Poker Perambulation

No not Duke; I mean Oakley. Remember? The sharpshooter. We have sharpshooters in all poker rooms — real or virtual. Since the days of the Texas Road Warriors, we’ve been concerned with the problem. But most of us ignore it and let the house handle it. Occasionally, they catch someone and we are shook.

Yesterday, I talked about separate topics but tried to link them. I called it a generational thing. That really isn’t the whole story. It is more a technology thing; but, that slips into the generational category too. Having made a living with computers, I might appear to have two ages working.

The first site I played at was PokerRoom. At the time, (It since change hands.) the software sucked. The site could fail and wipe out a tournament. At times you could be playing late and end up with a prorated cash. The next one might be close to the same 3-hours as the last crash and you only got a refund of the buyin. At times you got nothing and their support also sucked and their advise set people off with “Clear your cache.” being the only solution offered.

That demonstrates the failure at the server end. You don’t have an excuse when it is on your end. And they do happen. So, with three hours of play and the blinds abusive, you lose your Internet connection. According to the rules, better luck next time. In reality, many will call a friend and have them take over. I’ve seen it mentioned numerous times. Usually, it is a player with similar skills but not always. A cynic might ask if he really lost his connection or had to go to dinner with his family or whatever excuse was use.

That isn’t acceptable under any site’s Terms of Service. Yet, I don’t recall a single instance of the thread turning into a police action against the abuser. And, they become flamefests over far less. It seems there is tacit approval of the act by the average player. This is the same player that expects the site to protect them from the ‘real’ sharpshooters.

We saw an example recently of why the TOS sites penalizes mixing players on an account. I’ve done that too. I’ve let a friend play an account of mine. The reason wasn’t to cheat but it could have been. That slipped under the radar on a number of sites. Some of them didn’t have a way to transfer while others did. I didn’t transfer because it was expedient. If I wanted to play the account, I just IM’d the other person that I would be using at such-and-such a time.

The examples cited seem fairly innocuous. There was no intent to defraud. Or maybe there was by some but it slipped under the radar. In a $5.50 tournament, the sites may not be checking like they would in a big tournament. Or maybe it is so prevalent that to do so would affect the bottom line. We have no way of knowing. It is hard to accept that rule breaking only happens in big events. Fact is a cheap tournament might be a big event for some.

We’ve built a slippery slope. Bending rules seems minor. We might even get irate if we were caught. After all, we’re all nice folks and had no intent to angle shoot. We don’t feel we’ve done anything wrong. And with the laws around, we’re illegal as grandpa’s visit to a speakeasy was back in the 30’s. We have selective ideas of right and wrong.

The recent sale of a live seat, points out the other side. It is something we all see as wrong. Yet our attitude has allowed it to be gray wrong instead of black wrong. And we applaud the action of the site but do it with mess on our hands. There are plenty of players that don’t have the mess but there are enough that we might all think about how we go about our playing online life.

ADDENDUM:

Another slippery slope is P2P downloads. Who hasn’t done it? Many of us use it like TIVO. If you missed the latest High Stakes Poker, it is easy to get it for viewing. Or you purchased that game but hate having to dig our the CD for the startup check so you get the crack. We do a lot of things in this world that aren’t Kosher. It seems and usually is harmless. But, it can turn around and bite us as this example shows.

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Got an email from Duplicate Poker.  They gave me a $10 spot which I managed to donk down to 4.50.  Today they offered another $10.  I went there and sure enough — I had $14.50.  Played a quickly and ran that up another $3.60 with a win.  Darn things are a bit of fun.  I played the quicky.  They also have tournaments and SnG action.  So, download it HERE and get in on the fun.

The trick on the speedy ones is tight play.  I won this one down -200 chips.  I raised one hand I shouldn’t have but got off light.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Other. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.