Olmpic Women's Curling - egg on my face

Boy was I way off base on that comment a couple of posts ago. There are Asian hotties curling. China takes the bronze medal. You go girls! Since my Swedish gals let me down I will be checking you out in four years when the next winter Olympics are on.

The counter on Operation First at the table is now 39. It's just simply not possible to be the first at the table. Playing these 39 tables, not only is there a rush to sit at the table, but pervesly my erstwhile opponents rush to time out and sit out the first hand.

Now, let's review the table of the week. PokerStars has a long history of sorry attempts at making it look like you are playing against real people. Me and my crack team of non Hold 'em players (me, the dog, Jarah, the dead squirrell in the bakyard, the girl that sold me Scout cookies, the gnomes that repaired my shoes while I slept, Bubbles the Clown and Ric Flair) have stumbled across that playing a game other than Hold 'Em is a wild Tom Cruise crazy free for all.

OK, we didn;t stumble on it. I'm purposefully looking for trouble. And I get it.

That's a 25k buy in table. My Spanish is a little rusty, but I know "Como esta usted" means "How are you." And I know "Juego" is "game." So I'm pretty sure that this translates to "How do you play this game?"

Jackwipe dochebag, youu went through the long process of registering on to PokerFrauds, played enough to amass at least 25k chips and apparently had a minor stroke and registered into a game that you don't know the rules.

Bullshit. You're AI with an infinite chip stack directly connected to the server only playing to make my life miserable. It's not working. I'm not going away.

2010 Women's Olympic Curling

Upon further review curling doesn't make any sense to me. And not for the reasons that you might be thinking.

It's a finesse game. Brute power doesn't mean a whole lot. So what doesn't make sense is - why do I love it so much?

There's no Asian hotties, it's Nordic hotties. Before Jarah took control of my life I had a thing for tall muscular blondes and one of my proudest treasures is an autographed picture of the 2006 Swedish women's curling team. Thank you again, Ulla.

So this got me thinking about poker and the need for finnese vs. the need for muscle.

Despite recent changings in the program, PokerStars betting continues to be about the muscle. Very rarely does a hand ever get slow played. I've got the chip lead and dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a poker player! I'm going to bet it! And to top it all off, it works way too frigging often since the rigged cards force the real human to play short stacked.

So, I'm the US team playing against Canada, and the only chance of success I have is to play short stacked, realize I'm hopelessly outmatched and score that big double hit on the last stone that might make me the winner. Never despite the lack of real skill in your opponents or the fact that you know what you are doing are you allowed to cruise to an easy victory every once in awhile. And as much as I have played, that should happen every once in awhile. 200k+ hands. Thousands of tables.

The last couple of years in review of rigged poker

Let's recount the things that don't make any sense from the standpoint of "outside the cards." People can rail on the bad beats to no end, but the real clues are mostlyoutside the cards.

Operation First at the Table continues to be a winner. It is simply impossible to be at a PokerStars sit and go game where you are the first at the table. AI doesn't have to click on "OK."

We've had blackjack players hitting on a hard 19 and drawing a 2 when stackwise they shouldn't be desperate. And on both of those I've seen there was a subsequent post joking about how lucky they were. The translation - I can manipulate the cards and/or know what the outcome is going to be.

We had the weeklong period where PokerStars registered innocuous players like crazy - david42, sam1013, tina004, etc.... Probably not a coincidence that this was right before the big 25th billion hand celebration.

We have a host of people with low self-esteem that have decided to name themselves something like "Pustule" instead of something that meant a little more personal to themselves.

We have positions on PokerStars that register for a tournament, even a pretty big buy-in, and sit out the whole game.

Even including tonight's game I played, PokerStars still just can't be consistent on what to do with their time bank.

They're are players that can raise impossibly faster than a real human could do.

This has dried up recently, but there used to be a lot of positions saying, "I have to go." Instead of the proper etiquette of sitting out, they would universally go all in. And it would work. Consistent with knowing the outcome of the hand.

There have been insane chatfests about loser boyfriends and similar nonsense. Exactly why did you choose a poker room to talk about this instead of Facebook?

Absolute consistently uses the phrase "hun" instead of "hon" or "honey" in chat. And no other site has ever done it.

UltimateBet has created screen names that were a parody of my name in seconds, when it should take several minutes to go through the process of registering.

Race tables have way too many chips for the losers to support without there being some obvious "I don't care about my chip stack" activity.

The caution tape on this Asian babe says it all. Play internet poker at your own risk. Yes, these are free money games I investigate. But it's impossible to prove that they can't do this to you on the real money games. Me and the dog are convinced.

PokerStars 40 billionth hand

Of which 278 were actually played by real living people.

It wasn't that long ago that they proudly announced the 25th billion hand. A year maybe?

The same way Scientology makes these ludicrous claims that they have 11 million members (including Tom Cruise!) internet poker, in general, and PokerStars in particular, continues to make these ludicrous membership claims.

I have now played 33 tables on Operation First at the table and I haven't even gotten close to being the first. It's not like you get a certificate of registering speed expert. There's no benefit to being the first at the game. And now (fairly sure thanks to me) the play is so unXenuistically slow.

So, get where I'm coming at here - you rush to be the first at the table so you can

time out.

Evelyn Lin thinks something suspicious is going on here. My crack team of trying to sit at the table first (me and the dog) think there's something suspicious going on here. Nicole Kidman thinks there's something suspicious going on here. My placing in the money on 7 or so consecutive tourneys is suspicious. Friday night - 172k. Monday night 360k.

I am not that good. (At poker.) I am that good at understanding the system and folding far more often than a fun "free money game" should warrant.

Poker and math

Sean(sp?), this is for you.

I bumped into a strong poker player at the building that I work at today. Since we both had to act gainfully employed the conversation was cut shorter than I would have like it to be. So I will post here, hope you read it and understand exactly what you are up against.

We talked about math. As an accountant with a math teacher for a father poker is a natural attraction. And internet poker attracts me because the math just simply does not work, I'm an annoying pissant with ruffled feathers and other than Scientology there is nothing I've spent significant time on that makes me cock an eyebrow and say, "how the hell do real people fall for this nonsense?

He made a comment about playing real money games on Full Tilt, understanding that when the lobby screen shows 30,000 players there are actually probably less. Well, your quote was 22,000. My guess is something more like 2,000.

Sean, keep in mind that they present these games as populated by 30,000 real people and that you agree with me that the free money play is not fair and square. What is there to stop them from dropping some bots on your real money games? Even if you finish third when your skill should have made you first, they have an advantage. I've already convinced at least 9 strong poker players to give up playing for real money. One is in your position where for now they are winning real money, but I have aroused their suspicions. If you continue to play for real money, for God's sake don't get sucked into anything more than the low buy in games you've been playing. It will keep you under the radar. If you take the attitude of knowing what you are doing so much and trusting internet poker, I promise you that you will get gutted like a fish.

Like I said Sean, there is a TON of good math not working out stuff here. I don't expect you to read over 500 posts in more than two years to actually see it all. My last warning is that not only does the AI have a huge math edge from nonrandomness that they can, will and do pop in a database administrator who can toggle cheat mode, fix the cards (often to the benefit of the real human to try and suck you in, more often just to get their jollies.)

Remember I showed you the printout of that Full Tilt hand (posted here) with the AA, KK, QQ, JJ all in hands. This is a once in a severasl lifetime experience that simply should not be without manipulation. Go to Atlantic City or invite me over for a game. You won't get screwed over.

Jarah Mariano plays rigged poker

Because she and my crack team (me and the dog) of playing on rigged internet poker tables loves how cute she is.

Vote on the poll, win a t-shirt and 2 quarts of oil.

Poker Fraud - the survey

The poll is up!

Tell us what you think. 12 players (no AI included) will win a free BigLaydown T-shirt. Fortunately for our limited budget since it's all AI we have nothing to lose.

Rigged internet poker

After more than nine years of research I've come to this conclusion. Rigged internet sites - 5,362. Poker sites on the up and up - ummmm zero.

Playing internet poker is something like bashing your head against a wall. It only feels better when it stops. There's tons of cheating at internet poker. There's rampant internet poker fraud. There's lots of calling directory assistance for numbers that you could easily look up on your own.

Now think about this - I have dedicated more than nine years of my life at this. Internet poker bad beats are not just common, they are a given. Read the MASSIVE amount of evidence here, make you're own decision and tell all the poker pros that support a site to go place a flagpole in their anus.

Just a tad inconsistent, aren't we?

An hour and a half at a 25k buy in limit stud hi low game. And not a single preflop raise.

Playing free money poker for over nine years I've come to expect the inevitable raise, re-raise nonsense.

I guess they got tired of feeding me all the lovely screenshots.

Make sure to vote in the poll.

Remaining unpredictable/jokes

I have had quite a nice run lately and I'm back at the point where I can comfortably sit at almost any table I want to. So it's time to take a break and enter into a game I know I surely will have no success in. Not because I'm a chump and don't know the math. It's a freeroll 8000 player game where only the top 64 get the prize - advance to the money round.

My oh my. This has never happened before. 5 positions on the first table played like turtles on Valium. Becky Palmer was the only one that generated anything resembling real human life. The problem with the Becker is that despite nobody responding to her witty comments like "lol", she kept at it. Time to try and take the torch and win where she failed.

In addition to my superhuman powers of observation and patience, I have also been cursed with a warped sense of humor. Love or hate the jokes, just like "My bike is red." they should elicit a response from a group of "people" sitting at a poker table. But, being unpredictable and sitting at a game PokerStars wasn't prepared for, I guess they missed putting a real human cornerback on the wide receiver.

"Dam river" (you can't say damn it wil be ****ed out) met my response about hydroelectric power. Not a peep from anyone, including Becker. I was moved to a another table. For Noemi's benefit I post something about despite all the nominations there is still Noemi.

Me and my crack team of jokers (me, the dog and Jarah) thought both of those were pretty funny and worthy of at least one "lol" between the two of them. After a huge giggle fit (enhanced by my toe tickling) Jarah donned her scarf and scarfed down some Ben and Jerry's. We played Twister after that. The dog won, but I swear he cheated.

Everything's coming up Xenu

First of all, I have a new Asian hottie to focus on. I've seen China Strike Force three times now. Not only is Norika Fujiwara a total hottie, she can kick your ass to kingdom come. Jarah's been pouting about my adoration, but with enough Ben and Jerry's, she will get over it.

Operation First at the Table is now up to six tables where I was not the first to sit at the table. As a special bonus, tonight's 10k buy in game the table was full, other than me, before I even got the option to click on "OK" and sit at the table.

The game play was typical. Ridiculous. And for my three fans out there - I did take second place, so Operation First at the Table now has 271k to be annoying with. Autographs will be signed at the mall this weekend.

Operation First at the Table

PokerStars sit and go games are an epic failure in regards to demonstrating real human activity. The betting is consistently like that of a spoiled, petulant rich kid who always gets what he wants. Doesn't matter if he loses. Dad will just write him a check. The friendly chat from 7 years ago is gone. Now that the base of players is filled with so few real people (because, yes - internet poker peaked years ago and is now on the decline, despite PokerStars fronting these amazing numbers of "biggest online tourney ever and lobby screens with 250k+ players) that real people aren't posting chat, including "Wow that was bogus!" And there's no need for the admins to chat on an all AI table. Tonight's one and only game was 7-2 lowball which included the following mistakes:

1) First hand winner two pair Ks and Qs, and someone called it and mucked their cards. That's something you don't see every day.

2) Same first hand winner was big blind on four consecutive hands. The original interface was programmed by the ancient Egyptians (the historical record is not completely clear on this, but Steven Wright assures us that is was a guy named "Eddie" and despite numerous updates to be installed and improve the software there is still a major bug out there.

3) First hand winner after playing several hands apparently still has no clue that it's low and raises all in on another two pair. There must have been a lunch somewhere.

4) After it becomes established that I'm not into buying into the reality (or lack thereof) of what is going on, it's down to four positions. Two active including an insurmountable chip leader, me and two sitters. The chip leader magnanimously folds as do I and we eliminate the sitters. Am I being tested about concern for chips? I showed it here, but in reality, no. I'll take second place, start another game or fart around here.

But I do have a suggestion for PokerStars. If you want to make it look for real, admit human nature, the laws of probability, dig up Eddie and tweak the program for registered players sitting at the table.

I've already played hundreds of sit and go tables since my return almost two years ago. I doubt any one of those I was ever the first to sit at the table when the game finally started. Now, it's been several weeks since my "outside the box investigative mind" has noticed that I never sit first has raised my Vulcan eyebrow. Not logical.

So, Operation First at the Table is on. Statiscally and probabilty-wise let's assume I sit at a sit and go table that averages 7 players. Therefore, statiscally, especially since I'm actively trying to click the "OK" button ASAP I should be first once every seven times. I have over 250k chips and I can buy into over 125 2k buy in games. Even if I lose it all, I will have 125 chances to be the first to sit at the table.

Now that I'm paying attention to this the trusty pad of paper will be recording exactly how many times I'm not the first. Since AI connected directly to the server trumps the minimum of a fraction of a second that a human (actively trying) can do I expect this number to be somewhere between zero and zero. With zero being the most likely outcome and zero being the second most likely outcome.

Poker pros - don't take my word for it. Take a break out of your busy lives and you try and do it. This ranks in unbelievability of the rash of innocuos names like "David113" and "George34" names that appeared on the medium buy in tables where they would reg - unreg seconds later, reg back in and unreg posted here a few months back.

My crack team of weirdness revealing experts (me, the dog, the Asian hottie pictured here and the still living members of the Monty Python troupe) think this is a sill walk down into wasting your time and money lane.

Is there a lunch or something you have to be at?

The traditional PokerStars sit and go is where you sit idly by and watch two positions establish themselves as the experts. The vacuums. If you are patient enough you can sneak in under the radar and take the last place in the prize money.

There might be a new sheriff in town that hates patience. So let's seal the deal on the first hand.

Bear in mind real human nature while you ponder this. Poker is a competitve game. If you're going to go to the trouble of creating an account and getting enough chips to sit at a 2k table you might want to think about what cards you have, the game you are playing and do a little math.

Or, you could just go all in on the first hand and let fate take its course.

Fate, with its supreme sense of irony has allowed two mathematical idiots (that just happened to be at my table) the joy of splitting the pot on a crappy winner instead of a killer hand while three others with worse crap were stupid enough to call it.

There must be some AI buffet that they are just dying to get to.

Thinking outside the box

The casual player doesn't get to see 1/1,000,000,000 of the garbage I have to put up with. Login, play one table, service the wife, eat dinner, service the wife again, feed the dog, pee, take the dog for a walk, try to service the wife when she complains about a migraine, pee, watch football, watch Burn Notice, clean up the dog puke, make a long run on sentence, take a shower and go to bed thinking that they played against some real humans at poker.

I remember the magical days nine years ago when I first cut my teeth on PokerStars and latched on to Omaha Hi-Lo. For a couple of months I thought how cool it was (even though I never had any intention of breaking out my wallet) and JennieSue was so fun and friendly.

But, having already entered the field as a strong poker player and suspicious my logical and observant mind exploded into an enormous amount of thinking- "WTF?"

I redesigned my game to not worry about my own chips to investigating what people out there are doing with their chips. That's when I found out that internet poker hated me and that more often than not the play was designed to make me lose instead of playing to win.

Since I am insanely competitive this had the adverse effect. Bring it on. Chips are a necessary evil, I will start over at the minimum 1k and play your crazy all AI filled tables. Maybe twice a week I sit at a game where I get to say to myself, "That wasn't too bad."

The thousands of players multi table tourneys have always proven to be a big waste of time and energy. So the 1 table sit and go games are nice. Login, resgister for the table, service the blow-up doll, feed the dog, pee, service the blow-updoll again, and get dealt some non-random cards and deal with the fallout.

OK, so where the hell are you going with this other than proclaiming you are a Mountain Dew slamming nerd that has nothing better to do with your life than play Warcraft and internet poker.

90% of my time on internet poker is about looking for things that don't make sense. The huge amount of screenshots posted these past several years are suspicious at the minimum.And drawing on a hard 19 and getting a 2 on blackjack - come on, who are you kidding?

So outside thew cars (the box) my superhuman powers of perception have noticed this. Hundreds of sit and go games on Pokerstars, I've NEVER been the first to click "OK" and sit at the table. Try it. I have actively tried the past few weeks and it just cannot happen. AI directly connected to a server ALWAYS gets there first.

Old McDonald had a farm AI AI O.

No credibilty for this site until I actively try to sit first and make it.

Why do I bother?

The guy that sells me beer asked me again tonight - why do I play?

Well, it's because I am a genuine expert. Not at poker. Any player that's ever made it to the final table on ESPN would have a field day with me. But, if you assume average talent and random cards I should do pretty well.

The most perplexifical (real word) thing to me is why they just don't ban me. My expertise is in the realm of poker detective. And with so much experience I've learned how to identify the most unreasonable tab;es out there. And so when lack of chips is not a major issue I hunt them down and win or lose wait for the great damnating screenshot. (Like in the previous post.)

I only had time for one sitter tonight, and no screenshot will ever prove my post. Anybody out there like beer selling guy should also be aware of another warning sign that rears it's uglcious (real word) head every once in awhile like it did for me tonight.

The InstaRaise.

When it's your turn on the action some buttons pop up- Check, Raise, Fold. Just like good ole NLOP there are times when a real human could not possibly process the mouse movements necessary to raise within a fraction of a second, yet there it is. Time for the real human to fold. Thanks for the warning.

The Lost in Space robot says danger.
Spidey's Spidersense says danger.
The Girl Scouts showing up at my door trying to sell me cookies say danger.
Jarah's lawyers say danger.
David Miscavige says danger.
The entire country of Yemen says danger. (Now stop it with the emails, OK?)
The half used stick of butter oxidizing in my fridge even made a sound something like "dainher" and might be on to what it's going on.

And not surprisingly my sense of dainher (not a real word, yet, but the butter has written a nice email to Wikipedia to discuss it) allowed me to finish in the money when there was clearly a lot of Goober and Raisanette don't care about playing seriously activity going on.

My crack team of poker chat experts (me, the dog and the butter) also remind me that I must mention that the response to the "My bike is red" test was an epic fail. The correct response is "WTF?" (Hint hint.)

Thank you for Razz Sit and Go tables

Firstish, tonight's fun started with the ever popular 7-2 lowball 10k buy in table where some fartbomb CALLS an all in bet with a high hand. I'm well aware of the system. Establish two positions as experts that get to be in on every hand, including liberal doses of insanical (real word) raising. Real human short stacked and bored gets to be part of the database padded 250k players claimed on the main menu. My what fun.As I have been known to do in the past, my superhuman power of patience allowed me to take first. That surprised me since I hadn'tplaced in the money since last weekend.

The same system plays out on every weird non- Hold'em game a real human sits on. Including the newly offered Razz. Now, this is only a 2k buy in game. But, if your entertainment is to raise every chance you get and notplay seriously, you would still have to go through the annoying process of requesting a fresh 1000 chips, build yourself up enough to play at a 2k table...

...to find out that you have absolutely no fucking clue what the game is you are playing. This donkey is obviously outmatched on the first hand. And since it's fixed stud instead of a no limit game we get to see that he's not just clueless forone draw, but keeps betting like he can bluff everyone out.

Nice trade.Way to play to make me lose instead of playing to win.

Me and my crack team of free money chip experts (me, the dog and the Asian porn star of the day) suggest again. You might have a better chance of pulling off the scam if you only had enough tables and games available that could reasonably be populated by a couple real people. Or, heaven forbid, a table with all real people would be really sweet.

Make upyour mind

Make up your L. Ron Hubbard addled brains on strategy.I've done this before. What's wrong with this picture? (And I'm definitely NOT talking about the hot Asian porn star picture.)

You can play for weeks or months and the entire online poker community. Allegedly more than 200k a night alone on PokerStars, where the way you are supposed to play to be successful is to raise every single chance you are allowed to by the rules. Yet now we have switched to calling only, and (gasp!) someone other than me actually folding a hand.

And I don't want to hear any whining about how this was a 25k buy-in table and the quality of play is better, because it's not. Remember, in recent history I went from 1.3 million down to nothing on these high quality tables- to prove my point.

Internet poker can't multi-task. They can't do the three basic things needed for it to look for real. If a pro sits at a table and the cards aren't random, they'd call "bullshit." That's how I was eliminated tonight. If a poker pro sits at a table where some dingleberry is raising every hand and it works, they would call "bullshit." If a poker pro sits at a table and plays for 2 hours and there's absolutely no chat they at least raise an eyebrow if not making the official "bullshit" light bulb appearing. Other than some standard "gl all" type innocuos nonsense this table had only the ever annoying and generous "nh" and "ty" crap that can easily be programmed into a game that relies on the real human losing based on impossibly bad cards.

So far this year, playing dozens of tables on PokerStars and Full Tilt I've only had the sense that I'm playing against real people on something like three of them.

So remember, with me- it's not the chips. It's the play. You want me to go away? Populate every table I sat at with real people.So far in 2010 you've been an epic fail.