Bill's Poker Blog

For The Poker Bloggers Out There

Bill Rini — Wed, 16 May 2012 23:38:12 +0000

No respect for bloggers in the mainstream media :-( Related posts: LA Poker Bloggers List Las Vegas Poker Bloggers Tourney: Dec. 11 The Futility of Affiliate Programs for Poker Bloggers Bloggers Aren’t That Bad 10 Power Tips for New Poker Bloggers Related posts:

WordPress Developers

Bill Rini — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:13:04 +0000

Any WordPress developers in the SoCal area looking for a contract gig? I’m looking for a couple of people who have a lot of experience developing plugins and extending WP beyond a simple blogging platform. I would prefer independent contractors over a firm or agency.

If that sounds like you, pop me an email.

WordPress Contributor Role Vulnerability

Comedy Gold! Lederer Discussing Business Ethics

Bill Rini — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:44:24 +0000

One thing that we’re all acutely aware of in the poker world is that we only have our good name. And you can’t borrow a bunch of money and then say, “Oops, sorry, I don’t have any money. I’m going to declare bankruptcy,” and then a month later you come back into the poker world under a different name. Right? You can do that at business. But you can’t do that in the poker world. People always remember you as that guy who stiffed everybody and didn’t pay back.

And that hurts you. Not just the fact that you have to deal with these people that are constantly hounding your for money. And you’re being dishonorable and not paying them back. But also, people won’t trust you.

Then you have to be extremely risk averse your whole career because if you ever lose your bankroll you’re out. No one is going to help you get back in action.

One of the best pieces of advice, or maybe one of the best observations, particularly in the poker world that I got, was from a player who once told me, “Honesty is the best hustle.” And what he meant by that was that if you are truly honest, and the poker world perceives you correctly, that you’re honest, and that you’re a trustworthy person, then you create a group of friends that are all willing to help each other. You find you gravitate toward other honest people. And that allows you to actually play bigger, maybe beyond your bankroll, be a little less risk averse with your bankroll, because you know you have people who will pick you up when you need some picking up. And likewise, you’ll pick them up.

And if you think about this group of let’s say 10 people that all really trust each other, they can all play maybe a little bit beyond their bankroll. But they’re not really playing beyond the bankroll of the group. Some of them will be up and some of them will be down. And if everyone is willing to pick each other up, and they’re honorable with each other, then I think in the long run the group does better that way. But that can only happen from this position of trust.

In terms of not being trustworthy or being tricky, in the business world, you see again we come from a poker world where deceitfulness, that’s part of the game. That’s part of rules. The person you’re playing against is also going to be deceitful. You know that ahead of time. They’re expecting it from you and therefore it’s a completely honorable game. The deceit is part of the rules of the game, right? But if I sit down, and kinda because you’re developing this very strong sense of what it means to be honorable, and what it means to be trusted, in the poker world, even within this game where deceit is part of the game, I do think that, as a poker player, when I’m at the negotiating table, I’m acutely aware of the ground rules of that situation. And if deceitfulness isn’t part of that game, true deceit or lying about your capabilities, or lying about your ability to pay for a certain product or service, if that’s not part of the game, and it really never is at the negotiating table, then you don’t bring that to the table. It would be dishonorable. I think it gets instilled in the poker player maybe more than the businessman.

Is the Poker Media Allowing Another Black Friday to Happen?

Bill Rini — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:58:25 +0000

I’m not going to pretend I saw Black Friday coming but PokerStars and FullTilt were on a path where I’m not entirely surprised at the outcome. Going back to the passage of the UIGEA I’ve been dismissive of their legal arguments about poker being a game of skill. I even predicted that their demise in the US would be the cash flow strangulation resulting from the DOJ’s chokehold on banks and payment processors.

And I wasn’t alone is predicting this. Many industry insiders privately agreed with me. Yet, I can’t find a single cautionary note in any of the mainstream poker media. Despite plenty of warning signals, including one poker media site reporting that an unnamed industry insider told them that several big poker sites would collapse if the Reid bill wasn’t passed because of . . . payment processing difficulties!

Of course, we all see what their lack of journalistic curiosity got us.

But this post isn’t about Black Friday. There’s another potential scandal brewing and nobody in the mainstream poker media is covering it. It won’t likely impact players in the way that Black Friday did but it is something players should be made aware of.

Mike ODonnell reporting for CalvinAyre.com recently wrote a piece titled, Playtech’s Trust Issue, in which he discusses the fact that Playtech has announced yet another acquisition of assets that just happen to be owned by Playtech’s founder and largest shareholder, Teddy Sagi.

According to reports, Playtech will pay approximately £80 million to acquire certain assets of a social gaming company which is owned by Sagi. Sagi will retain 80% of the company (i.e. the £80 million is for a 20% stake) plus the rights to use some of the assets that Playtech is buying. In other words, he’s selling them software that Sagi plans on keeping for his own use.

This is in addition to the fact that another Sagi affiliated company is selling Playtech their office space in London for £10.5 million.

And if you do some googling around you’ll find this isn’t the first or even the second time Sagi has sold assets he’s owned back to a company he effectively controls. This is at least the third time he’s dipped into Playtech’s coffers to cash himself out.

Playtech shares took a dip (at one point shaving nearly 10% of their value) on the news. The investor view of this constant dipping into the corporate well was summed up beautifully by Simon McGrotty, an analyst at Davy Research.

Where concerns will be raised is that once again Playtech is acquiring assets from its founder and largest shareholder.

Ninety five million euros is a significant investment, especially in an area that is relatively unproven – there is no mention of the current profitability of the assets being acquired in this morning’s announcement.

Oh and in case that wasn’t troubling enough, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, William Hill’s Nevada gaming license is “possibly” being held up due to regulators wanting to take an extra close look at William Hill’s online business partner, Playtech. Why? Well, because the guy who is the majority shareholder, Sagi, was convicted in 1996 for fraud and bribery.

But you won’t read about these stories on any of the mainstream poker media’s sites. Once again, they’re either turning a blind eye or too inexperienced in the poker business to connect the dots.

Maybe Sagi’s deals are legit. I don’t know. The purpose of this post was not to make a case for or against Playtech or Sagi. My purpose was to point at the poker media and ask why they aren’t asking the same questions everyone else is.

If the worst were to happen and Playtech were to collapse, how many poker skins would they take down with them? How many of those skins are properly segregating their funds? How would another major implosion impact legalization of poker or the overall poker market?

The fallout has the potential to be staggering and widespread. Yet, the poker media is too consumed with posting trivial updates (or updates telling you that there are no updates) about the Full Tilt situation to pay Playtech much attention.

Maybe their investigation turns up nothing funny going on but shouldn’t they at least be asking the questions?

If Black Friday taught us anything it’s that as long as nobody is asking questions you can get away with virtually anything.

Lots of New Poker Jobs Posted

Bill Rini — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:59:07 +0000

Just got done updating Poker Job Search with the new jobs being advertised by Pocket Kings (Full Tilt Poker). Here’s a list of some of the most recent jobs posted.

QA Engineer – Tools, Pocket Kings
Internal Tools Developer, Pocket Kings
Games Systems (Poker) Feature Analyst, Pocket Kings
Payment Processing Analyst, Pocket Kings
Cashier Analyst- Night Shift, Pocket Kings
German Customer Service Agent – Night Shift, Pocket Kings
Russian Customer Service Agents – Morning Shift, Pocket Kings
Software Engineer (Simulation And Test Frameworks), Pocket Kings
Database Developer- Payments Team, Pocket Kings
Production Operations Manager, Pocket Kings
Social Marketing Manager, PokerStars
Country Manager Belgium and Netherlands, PokerStars

Poker Job Search Updated!

Bill Rini — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:02:48 +0000

Just a quick note to let people know that we’ve upgraded Poker Job Search so that employers can post their own jobs and job seekers can upload their resumes and make themselves available to be searched for by employers.

Of course, you can still use the site without sharing any of your information but if you would like employers to be able to find you by resume keywords, skills, or other search criteria, this functionality is now available. You can also set your resume page to private which will keep it out of searches but still make it available if you are applying for a job via Poker Job Search.

There is no charge for posting a resume and employers only pay a small listing fee to post their job vacancies.

So if you’re looking for new opportunities in the online poker market or are an employer looking for talented team members, check out Poker Job Search.

The Most Overused Woman in Marketing?

Bill Rini — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 15:56:33 +0000

I know this isn’t exactly only poker related but the inspiration for this post hit me in a poker room where they had some sort of promotion going on. I advertisement used a stock photo of a model that I’ve seen in several magazines, web banner ads, and other various places in and out of the online poker world.

Have you seen this woman?

You gotta admit, she’s an attractive woman but I’m scratching my head why she appears in so many different advertising campaigns. I guess I can see how she’s ready-made for certain types of campaigns but you would think that she’s in so many different ads that the designers would pick a different model. I recently saw her in two different ads for different companies in the same magazine.

Now that you know what she looks like you’ll start seeing her everywhere :-)

If you want to ad her to your own marketing efforts, she can be found here.

1&1 Website Hosting Review: WARNING!

Bill Rini — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:59:07 +0000

This tales starts on a bright Sunday morning. A day that the wife and I had planned on visiting our local cardroom and enjoying the great game of poker.

My first indication that our plans were soon to turn to crap occurred as soon as I began checking emails in the morning (usually the first thing I do before showering). There it was staring at me, the unthinkable; Bill’s Poker Blog was down.

I’ve been in the tech game since honeys were wearing Sassoons . . . Okay, maybe not that long but I’ve been running websites for about 20 years now. I’ve seen my fair share of technical glitches so I wasn’t ready to beat up the dog just yet (thankfully for my dog).

I tried logging into my server but it wouldn’t respond. So I logged into 1&1′s backend and rebooted the server. I fired up SSH again and voila I’m now king of my hardware again.

Bill’s Poker Blog was purring along just fine so I started to relax a bit thinking that some random glitch must have knocked some service offline and rebooting it corrected the problem. If it happened again I, of course, would do some more sleuthing but a one-time incident isn’t something to worry too much about. Freakish stuff happens sometimes.

But something, maybe even a higher power, compelled me to run one last command line on the server before I went to shower.

Segmentation Fault
I/O Error

Hmmmm . . . well, a Seg Fault and I/O Error tend to point to problems with the hard drives. I know because I’ve lost several servers over the years and the Seg Fault error is a big red flag that you have anywhere from a few hours to a few days before the hard drive fails completely forever destroying your digital bits and pieces.

I sent an email support ticket to 1&1 telling them what happened along with some diagnostic information and my conclusion that the drive was about to head off to the great big server farm in the sky.

I showered, ate, played around with the puppy for awhile and still no response from 1&1. Hmmmm.

No problem. I called 1&1′s tech support and spoke with a friendly chap who agreed that Seg Faults are almost 100% an indication of a failing drive and he would have his technicians throw another hard drive in the machine asap.

Like I said earlier, I’ve been doing this for so long that I know how this works. I’m not the harassing or threatening customer. I know they have tons of other customers and everyone thinks their problem is the most important and-or that bullying and bluffing will get them what they want. It’s Sunday, I’m not too worried if the site is down a few hours.

But I did inquire as to how long he thought the turnaround time would be. He said about an hour and that he would call or email me when the new disk was ready. Fair enough.

I nearly dislocated my shoulder patting myself on the back for ordering a server with RAID mirroring. For those you unfamiliar with RAID, basically the server has two hard drives and one hard drive acts as an exact mirror of the other. If one of the drives fails you can throw in a new drive and all of the data from the good drive will copy over to the mirror drive and you never have to worry about losing data.

The wife and I scrapped the casino plans in light of the day’s events because I wanted to stay close . . . just in case.

We went and did some shopping (she shopped, I groaned) and went to go see 21 Jump Street.

Roughly 7 hours later I returned home somewhat puzzled at the lack of an email from 1&1 telling me my server was back up. I checked the site itself and it was still down. Hmmmm.

So I called 1&1 again and a different rep looked up my previous ticket and told me that they had replaced the drive 6 hours ago. Why no email or phone call? He had no insight into that.

So, maybe all she needs is another reboot, right?

Rebooting basically replayed my experience earlier that morning. It rebooted. The site came up with no errors or problems. And about five minutes later I started getting Seg Faults and I/O Errors again.

WTF?!!?

I call 1&1 support again and explain that this doesn’t seem to have fixed the problem and question whether or not they’re positive that the drive was swapped out. I was assured it was and he suggested I email him the errors in my log files so they could diagnose the problem further.

So, I grabbed a relevant chunk of error messages out of my log files and emailed them to the special 1&1 email address they gave me.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually I went to bed crossing my fingers that when I awoke everything would be right with the world.

Instead when I woke up, nothing had changed.

So I called 1&1 support again and asked what the hell was going on. I was told they never received the log files I sent. I can’t say that they did or didn’t receive the email but I cut and paste the email address from the original email and resent the error logs which they did receive. So I did send it to the correct address, that I’m sure. Whether they ignored it, deleted it, or their own internal systems are so buggy that it ate my email, I know that it was sent correctly.

Of course, now it’s Monday so I can’t just sit around waiting so I went to work and basically tried to put it out of my mind until I could get home.

When I got home I called 1&1 again and this time they told me that based on the error logs they were now thinking it might be the RAID controller and not the hard drive. Fine. Just fix it I told them and went to bed.

When I woke up on Tuesday the site was still down. I still had not received an email telling me that they had resolved the issue. However they did send me an email telling me that they had received my original support request email from Sunday and that the faulty drive had been replaced and my incident was being closed.

So I called 1&1 yet again. My conversation with the support rep and his supervisor basically sums up why you should not use 1&1 hosting, EVAR!!!

Basically, the rep told me that when the pulled the original hard drive they had wiped it clean in order to protect my privacy. Then he told me that that wasn’t the bad drive. The hard drive still in the machine was the bad drive and they had wiped my good backup.

Now I’m pissed. Really pissed. Because now I have to restore the server from backups (which I fortunately also have). That’s hours and hours of tedious configuration, installing libraries, installing software components, etc, etc. It’s a major pain in the ass because all of those changes were made over the course of two years. A little here and a little there. In aggregate it’s a lot of work to duplicate just to get your site up and running again.

It’s just like when you get a new PC and even if you have all of your documents and spreadsheets and photos and music ready to deploy on your brand new PC, there’s still the process of installing and configuring all of your software. You have to install MS Office, Photoshop, TweetDeck, Dropbox, blah, blah, blah. And each one has to be configured like you liked it configured on your old PC.

So I bluntly asked the rep, “So why should I stay with 1&1? If I have to start from complete scratch there’s zero advantage for me to stay with you guys. I might as well go shop my business around with someone else.”

He fumbled through a response but one key phrase said everything, “I’m not going to try to convince you to stay with us because, you’re right, we have not handled this situation very well.”

What?

He then went on to explain about how f*cked up things are in support and that this is just how things are there.

In the end he offered to give me a month of hosting for free but threw it out there sort of like, “If you do decide to stay I can offer you a free month of hosting.”

I didn’t ask him to but he offered to connect me with his supervisor. I spoke with the supervisor and told him that while I feel that every rep I had dealt with acted in a professional and helpful manner, the fact that my site was offline for more than 48 hours and I was now farther away from having my site back up than I was on Sunday when it first went down (because now I have to recover from backups) was simply unacceptable.

To my surprise, he basically mimicked the rep I had just spoken to and told me that 1&1′s processes and procedures were fundamentally broken and that absent spending a lot of money and making a major overhaul, there wasn’t a very good chance of the situation changing anytime soon.

WTF?!?! Really?!?!

He eventually offered to comp me 3 months of free hosting and said I could use it if I stay with them or use the 3 months to help me in migrating to a new hosting provider.

By the time we were hanging up, I felt sorry for the guy. Actually, I felt sorry for all of the tech support reps at 1&1. They’re trying to fight a three-alarm fire with a squirt gun.

So if you’ve been wondering where Bill’s Poker Blog or any of my other sites have been over the last few days, now you know.

BTW, a good buddy of mine suggested Amazon’s web hosting service. Currently that’s where I’m hosting the site. It’ll be awhile before everything is back 100% but just seeing the homepage on my site brought a smile to my face.

I should also ad that I’m writing this on Wednesday. On Sunday 1&1 claimed that they had replaced both hard drives and the RAID controller in the server. According to 1&1 all I needed to do was re-image one of the new hard drives (why they don’t do it themselves after f*cking it up is still beyond me – I mean, when I leased the server the operating system was already installed so that should be the minimum requirement giving it back to me) and I’m good as new.

Not exactly. I tried re-imaging the hard drive via their control panel and the thing has been stuck on perpetual up and down mode ever since. Something is wrong with the server preventing the imaging from happening (I’m going to guess it’s the same problem that was causing my problems, i.e. they didn’t fix the problem). What makes it even worse is that because it’s not in a stable state 1&1′s recovery tools refuse to interrupt the re-imaging process.

I’ve kept a window up pinging that server for the last few days and I don’t think it’s seen more than an hour uptime. It’s dead. If I opted to stay with 1&1 I would most likely still be trying to get a working server.

Of course, this begs the question of why they didn’t/don’t offer me a new server once they wiped the existing one clean (assuming I was staying with them). I don’t own this server. I don’t care if they haul it out back and shoot it with a shotgun. I have no emotional, financial, or any other sort of interest in the hardware. Why are they so intent on fixing that server instead of resolving my problem (i.e. getting the site back up)?

I also have to question whether or not I’m owed a refund for the last two years I’ve been hosted with them. I paid for RAID in order to prevent exactly this situation. If they completely negate the benefit of having backup copies by deleting the hard drive contents before they properly diagnosed the problem then having the RAID was a completely pointless cost.

Bottom line is that if you were considering hosting at 1&1, don’t. My experience with them was great for the two years that I had this server and the several years I had another server with them but that’s when everything is working perfectly. The true measure of a hosting provider is how well they deal with problems. I don’t care if my server goes down. I care about how quickly they get it back up and how helpful they are in the process. Not only is it obvious from what happened that 1&1 is organizationally not up to the task but their own support staff sound as if they’ve given up.

It’s unfortunate because every rep I dealt with seemed knowledgable, professional, and really did try to help. It’s 1&1′s own internal policies and procedures that resulted in the failures and delays. I mean, if you’re a hosting provider and it takes you 48+ hours to respond to an email there’s something really, really wrong.

The Nearly Infallible Under-Over Line for No-Limit Hold’em by Tommy Angelo

Bill Rini — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:50:42 +0000

The Nearly Infallible Under-Over Line for No-Limit Hold’em

At sports betting, there’s this thing called an over-under line. One feature of betting the “over” at sports is that if the game goes over, it’s over. You won your bet, and the rest of the game doesn’t matter. At no-limit hold’em, I have this thing I call the under-over line. It’s a line of betting that starts with an underbet, followed quickly by an overbet. And then it’s over. At least for me.

Here’s how it works. I bet the minimum possible bet on the flop (that’s the under) and then I make a bet on the turn that is bigger than the pot (that’s the over). I’ve made this play about 15 times so far. The first few times, it happened spontaneously, as the result of experiments I was conducting with small bets. Then I put some deliberation into it, and I started doing it deliberately.

I found one spot for it that is safe, fun, and profitable. And it’s a lovely way to say, “I’m not you.”

If the pot is unraised, and it’s a rainbow flop, widely scattered, such as K-8-3, Q-7-2, J-4-4 – in other words, if there are no possible flush draws or straight draws – then I am very likely to unsheathe the under-over line on the flop.

Most deployments have been in $5-10 blinds no-limit hold’em games where the main denomination is $10 chips. The next largest chip in play is $100. These chip denominations are perfect for doing the under-over line with grace. That’s not to say that it couldn’t be done in any no-limit game, whether an internet tournament, an internet cash game, a live tournament, or a live cash game. It can. It just so happens that playing $5/10, with $10 chips in play, the whole maneuver can be performed with just two chips.

Here’s how it goes. The pot is $30 to $70, all limpers. The flop comes. I have no pair and no draw. I bet one $10 chip.

If anyone raises, I fold, and I plot deviously to exploit what just happened in future hands.

If anyone calls…

– and yes, sometimes I’ll bet $10 into a $50 pot with absolutely nothing, and then watch them all fold, and when that happens, it’s usually a funny moment when the action gets to the last man folding -

If anyone calls, I often get a sense for if they are calling because my bet was small and goofy looking, or if they are calling because they have something. Sometimes a guy will look like he is folding, with, say, a small pocket pair, or ace-high, and then he realizes how tiny and silly the bet is, so he calls. Other times, I get a hunch that someone is calling with nothing in order to leave open the option of stealing the pot on the turn. And then there’s times when I know they have something – top pair, or second pair, or maybe a cloaked AA – from how they play and act and are.

In all of those cases, all I’m looking for is an answer to one question: Do I think they will fold to a $100 bet on the turn? Usually the answer is yes, so usually, as soon as the turn card hits the table, I bet $100, using one black chip. Sometimes I toss it, sometimes I place it, and sometimes I keep a $100 chip hidden under my palm, for times just like this, and I use my thumb to zing it ten inches so that it magically appears in the betting area.

I like to explore rare and exotic betting islands. I just never know what I might find there. Sometimes barren wastelands, other times bountiful abundance. The payoff comes after I become one with the landscape of a new island. After I learn where all the best spots are. It is then that I lure my opponents onto my peaceful shore, while I wait in ambush ready to slay them!

World Poker Tour Foundation Celebrity Charity Event

Bill Rini — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 23:48:31 +0000

The World Poker Tour Foundation is hosting a celebrity charity event this Sunday, March 11 at the SLS Hotel Beverly Hills.

This will be an amazing evening featuring many A-list celebrities and some of the best poker pros in the world. WPT Foundation’s objective is to raise money for premier charities including Conservation International, Enough Project, World Central Kitchen and We Advance and has attracted the support of many celebrities including Maria Bello, Gerard Butler, Don Cheadle, Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Eva Longoria, Joel Madden and Nicole Richie, Jeremy Piven, and more.

The event will also feature many professional poker players such as, Mike Sexton, Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Selbst, Jamie Gold, Maria Ho, Tony Dunst, Andy Frankenberger, Liv Boeree, Liz Lieu, Vanessa Rousso, Joe Hachem, Mike Matusow, and Andy Bloch.