I ran across a great article on eGaming Review’s website that I wanted to highlight. Before I do, I should point out they often post articles of mine and have run some quotes from me in their print mag but that had no bearing in singling this article out.
Dominik Kofert’s article on what the real reason for the decline in poker is, should be required reading for anybody involved in running a poker room. Dominik is someone I have the pleasure of knowing and having worked together with him on some things in the past. He runs one of the largest poker training sites, Poker Strategy, and is one hell of a smart dude. So maybe I’m biased.
Basically he’s saying that poker rooms are way too focused on short-term gains. I’ve said very similar things in the past. Poker rooms often run promotions that produce short term pops in revenue but threaten to burn players out more quickly. Personally, if I’m running a poker room and I’m only going to make $1 off of a player I would rather do it over a year than in one session. That $1 taken in small chunks over a long period produces liquidity on the site and as a result translates into more than one dollar when you factor in how much action from other players that $1 eventually generates.
The problem is often a matter of people who don’t understand poker running a poker room. That’s especially true when you have casino people in charge. For them, you steer your customers to your highest profit offerings so you can make as much as you can off of them. Casino games don’t require liquidity. It’s hard for casino-minded people to grasp how important liquidity is to running a poker room. So they use that casino mentality to run a poker room and try to take the money as quickly as they can not realizing that they could be killing their own poker business 6 or 12 months down the road.
I think a lot of networks and their skins are seeing exactly that today. They’ve been so focused on catering to the VIP players due to the large amount of rake they generate that they failed to recognize that the recreational, losing players are where these guys are making their money. Once you kill all of the fish in the pond and if you don’t invest in restocking the pond you’re going to starve to death.
But that goes back to the casino mentality. You comp your whales. You keep them happy because they blow a lot of dough with you. But in poker, your big whales actually have a detrimental impact on your poker ecosystem. They’re sucking up all of the money from the layers of fish below them.
The guys you should be comping are the loyal and consistent players who deposit $100 or $200 every month and have been on the site for a long period of time but don’t generate huge amounts of rake. Poker rooms traditionally look at that guy and say “Look, we have players who generate more rake in one month than this guy has in two years, screw him.” But where are those guys who generate more rake in one month than this guy has lifetime making their money from? Him!!!
Without that dude and hundreds of others like him your sharks/whales will bolt on you faster than you can offer to comp them.
But most poker rooms don’t look at it that way. They salivate that the thought of landing a guy who generates $10,000 a month in rake. But I would rather have 100 guys generating $100 a month in rake than one guy generating $10,000. Or 1000 guys generating $10 a month in rake. Because that $10K a month guy will come if you have enough of these smaller guys. You don’t need to comp him or kiss his ass. Where’s he going to go if you’re serving up a fish buffet every time he logs in?
So props to Dominik for saying what far too many poker rooms have no clue about.
I mentioned not too long ago that things were starting to heat up around Bangkok. Fugitive former PM Thaksin was about to find out from the Thai supreme court whether or not the government was just in seizing $2.2 billion from him after the coup that threw him from power. Well, the verdict came down the last Friday in Feb and the word from the court was that about $1.1 billion was properly seized but the rest was his.
Sort of a win-win or lose-lose depending on how you look at it. Well, it wasn’t that easy. Once the supreme court said that he had obtained these funds via illegal actions while in power that brought every government agency to now take a crack at old Khun Thaksin.
For instance, now that it’s been declared that he used his office to benefit companies that he held significant ownership in the government is now looking at those companies and their officers and directors. Part of how Mr. Thaksin sidestepped the issue at the time was “selling” his shares to his children, housekeeper, and some others close to him. Well, the court said that the sale was a farce and that he was actually in control of those shares but . . . get this . . . the tax boys are saying regardless, those people never paid taxes on the proceeds of the later sale of their shares so they owe millions in back taxes. Not a great day to be a friend of family member of the former PM.
His supporters figured they couldn’t get a rally going on such short notice (uhm, the court had announced months ahead of time what day they would render their ruling – but let’s forget about that) and they would stage a “massive” rally in Bangkok March 12 – 14. The local press has been going absolutely nuts talking about where the protesters are staging, how to avoid trouble, what emergency rations you should keep in your house if all hell breaks loose, etc.
Depending on what numbers you believe, about 300,000 – 500,000 people have amassed in the capital to basically say “Hey, give the rich dude back his money.” Well, I guess to be fair, they’re saying that removing Thaksin via the coup was illegal and thus the government in charge is not a legitimate government but let’s be realistic . . . this whole thing is about Thaksin wanting to get back in power so he can overturn his conviction, declare that his money was seized illegally, and take control again.
So, you would think that the place is on the verge of civil war, right? Really, things seem pretty calm. Other than the police being everywhere and the military situated in key places where protesters might make trouble I’ve really seen nothing that would lead me to any concern.
In fact, so many people were so concerned about potential violence that on Friday night traffic was the lightest I’ve seen in Bangkok in as long as I can remember. I asked some local business owners about the impact and they’ve said that foot traffic from tourists is definitely down but their regular customers are still coming.
As for me, even though there was a supposed large gathering of protestors about two and a half blocks from my apartment I’ve only seen two protesters. It was actually funny on Friday, my building manager stopped me when I went down to the mini-mart and said “Khun Bill, maybe today you can stay in your room. Not good for you to go outside today. Maybe go outside Bangkok if you can.” She was obviously very stressed as were the security staff in the building.
But other than some isolated fights here and there between Thaksin supporters and those who wish he would just STFU, not much has really happened.
In poker related news I met up with Tim from Pokerology for some pool and shop talk at Sports Academy last week. Then he headed down to Phuket with some friends and met up with one of the Poker Affiliate Solutions regulars, Hazo, down there.
Hazo called me on Friday to say that he was coming up to Bangkok. He and I had exchanged some emails recently. He’s moving to Thailand and so I gave him some advice on where to hunt for apartments and such.
We missed each other on Friday due to some mobile phone malfunctions on Hazo’s part but we met up at a Thailand Friends event for one of our member’s birthdays. After the birthday party I took him over to one of my favorite haunts on Soi 22 where a friend of mine owns a bar.
There’s a rumor that one of my good, good friends and former Party cohorts will be here on the 18th. He’s almost made it to Bangkok once or twice in the past so I’m still regarding it as rumor until I actually see him sweating profusely in the hot Bangkok sun but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
I had the pleasure of meeting a local musician here in Bangkok the other night. Actually I had seen him playing over at Moonshine’s once or twice but he stopped in to say hello to my friend Jack and we were introduced formally.
Tony is an older American guy. How old, I don’t know but he’s got a look that says he’s been around before. Nice guy though and always quick with a laugh.
Several months ago Jack told me an incredible story about Tony that I wanted to share. It was a few years ago and Tony was playing a gig in one of the local bars in Bangkok. During the set he noticed a young guy sitting in the audience wearing a US Army fatigue top with the same unit patch as his old unit in Vietnam.
Obviously the man was too young to have been a vet (at least a Vietnam Vet) but it intrigued him so when he finished his set he went over to the young man’s table and introduced himself saying that he had served in that unit during ‘Nam. As the man stretched out his arm to shake his he saw that the nametag on the top was the same as his last name, which he mentioned to the younger man.
The young man explained that he had purchased the fatigue top at a small market on some side street in Bangkok just that afternoon. He thought it looked cool and was able to bargain down the price to something fairly cheap so he bought it.
Tony said, “Well, can I ask you a small favor? Can you open up the jacket pocket and see if there’s anything sewn inside the pocket?” The younger man obliged and there was Tony’s name on another nametag sewn inside the pocket.
Tony had sold all of his gear to a military surplus shop when he finished his military duty after Vietnam and had been traveling around the world since. But somehow his fatigue jacket had followed him around the world and ended up in the same bar he was playing a gig in.
The reason I bring this up is so many people argue that online poker must be rigged because something with a low statistical probability occurs to them. Maybe they have been dealt aces three times in a row or whatever. To them that proves the game is rigged.
But anytime the probability of something is greater than 0, given enough trials, it is expected to happen.
If my math is correct, getting dealt pocket aces three times in a row should happen approx every 1 in 2,385,443 hands. That means that the chances of it happening are still greater than 0. And if you take a room like PokerStars and let’s say they deal a billion hands per year, it is not unusual for that to occur 419 times a year.
So, your opponent catching pocket aces three times in a row has a low probability but it’s expected to happen to 419 people per year (assuming 1 billion hands dealt). Does it prove anything about whether or not the game is rigged? No.
I mean, what are the odds that Sammy Farha with AT would flop AAT against Oliver Hudson with pocket tens in the very first hand in the WSOP main event at the featured table? I’m not even going to do the math but it’s not very likely.
But because it’s live people are willing to accept that it’s just poker. When it happens online many of those same people assume it’s because the game is rigged.
That’s one of the reasons when anybody says something like “You never see anything like that ever happen in a live game,” I immediately dismiss anything else they’ve said or are going to say. Because I can post YouTube videos all day long showing highly unlikely events occurring during televised programs.
And out of all of the hands played how many have been televised? A low percentage to be sure. So if you can see these low probability events occurring from a rather small sample size then people saying they’ve never seen it in a live card room either aren’t playing very many hands or their experience is the true statistical anomaly.
This is now the third article in the series I’ve written on Lowball Poker games at Bill’s blog and will cover Badugi Poker. The post will take a look at Badugi poker history and provide a short how to play Badugi guide. If you want to check out the other two articles in my series [...]
This week was an insanely busy week for me. On my ThailandFriends website we pushed a relaunch out the door which not only meant the normal rush to make the launch date, firefighting all the glitches that we didn’t discover in testing, and complaints from members – some of whom have been on the [...]
It was recently announced that Full Tilt Poker is placing a 3% cap on margins rakeback affiliates can offer. What that means is that Full Tilt was once telling affiliates that you can offer 27% max rakeback while Full Tilt pays the affiliate 35%. That means the rakeback affiliate makes 8%. In [...]
Last week I said the Razz poker article that was coming up included one of my favorite all time poker stories. Instead of writing your standard how to play Razz article which you’ll be able to find in about 5 seconds on Google I’m just going to dive straight in and try to write something [...]
Hey look Ma, I canz writes my own name
I learned to write my name recently. Well, I knew how to write it in English (thanks, Misses kindergarden teacher I don’t remember) but I hadn’t really learned it in Thai. I had looked up how to write Bill on some website and it gave [...]
Editor’s Note: Dave has written some interesting stuff about low ball poker and I asked if he could share some of his thoughts here with you guys. Show him a little love by giving his site a visit and checking him out.
Introduction To Lowball Poker
Lowball poker is a term used to [...]
Proof Online Poker is Rigged One can hardly read any poker forum without running across individuals claiming that this or that site is rigged. Usually they are humiliated with the forum .experts. rudely telling them that the reason they.re losing is because they aren.t good poker players. I.m sad to say that I used to be one of those .experts.. I was one of the doubters until I actually caught one site cheating.
Why Online Poker Is Not Rigged In this post I will attempt to address every argument I.ve ever heard regarding online poker being rigged. Mind you, I do work for a company that develops online poker software but my motivation is not to convince people to trust *my* employer.s software, rather it is to have a central place where people can point misinformed message board and blog posters who think somebody is pulling something on them.
Motivations For Rigging Online Poker I.m not sure whether it.s funny or sad that even after my post on why online poker is not rigged, I still get people emailing me trying to convince me otherwise. The funny/sad part is that despite the fact that I.ve all but called people who make that claim without hand histories or other empirical evidence idiots I continue to receive 1 . 5 emails a week telling me some bad beat story and QED, online poker is rigged. So with that in mind, I.m going to expound a bit on some new points as well as clarify previously made points.
PokerBot Pro - Another Online Poker Scam Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can.t help calling the guy on his bullshit. He's certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the one I decided to pick on.
Online Poker Tells Many players will tell you that online poker tells either don.t exist or are difficult to judge. That's a load. All the online pros know the tells but it's some sort of unspoken rule never to let others in on it. Well, that ends right now! I will share with my loyal readers 5 of the top online poker tells that they (and we know who *they* is, don.t we?) don.t want you to know about.
The Wisdom of Bonus Whoring One of the common topics you.ll see mentioned in the poker blogosphere is bonus whoring. Of course, bonus whoring is the act of playing on a particular site in order to take advantage of a reload or some other type of promotional bonus. Many people chase bonuses from site to site and even include bonuses in their monthly win/lose figures. The more I've thought about it though, the more I.m beginning to question the wisdom of bonus whoring.
Seeing The World Through The Eyes of a Fish Have you ever been left scratching your head trying to figure out why your opponent played the hand the way he did? I certainly did so I found a fish and hooked him up to the USB port on my computer and did the same to myself. The results of this experiment are below:
The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker I'm going to let everyone in on the biggest secret in poker; there is no secret! You can quit looking for that special book, video, website, etc. that.s going to turn your game around and make you into the next Phil Hellmuth Ivey.
Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.