The 14 Second Warning

From what time I've spent around teenage girls I understand that they have a quaint tradition of calling each other up and discussing what to wear the next day. For hot Asian chicks it's simple. Ria calls Fuji and they agree to have gorgeous black hair, almond shaped eyes, golden colored skin and their schoolgirl uniform. For others it's a bit more intense.

Jennifer(who only goes by Jenn) calls up Samantha(who only goes by Sam) and they agree to wear pink blouses. In turn the two of them call the rest of the gang - Tawn, Jada, Barb, Esty, etc... and the next day at school is infested with a gaggle of teen girls dressed in pink blouses.

We here at the Big Lay Down have a slightly different theory. Instead of phone calls we think Jeff Goldblum made it to the mother ship and downloaded the common dressing virus. Which is certainly as plausible as the behavior of the collective unconsciousness on PokerStars the past few months. Me and my crack team of acronyms made on the fly experts (me and the dog) call this CUMSHOTS. Cumulative Unconsciousness Makes Some Hugely Odd Tactical Stuff. (The dog wanted to use Strategies instead of Stuff, but was outvoted as tactics and strategies in the same sentence really don't make too much sense.)

Several months ago, the flavor of the day was that every single table you sat at had several positions sitting out. The "we care about you so much since we heard your complaints, but we aren't going to do anything about it" message was posted every single table registration. Eventually this dried up. But then the collective unconsciousness found a new outfit to wear. The games where you could not swing a dead cat without someone using all their time bank. And then sitting out. Flash forward to present day. Now, you can't swing an expended time bank in this town without hitting a table where multiple tables are hit with the 14 second warning.

Prompted by the ghost of Itty the Kid, apparently the ghost of George Carlin has been calling all the millions of "players" on PokerStars and making them wait until they have spent a bit of time pretending they're thinking before making their move. "14 seconds. Get your shit together!"

Give us a call when the outfit of the day is "Throw the game to the real human player."

In the meantime, just like the daily race tables and other unreasonable stuff, the 14 second warning is something I can duplicate every single day.

Hey dog - Batman pajamas tonight? OK. Let me call Rick.

The Winner of the Charlie Sheen Hand of March

Yes, it's natural that when an extreme shorstack goes all in there is a tendency to want to be the guy that finishes him off. All those extra points for the fatality and such. You've seen the crappy 3-5 offsuit you have. You've seen the 4,4,q flop. And only a miracle is going to make you the winner. And yet you call.

Call your meth supplier and tell him you get the Charlie Sheen "good beat" discount and take up knitting.

Somebody's Pissed Off

Got myself over 80k recently, and now I find myself in a huge drought. You may be trying to convince me that I'm not worthy. It'sd happened before. It's pretty obvious that PokerStars has switched to imposswible mode. And the first game tonight was a classic fail.

During the drought it's plain to see that my not random cards are sub par. It's OK if it happens two nights in a row, but things get a bit suspicious when it goes on for three weeks.

Annoying raiser makes a big bet. Finally having three kings in 5 draw high I call. Annoying raiser draws one and beats me with a 4s and 6s full house. Later the same spot two draws to a club flush to eliminate me. Why am I not surprised?

Let me tell you - this kind of nonsense really, really wants me to click on your link to donate aid to Japan. Or the sake. Me and the dog haven't decided which, yet.

In order to see the unreasonableness of Internet poker one must simply log in, find me and watch the bad movie unfold. At least until PokerStars next update which doesn't address any real problems but changes the way the AI plays.

Aid For Japan Poker Style

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for aid to Japan. And it's not just my own selfish dreams that an Ultraman movie might come out. (Note to self - watch Ultrman and pet big affectionate dog.)

In general, the world is going to shit. Billions of people don't know when their next meal or even a drink of water is coming from. Billions of people don't have the company of the best dog on the planet, because he's mine. Billions of people don't live in the US and haven't grown up with the luxury of freedom and democracy. Billions of people haven't had a great family.

These thoughts made me right a big check to a reputable charity for aid to the Japanese victims. I find it in very poor taste that poker sites that cheat on meaningless free money games offer a link to have us send money there.

But then again, if you're stupid enough to do it then you deserve to lose your money. Don't go to redcross.org but talk to that Nigerian prince. Buy the Eiffel Tower and some swampland in Florida. It's your life. If you can call playing for real money on Internet poker or donating through them living.

Charlie Sheen Marries the Corpse of Elizabeth Taylor in PokerStars Chapel

This was only natural. PokerStars Chapel has been up and running for a week with 0.3% of the proceeds being delivered to relief of Japanese earthquake and tsunami victims. As the typical marriages are only those with $300 and a beat up pair of shoes to their name it was time to court some high profile celebrities. For those not acquainted with math - 0.3% of millions is a lot more than 0.3% of $300 and a small shaving of the tongue flap on the shoe.

As my homage to Liz I settled into Cleopatra on cable. It's been ages since I've seen it. And that's when it struck me to Google looking for some sort of bizarre refernce that connects Charlie Sheen to Liz.

We here at the Big Lay Down found it, and despite my lawyers warnings it's about to get posted. You already know this involves a dead person, so cue up the scary music.

Da da da daaaaaaaa!

This match made in heaven/hell/defunct Hot N Now Outlets was predestined. Charlie is the King of Denial. As Cleopatra, Liz is Queen of de Nile.

And those that play Internet Poker, whether you attended the wedding or not, are in denial.

Look at that screenshot. This vaccuum bet $61. That's with a $1 at the end instead of an even multiple of ten.

It can't be done. When you're on the action there's a slider bar that only allows you to bet in even multiples of $10. Unless you're rigged AI and/or an admin. When playing IP there's always someone or something out there that can break the rules, naturally get great supposedly random cards and beat you to a pulp. And before you think I photoshopped the $ bet, look at the chip stack that shows the bet. There's no way anyone has the time and desire to be in the face of IP to work on that.

Maybe some day IP will settle down into being a fun interface. But they're just having too much fun cheating addicts out of their hard earned dollars.

PokerStars Charity Credibilty

I am a fund loving and joking kind of guy. Occasionally events in my life had me get in a bit of a tizzy. After my initial PokerStars Japan Fund reaction of, "You really must be kidding" I stewed for 24 hours. And the conclusion is - Dexter needs to kill you all.

If you want to look all kinds of philanthropic there's a much simpler way than getting your 3 billion pieces of AI to donate money to some fund the site has set up.

Duh, gifting.

I'll believe this Japan Fund is for reqal when I hear that Charlie Sheen and PokerStars have donated millions of dollars to the relief effort.

In the meantime PS- keep on cheatin'.

(I said meantime - that's funny. There's between a zero percent and zero percent chance that the news is going to present that PokerStars will be presented in the news as having made a donation.)

The PokerStars Japan Fund

As I am a comic I usually tend to not laugh at others jokes. Consider it to be an alpha dog kind of thing. Don't show any sign of weakness. WShen I saw PokerStars had the Japan Fund set up I petted the dog, delayed my game for the night and giggled like a 12 year old school girl.

Imade my donation of $300 to a reputable charity last week. And a site that is more than willing to cheat at free money games wants more. Sorry guys. You aren't the Red Cross. It's really difficult for me to expect that my cash is going to do what it's supposed to do.

The wheels started spinning and I wanted to make a great acronym for what I thought JAPAN FUND must stand for, but there's two "n"s in it that are tripping up me and my crack team of acronym experts (me and the dog.)

Just Another Pokerstars Annoying (insert n word here) the FU in fund is pretty easy. Another annoying "n" and wrap it up with a "d" for dangerous.

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A look ahead at the near future of PokerStars. They're already talking up the upcoming 100 billionth hand dealt, of which I've probably played about 200k. But they're only 60 billion played so far. This is going to require massive amounts of AI playing vs. AI, and we can only hope they do the same stupid bullshit they did on 50 billion - registering inncouos names like "david43", "chuck 17" etc...and having them register at my beloved unpopular games.

I will get the screenshots for you.

Tables Offered

Let us think for a second. When you think Internet poker probly (real word) PokerStars jumps first in your mind. Being interested in poker and watching whashows up on TV I think it's fair to say Full Tilt is #2. I've seen your hats/visors/shirts/$300 swimsuits. Or maybe that was the annual swimsuit issue of Sports Illustarted. Since poker is a sport me and my crack team of bikini experts do tend to get a bit confused.

Beforest (real word) I forget from pounding down my malt liquor and reminding Full Tilt of the monumental stupidity of your mere existence let me say this:

Charlie Sheen is a douchebag.

That felt good. But back to the point.

Allegedly pro site. Naturally caters to the chumps that are stupid enough to break out the checbook but still offers free money games. Maybe it's just me, but if I was weorking a global con I would make it a tad more realistic. Like not doing things like offering 1 million buy in hands on a table that cn't be populated by real humans.

Real human - 200k after countless hours. And I'm supposed to think that there are guys and gals good enoungh and willing to spend the time to even sit at a 1 millionn buy in gane?

Bull
Shit

Mr. Monk Plays Internet Poker

As a character in a popular television show it's only natural to realize that Adrian Monk is artificial intelligence. We here at The Big Lay Down have been suspicious about the success of this series, the billions of dollars of free money chips lining Tony Shaloub's pockets and his influence on the owner's of these sites. Once we stumbled upon the massive capital he has in pork belly ice cream futures there is no doubt in our mind.

Tony is meant to make us laugh, want to watch TV and not log in to Internet Poker and raise like a psycho nut. However, as an attempt at credibility, just like PokerStars current fondness for the collective unconsciousness to use massive amounts of time bank time - they have yet made another subtle mistake.

And don't make these mistakes at my table. I'm Monk on steroids. With a wipe follow up.

Now for those of you that don't know the series Monk is a police detective with a lot of emotional baggae He's scared of everything and obsessed with what he needs to do about the death of his wife, Trudy. But, since he's on the PokerStars executive board he can't help himself from making a few mistakes for other detectives, like me, so he can eat his ice cream and get his jollies at the clueless members of his (other than me) ice cream conglomerate.

In Mr. Monk joins a cult he gets totally brainwashed within 5 days. Natalie, Randy and Stottlewyre kidnap him and throw him in the car, take him to some sparsely furnished home to deprogram. Adrian's psychitriast, a rock of sanity in his messed up life tells Stottlemyre to take off his watch to keep Adrian disoriented. As Leland (Stotty's first name) bursts into the room we see a single furnishing on the elstwise barren walls. A clock. Purposeful joke or continuity error? Doesn't matter. I'm still conscious and saw it.

OK, let me guess this right. I'm a real human with enough skill to have 2k to buy in to this game. And (please laugh while I roll on the floor...I said real human) and I've just gotten involved in what was basically a fixed limit style raise fest and I only called leaving myself with 90 chips. Now, I'm going to try and bluff the pair of aces with an 80 chip raise.

Dude, the 10 chips you leave behind makes no difference. There's no way it's going to make a difference.
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And get this - Monk episodes are always titled Mr. Monk xxxxxxxxxxxxxxzx. Not the first time this was done. The Wild, Wild West tv series...yes, not the piece of crap Will Smith movie, had every episode named "The Night of" xxxxxxxxxxx.

OMFG.

Time Bank, Episode names on a western series.

ITTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Off Topic for the Most Part

Hence no pretty pictures of weird and wonderful bogus play of Internet Poker.

Despite the probability taht tonight's table was a cheat I put my poisoned pen aside and try to atone for my Godzilla comments last night. Like celebrity deaths and Charlie Sheen rants it's at time not to try and forget the despair by joking about it. With regret I recall 20 years or so ago joking about famine in Ethiopa. At that time I wasn't earning anywhere near what I do now as a retail clerk. Now that I have some bucks to spare I'm more sensitive to what is going on in the world.

Sora, the lovely lass featured here is from Japan. You must have been living under a rock for the past week or so busy playing race tables that you haven't heard what's going on.

The sixth strongest earthquake in recorded history.
The resulting, devastating tsunamis.
Possibly we are looking at the second worst nuclear power plant disaster in recorded history.

Today I made a donation to the International Rescue Mission - $300. My biggest regret is that I couldn't feel comfortable donating more. But since I did a bit of research I know they are a reputable group. It's not like they are Scientology Vulture Ministers trying to pick up recruits in the wake of a major disaster.

Knowing it's not over yet is what bothers me the most. Snow and freezing temperatures are descending on a land where countless buildings have been washed away. Homeless. Freezing. Starving. No fresh water. Radiation.

God watched Armageddon, an old movie about Krakatoa and just decided to bitch slap us.

Break out your checkbook and send $25 to IRM or the Red Cross or I promise you I will kill you the next table you play against me.

Vacations are Rigged, just like Internet Poker

Why am I not surprised? The collective (un)consciousness of players on PokerStars has shifted from massive raising to taking as inordinate amout of time to think. This has been going on for weeks now, and it really is pretty embarrassing that suddenly hundreds of thousands of people completely shift their poker philosophy and have decided that being annoying and unprofessional is the way to play.

More so than anyone else I understand what is going on. I've gone on record stating that I want to vacation in Japan. But since vacations are rigged it looks like this isn't going to happen. Anyone that's seen Godzilla vs. Destroyah knowsx that the recent problems in Japan aren't an out of control nuclear reactor, but Godzilla.

Godzilla has the brain of a walnut inside a 100 ton body, which leads to lots of hands called that should have been folded.

Let's talk about SMODO here. Obviously the bastard child of Smeagol and Frodo. Smodie complained about one position wasting too much time. Nice attempt at a cover story, but there are at least 4 others. What exactly was your beef with tina? Did she spurn you on Craig's List? Are you upset that yesterday was L. Ron Hubbard's birthday and you forgot to send a card? We may never know.

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I'm serious about having wanted to go to Japan. And I do not want to belittle the plight of those people. During the next two weeks I personally will search out a reputable chaerity and write a big check. I challenge all who may read this to do the same. Earthquakes, tsunamis and the worst nuclear reactor incident in recent history. Take time out of your busy lives, stop wasting time on Internet Poker, count your blessings and pet the dog.

I Reject your Reality and Substitue My Own

Pet peeves can actually be a good thing. And I'm not talking about the cat yacking up a hairball or the dog not realizing that eating tanbark isn't the wisest career decision his ever made. I'm not talking about pets, I'm talking about the peeves.

It keeps you focused. It keeps you full of hatred that makes you want to listen to the little voices inside your head and just want to flip out and bring some justice to the world. So, when Charlie Sheen finally goes more over the deep end than he already is we will know that he simply got upset that his Internet was blocked from downloading pics of hot Asian chicks the final knife stabbing that lands him in jail has a meaning.

But I digress.

It's no big secret that two of my biggest PokerStars pet peeves are the players that waste a crapload of time and those that just do not have any clue at what game they registered for. Trying to cover it up only serves to make it that much more obvious. Google "Barbara Streisand Effect."
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Tonight's fun table has come after a bit of an irrational winning streak. A 3rd and a 2nd on two fairly reasonable 18 player games on the last two nights. Being astoundingly not scared of those that may have more talent than me I parked my stack on a 10k buy in. Now, surely the talent level must be up to my level. You really need some skill to get enough chips to even buy into this game.

And PokerStars screwed it up within the first few hands. Time bank on the second hand. My, what a surprise. Shortly thereafter Spanish chat. I'm no Spanish expert, but I know enough to realize that the chatterer (real word) was asking for help on how to play the lowball game.

OK, let me guess this. You're sober enough to post in your native language, but you decided to sit at a generally unpopular game that I love and happen to be at. You go all in on a pretty crappy hand and feed one of my main opponents who rode that crappy farm feed into the late stages of the game.

Justice was served as I did finish second, yet there's no doubt in my mind that it would not have been as much as a bad dental checkup experience as it waa if things were on the up and up. If you play fifty lowball games there shouldn't be 30 of them with someone thinking it's high draw. My Commodore 64 is still calculating the stats, but I'm sure they are huge.

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The repost of the Affably screen shots -

Despite my best non-malt liquor induced efforts I've been losing a lot of sleep on this and I forgot one of the main reasons I took the screen shots. When I first met Affie (as his crew likes to call him) he had one star. When we met again at the final table he had two stars on his (it's) avatar.

I'm thinking the stars are some kind of code for the style of play that the AI has. But as PokerStars continues on their self-destuctive train wreck obvious bs this remains to be Sheen.

Maybe a Bit of a Mistake - Following the Rules

Last I knew my depth perception was still in good working shape. And trust me, since a lot of the inhumanity rule breaks occur in the chat it's something I pay attention to. Observer posting chat when the table should be closed for all chat. There's a famous post from I think last year where some "player" posted nonsense every hand that almost looked like it could have been a foreign language, but there were too many consonants, even for Norwegian. Eventually the bloke posted "suck my dick" . The problem with this is obviously no one wants to suck a retarded Norwegians dick and that potty languange is asterisked out. And a couple of days later, with intent I posted asking if anyone had heard about what happened to Dick Cheney and proved it was asteriskable (real word.)

Now, I can go back in my Tardis and retrieve these screenshots, but not right now. Me and my crack team are busy. I'm typing, the dog is sleeping and the Commodore 64 is loading the latest Windows upgrades.

As there was a position at the table with a word that can be found in the dictionary my alert status was Spidey Sense Defcon 1,000 which is just below the zombie apocalypse being on us. So when this "player" posted "****ers" we can be sure of one thing. He ate the Norwegian knock off of Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Personally I think that it was a rare opportunity for me to play against a real human being without my Spidey sense and Tardis and some really cool beads I picked up in New Orleans by taking off my shirt. Had a bad night. Got obviously cheated. Dude, it happens to me EVERY night. Get over it and move on to a less rigged game.

But, if I'm right, he's still being courted and they wanted to allow the one last asterisked flameout to let him blow off steam.

When you play a sitter with a username in the dictionary it's pretty much a given it's unreasonable. The only two things I was wrong about are that I expected Affie to finish #1 and he wasn't in the money and the angry emails I'm getting from lawyers regarding racist Norwegian comments. Back off guys, my dog's name is Moose, and I betcha you have some there.

The PokerStars Time Bank

Got together with my friend that is resposible for my unwarranted (snicker) attacks on the believability of Internet poker today. A pleasant little lunch and conversation, long overdue because I've spent way too much time papmering the dog since his days are numbered.

The conversation shifted to my Charlie Sheen post where I again worked a poke at the time bank.

Let's assume I'm wrong. All this time I've been playing against real people. Every since the True Yobbo days when I started playing 5 draw lowball and he disappeared I generally do not see the same players at my table. It's rather curious that whatever table I choose to sit at that my opponents are constantly hitting the warning that they have 12-14 seconds left to act (depending on the game.) Sometimes the time bank is activated, too.

Let's reflect on the possible reasons:

1) The collective consciousness of Internet Poker players has been infected by an alien virus that thinks that if you use a lot of time you'll get better cards. Highly unlikely since we know that alien viruses were eliminated when we blew up the mother ship on Independence Day.

2) The softawrae is unreliable and/or people are still playing on 2400 baud dial up. A tad more plausible, but not a serious consideration.

3) You are doing it to purposefully be an annoying douchebag.

It's amusing who the collective consciousness all decided to be an annoying douchebag after the last so called upgrade. If these are real people they have absolutely no poker etiquette whatsoever.

The conversation with my friend included my thoughts on how the casual once every month or so player might believe that a player or two is slow thinking about what to do. But when you play every night like I do it's laughably obvious. If PokerFrauds was serious about the integrity of the game they would start deleting accounts for "people" that have the propensity to sit out and abuse the time bank.

Ain't gonna happen. Which is fine by me because this is one of those things outside the play of the cards that just doesn't make any sense.

One Simple Letter - me vs. Charlie Sheen

There's a single letter in the English alphabet that separates me from Charlie Sheen. I have an A. You have an E, which if the fucked up grading system didn't skip it to an F you would have a major fail.

This really isn't about train wreck Charlie, I'm just using him as my case in point. And PokerFrauds has brought this on themselves - all week you did a pretty good job of being normal, and you had to screw it up by cheating me at a meaningless free money game. The ordinary player would have called it a night, kissed the significant other and moved on. But me and my crack team of trouble seekers (me, the dog and Dog Bounty Hunter) aren't sleeping right, so here we are again.

With intent I decided to not play a single hand and search for the most bogus table available. It took something like 45 seconds. Omaha Hi-Lo big waiting list. A race table.

These tables are presented as ordinary humans logging in to a fun game. In this twisted reality they are admins and AI losing to vacuums. And the losers just can't get enough.

Charlie, I'm a mAth addict. You're mEth addict. My A trumps your E. Unless you can memorize Pi to 115 decimal places like I did. And you really sober up instead of money earned for nothing like bogus AI on PokerStars damage control.

Freckledmom retired?

A bnot so brief history of my relationship with Freckledmom:

My investigative career launched with playing on PokerStars. Since this was ages ago without the 400k+ hands of experience I have now I cut my teeth playing a ton of Omaha Hi-Lo. When the cards were random there's a better chance of getting fed with a winner because some pots are split. After pushing too many buttons and angering the admins who could rig the cards that made my life miserable, I did what they wanted. There are other fish in the sea.

The second site I played on was Party Poker, which I can't play anymore because I don't live in a place the racist bastards consider adequate to play on, even in free money games. Granted the exodus came after I was already through with them.

The next fish in the ocean was Absolute. Having played more games of O hi-lo than hold'em it was my first choice. Eventually I gained enough chips to feel comfortable at playing 20k buy in no limit games. Being careful and having cast a 34th level Patience spell with all my mana I garnered more play money chips than I'll ever need since my palimony suit with Sora only requires 200 a month.

Before I searched for target #3, I found Freckledmom on Absolute and my first real taste of the "race table". I could always count on a mathematically ridiculous game. And I didn't have to even play. I could just sit back, collect the screenshot and put the crappiest movie I could find on the (sadly) VHS player and go to sleep.

A succession of other sites - NLOP and their point system including gaining points by clicking on ads. CityPoker after being mailed a booklet. UltimateBet and their taunts based on my screen name. Brief visits at Bodog and Pacific Poker, etc...

Now, my confidence which should be damaged by my apparent lack of skill after losing so much is inflated higher than Charlie Sheen's ego. You want to cheat and you think no one notices? I notice. And with encouragement from a friend that no longer gets cheated at real money games The Big Lay Down was born.

PokerStars f'ed up my pc with registry values that wouldn't allow me to create a second account on my pc. No problem. Bought a used pc for $50. It has nothing on it but PokerStars. Hack away. The same math related and lack of humanity related problems abound. We are now getting close in the timeline to where we are now.

After a long Absolute absitence I decide to pop in for a friendly visit. Freckledmom - the gal with the great cards that played for 20 hours a day, got ridicuously great cards and made sure to raise on them has apparently died before my cancer ridden crack team member.

I don't want to sound cocky, but....fuck it yes I do. Internet Poker may finally start to be realizing that policing a game with AI set on raise mode is not the best advertisement they ever thought of.

Freckledmom is never around anymore. I search every single log in. It doesn't matter - you've already given me enough evidence.

Or maybe the raising is for PokerStars Chuck Bucks.

How many bucks would a woddchuck buck if a woddchuck could Chuck Bucks?