Poker Perambulation

Well, there is the grassy knoll. Then, there’s Area 51 and Roswell. According to some Internet sources, we can throw in online poker. The net is full of all kinds of possibilities that give the theorist fertile ground.

One of the way out there theories is that the London, Spanish, 9/11 and the Asian attacks are all because of their governments conspiring to take away civil liberties. Osama is supposed to be an employee of the CIA. In that context what poker is involved in is just a minor anomaly.

We all know about Absolute and it is bad and keeps getting worse. We’ve found that a lot of the law and enforcement that we’d expect a Canadian to be subject to are watered down when it is reservation based. Grand Chief Joe has used that in the past.

A bit before the current cycle we had the bot situation on Full Tilt. Then we had Stars DQ a player for playing several accounts in the big tournament. Periodically, there are others.

Illinois is going through an expansion of casinos debate. One of the requirements is to strengthen the state gaming commission. These are the types of things that are always needed and the way Nevada cleaned up its image. It takes a government to resolve these kinds of issues. It is why we accept governments.

If we are honest about all this, at least three out of four nasty disclosures are to our benefit and show that the online rooms are keeping an eye on things. And, even with the Absolute problem, we learn that both Stars and Tilt have no software hooks that would allow anyone to look at card in a real time mode. There sites can only view hand histories. That makes sense. The ability to view cards is only helpful as a programmer when you are doing the very early programming of the sort and display. It is so rudimentary that quickly becomes resolved.

What all the conspiracy theories have in common is there ability to pray on our human nature. It has little to do with whether we are ’smart’ or ‘dumb’ in general. It prays on our visceral side. If there is anything that is secret about it, the questioning ramps up. The less independent oversight there is the greater the theories.

We know that old Las Vegas wasn’t squeaky clean either. You had the mob control of the counting rooms. Today, we have outside auditors, the IRS, and the SEC. The state’s gaming board is active in auditing and PR to ease or minds.

The current problems could be easily resolved by licensing legislation that moves oversight out of the hands of interested parties. The Absolute situation point to the problem. They/Kanhawake have engaged an audit organization. There is a prior relationship that adds suspicion. Other sites have used them or similar operations to review their practices. But, beyond excerpts we have no way to identify the competence of the auditors or the scope of the study authorized. That makes for fertile conspiracy theorists.

What is ignored is that it is hard to cheat or maintain illegal operations. To many ways to slip up over time. And, Canadian law enforcement has shown some activity. All the sites mentioned in this blog are on those servers. It isn’t as good as it should be but it will become better than it was.

All this fits right in with our bad beat stories and those out-of-context hand histories that we all love to blog. Because it is ‘the other guy’s fault’, we like the crutch. It is a survival mechanism that has it’s place. If we approached it from another angle, we might describe it as being naive as hell — as we try to maintain our man/women/person/fish of the world persona.

If you’re a cup half full type, you’ve the basis for playing poker. And, you should be reasonably comfortable that you can click on one of the links to the better sites and feel comfortable putting a few bucks on a site for enjoyment. The ‘eye in the sky’ for the online game, just got better spectacles. If you are in an enlightened country, you can choose regulated sites and be even better served.

ADDENDUM:

You might want to check out Bodog’s tournaments. They have a collection of guaranteed tournaments that according to the Poker Professor have a nice overlay. I took a quick look and they do have guarantees going off all hours each day with a big weekend one.

Bodog is associated with a sports book and that has been a traditional plus for the poker player. Common views say there are more fish on such sites than the norm. I’ve played a fair amount of Stud there and it certainly seems the case.

A number of their tournaments are really cheap rebuy tournaments. That was what was lucrative for me on the old TonyG site. If you approach it as more of a normal tournament, it is very +EV. You throw in your few bucks and try to build a stack with reasonably aggressive play. If you bust out or get hit over the head with a cold deck, you move back to your ring game or whatever. Let the fish keep rebuying to build the payouts. I used to watch people do it so many times they had to finish 4^th just to break even. A lot of the time, I didn’t even need to do the add on. Play it that way and there is overlay – even where such tournaments fill.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 5:04 am and is filed under Pols and other Crooks. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.