Internet Casino Cheat Soft

Cool first day at the Venetian yesterday for the start of the NAPT event. My sense at day’s end was that most everyone — players, tourney organizers, media — felt it more than met expectations.

As you’ve probably read elsewhere, the turnout was huge, with 872 players altogether, making the prize pool somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 million. That meant 89 tables to start out. The Venetian Poker Room is already quite large, but only holds has room for about 40 tables, so there were tables set up all around the perimeter, filling every space there between the Poker Room and the Race & Sports Book, Noodle Asia, and the Casino.

I made it down early to get acclimated, and was glad to see Mad Harper (whom I last saw about 6,000 miles away in Kyiv, Ukraine) who helped get me oriented, as she helps everyone do at these things. Also glad to meet up with Garry Gates soon afterwards, with whom I’d worked the last two summers at the WSOP.

Brad, California Jen, and Joe (our photographer) had ourselves a nice spot from which to work, and once we got set up we were on our feet a lot, making the long circuit in and out of the tables. Had some more fun reunions while making that trek, including with Benjo, Gary Wise, F-Train, and Donnie Peters (who, by the way, final tabled one of the preliminary events at the Venetian).

Incidentally, those jokes the last couple of posts about my new computer were partially true — I am now writing on a MacBook Air which so far has worked like a charm. Still getting used to the basics, but as other Mac users have said time and again, the sucker is set up in a way that it generally isn’t too hard to figure out how to do what you want to do. The fast start ups and shut downs are pretty cool, too.

There was a little bit of talk here and there before things got going about the absent Team Full Tilt folks, but not a lot of attention to that story once the cards were in the air. Fact was there were plenty of big names there — including a lot Full Tilt pros, just none of the toppermost guys (and gal). Much more interesting to focus on who was there than who was not.

For a quick overview of Day 1, you can check out Brad’s wrap-up post which also has links to the live blog. Also check out the PokerNews’ reports for further details of the day.

The stacks were — as the “Deep Stack Extravaganza” name suggests — mighty deep, starting at 30,000 with 50/100 blinds and with a very gradual schedule of increases. So aside from a few bits of drama early on (e.g., Daniel Negreanu doubled up on one of the day’s first hands), it was slow going poker-wise for the first couple of hours. But things soon picked up and by day’s end the field was down 510. The plan is to be down to 24 by the end of Day 3 (Monday), though, so we’re anticipating a couple of long ones today and tomorrow.

Phil Hellmuth arrived at the start of Level 5 — the last possible moment, I believe — and was soon gone after somewhat stubbornly running his pocket queens into Eric Levesque’s pocket aces. Enjoyed hearing about that hand from Kathy Liebert (who was at the Poker Brat’s table), although Cali Jen had already been there to report it on the PS blog.

Speaking of Liebert, Jen and I have begun a new “He Said/She Said” column over at Woman Poker Player, and in the first one we separately discussed the issue of women and sponsorships in poker. The idea was partly suggested by some recent debates about the issue in the poker media, debates which invariably involve Liebert, the most successful no-limit hold’em player among women who doesn’t currently have a sponsorship. We’ve both been getting some nice feedback on those articles — here they are, if you are interested: He Said & She Said

Like I say, a nice start, and it’s only going to get more exciting as the tourney progresses. And I’m glad once again to be working with and alongside a bunch of talented and smart folks. Follow along over on the PokerStars blog for all of the latest.

Related posts:

1. Travel Report, NAPT Venetian: Arrival Today’s the day. The second big North American Poker…
2. Travel Report, EPT Kyiv: Looking Back About halfway through last week I got an email…
3. Travel Report, EPT Kyiv: Looking Back About halfway through last week I got an email…

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

There’s nothing to choose between Big Fella Thanks and Duc De Regniere on chasing form to date, but the latter was a smart hurdler and should be able to improve on his three efforts to date over fences. In addition, this trip will be on the sharp side for Big Fella Thanks, though he should still take second from some inferior rivals.

Related posts:

1. Timeform Daily: Friday, Catterick 3.30 Jim Tango is open to improvement over fences, and…
2. Timeform Daily: marketrasenraces.co.uk Handicap Hurdle (3), Market Rase, Friday June 12, 3.35 Former course winner, Overstrand, has strutted his stuff on…
3. Timeform Daily: Thursday June 25, 3:40, Kempton Timeform run the rule over the field for the…

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

Noticed an item in yesterday’s USA Today about online poker, a reference to a newly-published study about online poker called “Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker” by Kyle Siler, a doctoral student in sociology at Cornell University.

As usually happens with these articles that try to summarize a discipline-specific study for a wide audience, the USA Today piece boils Siler’s article down to one simple, easy-to-digest claim, essentially announcing that it shows “Poker wins often lead to bigger losses.” In other words, the USA Today article makes it sounds as though Siler’s exhaustive study of a large sample of online poker hands proves that players who win a little tend to lose it back and then some — confirming, in a way, the fears of those who object to poker and/or gambling as an inevitable road to ruin, regardless of one’s short-term successes.

The USA Today article is accompanied by a picture of 2009 World Series of Poker champion Joe Cada, who does not actually figure in the piece. I suppose there could be some implication here being advanced about the possibility of Cada’s not holding onto his winnings, but I think it more likely this was the first available poker-related photo that came up following a quick search.

I was curious to read the study, especially because the way it was presented in the USA Today article seemed more than a little sketchy. Took a little bit of work to get a look at it, but I did manage get a copy and have now read it through.

Siler speaks knowledgeably of poker and the online game, and as far as I can tell seems to be operating within accepted expectations for sociological research and argumentation. He also shows an understanding of economic theory and applies some of those ideas when appropriate. Siler additionally brings in many references to “poker literature” — both to strategy texts and to narratives — which help ground the study within conversations about theory and practice with which we poker players who have read those books are versed. Those references to people like Sklansky, Caro, Harrington, Brunson, and others also make the article more fun for poker players to read than probably would be the case with most dry, academic treatises.

All in all, I think Siler’s article is smart and interesting, and while its findings mostly confirm ideas we already had about what strategies are most successful his study is nonetheless useful for its having found support for those ideas in the data. I also think it is obvious that the USA Today writer probably only skimmed the study, coming away with a vague, uncertain understanding of its findings.

Here, let me take a shot at summarizing this sucker a little more carefully…

“Social and Psychological Challenges of Poker” by Kyle Siler appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Gambling Studies. Using Poker Tracker, Siler examines roughly 26.9 million hands of online poker played over a five-month period at different stakes in order to try to determine “which strategies are conducive to winning at these different levels,” and therefore perhaps draw some conclusions about the “social and psychological challenges” the game presents. The game on which Siler focuses is short-handed (6-max.) no-limit hold’em, and the hands he’s looking at come from games played at NL50, NL200, and NL1000. In all, he was able to gather and analyze stats on around 295,000 different players.

After crunching the numbers with Poker Tracker, Siler reaches a few conclusions which he does a good job explaining, also using charts and graphs to help him further illustrate what he has found. Those conclusions include his having discovered that

“tight and aggressive strategies have the best return across all levels”;

one finds “an increased proportion of aggressive players as one moves up stakes,” where also “the number of passive players decreases”;

there is an “overrepresentation of loose and aggressive players” among the biggest winners and the biggest losers at all stakes;

“None of the biggest winners at any of the levels were even close to being in the top hundred win rates,” having made their money via higher volume (the “grinders”);

“a high win percentage (i.e. the percentage of total hands won by a player) is negatively correlated with win rate.”

It is this last item that I think caused the USA Today writer to stumble a bit. The point there is that in no-limit hold’em winning a lot of pots doesn’t mean one wins a lot of money, and, in fact, when one looks at millions of hands like Siler did, one discovers that the big winners tend to win fewer (though bigger) pots relative to the rest of the player pool. That correlates with the first finding, namely, that the tight-aggressive strategy has the best return.

The USA Today writer took that point and mangled it into a declaration that “players who played a lot of hands and often won ended up losing more money than others.” He then quotes from Siler’s study in a way that makes it sound like Siler is agreeing with that somewhat vague claim, but he’s misrepresented Siler’s findings.

Siler does conclude the study with some thoughts about how moving up in stakes presents players with new challenges, and does a nifty job relating how the stress of adapting one’s style — necessary to succeeding at the higher levels — presents especially difficult “social and psychological challenges” to poker players. He ends with the point that “the biggest opponent for many players is themselves,” an idea familiar to any poker player who has struggled to improve his or her game.

Like I say, a smart study that I recommend if you can somehow get access to a copy. And I’m sorry to see it somewhat misrepresented in USA Today the way it was — that is, as seeming uncritically to confirm fears about poker as just another unhealthy avenue to degeneracy and self-destruction — and thereby soliciting further misinformed, unrelated comments like “this is the reason why the house always win[s]” and “that is why they call it gambling.”

Related posts:

1. Mike McDonald: Team CardRunners Full Tilt Poker Player Profile Canadian poker player Mike McDonald has earned over $1.8…
2. Mike McDonald: Team CardRunners Full Tilt Poker Player Profile Canadian poker player Mike McDonald has earned over $1.8…
3. Dealing with regulars At the mid and high stakes, you will start…

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

Wasn’t able to participate in that PokerStars record-breaking tournament yesterday, as I was busy during the mid-afternoon and couldn’t be there for the start. Looks like I was one of the few online poker players who didn’t, as the $1 no-limit hold’em tourney attracted 149,196 runners. I did pick up things later in the day and noted that the population of the event exceeded that of Syracuse, New York.

There was a $300,000 guarantee — didn’t even make it halfway to that total, so a big overlay there. The whole sucker took less than six hours to complete thanks to them five-minute levels and quickly rising blinds and antes. Top 30,000 got paid, though only the top 80 earned more than $100. Winner got $50,000. That’s a decent ROI.

Meanwhile I parked it in front of the crystal receiver to watch some NFL. Was most intrigued to see if the Indianapolis Colts, the league’s sole remaining unbeaten team at 14-0, could keep their streak going versus the up-and-down-though-mostly-down New York Jets. If the Colts could take care of NYJ, they had only the crummy Buffalo Bills — who were getting pounded by Atlanta 31-3 yesterday — to get past in the season’s final game to head into the playoffs without a loss.

Did not get the game locally, so I ended up following the score on the iPhone. Picked up a very cool app a few weeks ago called Wunder Radio that allows you to listen to radio stations around the world. So I dialed into 1070 The Fan to hear the Indianapolis radio network’s broadcast of the game.

As anyone who follows football well knows, the Colts were up 15-10 in the third quarter when the coaching staff decided to pull quarterback Peyton Manning along with some other starters. “Ridiculous!” pronounced the Colts’ play-by-play guy.

I lived in Indiana for a while back in the 90s and used to listen to this same announcer a lot then. That was the pre-Manning days when the Colts were usually horrible, and I remembered how sour the dude would often get after relating yet another bad play. His distaste at the decision to yank the starters yesterday reminded me of those days.

The Jets immediately forced a turnover and scored a go-ahead touchdown. The Colts couldn’t move the ball with the backup QB, and New York ended up winning going away, 29-15.

Despite my spell in Indiana, I’m not really a Colts fan. Still, was disappointing to hear them laying the game down that way, not to mention how doing so affects the rest of the playoff picture. I’m sure there are several teams fighting NYJ for one of those last wildcard spots who weren’t too pleased the Jets got that win yesterday, especially the way they did.

I listened to Peyton Manning in the post-game presser talk about how the decision to pull the starters had been in the works all along. “It was the plan,” said Manning, “the organizational philosophy that we were going with… and, as players, we support that.”

I’m a Manning fan. A hell of a QB, who is obviously smart and eminently likable. He also makes funny commercials. Not surprised at all to hear him support his coach and speak for his teammates this way. Still, that reference to the team’s “organizational philosophy” kind of made me cringe a little.

We’ve all been in those situations where we are forced to deal with a huge difference between theory and practice. Happens in poker all the time, where we begin a session or tournament or even a single hand with a “plan,” then realize how certain developments make sticking to that plan a less than desirable course to follow.

I’m not going to say it was “ridiculous” to pull Manning et al. and essentially hand the game to the Jets, thereby making the whole quest for 16-0 — genuinely important to many fans (and not just Colts fans) — seem like some sort of vain, immature desire. But I’m not going to say I liked it, either.

I understand the need to prevent injury and the “big picture” and all that. But it seems to me like the willingness to tank this game only increases the pressure for the Colts come playoff time rather than relieves it. And having your star quarterback defending your “organizational philosophy” after a loss — well, that sounds a bit more abstract than I’d like, too. Let’s talk about the game, and the decisions and plays we made to try to win it.

Maybe I’m missing the point. Sometimes it really is best to fold — even if you think you are best — in order to increase the likelihood for future, greater successes. Still, you gotta think Manning hated giving up this pot, even if it were a small one.

Related posts:

1. Colts a Favorite for Monday Night Football Game Bettors are jumping on the Indianapolis Colts in the…
2. Can the Colts and the Saints stay undefeated this week? 13-0, that’s what both teams are gunning for this…
3. Why Bill Belichick Was Wrong I can’t believe there’s even a discussion about this….

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.