The itsy-bitsy spider

went up the waterspout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Beware of Swedish and Euro spiders. It is the rainy season for European poker players.

The Swedish spider in question has a name. It is Xenon. This spider is a web crawler and used by a number of EU members. It bore fruit recently when it is purported to have uncovered 44.5 Euros in unreported income. Of that 5-mil is from individual poker players.

Like Eric Idle doing a Monty Python sketch, the poker community does a lot of the Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink…Say No More. Some folks – obviously devoid of proper council and brains – talk about it. Most are probably poseurs but that can get the IRS’ attention as well.

We are all interested in the UIGEA. Hopefully, we’ll see it pass in our lifetime. (Mine anyway) At that point sites will want to curry a relationship. They will have the data on all our play and our address, etc. There is already some of that going on in the Neteller settlement. Neteller agreed to provide it’s records to the U.S. Government.

The Swedish government said it’s objective was to collect taxes from the sites and not the players. Yet, part of the 47 entities they list as earning that unreported income are individuals. Governments never look gift horses in the mouth.

Like the good ol’ boy says, “Yall be careful out there. Ya hear?”

ADDENDUM:

Interesting article on the Iraq situation in the Washington Post.

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Well, I managed to meet the variance monkey after that bragging a while back. I’ve had a week or so’s run that hasn’t been kind. With Poker Tracker following my PokerStars play, I am still running about 5 big bets per 100 hands. But, from being up overly nice, it move back to normal and that smarts a bit. Stud often seems to be a feast or famine situation. Some days you can’t seem to miss and others you have really nice draws that crash and burn. The river some days is deadly and other days you improve an already nice hand. Stud provides odds to often chase and you see hopes crash at the river often.

This morning was a great session however. Not only did I get good card but I got them at the right time. Here is a graph of a short session that was 34 minutes and 36 hands:

You can see the nice move most up that was accomplished with not a lot of play. The early win was with rolled up 4’s. Bet or raised every street after the door. I was early seat and decided to just call. That can be dangerous but this time it made out ok. The player that road it front to back displayed [75]69QA[A] that appears he was chasing a gutshot. I’ve noticed that PokerStars seldom resorts the down cards. FullTilt always does. I watched the opponent go broke during the session so the read said to not quit and it worked out with him calling the river with just AA.

The very next hand again made a nice profit. The player on my right completed and I had AQ4 in clubs and called. Four Flushed on 4^th; paired the 4’s on fifth and made the flush on 6^th with a bonus club at the river. My opponent started with pocket tens and got a pair of kings up along the way. Because I put her on roughly what she had – starting pair – I gambled against the reasonable idea she might have made a boat by beting and/or raising on every opportunity.

The last big pot was a bit of a gift. I had a truly ratty looking board. My cards ran [35]3384[4] with me betting every street. My opponent had [Q8]KQ96[Q] which is a very nice hand. He thought enough of it to raise the river when he hit. Of course he might have been rivered by me. But, if so, he slow played it to maximize his loss. Three of us saw the river with the one hand concealed but appearing to be on a flush draw. The player I beat was a DM#### and that’s pretty close. In the 21 hands I played against him he was down 7.45 from seeing 62% of the bringins and 54% of 4th street action.

Tomorrow, I am going to throw up a hand history from an earlier game that lead to a great pot. It isn’t so much about the win and the cards and optimism gone awry. Fortunately, they were the overly optimistic.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2008 at 11:06 am and is filed under Journal, Other poker, Pols and other Crooks. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.