Tougher Online Poker? Growth Drops to Historic Lows

For a while now many in the online poker universe have been claiming games are getting tighter, tougher and less lucrative. For the first time the numbers are backing that up significantly. As the global recession has started to bite, increased regulation in Italy, China and the USA have started to attack poker sites performance Poker scout reports a critical drop in the pace of growth.

Legal U.S. Online Gambling and Other Fish Tales: APCW Perspectives Weekly for April 30th, 2010

Well it's been a slow news week in the poker gossip world so I'll bring you this week's episode of Perspectives Weekly on the front page. They cover off the issues facing the online gaming industry at present including the legal situation in the USA and what the future might hold.

You can catch all the back catalogue of perspectives weekly articles in our links page where we permanently feature their episode player as a proud supporter of their campaign. Better deals for gambling players, affiliates and the industry as a whole.

Real Deal Poker - A Scam That Tells the Rigtards What they Want to Hear? or the Solution to Rigged Online Poker...

This is a contributed 'view' column and is not Poker News.

A lot of gamblers are paranoid. It's only human nature to think we ought to win at games. Especially when there's skill involved. We're more skilful than the rest right? Online Poker must be rigged if we're losing... right? surely? It's the rigged random number generator catching up with us again. If only there was some kind of Real Deal going on! Well that's the exact paranoia that Real Deal Poker appears to be targeting with their upcoming launch.

YouTube hosts this video which is a recording of their launch presentation. I've included it for completeness and fairness - you guys can of course make your own minds up about these things.

Australian Poker Advertising Boom to Start?

New blood, new markets new fish and easier poker games. These are the Holy Grail to Online Poker Rooms like Full Tilt Poker. There are many areas left to target and in areas where gaming advertising is technically not allowed Full Tilt and PokerStars are the masters.

They use their '.net' play for free/playmoney sites to advertise to players. Of course many of these end up addicted and playing on the .com real money sites (some probably just assume it's .com and rock right up there first!).

Australia is now hot for the attack as Full Tilt is looking for a longer term deal with Rubgy League as reported in the Morning Herald.

The reason promoting only the "practice" site is crucial, says a lawyer who specialises in the field, is that it allows the sponsor, the NRL and the clubs that endorse it to argue they are doing nothing illegal.
Source: D Lane, Sydney Morning Herald

Hopefully this will be the first step in the breaking down of another barrier to international gaming and advertising and bring more liquidity to the game we love.

Military: Free Supernova VIP Status on PokerStars?

An interesting discussion has broken out on 2+2 where a number of posters are backing either VIP upgrades or 'automatic qualification' periods for soldiers who are out on deployment under the PokerStars VIP scheme.

For those of you guys who don't know, PokerStars runs a VIP scheme where players must put in high levels of volume in order to start picking up rewards. If you miss out one month and don't achieve enough you get dropped back to the beginning and don't receive any rewards (discount on the rake you pay).

Naturally deployed soldiers will suffer greatly from this. One minute they are at home grinding a ton of hands and close to making top VIP status then the orders come in and they are preparing to ship out. All that hard work grinding towards SuperNova status can be wasted.

It's definitely something I'd support given the sacrifices the men and women who sign up to defend the many countries represented in the PokerStars player community make. However it seems unlikely it will be honoured by the site that puts so many hoops in the way of getting good VIP rewards in the first place!

A good short term solution for American soldiers for example who are looking to get decent rewards without any risk of losing out whilst on duty would be to sign up with a room that offers top level VIP rewards. At This Poker Week we currently recommend Merge Network's 30% Rakeback on Black Chip Poker. If you sign up through our link you get VIP payments and bonus all on top of rakeback (not deducted!). No need to qualify for rewards, no need to worry about downgrades while your away. Most people think the games are easier too!

You can try the software for free as we run a freeroll every 4 hours where $50 is up for grabs and no deposit is required!

Video: 100 Tabling Double or Nothing (DoN) Sit and Go's (SNG's) on Pokerstars - Ridiculous?

I started today looking for a story about online Bots and poker as someone had been discussing this with me recently and I found this thread on the popular Two Plus Two forums where a guy playing 80 tables of $1 double or nothing sit and go's is accused of being a bot.

At first I thought he must be then I found the video featured here. It shows a guy playing over 100 tables of double or nothing sit and go's on PokerStars.

...it get's pretty ridiculous

gnumsploitz: 100 tabling player

This to me is something that's just outright ridiculous. For one having tons of players playing too many tables takes away from the enjoyment of others. For two the ridiculous style whilst not 'profitable' in the long run is probably close enough to breakeven that it increases the 'rake trap' effect of playing these for recreational players.

So many recreational players are put off by the extreme slow playing of even the 16 tabling regulars at the $200NL 6-max level that I feel this should be tackled let alone allowing someone to fire up such a ludicrous number of tables.

New iPoker Software Update - Tables Now Look Great!

A lot of you have been asking what the new iPoker and Betmost software looks like. The honest answer is that this is one of the best upgrades in recent memory. None of the usual mistakes, slowdowns or crashes. On top of that it looks great! Photos and review below.

Microgaming Stoop Even Lower and Start Legal Moves Over Microgamingscandal.com

For a long time now we've been following the Microgaming Scandal on the popular Two Plus Two forums. One member there who reportedly lost a substantial sum during the collapse of Tusk which Microgaming has publicly washed it's hands of (see the APCW show in our previous post) is trying to keep the public informed. He made the MicrogamingScandal.Com which currently points to the relevant story on 2+2.

Well shockingly rather than engage in sensible discussion with the likes of the APCW or other representatives of the poker community, Microgaming have chosen to attack one of the victims of their allegedly slack network management that allowed Tusk and Eurolinx to allegedly operate without sufficient licenses and without appropriate player protection.

I've received a cease and desist regarding microgamingscandal.com. Can anyone help me out with this, or should I seek the advice of a lawyer?
skier_5 (on 2+2)

Now I'm not going to rehash an old story by going over everything in detail but I feel like their stance on the APCW report that they are just a software provider is unacceptable. As many of us know who have played on the network in the past, Microgaming security preside over decisions on refunds in network error situations, collusion, cheating etc. Yet when big money is involved and one of their skins is cheating they expect to be able to just turn away and players to not feel cheated and confused? Come on.

Players need to feel safe and secure to keep the flow of fish into our games and keep poker healthy. Networks making it easy for anyone who feels like it to open a poker room and not carrying out sufficient checks isn't something that's ever going to help. There's plenty of good safe poker rooms out there on networks that take security very seriously and don't seek to turn away when things go wrong.

Cake Joins Full Tilt Attacks Shortstackers

Cake Poker has announced that on their network now the minimum buy in for cash games will be 30 big blinds in No Limit Games. This is significant as Full Tilt had already made moves to encourage shortstack play only on the capped tables they spread.

The Cake network had been coming under pressure as major Skins (or members) of their network have announced moves or have already moved to Merge Gaming. This move is the first step of their fight back looking to appease the high volume and by definition high raking regulars and retain some of them in their games.

PokerStars have announced they are reviewing their response to shortstacking and the community eagerly awaits their response. Most commentators are suggesting we should hear something by the end of April.

The reason shortstackers are hated so much by full stacked players is simple. An easy to learn mathematical style can be applied to a 20 blind stack which exploits full stack regulars taking money from fish by playing a looser style versus the fish. It's nearly impossible to optimise play against the shortstackers and fish but it's most profitable for regulars to attack the fish (since they have more chips). Therefore the shortstackers exploit this and reduce profitability for everyone else with a simple and boring style which many feels take the 'poker' out of the game.

That said I had nothing against it while it was allowed by the sites but if fun and liquidity are being hurt by their play then naturally they will respond.

Scandal and Resignations Lead to Closure of Stoxpoker and Merge With CardRunners Brand

Another day and another turn in the StoxPoker Story. Cardrunners have decided to bin the brand and close Stox, merging members and instructors into their Cardrunners stable.

Whilst Cardrunners is the premium brand and in the long run this move will cost the members who stay on money the many members who had paid in advance - often for up to a year - who felt let down by the scandal, resignation and issues at Stox get a great deal out of this. For that reason I commend the management team for a strong decision to give the best value to their existing members in the face of a collapsed and hollow shell left under the Stox umbrella.

In lieu of the recent events, it has been decided that the StoxPoker website will be merged with CardRunners. This change will take full-effect on May 1st, 2010.

Alex Huang: Stoxpoker Brand Manager

The Timeline

January 11th: Dusty "Leatherass" Shmidt Leaves StoxPoker

In the first of a series of high profile resignations (already Beachjustice and James262 had quit in a more subdued fashion) Leatherass quit Stoxpoker. His close friend Mbolt1 joined him and a feeling of loss spread through the Stoxpoker community.

January 28th: Jason Ho Scandal Allegations Reach Their Peak

Shortly after the Leatherass departure and as many members of the training community were still feeling the loss of their lead coach allegations surfaced and refused to die that Jason Ho was a scam artist. He is eventually dismissed by Stox Poker.

Present Day

As the Stoxtrader allegations surfaced and we covered here it was becoming clear that a toxic management environment had formed at Stoxpoker. The allegations worsened and Stoxtrader himself resigned leading to the decision by Cardrunners management to merge the brands.

For those of you who prefer a laugh, I'll leave you with the Jason Ho Parody Video Camp Afghanistan (mocking his famous Camp Macau).

$500K For an Indian Poker 8 Year Old?

The rumour mill over at TwoPlusTwo forums and all over Google has been going crazy at the suggestion an 8 year old from India has won $500,000 at an as yet undisclosed poker site.

Not to be a sceptic but I think FloppyNutz over at 2+2 has it right when he says:-

Only in poker could u read news sites, & it's still 50-50 whether it's BS

I have no real idea how so many sites have broken this story as fact across the internet when there is no apparent source, detail etc. If only it was a few days later in the year and we'd know it was a steaming pile of April Foolery.

To be honest I almost hope it's not true as if the winner truly is very poor from a poor family that amount of money would be huge - the cruelty of having it withheld by the site pretty unimaginable.

Team Collin Moshman and SNG Variance

We mentioned in a previous entry that team Collin Moshman was now live and kicking for all you Sit and Go players out there. They offer apprentice positions as well as staking and coaching (on a no win no fee basis) which is pretty unique in the poker world and pretty exciting.

His team member Vandweller in his latest blog post discusses the graph shown on the right and points out that this man is a winning player who suffered a huge 100 bi downswing. When you see the rest of the graph and the discussion on the site it's a real eye opener about variance and Sit and Go Poker.

All you beginners out there struggling for now need to remember that over time even the best players and guys on the leaderboards on SharkScope will take a beating and it's just part of the game we need to fight through.

Self Denial and Poker

So many people play online poker these days and study all the available guides and think they somehow can just 'absorb' talent by magic from a few videos. Or they start to believe that just playing tight preflop gives them an instant right to be a winning player.

They then project this belief onto the tables around them. They see guys playing tight statistics on their Holdem Manager or whatever particular program they use to monitor such things and assume the games are tough - they can't beat them, the tables look tight, so online poker is dead. They start to believe that bad luck is to blame for their losses. They 'run bad' instead of losing because they play bad. Total self denial.

The truth is poker is like a job; it's a lot of hard work. It's not enough to learn some simple preflop rules and concepts and to understand that a continuation bet is profitable. If it were that simple to code a winning solution to poker there would be winning 'bots' all over the tables and millions of us wouldn't find it so fascinating.

There will be more psychology articles to come but for now i'll leave you with a great video I found on the internet about self denial in poker.

Where Can I Practice Real Money Poker for Free? (Freeroll Information)

What is a Poker Freeroll?

Poker sites need to advertise their software, promotions and poker rooms to the public. Most people want to see what a new room looks like and if they enjoy playing there before they want to make a deposit.

As we all know though, poker is a lot more fun when it's played for real money so poker rooms load up free money and let you try out their games.

What Freerolls Are Available?

There's quite a few freerolls out there but the best are the Sunday $100 freeroll available every single week on FasterMule. This week they are on Poker Time but you should head there now and check them out as there will be an exciting new room to try out for free every week.

FasterMule Poker Freerolls

Black Chip Poker (use our link to the right to get 30% rakeback and a $500 bonus if you decide to play there) have a $50 no deposit freeroll every 4 hours as well as an exciting first depositors freeroll.

New freerolls news, sites and poker information will be released here every week so be sure to bookmark us and check back.