Month: October 2006

Getting Analytical–creating an honest self-assessment.

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As you know, I no longer have a boss. It recently occurred to me that a byproduct of my bossless existence is that I no longer have to suffer through my yearly review. I certainly do not miss “review day” at my old law firm. A man in a suit whom I’d seen maybe a handful of times in the hallways would come into my office. Then he’d let me know in stark terms what my superiors thought of me. Most of it was patently obvious stuff.

I don’t show enough enthusiasm, Bob? Golly. No shit, Bob. I hate it here!

Anyway, there were useful aspects to the yearly review. So for awhile now, I’ve been trying to sit down and write a summary of my strengths and weaknesses as a poker player. It hasn’t been easy to do (in fact, I still haven’t begun). And to be perfectly honest, the reason I have yet to write my self-assessment is pretty simple: I’ve been in a rut and been barely profitable since I got back from the World Series of Poker. No one wants to write an objective review of themselves when the plain truth is that they’re sucking.

But I now have at my disposal almost 10 months worth of statistics and observations. So today I present to you a very short version of what’s in store, focusing only the negative aspects of my game. I think i’m doing this more as a wake up call to myself than anything else. My very abridged review:

1. I lack motivation. This has been a problem throughout my life, but I didn’t expect it to infiltrate this particular job, which I unabashedly love. It has. Since I’ve gotten back from the WSOP, I’ve played much fewer hours per day and taken way too many days off.

2. My game selection sucks. For those unfamiliar with this term, “game selection” basically means playing the games that are most profitable. I am a much better player live than online, and I am a better cash game player than a tournament player. So what have I done for the last few months? I’ve played almost exclusively online tournaments. Duh.

In my next blog entry, I will attempt to discuss the causes and effects of these two problems. I’ll also detail some other problems in my game. And then, just to keep things balanced, I will also talk about the good parts of my game. It’ll be a full scale Bob-less yearly review, a self-analytical bonanza!

In the meantime, I’m addressing items (1) and (2) above. I started with a serious online cash game session last night. And I’ll continue by taking a trip to Atlantic City tomorrow and a trip to Foxwoods for the WPT event in two weeks. No more messin’ around!

DZ

Pokerstars staying, Neteller leaving (soon).

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About a week ago, online poker players got some very good news. Pokerstars, which in my opinion is the highest quality online poker site, announced that they would continue to service US-based customers. In their announcement, Pokerstars stated that poker is a game of skill rather than chance and thus outside the reach of the legislation.

But today, some bad news came across: Neteller, the largest, most reliable offshore intermediary, announced that they would voluntarily comply with the new anti-gaming law once the law’s regulations are established.

http://about.neteller.com/neteller/upload/Pressreleaseupdate19oct06Final.pdf

For now, it is business as usual for Neteller and the players. But sometime in the coming months, Neteller will close its doors to us, and that is a big deal.

What will happen? Likely, some other smaller entities that are more comfortable with the risks involved will step into the breach. But will players like me feel comfortable using these alternate intermediaries? And will it scare off a high percentage of the US players and dry up the action? I guess we’ll see. But this news is ugly.

Firepay Flames Out.

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Yesterday brought bad news for online poker players. Firepay, which after Neteller is the second most popular foreign banking intermediary, announced that they will voluntarily comply with the new legislation once it is signed by President Bush. In other words, online poker players who currently use Firepay will need to look for another way to fund their poker accounts.

This leaves Neteller as a crucial entity in the future of online poker. If they stay the course (as they announced they would on October 1st), I’m still convinced that things will remain relatively unchanged. If they follow Firepay’s lead, it will be a crushing blow as thousands of poker players, including myself, will no longer be able to move money into or out of their poker accounts.

Should Neteller cave, I’m sure some small daring international companies will fill the void, but will these companies be trustworthy? And more importantly, will it simply kill all the action before these companies can pick up the slack?

Prognosis: ominous.

After the Panic: Pretending I’m Broke.

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After I found out about the new anti-poker legislation a week ago today, I joined many of my brethren by withdrawing nearly all my money from my poker site accounts.

The dust has now settled a bit, and the prevailing sentiment is good. General consensus is that online poker will continue to exist, with the only big change being that funding online poker accounts without the use of a mediary will cease in nine months. This is definitely good news.

As for me, after making my withdrawal, I was left with a meager $200 in my Pokerstars account. Rather than make a new deposit to replentish the account, I decided to run a little experiment: Try to run the $200 up to $1500 or more as quickly as possible. So far, I’ve been multitabling $25 sit ‘n gos and I’m up to around $750.

This is probably a huge waste of time (I have no chance of making a sizeable score), but I figured that grinding it out would be sorta fun in its own way. Also, my experiment might give me a valuable refresher in basic sit ‘n go strategy.

DZ

The Future of Online Poker

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I have spent the last day or so researching the new Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Here is what I’ve found out, and some conclusions I’ve drawn.

First, here is the legislation in its entirety:

http://www.rules.house.gov/109_2nd/text/hr4954cr/hr49543_portscr.pdf

The first thing you’ll notice after clicking that link is that nothing about internet gambling is mentioned until page 213 of 244. That is because the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was snuck through the Senate as an attachment to the Safe Port Act. If you think Maritime Safety and Internet Gambling seem like very different topics, well, you’re not the only one.

I’m not going to pretend that I know anything about how the Senate typically operates, and I’m not going to pretend that I understand the ins and outs of bi-partisan politics. Here are some comments from someone who does.

[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/watch_video?v=nb1pzayqPaI” height=”350″ width=”425″ /]

What is clear is that the topic of internet gambling was never debated on the Senate floor, and that some kind of back room deal turned this proposed legislation into law. Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself. This Act will not become law until President Bush signs it in the coming days. And the odds of Bush vetoing it are longer than the odds of being dealt a royal flush.

The Act Itself

The Act starts out by defining a bunch of terms, and in the process clearly states that it aims to prohibit sports betting. It also explicitly carves out exceptions for horse racing, state lotteries, and fantasy sports leagues. The word “poker” does not appear anywhere. The clause that would appear to pertain most to poker states that the “purchase of a chance to win a prize (which is predominantly subject to chance)” is prohibited.

The Act does not go after anyone who gambles on the internet. Individual gamblers will not be prosecuted by the federal government. Instead, it attaches criminal and civil penalties to any entity that sends or accepts funds for the purpose if illegal internet gaming. The targets are thus internet gaming sites and banks. A new class of illegal banking transactions are created by this Act.

Along with these new illegal gambling-related transactions comes the burden of identifying them. This burden will rest with the banks, who will now be expected to police themselves. To that end, the Act instructs the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors to create new regulations on this topic within 270 days of the Act’s enactment.

The Act’s Impact on Poker Players

Internet poker playing is about to change. The questions are when and to what degree.

It is clear that enforcement of the Act will be impossible until the regulations go into effect. This means that internet poker, with some notable exceptions, is unlikely to change for up to 9 months while the banks prepare to meet their new duties. The only thing that might accelerate things is voluntary compliance with the Act before the regulations are agreed upon. So far, Party Poker, which not coincidentally is the only publicly traded poker site, has already issued a statement indicating that they will no longer accept business from any US-based poker players starting on the date President Bush signs the Act. It is unclear whether other sites will follow suit, but several others have emphatically indicated that they will not.

A curious aspect of the Act is that poker is neither explicitly banned (like sports betting) nor exempted (like horse racing). Many state courts have already considered the question of whether poker meets the definition of a “game of chance” and thus falls under the ambit of various state gambling prohibitions. In some cases, most notably in California, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona, poker has been held to be a game of skill and thus exempt from those states’ gambling prohibitions. It would seem likely that litigation on the topic of whether poker is a “game predominantly subject to chance” will now take place at the federal level. If poker players were to prevail in such a lawsuit, obviously the Act could be more or less disregarded. This would not take place for awhile, however.

The most obvious loophole in the Act is the possibility that services like Neteller and FirePay, which are internet fund transferring companies (essentially go-betweens) incorporated in foreign jurisdictions are beyond its reach. The way almost all serious online poker players (including myself) currently fund their poker accounts is by making payments from their banking accounts into Neteller or Firepay, which in turn transmit the funds into the poker accounts. This became a necessity once all the major US credit cards began to refuse to fund gambling sites on their own accord several years ago. The Act certainly prohibits direct transfers from credit cards and bank accounts, and the Act certainly attempts to prohibit transfers from Neteller and Firepay, but can the government enforce the act with respect to these foreign entities? My guess is no. The real problems would arise if Neteller and Firepay, large companies which make only a small portion of their revenue from gambling transfers, voluntarily chose to comply.

For people like me, the biggest problem with this new legislation might be less technical and more practical. The publicity generated by the Act and Party Poker’s subsequent stateside shutdown could be crucial. If the general consensus amongst Americans is that online poker is now illegal, many current recreational players will withdraw, and fewer new players will arrive.

I make my living preying on inexperienced, part-time players. If that well runs dry, whatever survives of online poker might include only the strongest players, who will beat up on each other instead of the fish. And online poker, contrary to popular opinion, has a symbiotic relationship with brick & mortar poker, acting as a hatchery for real life, brick & mortar fish. So it would seem that this legislation might have a real negative impact for guys like me even if online poker survives.

Brace yourselves for the unknown, fellow internet gamblers.

Hey, I can still write legal memoranda. Who knew?

Black Monday.

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I was away in Chicago all weekend, then at the Jets game yesterday, and I watched football last night before going to bed. So the panic that has beset my “industry” since Friday afternoon is just now taking hold with me.

I learned an hour or two ago that the Online Gambling Bill got snuck through the Senate (attached to some other Bill regarding port security). Bush will sign this bill in about two weeks, and this is catastrophic news.

Party Poker has already announced that they will no longer service US-based clients once the bill becomes law, and Pokerstars is still evaluating. I have been frantically removing my money from all the online gambling sites I have accounts with. When the dust settles, I’ll re-evaluate and then might have some important decisions to make. For now, I’m effectively unemployed.

Good fucking yuntuv.

DZ