Internet Casino Cheat Soft

So here’s the skinny. I’m signed up to play in this here initial event of the 2009 World Blogger Championship of Online Poker thingy over on PokerStars this afternoon, for which I’m gonna try to live blog while I play. Hell, I got two hands.

Am askin’ for trouble, I’m sure, given the limited capacities of my jingle brain, not to mention the fact that it has been a couple of months since I last played no-limit hold’em (or a tourney, for that matter).

All of which is to say, don’t be comin’ around expecting pokery greatness from yr humble gumshoe.

Looks like with a little over a half-hour until the first hands are dealt there are already over 1,500 scribblers registered for the sucker. Top 153 finishers win tickets of varying amounts into the upcoming Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP), with a total prize pool of $5,096.50 having been set aside for today’s event.

Click here for more info on the WBCOOP series. I’ll be back here shortly after five o’clock ET with the first report. (And hopefully not the last!)

5:01 p.m. ET
Tourney is underway. 1,690 runners all told at the moment, but late registration is still open. Looks like at least two-thirds of my starting table is sitting out.

5:06 p.m. ET
Okay, there are five of us playing, with four sitting out. The sitters are all to my left, and the players to my right. At least one of the four other players is raising preflop each hand before it gets to me, so I have yet to be able to take the sitters’ blinds uncontested. Biding my time for now, but will probably have to start reraising to get involved.

5:08 p.m. ET
Just took my first hand, a standard PF raise with one caller, followed by c-bet on ace-high flop. (No, I didn’t have an ace.) Shortly after, I see an all-in confrontation between 8-7 offsuit and A-10 offsuit. It’s a freeroll, all right.

5:11 p.m. ET
I am seeing on Twitter my buddy the Poker Grump is already out. Must have picked up deuce-four and went with it, I am assuming.

5:15 p.m. ET
Just lost few chips getting a little reckless with the bloggers’ favorite, the hammer, but got it back very next next hand. Back to starting stack of 2,000.

5:21 p.m. ET
Pocket kings in early position. Both blinds call my standard raise. A king flops, both check, I make a smallish c-bet, and both go away. Might’ve milked it for more, I guess, but I’ll take it. Little over 2,400 now.

5:26 p.m. ET
First elimination at my table, about 25 minutes into the proceedings. Looks like 1,730 runners or so at the moment.

5:30 p.m. ET
Okay, just won first big pot of the tourney. Player raises to 120 (3x) in front of me from early position, I reraise to 420 with pocket kings, it folds around and my opponent calls. Flop comes Q-J-T. He checks, I shove (about 1,800), and he instacalls with A-J. Turn and river both nines, giving me straight and 4,670-chip pot (my new stack).

5:37 p.m. ET
EP preflop raiser gets one caller to his left, then I call, too, from cutoff with K-Q. Flop comes Q-4-2 with two hearts, and both check to me. I bet three-quarter pot (475), preflop raiser thinks, then raises to 1,400. I immediately shove (what do I know?), raiser goes into time bank for 30 seconds, then folds. At 6,170 now.

5:42 p.m. ET
Sheesh we are already at Level 5 (ten-minute levels). I don’t need to consult Arnold Snyder to conclude this here is a fast-structured tourney.

5:47 p.m. ET
Pick up another pot (1,135) with pocket queens. (Yes, I am getting some decent starting hands so far, no doubt.) Both an ace and king come by the river, but my opponent had neither (was chasing draws). At 6,965 now.

Related posts:

1. PokerStars.com to hold WSOP Mega Qualifier guaranteeing 200 Main Event packs World leading poker site PokerStars.com is giving players of…
2. PokerStars WBCOOP Starts Next Week During the last week of January, PokerStars will be…
3. Hollywood Poker to hold three additional online qualifiers for Rigged in Riga live poker event Online poker site HollywoodPoker.com is giving its players more…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So I did find time to sit down for a relatively brief session of Rush Poker on Full Tilt yesterday. Jumped into the $25 max. buy-in, six-handed pot-limit Omaha game, where I joined about 160-170 others. A little over a half-hour later I’d played 111 hands, at which point the game paused. I noticed players quickly dropping out of the pool, and after a couple of minutes of waiting I decided to skedaddle as well.

I was happy enough to leave, having accumulated a handsome profit during those hands. I managed to double my buy-in (almost) very early on, then added a few more bucks before the pause. So I came away feeling fine, although the whole experience was likely unduly affected by my good mood at having that early success. In fact, I’m sensing a lot of early reactions to Rush Poker are tied pretty closely to whether the player won or lost during that first session or two, which is understandable.

With that in mind, I’m gonna resist offering some long-winded analysis and/or judgment of Rush Poker as of yet. I need to try it again and become more familiar with the ins and outs before presuming to say anything meaningful about it.

I will say one thing, though. Those initial hands, when I first realized how the game worked, evoked for me a feeling I hadn’t experienced for quite some time while playing online poker. I’m talking about that sorta nervous excitement that came with first signing onto a site and playing those initial hands. You remember that? That mix of fascination and edginess you felt when you first realized how online poker worked — how you could play against others all around the world, any time of day or night? And then, when you won your first hand, and thought, hey, I like this!

Not saying that getting to relive that feeling necessarily means Rush Poker is the cat’s pajamas. But it was pretty cool to “go back” like that, even if only for a few moments.

Speaking of “going back,” the New York Jets are playing the Indianapolis Colts this weekend in the AFC Championship game, with the Colts being huge favorites. Spent some time this week listening to “the Fan” — i.e., the New York sports radio station — and enjoying all the excitement and hype. And all of the references to Super Bowl III, the Jets’ finest moment, when “Broadway” Joe Namath led them to a stunning 16-7 victory. Over a heavily-favored opponent. The Colts.

As a Carolina Panthers fan, I have no particular allegiance to any of the remaining teams, which means like most unaffiliated folks, I’ll be rooting for the underdog in this one. That decision a few weeks ago by Indianapolis to rest their starters against the Jets and forgo the chance at an undefeated season — see “The Colts Find a Fold” — provides another reason to pull for the Jets on Sunday.

What a story that would be, eh? The Colts give a game away to the Jets, saving New York’s season, then find themselves in a nightmarish situation wherein a newly vitalized Jets team gives ’em all sorts of hell just one step from the Super Bowl. Sort of like a chip leader passing on a chance to eliminate a short stack, only to see that player then double up a few times to become a real threat to take it all away.

That Jets defense is obviously going to have to step it up to slow down Manning et al. And New York will absolutely have to run the ball effectively to chew up the clock and keep Indy’s offense off the field. Here’s hoping they keep that momentum going — first launched just four weeks ago in that game versus Indy — and make things interesting Sunday.

As far as the NFC Championship between the Minnesota Vikings and New Orleans Saints goes, I’m mainly just looking for a good game there. Really, whoever wins that one will make for an interesting story.

So enjoy the weekend all, whether it be filled with Rush Poker, monitoring the Jets’ rushing attack, or rushing around doing something else.

Like listening to Rush!

Related posts:

1. Full Tilt introduces Rush Poker, the world’s fastest poker game Full Tilt Poker is taking the online poker action…
2. SPORTSBETTING.COM helps you decide if you should jump on the Jets bandwagon or just stick with the Colts It will be a David vs. Goliath-like battle when…
3. Party Poker releases new Card Rush promotion Online poker site PartyPoker.com is about to unveil the…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Opened up PokerStars yesterday for a brief session. While scanning the available tables I noticed one with a little yellow square before it indicating that I had taken a note on a player at that table. That’s a relatively new feature at Stars, I believe. Curious, I opened the table, saw the player, and read the note.

I’m not as diligent a note-taker as I should be. Nor am I necessarily always confident in the quality of my notes, either. A lot of times inspiration for the note comes from a single hand, and thus may or may not offer sound information about how the player plays, more generally speaking. Even worse, sometimes that hand involved me taking a bad beat, and the note is really just an outlet for my frustration, a slightly more constructive alternative to whimpering in the chat box.

When I took a look at my note for this particular player — I’ll call him Drifter23 — I realized that it was indeed partially an example of one of those dubious notes taken after I’d lost a hand. The note read “gambler; won big pot v. me after getting it in real bad; plays PLO50 mostly, six-tabling (PLO25-6).” That latter designation tells me where I had encountered him — at a $25 max. buy-in, six-handed pot-limit Omaha table. Which is where I was finding him now. With a seat open on his left.

Noting that he’d more than doubled up at this table (to about $55), I took the seat with a vague expectation that I might well be playing a big pot with Drifter23. A couple of orbits went by without much incident other than the two of us having battled for a couple of smallish pots in blind-vs.-blind hands.

Then came a hand in which Drifter23 minimum-raised to 50 cents from UTG+1, I folded a crap hand from the cutoff, then a player I’ll call RowdyRon, who had $26.45 to start the hand, reraised pot (to $1.85) from the button. The blinds folded, and Drifter23 made the call. The flop came . Drifter23 checked, and RowdyRon bet $2.50 — about half the pot. Drifter23 then check-raised pot to $11.35, and after thinking for a while RowdyRon finally folded, conceding the $8.65 pot to Drifter23.

An unremarkable hand, it seemed, until the chat started up:

Drifter23: i thought you were gonna take it all that time
RowdyRon: fk up nit
Drifter23: youre more of a nit than i am for sure
RowdyRon: go suck a ball sack
RowdyRon: and buy lotto

The chat revealed at least three things to me. For one, these two apparently had butted heads some before I got there, it seemed. Secondly, RowdyRon’s calling Drifter23 a “nit” didn’t seem to jibe with my note on the dude, while Drifter23’s denial perhaps did. (In fact, I’m going to guess from the action and subsequent chat that Drifter23 had flopped a draw there and was ready to play for stacks — not that “nit”-like, really.) And thirdly, RowdyRon was clearly a jerk.

The chirping continued, and it became clear that the pair’s conversation had indeed probably begun sometime earlier. It also revealed a few more things.

Drifter23: as i said, if lotto gave me these odds…
RowdyRon: thats why ur break even over 50k hands
RowdyRon: what a wste of life
Drifter23: for sure
Drifter23: quite terribad
RowdyRon: i recommend find a new hobby
RowdyRon: thats just incredible
Drifter23: cheers
Drifter23: i recommend stop breaking pstars rules btw =)

I thought I had a little bit of extra info on Drifter23 when I’d sat down at the table, having taken my note on him during that earlier session. But RowdyRon knew even more. He’d obviously taken a peek at Poker Table Ratings to discover more about his nemesis. I wrote about this site a couple of weeks ago, one which tracks all cash games and where one can look up any player’s number of hands played, net profit/loss, and BB/100 for all stakes/games. One can even do some cursory analysis regarding their looseness/aggression, replay hands or sessions, among a few other investigations.

Drifter23’s reference there to PokerStars’ rules alludes to the fact that the site forbids players from accessing Poker Table Ratings for such information. In fact, the way Stars’ rules are written, one isn’t to look at PTR while playing (something Stars can, theoretically, check for), nor even while away from the tables, although there’s no way Stars can enforce that prohibition.

Unless, of course, someone pipes up in the chat box to volunteer that he’s accessed such info.

RowdyRon: now u angry hey
RowdyRon: i hit a nerve?
Drifter23: my observations tell me that only one of us are crying
RowdyRon: or learn to play
RowdyRon: youll be better off either way
Drifter23: thanks =)

As play continued, I thought about my little note on Drifter23. Hadn’t really attached that much value to it in the first place, but now I realized how easy it was to discover much, much more about him if I so desired. I also was now playing with an awareness that RowdyRon may well be checking my stats to see if I were a winning player, if I were a “nit,” and so forth.

In that post from a couple of weeks ago, I expressed a bit of bother about being tracked so closely (and not having the ability to opt out of the tracking). Having thought about it some more, I guess I’m less worried about it, although I still feel like my opponents’ knowledge of me ideally should be limited to hands they’ve played against me. And I remain cynical about sites having rules they can’t really enforce.

Kind of appreciated Drifter23’s reference to what his “observations” were telling him there, which I took as a cheeky allusion (intended or not) to RowdyRon’s having supplemented his observations with extra data.

I liked Drifter23’s apparent attitude as well. Can’t do much about folks investigating you like this. Nor about folks giving you hell in the chat box. Saying “cheers” and “thanks” and typing smiley faces seems as appropriate a response as any, I guess.

Related posts:

1. Observations From My Couch: UFC 103 “Bye-Bye CroCop” After the beating suffered at the hands of Vitor…
2. Cards & Chance Had one of those weird hands of limit hold’em…
3. The Waiting Game Was watching PokerStars’ Spring Championship of Online Poker last…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

For online poker sites to give back, that is. Lots of bonus programs and other incentives being doled out here at year’s end, it seems.

Been playing more on Full Tilt Poker than usual, mainly because of that bonus they offered me over there this month. Am still only having limited time to play, so I’ll probably only end up earning about half of the hundy they’re giving me in ten-dollar increments as I slowly accumulate those Full Tilt Points.

I continue to play primarily the $25 buy-in pot-limit Omaha games, usually six-handed, and usually only one or two tables at a time. Meaning I can only earn FTPs at a relatively slow clip.

I generally like the new lobby Full Tilt rolled out a few months back, although sometimes when looking for a game I find all of the little codes a bit headachy. Just a matter of getting used to them, I suppose. I have now and then unintentionally pulled up tables that feature certain variations on my desired game — e.g., the “cap” games, the “ante” games, the “deep stack” games. And every now and then I’ll even sit down at them before realizing my mistake. (It really doesn’t take much to confuse my jingle-brain.)

I have now and then purposely played the “cap” games — at my level, those games are capped at $10, meaning no player can put more than that in the middle on a single hand. Kind of pushes most of the play to the first two streets, as that limit tends to get reached with a raise and reraise on the flop. Basically requires everyone to play a short-stacker’s strategy, and I’ve found one often comes across one or two players at each table who are mainly just looking to gamble it up.

The “deep stack” games are the opposite, requiring at least 50 big blinds ($12.50) for the buy-in. One can also buy in for as much as $50 in these at the $0.10/$0.25 tables, so, really, if I’m a PLO25 player (as I am these days), I should be scooting back down a level rather than play these. Meanwhile, the “ante” games require everyone to kick in an extra nickel on top of the $0.10/$0.25 blinds, sweetening the pot a little more before that first action.

Otherwise, I’m strictly a PokerStars player. I do still have some cabbage over on Bodog, but only call that one up every once in a while as their poker room traffic is usually fairly low. PokerStars, meanwhile, always has a ton of tables going, and the site remains my personal fave for other reasons as well (the interface, support, etc.).

Speaking of bonuses, I got an email yesterday from PokerStars passing along their plans to change and add to their rewards system. Once again they are lowering the requirements to reach Silver Star, making it necessary only to accumulate 750 VPPs in a month to get there. That’s down from the current 1,200, and way down from the 2,000 it was when the VIP program was first introduced back in 2006. (I don’t believe they are lowering the requirements for the other levels: e.g., still 3,000 VPPs to get to Gold, 7,500 for Platinum, etc.)

Another new feature will be something called the “VIP Stellar Rewards” program which essentially gives extra cash for playing.

To clarify, FPPs are “Frequent Player Points,” and one earns those according to how much rake is collected. FPPs can be used to purchase various items or cash, or used to enter tourneys. VPPs, or “VIP Player Points,” are earned the same way, but cannot be redeemed — they are just to gauge where you are status-wise. However, if you move up a level, you can earn FPPs more quickly (e.g., Silver Stars get 1.5 FPP for every 1 VPP). Make sense? If not, you can read more here.

Anyhow, this “VIP Stellar Rewards” thing basically gives players extra cash on top of all the other benefits of the VIP program. Starting on January 1, 2010, everyone begins a new yearly balance of VPPs. Once you reach 750 VPPs total, you can spend just one FPP and pick up ten bucks. Then, when you get to 1,500, you get another $10. And so forth according to the schedule (see the table at left). As a recreational player, I’ve earned a little over 13,000 VPPs this year. If I earn the same number next year, I’ll pick up an additional $150.

I might be encouraged, though, to pick up the pace a little — indeed, there were a couple of months in there during which I earned 2,500-3,000 VPPs or so, so I know I can probably easy pick up more.

Definitely like the way Stars is gearing these programs toward the small-timers, giving them a little bit here and there to keep ’em playing. Seems like a smart strategy. It’s always nice to be constantly getting something back while playing, meaning that even a break even session is technically going to be a small winner.

Related posts:

1. Fortune Lounge Group invigorates its loyalty program Fortune Lounge online casino group has recently implemented a…
2. The Plaza Las Vegas Introduces New Players Club Member Program The Plaza Hotel & Casino recently debuted Las Vegas’…
3. Diamond level at Harrah’s Las Vegas now achievable by playing poker photo by flipchip • lasvegasvegas.com Harrah’s on the Las…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Back in September 2007 — several months after the UIGEA had become law and PartyPoker and other sites pulled out of the U.S. market — I thought I’d open up an account over on UltimateBet in order to give myself more options for places to play. Then, about six weeks later, the Absolute Poker insider cheating scandal broke. I had an account on AP as well, and knowing that both companies were run by the same folks, I decided it best to pull my funds from both sites.

About two months later (January 2008), news of an even larger cheating scandal over on UltimateBet first appeared. With subsequent reports we learned of the jawdropping magnitude of the UB scandal. Cheaters with access to opponents’ hole cards played on the site from June 2003 to December 2007, with 32 different people — including 1994 WSOP Main Event champion Russ Hamilton — linked to over 100 different accounts apparently having been involved.

Those numbers came from a September 2009 “final decision” by the Kahnawake Gaming Commission, an outfit “empowered to regulate and control” online gambling sites by issuing them licenses. That “final decision” reports that Tokwiro Enterprises (who now owns UB) had paid $22,054,351.91 back to players who had been cheated on the site, as well as a $1.5 million fine to the KGC. The site got to keep its license, but is now on a one-year probationary period.

Needless to say, I was glad I got off UltimateBet when I did. I probably would’ve never looked back except for the fact that later in 2008 I heard UB spokesperson Annie Duke (on Poker Road Radio) saying that anyone who had played on the site and who wanted to obtain copies of their hand histories could receive them.

As I say, I only played on UB for about six weeks, and in fact only intermittently. According to my records, I had played only a little over 1,100 hands. And at my low limits, I was fairly certain I had not been up against any of the cheaters in my games. Still I was curious to see my HHs, and so made a request. I received a couple of promises back over the following weeks, but eventually UB support stopped answering my emails and the HHs were never sent.

In September 2009 — a couple of weeks after the KGC’s final report — we heard the surprising news that Joe Sebok had signed on with UB as a spokesperson and “media and operations consultant.” Like Duke before him, Sebok was saying things about making hand histories available, and so I once again submitted a request. I received a prompt reply that I would be getting my HHs “ASAP,” but weeks went by and nothing came. I sent another email in late October, and it was returned as undeliverable.

I sent a brief note on Twitter stating what had happened, and Sebok — whom I’ve met a couple of times while covering the WSOP — ended up responding to me. He said he’d look into it, and try to ensure I got my hand histories. It took nearly a couple more months, but I finally did get an email back from the “Poker Security Manager” with a ZIP file full of hand histories.

The ZIP file contains 614 text files, some of which include just one hand and others that have multiple hands (dunno why). The histories themselves are a bit difficult to parse — they are not the clean-looking ones you get from PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker — but I can make out the action at least. They’ve also sent me a large number of hand histories for hands in which I was just sitting out, meaning of the 854 HHs included, there are only about 700 hands of mine in there.

Since I keep my own records for all of my sessions, I can see that a number of hands I played on UltimateBet are missing, including two entire sessions. In all, it looks like I’ve gotten back hand histories for about two-thirds of the hands I actually played on UB.

To be honest, I’m not that interested in taking it any further and trying to get the missing hands sent as well. I know this amounts to fairly minute trivia, all things considered, but for the sake of completeness I wanted to report here how my little hand history saga has concluded. Kind of silly to think it took this long (over a year) just to send me these 700 hands (and that there are still 400 or so for which I didn’t receive HHs). But I do appreciate Sebok getting involved and helping me out here.

Still no plans to revive that account, though.

Related posts:

1. On Those UltimateBet Hand Mysteries, er… Histories Listened to The Poker Beat’s latest episode last night,…
2. Raise. Stack. Own. Rebrand. Try Again. Vera and I do have a satellite dish and…
3. PartyPoker.com brings back Million Dollar Hand promotion Thanks to a remarkable response from its players, the…

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.