake up on the first day of Advent?

To address this question, recall the scope of the UIGEA. This act demands that banks prohibit transactions that place wagers (or deposit funds) on internet gaming sites. Horse racing is, for obvious reasons, excluded. [1] An important point that is often overlooked is that there is nothing in the legislation about banks accepting winnings from online wagers and gaming. Thus, based on the actual content of the UIGEA, the often-expressed fear of winning poker players that they will not be able to access their funds is unfounded.

With this in mind, how bad could the situation become in December? The complete Doomsday Scenario is that PokerStars, Full Tilt, and the other major sites decide they no longer want to deal with Department of Justice stormtroopers and withdraw from the U.S. market. Is this likely? I feel that it is not. Multibillion dollar industries are not in the habit of throwing up their hands, dismantling their operations, and opening a chain of casual dining restaurants instead.

What about financial institutions? Will they feel sufficiently intimidated by the UIGEA that they decide to block incoming funds that have been withdrawn from online sites? Again, we feel this is extremely unlikely. First, historical precedent indicates that banks rarely say "no thanks" to money. They have, as it were, a self-interest in the interest. Al Capone had a bank account. Second, with withdrawals from poker sites being processed via third party intermediaries there is no obvious way that banks can distinguish between poker winnings and proceeds gained through the sale of garden gnomes.

This second point also pertains to the ability of players to deposit funds at poker sites. If this, the only limitation imposed by UIGEA, actually occurs, the ramifications for winning players are clearly serious. But with third-party processing and the vested interest poker sites have in keeping fresh money flowing in, can such a law be enforced? It is difficult to see how.

With all these factors in mind, the best-case scenario for December 1st is that nothing will change at all. However, it would be foolish to assume that this will be the case. Even if the legislation proves to be unenforceable in principle, it seems inevitable that fear of UIGEA will decrease the amount of money deposited at poker sites. Simply increasing obstacles to deposits at sites will reduce action from losing U.S. players. This is a sufficient reason for poker players to continue to protest and fight UIGEA in any way they can. A broader reason is that the U.S. has a written constitution that protects its citizens and residents from this kind of bullshit.


[1] The most obvious of the obvious reasons being that assholes who have been in the Senate for decades and who are about to step down can pass whatever bizarre, inconsistent, flawed legislation they please, and thus trample on the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents before putting their feet up and living off the fat pension being paid for by the aforementioned American citizens and residents.

It is what it is

I have long held the opinion that interviewing sportsmen and women immediately after they have completed a match, round, race or game is as useful as asking your cat what it would like for breakfast. Why, for example, do we need a quarterback to describe the winning touchdown when we have seen nineteen replays of the event from twelve different angles? "I threw the ball to a wide receiver in the back of the end-zone who caught it." Right. We knew that already.

Lucrative sponsorship deals have compelled many athletes to develop their public speaking skills with varying degrees of success. The Peyton Mannings and Michael Jordans of the sports world have an easy, polished delivery. Occasionally they even say something interesting. But many athletes employ a mode of speech that seems to have evolved in an environment free of natural predators, so that redundancy flourishes like a bizarre marsupial. Semi-rhetorical questions such as "you know," "know what I mean," and "you know what I'm saying," are used as commas and periods. We are told by announcers "that's a wonderful golf shot," presumably to eliminate any confusion in our mind that we might be watching hockey.

Even the most engaging speakers are frequently forced to sound like total twits due to the aforementioned sponsorship deals.

"Jeff, a great race today. Tell us about the closing laps."

"Thanks Rusty. I'd like to thank God, my crew, Ricky-Raccoon-Racing, Goodyear, Chevrolet, Castrol, Viagra, Pepsi, Branflakes, Southwest Airlines, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Tampax, Slim Jim, Joe's Laundromat and Bait Shop..."

Perhaps because I am older than most such interviewees I tend to attribute these "sportsisms" to a disease of youth. Two hours ago, however, I was forced to revise that opinion thanks to an in-game interview with Detroit Tigers' manager Jim Leyland. Leyland, now in his early nineties, is old school in every sense of the term. I was therefore horrified when he responded to one of the announcer's questions with "It is what it is." My first reaction was that I must have misheard him. The Metrodome is notoriously noisy and Leyland had added to the problem by choosing to position the microphone on his headset directly over his nose. However, a few sentences later he repeated the phrase.

"WHAT IS IT?" I screamed at the screen. At some level I think I just felt left out. Apparently everyone other than me knows what "it" is.

I suppose if one is generous one can view "it is what it is" as a modern incarnation of the once popular "que sera, sera." The latter, however, in employing the future tense at least offers the hope that we may at some point discover what it is (or, to be pedantic, what will be). Further, despite being fundamentally self-evident, the phrase does communicate the concept of kizmit and has the added benefit of being foreign and thus sophisticated.

For reasons that defy my understanding, the directors and producers of televised poker events have concluded that the ideal time to interview a poker player is immediately after he or she has busted out from a tournament. At such times the last thing I want to do is talk to anyone about anything. But even fellow players can be staggeringly oblivious. Immediately after I busted out of the 2006 WSOP Main Event and was heading through the Rio labyrinth to find an exit so I could kill myself through chain smoking I was intercepted by a poker-playing colleague. He offered a few brief words of condolence about the $10k that I had yesterday but didn't have today, then asked me if I wanted to split cab fare to go to the nearest Office Max so he could get a new battery for his laptop. I haven't spoken to him since.

One of the advantages of being a low-profile poker player is that I have never been confronted by Norm Chad stuffing a microphone under my snout and asking me how I feel about suddenly being poorer. There are players, of course, who provide wonderful TV on such occasions. Hellmuth's rants about the stupidity of his opponents and his abysmal luck are invariably entertaining. I could listen for hours to a David "Devilfish" Ulliot interview as he meanders effortlessly from how his aces got cracked to the fact his girlfriend is the third most attractive woman in China and that his uncle was rescued from a desert island by the Titanic. It is a great shame that less than five per cent of Americans can understand more than a few words of what David says.

Alas the ipso busto facto interview can also unleash the phrase that I dislike above all others. It is our equivalent, I suppose, of "it is what it is," but irks me far more for the simple reason that I dislike a representative of my profession sounding like a complete asshat.

"So, John, tell us about that last hand."

"Well Norm, I picked up AK under the gun, shoved, got called by Annie in the big blind with AQ, and she flopped a Q. But... You know... That's poker."

Indeed it is.

Raymer's Shades

In my never-ending search for a poker edge I've been considering new angles for my appearance. As is the case for CEOs, a disproportionate number of WSOP ME winners are above average height. Because stopping smoking at my age is unlikely to lead to a sudden growth spurt I did what I could in this area and started wearing 2" Cuban heels and a hat.

Greg Raymer, of course, is above average width, and it is not clear to me that this leads to any particularly intimidatory advantage. However, I do find those voluminous cargo shorts that he wears to be unsettling. Somehow they communicate the idea of camping and I do poorly when asked to sleep in the wilderness when I know there's a perfectly good Marriott within twenty miles. Greg also has the worst nickname in the poker world. He gave himself the handle of "Fossilman" and frankly it's so naff that a strange feeling (maybe it's 'sympathy'?) creeps up my neck when I see him, potentially taking my head out of the game.

But when it comes to clothes and accessories, Raymer is best known for the shades he wore when he won the big one. Many of his opponents have stated that the holographic monsters not only made Raymer harder to read but were simply unpleasant to look at. Indeed I suspect the slightly mesmerizing effects of these shades may have inspired some of the avatars used by players at PokerStars. The timing could have been a coincidence, but immediately after Raymer's ME win there was an outbreak of out-of-focus, double exposed, swirly things that could lead to migraines. None are as disturbing as the ever-popular, ever-nauseating baby pictures, of course, but whatever the nastiness presented in the little Stars' circle I have the ability to block the horrid thing. Something that cannot be done live without drawing undue attention to oneself with masks, fans, and so forth.

To simply imitate Raymer and wear holographic shades is clearly not an option here. But this is an angle I want to shoot. So I have been experimenting with high-wattage halogen lamps tucked into the inside pockets of my double-breasted jacket, pointing them upwards in the traditional manner used for telling scary stories around the camp-fire. There are still a few practical issues to iron out in order to use the set up in a casino, but I am pleased with the initial results...

The benefits of (nearly) going broke

Some time last year my poker results started declining. My tournament ROI dropped and I stopped making significant money in cash games. In April of this year I had enough stats to know that unless there was a sudden upswing in my earn I was going to go broke.

I still haven't completely figured out what happened. The number of hands and tournaments is too great to attribute the downswing to variance, although I think it played a part. My current guess is I started playing bad as a result of running bad. Not stupid "let's try and get back a chunk of the roll at once by playing limits I can't afford," but that creeping disease of semi-tilt.

The situation led to considerable reflection and some tough decisions. First, I realized that I didn't quit a well-paying job to "become" a poker player. I was already a poker player and to make my living in any other manner was going to make me unhappy. I also concluded that five winning years provided convincing evidence that fundamentally I am a winning player provided I play my best and keep working on improving my game. This optimism was aided by a former poker student telling me "you're too good to not be making money."

None of this altered the fact that I was a few weeks away from going busto.

So I put a plan together. I got a long-term backer as well as other stakers to make sure that I could stay in the game. This also meant I had to work twice as hard for the same earn, but the alternative was unacceptable. I also started paying more attention to the small edges. Sitting out of a cash game when it got too tight to be profitable; changing my sleep schedule to target easier times of day; focusing on my strongest forms and structures of poker. And perhaps most importantly working my ass off through training sites, forums, books and other resources to make my game stronger.

I still don't know how this story is going to play out because I am still working with a worryingly thin bankroll and my house is falling down. My feeling (supported by steadily-improving results) is that I've turned the corner. One thing I know for sure is that nearly going broke has forced me to greatly improve my game and my approach to playing poker. And those of you who have accused me in the past, rightly, of being arrogant, may be pleased to know that this episode has also given me a little humility. Not a lot. But a little.

The Interwebz

One of the problems presented by online poker that is not an issue when playing live is losing internet connection to the poker site. If a casino unexpectedly bursts into flames all players in the card room are affected equally and an equitable resolution to the problem can be easily found. I guess it's conceivable that one of the geriatric cocktail waitresses at Bally's might drop a gin and tonic in my lap and that I'd be forced to leave, but that has not yet happened. If, on the other hand, I am sitting in a PLO8 tourney at Stars looking with joy at AA23 single-suited and my internet goes down I am both screwed and apoplectic. This happened last night. For real. AA23.

As we all know, the internet is a series of tubes, and I understand that on occasion those tubes can get clogged. So when I phoned my cable company this afternoon to report this ongoing problem I was polite and controlled despite the fact that this is costing me money!!! And I spoke to a very helpful young man named Brandon who confirmed he was seeing packets vanishing for an unknown reason and that a service engineer would be out tomorrow afternoon. Which is really pretty fucking useless given that I need to play off another 1400 Stars' VPPs to maintain my VIP status AND I am supposed to be internet-broadcasting a tournament tonight. Brandon also told me explicitly, because I asked, that no other customer in my area had reported any problems.

Now I know absolutely nothing about the internet (other than the tube thing), hardware, software, computers, electronics, or anything that gets plugged into a wall socket, but undeterred by my boundless ignorance I decided to walk around my estate to see if there were any squirrel teeth marks in the big wire that comes from a pole in the alley to the box on the side of my house. And what did I see in the alley? I saw a man up a ladder fiddling with wires. And beneath him was a white van. And what do you think was written on the side of the van? Hmmm??? Yup. The name of the cable company that provides my fucking internet.

Just Play

National Poker Week is upon us and a drive is underway by organizations such as the Poker Players Alliance to defend The Holy Game from the stupidity of the UIGEA, the DoJ and quite probably the DMV since they are usually involved in making life difficult. This raises a question for professional and recreational online players alike: What can we do to keep online poker legal and help it thrive?

There are petitions that can be signed and form letters that require a couple of mouse clicks to send to members of the House and Senate. The major online sites have been ponying up prize-pools for freeroll tournaments for those signing these petitions and sending letters, thereby providing additional incentive for players to get involved in this process. I strongly encourage everyone who supports the right of citizens and residents of the U.S. to play online poker to take the thirty seconds required to petition and write. However, I am also convinced that the most important weapon we have in our fight against dim, repressive, and flawed legislation is the simplest of all.

Just play.

The fundamental reason that the prohibition of alcohol in the U.S. was repealed is that people continued to manufacture and consume alcohol. Similarly tobacco remains legal despite its health consequences because so many people smoke. The U.S. will eventually follow the worldwide trend of decriminalizing marijuana largely for the same reasons. One does not have to approve of drinking and smoking to recognize that attempts to make them illegal are counter-productive and lead to a lessening of respect by the public of laws in general.

Playing poker online is not currently illegal, of course. Part of the cynicism of lawmakers opposed to online poker is that, recognizing the popularity of the game, they have attempted to cripple it through indirect means such as attacking the flow of money between players and online sites. And this has clearly succeeded in driving away many U.S. players. Particularly the bad ones, unfortunately. We have endured scares over seized funds going back to the Neteller fiasco. I had nearly $10k tied up for several months. I didn't like this at all. Eventually every penny ended up safely in my bank account.

Clearly one can make the decision to cease playing and wait to see how the legal situation pans out. That is exactly what the opponents of our freedom to play The Holy Game want you to do. So be the change you want to see in the world. Just play.

Department of "Justice"

As an Omaha-8 player my life is not exactly stress-free. At least once a day I will flop the nut flush and nut low, lose the low on the turn to a counterfeit, and watch the flush dissolve on the river as the board pairs. I also have to maintain concentration over many hours while sitting at tables with players who have screen-names such as "ilovetoeatpoo." But this is the life that I have chosen and all I really ask is that I be left alone to make my living playing poker.

Apparently in the "land of the free" this is overly optimistic.

It has emerged over the last couple of days that the Department of Justice, acting through the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, has frozen $30 million of online poker players' winnings.

Why?

Apparently it has something to do with the 1961 Wire Fraud Act. My detailed research has revealed that whenever some social-engineering, mindless, bottom-dwelling federal attorney decides they want to make a name for themselves without bothering with the niceties of due process they invoke wire fraud. Which they are compelled to do in the case of online poker because playing poker is not illegal.

In fact why online poker gets certain politicians all riled up baffles me. "Gambling is a disease. It destroys families." I see. Well, first poker is a game of skill it isn't "gambling," and second where are these nanny-state legislators when it comes to state lotteries?

I went to my local gas station the other day to buy a carton of cigarettes. For the reasons given above I, like many Omaha-8 players, smoke heavily. The check-out guy asked me if I wanted to buy a lottery ticket. I peered at him over my shades with my best "wtf do you think" glare. "Sorry," he replied, "we have to ask everyone that this week."

Walking home I mulled this over. The corporation running this gas station instructs its employees to invite customers to engage in gambling. Since the lottery is state run it follows that they do so with the full support of the state. This is essentially solicitation to participate in gambling of a form that would be illegal in any Nevada casino because the house take is so huge. But if I choose to play poker online and by using my skill advantage win money I run the risk of losing my winnings because of "wire fraud."

Genuinely confused by all this I decided it was time to do a little background research into the man apparently behind this madness, Arlo Devlin-Brown, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. It seems online poker is the bee in the bonnet of Mr. Devlin-Brown since it was he who went after Neteller and Party Poker for reasons that are baffling to poker players.

Based on my extensive research it is possible that Mr. Devlin-Brown has spent much of his legal career involved in noble causes protecting the innocent and acting as an advocate for the disenfranchised. And that while engaged in these activities he has shunned publicity. Because a thorough googling of Mr. Devlin-Brown returns a remarkably thin curriculum vitae up until the point he got in on this wire fraud scam. Specifically since 1995, when Mr. Devlin-Brown placed 4th in the APDA Speaker of the Year contest, his only notable achievement was the prosecution of a Mount Vernon trash hauler:

Albert Tranquillo III, 30, of Armonk, faces a possible new indictment that will include a charge of bribing a Mount Vernon Department of Public Works official.

"There is a substantial likelihood a superseding indictment will be handed down," Assistant U.S. Attorney Arlo Devlin-Brown said during Tranquillo's hearing before U.S. District Judge Stephen C. Robinson.

Appparently this case was insufficient to catapult Mr. Devlin-Brown into the spotlight and he is looking for bigger fish to fry. Thereby chasing all my fish off the poker sites and back to the state lotteries.