This is my favorite time of year to make sports wagers. March Madness, the NBA playoffs (so everyone is playing hard, which is why I NEVER bet NBA regular season), and MLB props are all in full swing. Naturally, I see a million guys on a million message boards, all posting their action and their predicted “locks”. You’ll never see me among them.

In 1992, I was fairly well established amongst a group of guys at Speeds’ pool hall in northeast Dallas. I’ve written about a bunch of these guys in previous blog entries. In the first round of the NBA playoffs that year, my beloved Chicago Bulls were playing a sorely overmatched Miami Heat team which had limped into the playoffs. I cleaned up taking the Bulls, and giving about 16-18 points each game, for the first two games at home. During the off day, I bumped into Big J, who was taking my action…and rather than fully settle with him, I rolled most of what I had won onto Game 3, where the Bulls were giving 10 or 11 (somewhere in there) down in Miami.

Tom the Bartender saw me talking to Big J, and asked what I was doing. I had no problem telling him…I didn’t know Tom liked or cared at all about basketball. But being the action junkie he was, he followed up with “Really? Is that a good bet?” I told him I wouldn’t have made it if I didn’t think so. Tom crawled under the service bar and hustled his way over to Big J.

“What’d you bet?” I asked when Tom came back.

“$200,” he said.

I groaned a little. It wasn’t what I had bet…but I knew it was more than what Tom had in his pocket, or could probably hope to have.

Of course, the Bulls fell behind by 15 in the first quarter of Game 3, and had to work like hell to eke out a 5-point win. They didn’t cover, and Tom was out a lot more than he could afford.

15 years later, I still feel kinda bad that I wasn’t smart enough to keep my mouth shut. So I’ve kept it shut ever since.

Yes, I do have a couple of picks for the March Madness games this weekend. And no, I won’t tell you what they are.

First let me say that I am a huge fan of Poker Road, rarely does a day go by where I don’t check it out at least once. In terms of “Pokertainment” they are tops and there really isn’t a close second. But will they make it I think is the real question? By my idiot math it looks like they have at least 20 people working for them in some capacity, that isn’t cheap. Fact is they are climbing uphill, they took on the task of making a poker content site while the money for poker was conceivably drying up.

Here is the first problem that works against PokerRoad. Their audience. If you like Poker Road’s main show with Joe Sebok and Gavin Smith, Big Poker Sunday’s or Two Jacks in the Hole with Scott Huff and Joe Stapleton (my personal favorite) you are not typically a casual poker player that just happened upon the show and ultimately that is what sponsors want. When I say sponsors I mean poker sites because that is where the money is in poker content. Look at the content on Cardplayer or Pokernews and you will be hard pressed to think that the content compares, PokerRoad is far superior in my opinion. But what Pokernews and to a lesser extent Cardplayer has is the attention of Google and a history with bringing online players to poker sites. When a new player is seeking something related to poker, Poker Road has no chance of showing up. Even on podcasts where they are the undisputed champs it is going to take some time to break through the clutter that is internet marketing. Why is that you ask? In theory the best shows should rise to the top but that isn’t the way things work on the internet. Sites are ranked based on age and relevance, two categories that PokerRoad falls short on. The sites with authority that could link to Poker Road to establish them will not because they are the competition. A perfect example is the fact that PokerRoad links to PokerNews but the opposite isn’t true (they may have once or twice but it isn’t on their front page).

So why don’t internet poker sites value websites based on the quality of their content and reward them with advertising dollars and support. Simply put they don�t get it; the poker industry is 2-3 years behind where they should be almost always, there are many reasons for that and I could write a book on that topic alone. For the industry to still have such an emphasis on new customers is just absurd. A site like PokerRoad that has a very loyal base that listens regularly should be exactly what online poker sites want (and don’t give me Doyle’s Room, which is a blip on the radar). Look at Poker Stars, they spend millions on television advertising yet one of their own (Barry Greenstein) has a very prominent website and they don’t support it. To further prove my point PokerStars is the title sponsor of the 2+2 podcast based on the number of readers that frequent 2+2, there just is not enough history yet for PokerRoad to say they are competitive, though if you listen to the shows the clearly are on content. The politics of this is tough though, not every player on Poker Road supports Poker Stars. In fact the main podcast on PokerRoad used to be hosted on Pokerwire.com which was supported by Full Tilt Poker. So in a sense at least one big poker site has tried to support at least one of these podcasts and it failed (the show with Joe and Gavin). I don’t know the history of that all that well but I am pretty sure if you based your decisions on new poker sign ups pokerwire was a failure.

So is that the correct way to view websites and their hold on customers? Well PokerRoad better hope not because on that criteria alone they have absolutely no chance of making it long term. In essence what PokerRoad is up against is an industry that isn’t very mature and potential partners where bridges are either burned or the bridges that could be made really don’t see a use for them. There are only so many Doyle’s Rooms out there and even with their support it just isn’t enough to feed 20 mouths. Not to mention the additional demands that your customers will make of you as you mature.

PokerRoad does have one huge thing going for it though. Egos. Many professional poker players are far from the celebrities that a lot of people think they are. Just having their name in print and having 200 people reading their blogs might be enough to keep an endless stream of bloggers showing up but I doubt it. As someone who has run up against some of the same ceilings they are encountering the only people that you will have their full attention are the people that you pay or the people that have paid (investors). Everyone else goes into a rut, gets a girlfriend, joins a commune, the list goes on; poker players are just a fickle bunch. Also when you sign up to contribute content on Poker Road you start off 4th behind Joe, Gavin and Barry. That is just fact.

Friends, energy and good content should be enough but I doubt it will be. Would Cardplayer or Pokerwire (Full Tilt) really have let them go if they saw good value from them? I would doubt that. Here is a site that tracks poker URL’s while Poker Road isn�t ranked I can let you know that for January they would have been between AllVegasPoker and TopPoker, in February they would have been between PokerTracker and Cardrunners. Essentially they started off with a bang and gained a following, we will know a lot more after this years WSOP.

So why did I write this? Do I just hate PokerRoad? Far from it, in fact, the exact opposite is true. I think the industry needs to mature and start rewarding newer sites with good ideas. Of course you could argue that PokerRoad had many signs that the industry just didn�t work that way, yet they decided to press forward. Which may have been bold but might not have been prudent, what Poker Road needs is time and patience, neither of which I think they will be afforded. I hope I am wrong.

Yet.

Which has a lot of people more than a little angry. For poker players High Stakes Poker is THE show that you wait for each week. Other than the WSOP main event coverage I do not watch any other poker show, not even the WPT, I would rather watch American Gladiator’s. How did it come to this? Well hold your suspenders because most people believe it will be coming back but GSN is just trying to milk the WPT broadcasts for all they are worth. Which sort of misses the point. High Stakes poker is the best rated poker program on GSN, they are really running a risk that a competing network can steal the cash game show from them.

Tournament poker just is not the same for people who understand the game, the networks like to focus on the “lottery moments” in a tournament and the silly segments that are meant to entertain your wife when you force her to watch with you. High Stakes Poker did not need any of that because they had millions of dollars on the table and that created it’s own drama.

The producers of High Stakes Poker also produce Poker After Dark on NBC. It would be nice to see them scrap the PAD half cash half tournament format and get some big boys throwing around 25k chips.

Yet again it just seems that poker just does everything wrong, almost consistently. I think we are all going to look back and think of a wasted opportunity on a lot of things because people got too cute. GSN taking on the WPT might have been a good idea but for them to lose focus on a valuable property like High Stakes Poker is really missing the point for people who watch poker on television.

If you can excuse the irony of an article from Sorel Mizzi about finishing off a tournament this is an interesting read. Good point about keeping short stacks alive if you are the chip leader to keep pressure on the middle stacks.

Most technology breakthroughs in casino security over the last 15 years or so have come from Jeff Jonas. He’s a legend at IBM, and throughout the security business, for his advancements in identity recognition (and other things). If you’ve seen the specials on Travel Channel where they scan your image on a security camera and match it to a database, regardless of what disguise you may be wearing….THAT’s Jeff Jonas.

He gave a presentation on casino security technology a couple months ago. The initial article linked here is interesting. But do yourself a favor and keep following links to Jeff’s blog. It’s as good as it gets if you like the casino industry and want to know more about it. Jeff’s the man.

My dad won’t like me saying this but he is a sucker, he isn’t going to win at poker over time. That might be brutal but it is honest. My dad’s story is so pertinent right now it is unreal because it points out why the suckers leave and why they are going to contribute less and less to the poker economy.

My dad has always liked to gamble. As he has gotten a little older he has more time on his hands, he is retired and occasionally he works odd jobs. He also plays poker, too much in my opinion but mostly it is low limit so other than the time he really isn’t hurting anyone because the amounts really don’t matter. Mostly he plays sit and go’s and satellites, recently he has started to actually show some results so clearly his time investment is paying off. Last week he won a satellite into a live event for 10k. For many reasons my dad didn’t want to go, begrudgingly the site gave him tournament currency which was actually nice of them. They didn’t have to do that.

In fact, no one is really wrong here but it is the perception of being wronged that is causing our suckers to leave.

So my dad has 10k with no idea what do with it, I told him he should just sell them and take a little hit, which is a more than reasonable position but as you get older you don’t always think of things rationally. His basic thought is he has 10k now and he would like it. Plain and simple. Now for a lot of readers you may think my dad’s position is unreasonable but you clearly aren’t a sucker because suckers know they are going to lose that money, so they want it and they want it fast. No dice. Without paying the fee my dad just decided to play the dollars into cash, which cost him about 2k (I told him he should have just cashed the damn dollars in, oh well). He owed me a few dollars so he transferred them to me which left him with about 7k. Fine so far. Now he wants to cash out and he is a little hot from having to lose 2k to get his money so when the site says he will have to send all kinds of documents in to them to get a check my dad blows his cork. I mean none of this stuff was required when he was a contributor, now he is being inconvenienced for money that is rightfully his, or so he thinks.

Here is where I need to stop for just a second and give a few disclaimers because I know why the sites have these policies and I certainly don’t fault the sites at all. What I am attempting to do is remind everyone why the fish are leaving and why they likely aren’t going to come back.

While my dad can likely figure out how to get this site his information he doesn’t want to do it. Why? Mostly because he doesn’t know how. Whether it is international faxes or wires to a bank my dad doesn’t want people in his business. After all he is a losing gambler, gambling is a source of shame for him to be judged by the guy at Kinko’s is not high on my dad’s list (of course the guy at Kinko’s could give 2 shits but my dad doesn’t know that). So he calls me up sounding tired and pissed off and asks me if he can transfer me the money. Begrudgingly I say yes, I have enough online money that I need to get off monthly but I can hear it in his voice that he really needs help, so I agree to help him. The first transfer is declined for 5k. It is not uncommon for me to transfer or recieve 5k transfers 5 or 6 at a time a day, so this seems odd to me. Especially since my dad did win the money. He wasn’t dumped the money by some crook, there were numerous emails that went back and forth before the site begrudgingly relented the tournament currency. Why they declined the transfer we still don’t know but you can bet there will be another stream of emails that will need to go back and forth. I am guessing they are figuring that since my dad won’t send them his documents that he could be jobbing them. A very legit thought on the part of an online poker site I would imagine except for the fact that they know where he got the money and I have a long history on the site.

Anyway, to end this story I will summarize with this, when you are a fish you are used to losing but when you happen to win occasionally you are inconvenienced beyond normal reason. Fact is, my dad lives in Baton Rouge and if he were to win a tournament they would ask him for identification but he can just pull it out, he doesn’t have to fax it anywhere (or refax it because the first one wasn’t clear, let’s be real not all of the customer service agents at these places do a great job). My dad is pissed to no end right now and you can bet what little money he contributes to the poker economy will be gone soon. He has a theory that the site is holding his money so he loses it, which I have told him is absurd but think about it, what if you knew very little about these processes, you might feel that way too. You might think I could be a calming influence on him but when 7k is on the line that matters to someone who is used to just putting money online. And then the first time he happens to get a little lucky and win he can’t get the money off.

One more sucker down. The games just got a little harder.

An attorney from downstate Illinois won a jackpot in a slot machine in a casino on St. Thomas. Per the linked story (and several others from Googling “Alvin Paulson lawsuit”), he claimed the casino management came off, immediately declared the machine was faulty, in which case the win is voided. They sent him on his merry way, not only without his $5.15 million, but always without the $16.50 in credit remaining in the machine. So he’s suing.

From my experience working for WMS Gaming, and testing slot machine, I tend to believe this machine was actually faulty, for three reasons:

1) For a 25-cent machine, $5.15 million is an INSANE jackpot. That’s as big as I’ve heard of, even for $1 machines. A jackpot that size is usually reserved for huge casinos, with hundreds of machines on a progressive network. The casino at the Ocean Club in St. Thomas isn’t large enough to even merit mention on their Web site.

2) According to the complaint, it states:

“In plain view of numerous witnesses, an employee of defendants proceeded to turn the machine off while it was still adding up credits”

The machine isn’t going to sit there and try to ring up 20 million credits. That would take a VERY long time!

3) When a machine hits a jackpot, it doesn’t ring up quarters (as in his complaint) or start spitting out quarters, as he claims in the AP article. Instead, the machine acknowledges the jackpot to the player, a white light flashes on top of the game cabinet, and the machine locks up. The casino is required to verify the win, process paperwork, and verify the validity of the machine’s mechanics and game software. Then, and only then, will a player get a payout, and the machine be put back in service.

I’m also curious why, if he was cheated out of $5.15 million, he’s only suing for $74,000.

The word on the street is that the story will revolve around the cheating scandals at Absolute Poker and most recently at UltimateBet. The centerpiece of the story will stem from two kids that were involved in uncovering the scandal in the first place. Personally I think there is a little bit of “hey mom, look, I am on 60 minutes” going on. Frankly though I am not sure it matters. All over the forums people are gleefully proclaiming “ding dong the witch is dead” because for the most part people feel like Absolute Poker has gone unscathed. And I think they still will. No one is going to suddenly take our side thinking “Oh my god, if only this were regulated those poor 21 year kids could play poker in peace”�. Fact is, almost everyone is against us. This story likely will not change that much.

There is another faction that thinks this will be the worst thing ever. I think they are also wrong. Simply put what more can be thrown at online poker that could make a difference? With all the cheating scandals and all of the problems that exist in an unregulated environment people continue to play. They keep coming and in droves.

If you want to be on television make a final table and act like an ass like everyone else does. That is the most sure fire way to do it. This will just be another story that will be fast forwarded through so the 70 year olds can get to that really funny Andy Rooney bit.

I have fought and debated with several people including myself about talking any further about the FTP issue. Most people have advised me to “let it go,” “don’t raise the issue again”, “people will forgive and forget”. Despite the advice that people have given me. I still feel it’s necessary to share the evolution of my thought process and finally have some closure.

In what is possibly the biggest no brainer from both sides most of the pros from Cardrunners.com have signed promotional deals with Full Tilt Poker. These types of deals have been in the works for some time. I would expect that you will see other online sites align themselves with other training schools. I think you can likely expect that Daniel Negreanu will have all of his people from PokerVT.com sign with PokerStars as an example. This of course only makes sense, the most successful people online are a big draw to show new customers that if they win, they can be rewarded with promotional deals.

This is about 3 years too late but it is nice to finally see it happening.

Millions of people have gambling addictions, to go along with the other millions with drinking, drug, shopping, eating, obsessive/compulsive…the list goes on and on in 21st-century society.

This woman, a one-time promising attorney in NYC, lost everything she owned in Atlantic City casinos, and spent a year in addiction treatment. But somewhere along the line, she completely missed the step where you take responsibility for your past actions and your life going forward.

I do what I can to avoid judging other people, because I don’t want to be judged myself. But Arelia Tavares is a pathetic joke.

While I do not even know Mason one bit I will have to side with Mason on this one. Frankly I am bothered by what is going on at Neverwin. I do not think it is good for poker to let crazy people dictate your format. I had one of the people contact me about writing a few blogs to get their side out more clearly and I said �no thank you�. Even though this type of drama (extremely weird love triangle involving David Sklansky, Brandi Hawbaker and an innocent victim) gets hits it is hardly relevant and appeals to the lowest common denominator of user. Which I think is what neverwin.com is aiming for, I just think this might be too far, even for them.

Neverwinpoker is owned by PokerNews.

Jonathan “FieryJustice” Little is one of the first wave of Internet players who achieved success and fame in live tournament play, and carried it back to become one of the Full Tilt Pros. Part of his “red” deal is 100% rakeback, which for someone like Little, who started as a SNG grinder, is golden.

On National Sportsmanship Day, I find it deliciously ironic that Little was let go today by FTP for violating its terms of service. The 100% SNG rakeback was just WAY too tempting…he had people playing his “red” account around the clock. He was seen playing 24 hours a day, over 150 SNGs a day. Several of his massive sessions were at the same time he was playing the NBC Heads Up Championship.

Oops.

I don’t know what else was in Little’s deal…but I’d guess (based on what other FTP Pros have gotten) that a backing arrangement for live play was part of it. Maybe Little, with $2 million in live cashes since the start of 2007, doesn’t care. It’s still just phenomenally dumb.

How many more notices not to fuck around do people need? Why are so many smart people so goddamn stupid?!

We play a game where angle-shooting, trash talk and generally being a giant asshole are not only “acceptable” strategies…they are glorified on television. Every day online, most of us who play are insulted, cursed at and denigrated. As an excuse, people interpret bluffing to equate with lying…and if lying to your opponents is OK, then anything goes, right? Any excuse to take their money.

Today, in thousands of schools across the United States and many other countries, our children will learn about the importance of sportsmanship. Lessons will be taught about being civil to each other in the field of competition, understanding our opponents are the same as us, with the same intent and desire to win.

The game of poker would be better off if we all took those lessons to heart. Understanding sportsmanship allows us to keep our goals in better perspective, prevents tilt, and generally guides us in who we are before, during and after our time at the table.

Seems some of the younger guys that owed Chip Reese have not paid up, with the notable exception being Phil Ivey. I talk about it all the time, Vegas runs on credit. If your first thought when someone dies is “great, I do not have to pay him back now”� you might be a scumbag. Why is Doyle mad though? It is conceivable that they were not aware that they owed Doyle.

Even Doyle is learning that the internet can be your friend. Exposure is the worse thing for people with small integrity. The internet can do a good job of exposure because word travels fast.