I must say, I was quite turned off by Tom Dwan’s million dollar “I’m better than everyone, you can’t beat me, nyah nyah nyah nyah NYAH nyah,” challenge. Whether you play poker online or off, there is a certain level of integrity, honor and respect that comes with the game. Offering a million dollars to anyone who can beat you out of a buck is just cocky, and there’s nothing in that that implies any amount of respect for your fellow players. It makes us all look like assholes.
Not to mention the fact that Phil Galfond can’t play, for the speculated reason that Galfond beats the tar out of Dwan. And you can’t go making the statement that you’re better than every other online poker player, when you finished third in total high-stakes games for your sponsor just this past year.
But I suppose what really gets me is that there are a lot of poker players out there that donate their money to good causes… there are charity tournaments like Ante Up for Africa. So this guy has a million bucks just floating around that he can throw away on a whim, and he uses it to try to prove he’s better than us? That’s just lame. Self-indulgent tripe, if you ask me, but that’s just an opinion. Please don’t sue me, Tom.
I personally hope that Phil Ivey, who came in first in high stakes games for Full Tilt (where they both work), takes him out. Every good poker player must learn that cockiness leads to epic failure. Confidence is one thing, but a Braggadocio often is found on the tilt. Tom, we know you’re a good player, that’s why Full Tilt has hired you to just sit in their poker room and play cards all day. Who are you trying to prove your worth to, if not yourself?

Carlos is Back on the Radar

I was happy to find that Carlos Poker found a new home. I was turned off when iPoker Network gave them the boot, as many others were, because it’s always been a reputable operation – and it seems it looked out for the online poker player.
I like the iPoker Network, for the most part. It hosts a number of great online poker rooms. It just seems to me, that from the business end of things, when you kick out two of your most popular rooms because they allow players to withdraw all of their winnings and deposit, you’re going to lose some fans. This was not the official explanation given, it’s just the only conclusion that online poker players have come to.
Carlos Poker was not found to be at fault in any other area. They’ve always offered a great platform in customer service and software, and there’s a good deal of tournaments.
The thing that gets me about iPoker is that it doesn’t allow its poker rooms to offer any rakeback to its users. I suppose it can get away with this because it is home to many Playtech rooms, and Playtech is the best of the best. I guess I just thought, again from a business perspective, that you’d want to offer your customers more incentive than just having some amazing software. Bonuses are all well and good when you first sign up, but to the avid online poker player, that doesn’t last long. It’s all about the rakeback. I like to know when I’m playing online that I’m not going to pay out the wazoo for the amount of tournaments I play.
Now what upsets me about Carlos’ move is that it is now in the Microgaming network, which means poker players like me, who live in the U.S. won’t be able to play. What a bummer, thanks a lot iPoker.
At least there’s a venue out there that will appreciate a good online poker room when they see one.

Clonie Gowen vs Full Tilt

Tsk tsk and for shame, on both ends. First and foremost, I am very concerned to hear that Full Tilt allegedly does not pay its pro members. The fact that Full Tilt has not flat out denied that they were supposed to pay her and didn’t, leads me to believe they were proooobably supposed to pay her. So my concern now lies with the credibility of the site’s management. If it won’t pay its professional players, how can I take any comfort in ME being paid? You don’t screw your players over, behind the scenes, that’s as shady as it gets.
HOWEVER, this does not merit Gowen going after her fellow players, come on now. It’s not their fault that they got paid and she didn’t. It’s not their responsibility to make sure she has a paycheck. They didn’t make her keep playing at Full Tilt for four years without getting paid, and they certainly have not wronged her in any way. They sign into an online poker room and play tables for a living, and sometimes they attend major offline tourneys. They are not management, they are not customer service, they are poker players. It almost would appear that she’s jealous of them, because they got what was promised them, and she didn’t.
And Howard Lederer, despite this not being his responsibility, offered Gowen $250,000 last year and she refused it, because she was due more than that. So rather than take ¼ of a million dollars, she decides she’ll just not get paid for another year, as a matter of principle.
Jim Kohl, one of Gowen’s attorneys, “We are confident the allegations will be proven at trial. Clonie has been wrongly denied her compensation and, after we go through the process of discovery, we feel the court will find in our favor.”
Full Tilt should pay as soon as Gowen drops the other 13 players from the case.

Affiliates, Don't Get Screwed!

Affiliates of online poker need to do just as much research into their material as the poker players themselves. In any case where money is at stake, your money, make sure that you know what you’re getting into.
I say this after a recent online poker room essentially failed to pay any of their affiliates for the members driven in, even after assuring it would come for months on end. It’s very much the same process as with online poker players. And in a case like this, many times arbitration is needed. That’s why there are groups out there, like Poker Affiliate Programs.
This is a website that will refer newcoming affiliates to reputable online poker business as well as the unsavory ones. There is an “All-in” poker room section that provides reviews of all of the poker rooms it promotes. As of yet, this list includes Cake Poker, Everest Poker, Euro Partner, thisisvegas.com, Poker Stars, Wager Profits, Red Star Poker, Tower Gaming, Carbon Poker, Bwin, Kharma Partners, Affiliate Club, Chipleader, Sportsbook.com, Intertops, Paw Network, Paradise Poker, Paddy Power Poker, Sun Poker, Doyle’s Room, Stryyke, Eurolinx, Bet365 and Eurobet.
For each of these rooms, an extensive list is provided of the revenue models (including revenue share, cpa, hybrid and referral), program info (the software and the establishment date) and payment details (whether it uses a check, wire transfer, neteller, affiliate speed pay, moneybooker, ecocards or others). The site provides a community environment, where users can post in the forum, to pitch a bitch as they say, or the compliment a website. There is also a number of radio broadcasts, blogs, sponsors, etc.
In the long and short of it, is important to never trust another person or company with your money. As such, keep yourself informed as to which operations are out there to screw you over. In case anyone was wondering, it was CardSpike that came into question for not paying its affiliates. And for online poker players, never trust a site that can’t pay its affiliates, as they probably won’t pay you either.

Motion Sensored Poker

The Wii was just recently released a world series of poker for their system, and that’s freaking awesome. Of course nothing goes better with a game of poker than a black eye. I do like the Wii but I just wish it would have better graphics, I kind of want to see a legit looking Doyal Brunson and not a bubble headed Mii version of him. But this is seriously cool, maybe they’ll allow for some online gambling for it, maybe this will qualify as a game of skill depending on how you move the Wii remote maybe you’ll play better. At least I will, as a U.S. citizen, have something to do when they completely ban me from playing online poker.
What sounds pretty cool to me is the story mode, where you can start out as a noob in the series and work your way up to poker god! This game has some serious potential for the future, every corporation has tried one way or another to get kids interested in their product for the future by starting them out as kids. There were candy cigarettes, McDonald’s video games, even bible video games at one point. It has always been clear that getting kids interested in something will lead them to like that same something when they are older, and you know loads of kids will be learning at a young age how to be a good poker player.
I know when I was 8 I had no idea what poker was, especially not Texas hold’em. But if I would have had a chance to get into it when I was so young I probably would have started playing in tournaments when I was 18, and that would have been damn cool. All of my favorites will be there which is nice, I remember some earlier attempts at video poker have left out so many, but the Wii has their pros locked down pretty tight.

Phil Hellmuth is Not a Superuser

While I’m not so convinced on the explanation provided by Ultimate Bet on its online poker network’s software glitch, I’m also not an idiot. There are many players out there who actually think that Phil Hellmuth is a superuser, and that he cheated some guy out of a $5,600 pot. Now, if you were to cheat in an online poker room, would you do it, as a renowned and sponsored player of the site, right out in the open?
I mean honestly, these people aren’t giving him enough credit. He’s won something like 11 WSOP bracelets – he’s a pretty good bluff. Don’t you think he’d at least be smart enough to create another account?
I don’t personally believe that Ultimate Bet was intentionally cheating its users. I think they’ve given a bogus explanation of the glitch. I think in order to appease all of the complaints launched, they made a statement too quickly and perhaps a more thorough investigation as to the shortcomings of the software could have been made, is all. There are bound to be a few bugs, the network was just released less than a month ago. But much like with the other scandal, Ultimate Bet seemed to want to keep it out of public knowledge. Like the guy whose hand history was deleted. That’s not appropriate, and I think they just wanted to avoid a confrontation.
Again, this is not fact, it’s my opinion.
I feel bad for Tokwiro, as they’ve had nothing but issues after buying UB and Absolute. It’s going to be hard to maintain a solid reputation after that, but if they would just be open and honest with their users as to what’s going on, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much controversy.
At any rate people, Phil Hellmuth is not a superuser. He was unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time, and did not show enough empathy, as a spokesperson, for what happened. Now he is the victim of all sorts of slander. Poor guy.

The Customer is Not Always Right..

...but of course, you have to make him feel like he is.
I have to say that I’m not overly impressed with the iPoker Network. It’s not the online poker room, exactly, it’s the policies they have. It seems a little shady to me.
For example, if a poker room does not bring a “positive cash flow,” they are fined and suspended. That is to say, if a player participates on the website – makes a deposit, wins a ton of money, and then withdrawals all of it, there’s no positive cash flow. So that would seem to me that the network operates under the assumption that it’s players will constantly deposit more than they withdraw, or they’ll lose enough money to the site in rake to cover expenses. I get the impression here that the network is not concerned about the player at all, but at the money he/she loses. And so because a couple of poker rooms weren’t bringing in enough cash, they were booted.
I can respect the no rakeback policy, I suppose. At least that’s out in the open and upfront with its players. But how can you expect players to not withdraw their winnings if they’re not getting anything back in tournament fees? No Sir, I don’t like it.
I understand it’s a business – it’s there to make money. Poker rooms aren’t here to defend our right to gamble or to be our friends. As such, I don’t expect a poker room to give two flying hoots about me personally. However, if you’re wishing to compete with the thousands of poker rooms out there, you need to be competitive. You need to offer me something that no one else does, meaning that you have to care about the OPINION that the players are going to have about you. And when you so openly slight them, it’s going to leave a bad taste in our mouths. Trust and integrity are a must with a business, and I don’t see it here. And so, iPoker gets a big “thbbt!” in my book.