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March 28, 2007
Hooray
Full Tilt now has resizable tables. Playing there on my laptop just got a whole lot less sucky.
Now can I just get a "Sit Out Next Blind" button on the speed tables please?
Posted by themaroon at 6:15 AM | Comments ()
March 22, 2007
Raymer "Hacked"
Interesting stuff about Fossilman getting his Poker Stars account robbed, or, as people who know nothing at all about computers call it, hacked. It isn't hacking at all, it's just him being a moron and someone using that to get his password, but I suppose the difference is irrelevant to most.
There are basically four ways that this can happen to you. The first, and I would suspect by far the most common, is that you type the password in while you're in a public place and someone glances over and sees you push the keys. That's the easiest and best way to get someone's password. While I was in the Bahamas for the poker event I saw multiple people I don't know type theirs in and I wasn't even trying. I bet I could have emptied 20 accounts just by walking around the lobby at Atlantis and writing them down. In fact, I saw the passwords for accounts of at least 3 players you've seen on TV who I don't even know. Of course I never did anything with them, because that's just not how I roll, but that makes me think that when someone does get their password stolen, that's the most likely method.
The second is via phishing. That's where someone tricks you into inputting your password into something that appears to be run by Poker Stars. Phishing is an extraordinarily effective technique for getting passwords for things like PayPal, eBay, or online banking, but since you never input your Poker Stars password on any web pages it wouldn't be so great in this case. It might still be doable if you managed to convince some idiots that your website is run by Stars (i.e., input your name and password here and we'll give you a $100 bonus), and I'm sure plenty of people would fall for such a trick (hell, they reelected Bush) but probably not Raymer. It's just too obvious.
The third method would be a key logger, which is basically some software that is put on your computer without your knowledge that records every key stroke you make and then sends them to someone. Key loggers can be installed by someone who has physical access to your computer or they can be installed via some sort of shenanigans. Maybe someone sends you a program that says "free copy of Poker Tracker" and it's really just a program that installs a key logger. Something to that effect.
Loggers, like all sorts of viruses, are incredibly easy to avoid by following two simple rules. Rule 1: don't be a retard. Don't open mysterious attachments. Don't run installers from sources you don't trust. Don't execute any strange files. In all my years of nonstop computer use I've only gotten two minor viruses, and those were back during the days of easy IE exploits where just surfing to the wrong web page could infect you.
Rule 2: have a good firewall. Zone Alarm won't stop a key logger from being installed, but it will tell you when one tries to phone home and allow you to block it. That's all you need. Both of the viruses I did have tried to send my personal information back to someone and I found out about them (and stopped them) via Zone Alarm. It doesn't do anyone any good to make a list of your passwords unless they can have that list sent to them.
The last way he could have gotten his password stolen is by brute force. Someone could have made a bot that repeatedly types in passwords (usually using words from the dictionary) until they got the right one. I've heard it said that this is how it was done, but I can't believe that to be true.
Poker Stars is very security conscious and brute force attacks are relatively simple to prevent. You just have accounts automatically locked if they try to log in repeatedly with incorrect passwords in a short period of time. Those attacks have to attempt millions of logins, so they often try many times per second. Stars could just have a rule that if a client tries to log in more than once in 3 seconds (which no human could feasibly do) that they freeze the account and notify security. I have to believe that have something like that.
It's possible that someone tried typing in a few things that are very obvious, like 2003WSOPchamp and stuff like that, but I doubt Raymer was that dumb. In the end someone probably saw him type in his password in the Bahamas, or maybe somehow got a key logger on his computer. If I were Raymer I'd reinstall Windows just to be sure.
The only good thing in all of this is that a bunch of people will update their passwords now to something more secure. I hate obnoxious sites that enforce password security on customers, but some have a neat little bar that slides as your password strength increases. Most people ignore it I'm sure, but it's a nice feature for those who care.
Posted by themaroon at 1:09 PM | Comments (12)
March 21, 2007
Woohoo
We're all going to get our money back in 75 days! As Howard Dean would say, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Posted by themaroon at 2:49 PM | Comments (2)
March 14, 2007
My Trip To Vegas Part 3: Sushi and Poker
Shortly after hitting my royal I steered the Chevy Cobalt over to Andy's to play some heads up badugi. I'm sure as I got in the car I had the same thought I did every time, which is "Right now, all across America, people are getting into their brand new Chevy Cobalts, looking around, and thinking to themselves 'Wow, my life really didn’t turn out how I had hoped.'" If you're over the age of, say, 25, owning a car like that can induce serious depression. It honestly baffles me that anyone can make such a pile of crap.
Last time I was there Andy and I played a bunch of heads up badugi and triple draw, mainly $5/$10. I won a pretty good amount. This time we doubled the stakes, and it was Andy's turn to bend me over. He won a bundle off me in about 3 or 4 hours. I'm still up on him in terms of big bets, but he's got me by a few hundred bucks and that pisses me off. As much shit as I give him (and I'm still positive I have an edge, though I'm sure the feeling is mutual) he does some things really well, so it wasn't a total loss. I learned a lot. And I'll be back in March.
After that me, Ethan, his girlfriend Amanda, his roommate Mike (who did the Macarena in that YouTube video I posted last summer) and my Ohioan friends Keith and Tara all went to see Second City at the Flamingo. I'd been wanting to catch that one for quite some time, as it has always gotten pretty good reviews. It was pretty good and I'd recommend it, especially since the ticket price is about half that of most other shows in town.
From there it was back to the Wynn, for another few hours of revelry with the Brodie crew, and then back to the suite at Bally's. Bally's, for those who haven't been there, is the Chevy Cobalt of the Las Vegas Strip, but the room was my favorite price, and who spends much time there anyway?
Sunday I spent the day just hanging out in the suite, working on a little non-poker project, and sleeping. Some time in the early evening I headed over to Wynn to meet up with Richard, Jenni, Allen (friend of Richard's with impeccable taste in Scotch who I've met on a few prior occasions), and Emily Jillette, the better half of the larger half of Penn and Teller.
We had a fantastic dinner at Okada, Wynn's amazing Japanese restaurant. The sushi was excellent, the caviar (of which I'm usually not a fan) was perhaps even better, and I've never had a sake I really liked before but the Divine Droplets were deserving of the title.
After dinner Allen and I went over to Sugar and Ice for some gelato and then met back up with Richard and Jenni in the high limit slot room. Allen seemed to think the speed with which I polished off waffle cones might raise questions about my sexual preference, so I asked a cocktail waitress what she thought of his leopard-print shirt. "Straight or gay?" Her response was priceless. "Well, a straight guy could wear that shirt, but…." In all fairness though, I've known quite a few gay people and none of them would have worn it (outside of a parade) either.
The next couple days were filled with poker. I decided to get some quality live action time in over at Bellagio. There was only one $30/$60 game and the list was deep so I jumped into a $15/$30 while waiting. I found out later that I should have just gone to the Mirage where they apparently had a couple great $20/$40s going. Either way I got stuck pretty deep by the time they called me for my $30 seat, so I decided to just hang out where I was. I felt like I was playing badly for a number of reasons (the largest of which was adjusting to live play) and didn't want to compound my losses by playing bigger. I mind playing badly much more than I mind running badly, and I was doing both, so I soon called it a night.
The next day I played much better and won a little bit back before hopping my midnight flight home. I resolved to start playing more live poker when I got back, and traveling more often to play live games wherever they may be.
Posted by themaroon at 1:59 PM | Comments (4)
March 8, 2007
Whew
I haven’t updated recently because I've been playing a lot lately. Mostly live games around Akron, and some in Vegas. More on that in a bit.
I went to check my email yesterday and couldn't seem to log in, and it turned out that somehow the domain name had expired. Damn Godaddy and their constantly mailing me crap. They sent me so much junk (both email and snail) that I've just been round-filing it all, so I missed the expiration notices. I thought it was on auto-renew, but it turns out it was the only one of my 10 or so domain names that wasn't.
So someone could have snapped up this here website for a whopping $5. I'm pretty sure the only reason I got it back is that I use a local university's DNS and they seem to register changes with incredible speed. So while the IP change back to Godaddy was still propagating, and almost everyone else was still seeing the old site, I was actually able to realize the error and fix it. Some of my friends said they viewed the site around then and never even noticed, some said they saw Godaddy's splash page for a few minutes.
You better believe that sucker is going on auto-renew now.
Posted by themaroon at 4:43 AM | Comments (1)