The end? Maybe not.....

It looks like my last post may have been a bit premature, although the situation is still grim. Many sites have said they will stay open past the time of signing, including "name" sites like Full Tilt:

Official statements from various poker sites

Cardplayer.com's thoughts:

What's NOT Included in Anti-Gaming Legislation including the following phrase:

Do not panic. First and foremost, this bill does not criminalize playing poker. In fact, the bill does not speak to the poker player at all.

Also nice to know that Party will pro-rate the amount of my bonus that I do not clear before they shut down U.S. players:

2+2 post from a from Party representative

That's about it. More positive than the last one, but still a bummer...

The End

Well, it appears to have happened. Late night on Friday, September 29, the U.S. Government passed a bill making it illegal for U.S.citizens to gamble on the Internet. Well, actually the bill focused on the methods by which online accounts are funded, but the net effect of the bill is to ban online gambling. The bill has not been signed into law by the President yet, but there is no reason to think that he will not, as the bill was attached to a port security bill that has very little chance of being vetoed. This pretty much sounds the death-knell for the online gambling industry, estimated at 6 billion dollars per year in the U.S.

In theory, there is a gap of time (270 days) during which the banks and other financial providers have to become compliant with the law. In actuality, the casinos (especially the publicly traded ones) have jumped this gun and started banning U.S. players outright. And the ones that have started the banning are not the small-fry casinos either - among those that have banned (that I know of as of 7:00 Monday morning!) are Partygaming, 888.com, William Hill, and Intercasino. I have not kept up on the news, as I am disconnected from the network as I write this, but would not be surprised to see that all of my casino / poker options have been closed to me by the time I get home today. I think my only possible action is to try to play out the end of my Party bonus ($100, 5x, and I'm about 30% through it) before the President's pen actually signs it into law.

There is some speculation that the reasoning behind this bill is to "prove" that you cannot ban something as large as this - that it will fail much like Prohibition in the 1920s, and once it has deemed to have failed, to regulate and tax it. I think this is VERY optimistic thinking - I personally do think that the ban will fail much like prohibition, but don't know that the situation will shake out in exactly that way. Regardless, it would take many years to get to that point.

The reasoning for the bill is to protect us from the evils of gambling. Senator Bill Frist had this to say

"Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the fabric of society," Dr Frist said. "The bottom line is simple: internet gambling is illegal. Although we can't monitor every online gambler or regulate offshore gambling, we can police the financial institutions that disregard our laws."

This is, to be quite frank, pure bullshit. If that were the case, there would not be exceptions in the bill for online betting on horses, lotteries, and fantasy football. The bill is pure hypocrisy - a combination of election year politics and the inability to tax the stream of money that is produced.

If you haven't guessed, I am highly offended that the government can control what I do with my own disposable income and in my own free time.

Land of the free indeed.

I will likely see what the damage is over this next week, tidy up for a last bankroll update, and check out. I hate to complain, as I am over $4,000 richer than whan I started, but am totally disgusted at my government right now.

More random stuff

Yes, it is time for yet another post of stuff that is too-small-for-a-post-of-its-own.

As you can see by the right column, my blackjack earnings from the last two months of sporadic play are approaching my poker winnings from the last 7 months of steady play. Craziness. I'm running at about $500 more than my "expected" profit to this point, but I'm not going to complain. Even more craziness - I've put over $35,000 in action to get that profit. It sure doesn't feel like it, but I suppose betting $1-$3 every 8 seconds or so adds up quickly. :-) On the positive side, I'd estimate I've only spent 40-50 hours overall at this, so am earning somewhere in excess of $40-50/hr doing it. Certainly an hourly rate I can't approach playing $0.50/$1.00 limit hold'em, even with bonuses......

I have decided to take a challenge (inspired by a 2+2 post) to see if I am ready to move up a level to $1/$2 (or higher). It lays out like this:

1) Pick the level you will start out at, and carve 80 BB out of your bankroll to dedicate to it.

$160, and start at $1/$2

2) Double this bankroll to 160 BB

$320

3) Take half of this bankroll to the new level

take $160 profit and go to $2/$4

4) Double this bankroll to 80 BB

$320

5) Take half of this bankroll to the new level

take $160 profit and go to $3/$6

6) Double this bankroll

$320

7) Take 15 BB for the next level and play for 3 hours or until it is gone, going up whenever you have 15 BB for the next level.

take $170 profit, and take the remaining $150 and take a shot at $5/$10.

Even if you lose the last $170, you've made a profit of $490 taking the challenge. And if you bust out of any level greater than the first, you've assured yourself some profit. I will also probably attempt this while under a 5x bonus, to further limit the risk.

I'm going to play a single table of $1/$2 full ring to see if I can start this challenge out on the right foot.

As it turns out, I started it just today, and have already had KK UTG run into 44 from a 52%/0% fish who cold called me UTG+1 on (of course) a J94 flop that took a whack out of my intial stack. Also had AA cracked by the all powerful 75o. Hopefully things look up - I'm down over $30 in 60 hands! :-)

3) I played $3/$6 live at Casino Windsor again. The table was unbelievably fishy (in fact, poker1eh stayed LONG after I left to extract some of the value there) but couldn't hit a flop all night and finished down about 7 BB. No big deal. Most of it wound up in poker1eh's pocket as he won two big pots with his AK vs my KK on an Axx flop, and his KQs vs my AKs on a Q-high board. That last hand actually had 5 people in for 3 bets apiece preflop ($45 preflop!!!!), and so was a painful one to lose.

4) Will Hill closed up shop to U.S. players earlier this week. That was painful - that was one of the few monthlies left. I never did get to do their monthly, but I did hit up their initial bonus pretty well - deposited 50 GBP and cashed out for 243 GBP, about a $366 profit. Schweet. I really hope that this casino closure does not foretell the "beginning of the end" for us Stateside players.

Well, that's it. Back to the tables......

6-max

Yes, after hearing about how soft the shorthanded games are and with some prodding from my "coach" I finally decided to stick my pinky toe in the scary waters of 6-max. I had never tried it before due to the fact that my blind defense has always been a weak part of my game, and I thought 6-max was chock full of aggressive players always trying to steal your blinds and making it 3 bets before the flop with air.

Boy was I wrong.

Or, rather, yes there are those people but they are far outnumbered by the fish. And by fish I mean someone like 60% VPIP, 4% PFR, 0.30 AF. When you can count on 2 or 3 of those people at your table (half the players!) you can see why the games might be considered soft. With a bit of good table selection and the diligence to stand up from a table when it is readily apparent I am in the wrong seat (maniac players to my left) I have managed to clip right along at a rate of nearly 5 BB/100 for the 2500 hands I have played. I realize this is very, very short term, but is certainly a good indication of the softness of the games. Chart:


You certainly can't bring your normal full-ring game to the 6-max table, or you will get eaten alive by the blinds. The funny thing about 6-max (to me) is so far I see people either playing way too tight (VPIP 8%) or way too loose (VPIP 50%+ including some in the 80-90% range!) with very few people "in the middle" where the sweet spot is. How do my playing statistics compare? At comparable money levels:

Full ring: 15.8% VPIP, 7.6% PFR, 1.99 AF
6-max: 22.3% VPIP, 13.1% PFR, 2.49 AF

So, as you would expect, more opened up pre-flop and more aggressive post-flop. Amazing that I am raising almost as many hands at 6-max as I am playing in full ring.

I have now split up my bankroll update between full ring and 6-max to separate the two - see the right column for the results.

Believe it or not, I may actually go after a BJ bonus next, even with as much fun as I'm having with 6-max. Don't try to figure me out......

Risk of Ruin, again

This should be a quick post. I actually had my first Blackjack bonus where I finished in the red - I cleared the $100 Party August reload at PartyCasino and cashed out $11 poorer than I started.

This is not that big a deal, but I only bring it up to clarify one of my points in a previous post. As it turns out, I was down more than $200 at one point clearing this bonus and thus if it was the "standard" bonus I have been talking about in previous posts, I would have gone bust. This actually serves to illustrate why I said before my model underestimates the chance of going bust - my model doesn't take into account that you could have gone bust "on your way" to a non-bust result, as what happened here.

If we use the numbers on wizardofodds.com done from actual simulations, you come up with different numbers:

$1 betting - My RoR: 0.1%, WoO RoR: 0.1% (this is a good check - for very small bets the model should match)
$2 betting - My RoR: 1.0%, WoO RoR: 2%
$3 betting - My RoR: 3.0%, WoO RoR: 5%
$4 betting - My RoR: 5.1%, WoO RoR: 10%
$5 betting - My RoR: 7.2%, WoO RoR: 14%
$10 betting - My RoR: 15.1%, WoO RoR: 30%
$25 betting - My RoR: 25.7%, WoO RoR: 50%

For the larger bets, the RoR is about double my model which (coincidentally) was about that I was thinking it would be. Nice to know my math intuition hasn't gotten that rusty. If I can find the actual formula to produce these numbers, I may update it in my spreadsheet, as I use that spreadsheet to choose how much I'm going to bet for a particular bonus.

That is all - this and a bankroll update on the right. Told you it would be short.......