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September 30, 2006

Legislation

Interesting story here. Apparently Congress, in a last minute effort to pander to the religious right, tacked some anti-online gaming measures onto a port security bill and it went through.

The article says that "Most forms of Internet gambling would be banned under a bill that received final U.S. congressional approval early Saturday," but I don't know how many articles I've read previously that have claimed online gambling was already illegal, despite the fact that it clearly wasn't, so I take their assertion that this one will make it so with a grain of salt.

So far all I can find addressing online poker specifically is "The bill, a compromise between earlier versions passed by the two chambers, would make it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gambling sites." If that's all it says it might be a good thing. I can't remember the last time any site was able to take a credit card. It will suck a little if Party Poker can't send or receive EFTs anymore, but it won't be the end of the world.

Unless the bill specifically defines online gambling as illegal it won't have much effect. All payments will go through overseas intermediaries like they have for the last five years. And it may have the enormously positive effect of convincing congress to leave the subject alone for another five years or so. So this bill might actually be a win for online poker players, or at least break even.

Posted by themaroon at 5:58 PM | Comments (6)

September 22, 2006

Shoot Me, Please

This week hasn't gone well for me, but that's largely because I spent it playing poker. It's been another atrocious week of ring games, even at the kiddie tables, and my streak is now rounding the corner towards 100k hands. I know that's mathematically possible even with perfect play, but it has me feeling pretty bad. That's the worst thing about bad runs in poker I guess.

I'd expound on it more but I'm too busy coughing my nuts off. I was also going to go to the Boathouse Bash in Philly this weekend, but again, coughing my nuts off. I feel like someone stuck a pipe cleaner down my throat and no matter how hard I try I can't get rid of it. As much as I'd like to finally meet all of the bloggers I don't think they'd appreciate my gift of bronchitis, so I'll sit this one out. Hopefully there will be another one next year. And hopefully my hotel doesn't require a 24 hour cancellation notice.

I'll probably try to play the WCOOP tournaments today, since even after a whole bottle of prescription strength Robitussin I'd still have to be better at limit hold'em than these clowns. For some reason I thought the buy-in was $530 but it's only $215. Either way I expect it won't take long given the way I'm running.


Posted by themaroon at 1:21 PM | Comments (4)

LGBT Poker

Alright, over the past 5 years we've all seen people try to make money off of the poker craze in a multitude of ways. Some of them have actually worked (top rake-back sites bring 6 figures annually, and probably not low 6 figures either) but most have failed miserably. But until today I honestly thought I had seen it all. And then I found this. It's an online poker room for "gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender poker lovers." Wow.

I guess it had never occurred to me that the current online poker sites might not be adequately serving the needs of gay poker players. I'm still not really sure what those needs might be, but at least now there is a site to serve them.

If put yourself in the mindset of a gay man you can see why this site is destined to fail. You live in a world of care-free anonymous sex. How much poker are you playing? If straight men had even 1/4th of the ability to get laid that gay men do the World Series of Poker main event would still be a one table shootout. We straight guys play poker only because we can't find anything better to do, gays don't have that problem. Pretty soon they'll be able to get married and then they will, maybe the site is banking on that.

And think about lesbians. No, not that. Think about their thought process. Even though they agree with us straight males on one major point they're still female, and as such they are still very selective about potential mates. And if you were looking to meet someone to settle down with, would you try to do so at a poker table? Even if poker tables were routinely filled with single, straight women they would still be the last place on Earth I'd go to look for a girlfriend. You'd have a better chance of finding a fat kid in Uganda than a suitable mate at a poker table, and all women, straight or otherwise, know that.

Also, and this is probably a topic for my other blog but it fits in with this conversation, why do transgender people always get lumped in with lesbians and gays? I remembered the first time I noticed that, when the LGBT student union at Akron U. had a festival day. I thought that if I were gay I'd be really pissed about them being in my club.

Those people are just creepy. I'm not homophobic at all, but people who want to change genders scare me. They're deranged. You see homosexual behavior all throughout the animal kingdom and scientists have some good theories as to why what would seem to be an anti-adaptive trait (since it inhibits its own chances of being passed to offspring) manages to survive in the gene pool with such high frequency. But no animal that I know of has ever attempted to remove its own genitalia and then wear lipstick. That's just weird. If my dog ever does that then maybe I'll change my mind (and given the number of panties he's eaten I don't think I have to worry about it) but until then I have to assume that if I were gay I'd want them totally removed from my student union. "Listen," I'd tell them. "I'm sympathetic. You're outcasts, we're outcasts. But you're kinda freaky. We just want to improve our image within the straight community and you're just making this harder for us. Just go ahead and get your own club down the hall, ok? Thanks."

Posted by themaroon at 4:19 AM | Comments (16)

September 20, 2006

WCOOP $215 HU

Today's WCOOP was pretty humorous. I spent more time trying to get into the tournament than I did playing in it. One has to appreciate the irony there.

I went to bed the night before without having registered and when I woke up it was full. I thought I'd wait to see if anybody unregistered. With 2,048 players I assumed a good number of people would change their minds. That's pretty much what happened, and the little black "Register" button would pop up on the lobby periodically.

When it first popped up I clicked it. When that happens you get a little pop-up window and you have to fill in a radio button to tell it to buy you in with W$ and then click OK. I did that but by the time I had completed someone else had already taken the seat. I waited and did that again, trying to do it faster, but the same thing happened. And then a third time. Apparently there were a lot of people doing the same thing I was, and probably many of them had no W$ in their account and therefore had one fewer mouse click to make.

Then I remembered to work smarter, not harder, and thought "What if I make that box pop up and fill it in but don't register? Will it stay there even after the spot gets filled? And if so can I just wait until there is a seat and then click OK in that box?" It turns out the answer to the last two questions was yes, and I got in.

Unfortunately I must have burned up all of my brain power on entering the tournament. My match started off with a guy who seemed like he was going to let me bully him. I did so for the first six or seven hands, taking them all down preflop except one, which I took on the flop. Then a hand came up where I had middle pair he started getting aggressive. When he raised me on the flop I thought "maybe he's just pissed because I'm steamrolling him and he's running one at me" so I called and then check-raised all-in on the turn when a blank came. He had top set, to which I was drawing dead, and I was down to very little in chips.

I should have just given the guy the hand when he bet a few hundred on the turn. The stacks were just right for a shove (all-in was almost exactly a pot sized raise, and he had only bet about 1/4th of his stack so he wasn't committed) but he seemed like the kind of guy who I probably could have walked through without much trouble. And those guys are the most likely to actually have a hand there. I wasn't too sure of any of that, because we hadn't been playing long, but most people in Stars heads up tournaments play that way. I should have just folded the turn and gone back to stealing his stack. Oh well.

No more WCOOP events for me for a couple days I guess. Tomorrow is something boring. Thursday I have to sit out because I have something in the evening I have to do. And then Friday is the $530 limit hold'em event.

Posted by themaroon at 2:03 AM | Comments (4)

September 14, 2006

How To Really Be A Poker Blogger

Probably the most frequent question I get from readers is "I have a poker blog, how do I get lots of people to read it?" I'll answer it right here to try to save myself some email.

The first suggestion I have is to post good content. That has two parts. The first part is being interesting. Post stuff people want to read about. Granted, some people do want to hear about your daily results at the $0.5/$1 no-limit games, but most don't. Talk about what's going on in the broader poker world or your little corner of it. If you have an opinion on something important, share it. It's probably much more valid than any poker strategy advice you have to give. Save that stuff for your book.

The second part of good content is writing well. What you say is often less important than how you say it. Use a spell checker. Use punctuation. Periods are your friend. Nobody is expecting Dickensian grammar from a poker blog, but people don't want to read anything that takes extra effort to comprehend. Avoid "lol"s, or saying "u" instead of "you", etc. And try to mix in humor wherever possible, a little goes a long way.

Also, speak candidly. You can speak a lot less candidly than I do and get away with it, but remember that your mission in life shouldn't be to make as many people like you as possible. That's a poor way to live and an even poorer way to gain an audience. You don't have to offend people, but don't be so afraid to do so that you castrate your message. Any worthwhile opinion is going to offend somebody. There are plenty of people taking meaningful thoughts and sugar-coating them to the point of uselessness. Don't fall into that crowd, and ignore anyone who does or expects you to. They are bad writers and even worse friends.

The second most important thing is to post frequently. There's a delicate balance between quantity and quality. The more you post, the less interesting your stuff will typically be. As far as ratings go, however, quantity is, in the short term, a little more important than quality. People who don't have RSS readers would rather read a mediocre blog once a day than a great blog once a week. People who do read via RSS are probably the opposite, but they're only about 1/4th of your readers, and that’s if you constantly promote it like me. For most bloggers it's even less.

Another way to boost ratings is to respond to your users. If they leave open ended comments, reply to them. Put your email address on your website and try to answer every one you get. I've always done that. If you're as lucky as I've been you'll even make a few very good friends that way.

Link to people who link to you. Don't link to crap. Private poker blogs, even if they suck, are ten times better than a lot of what's out there. I get link exchange requests from dozens of crappy poker sites a week, though most are picked up by my spam filter. If you link to all of that garbage people will realize that your list of links is largely junk and won't click any of it. I send a lot of traffic to a lot of people and like it that way, if I linked every crappy site that asked me to that would get watered down.

Now if you really want to get traffic, you can work for it. I don't do this, at least not for the sake of getting readers, but it's very effective. Basically what you do is promote your site grass roots style. Leave a bunch of comments on other blogs (ideally read them and post relevant messages) with your URL. People who see your comment and enjoy it will check out your site. Do the same on relevant forums. Posting a couple dozen comments/messages per day would give you a significant readership boost.

Personally I've never done anything for the specific purpose of gaining more readers. In fact, I always ask people why they want a bigger audience. If you're trying to make money off of blogging you're wasting your time. You'd be way better off actually playing poker. There are very few bloggers making six figures in the entire world, let alone in the poker section of the blogosphere. You'd be much better off spending your time learning to play better. Even a mid-limit online grinder can make many times more than the best poker blogger. Make your money at poker and make blogging a hobby. Or make your money at your day job and make both poker and blogging your hobbies.

It's nice to know that what you write is going to be read by a large number of people. And there are a lot of benefits to writing a good blog. But in reality I think you will achieve the greatest rewards by simply trying to be the best writer you can. You might not make the most money that way, and you won't get the most readers, but who cares? The enjoyment you get from it will be worth a fortune.

Posted by themaroon at 4:39 AM | Comments (12)