Weekend Recap

Didn’t get much poker in at all this weekend. Went down to Coyle’s beach house, which signifcantly delayed my completion of Deathly Hallows, but it was a fun, relaxing time. That being said, I did finally complete the final installment of Harry Potter last night and I thought Rowling did a good job of wrapping up the series. There were some confusing parts that I’ve already discussed with friends who have completed the book, but I won’t write about what was confusing becuase I fucking hate spoilers.

Logging in to Pokerstars yesterday, I unregistered from a tournament becuase I was going to be playing tennis in the afternoon. I opened up the Cashier and was surprised to see that I had an extra 50-something dollars in the account. A little confused, I went into my history and there was one line that said “Credit Purchase $54.09″. Now, this is sad to admit, but I actually have a Pokerstars filter on my Gmail account since I get so many tournament result e-mails from them. I checked the filter and found the following e-mail:

Hello,

PokerStars has become aware of two players who were working together in our Sit & Go tournaments to the detriment of other players.  You were involved in at least one tournament with these players and as a result you may have been adversely affected.

The players’ accounts were closed and their funds frozen pending a thorough investigation, which is now complete.  Fortunately the problem was identified quickly and they had only played in a few tournaments before the accounts were closed.

In a case such as this it is our policy to confiscate the colluders’ winnings or balances and to distribute them to the players affected by their actions in as fair a way as possible.  To confirm your credit, log onto your PokerStars account, go to the ‘Cashier’ screen and click the ‘History’ button.  Your share will be shown as a “Credit Purchase”, followed by the amount of the credit.

I regret that we will be unable to answer questions as to how your specific credit amount was calculated.  Likewise, we are not at liberty to identify the specific games or players in question.  Suffice to say that they have been barred from the site and you will not encounter them again.

The integrity of the games at PokerStars is of paramount importance to us and we will not abide cheating or collusion in our games.  We work hard to police our games and prevent such instances.  In the rare cases where collusion has actually occurred, we make sure that any players affected are compensated appropriately.

Thank you for your continued play here on PokerStars.  Please do not hesitate to let us know any time we can be of help.

Best Regards,

SteveW
PokerStars Support Team

So it looks like two fuckers tried to collude with each other and got caught. I was talking with Eric about this and we both found it quite impressive that Pokerstars does have the security in place to somehow track people down when they do cheat. My roommate and I once entered a SnG together – not with the direct intent to collude, but with the idea that we’d stay out of each other’s path when put in that situation. I think we both finished out of the money anyways and that’s when I got thinking about collusion in Sit N Go’s. In the long run, it doesn’t seem terribly profitable for two players to collude in SnG’s… especially if they’re not already winning players to begin with. If two losing players (where losing players basically means people with a -ROI) think that they’ll become superhuman and untouchable in SnG’s by colluding with one another, I think they’re in for a harsh surprise. Looking at the 25+2 SnG structure (just using this as an example, you could use any buy-in really), two people would have to put up a combined buy-in of 54 dollars. At least one person would have to get 2nd ($67.50 payoff) for this to be profitable. It just doesn’t seem to me that between two losing players, this operation would be profitable in the long run. The only way I see this working is if one of them goes all-in early on in the tournament (when blinds are 10/20 or 15/30) and the other guy calls, with whoever winning having close to 3000 chips and a distinct big stack advantage over the other players. This obviously has risks associated with it. The first one being that unless you are side by side in the SB/BB, there’s no guarantee that someone else in the tourney will wake up with AA-JJ or be a donk and call you with Ax or Kx and win. The second one being that Pokerstars will probably start to catch on to something fish if one person is going in with 72os and another is calling with 94os when blinds are so small, lol. I think the most profitable ( and safe) arrangement a winning SnG player could make would be finding another winning player, entering the same tournaments, and sort of having a non-compete pact where you basically don’t go heads up into a big pot with each other. Then again, having played close to 1000 SnG’s at the 25+2 level so far, I already have notes on most of the good players and make it a priority of mine to stay out of their way when they come in with big PF raises. It’s like the Big Game in Vegas… all the pros will play pots with each other, but when a fish does sit down, it’s a race to see who can take the fish’s money, not each other’s.

Other shit I’ve been thinking about:

• My first ever bold prediction on this blog was… quite the huge failure. I guess that’s what you get when you bet on Asians. On Saturday morning, I predicted that KJ Choi would win the British Open. As I was typing those words, KJ was at -5 and Sergio was at -7… by the time I finished my post, I think Sergio was at -8 and KJ at -3. Basically KJ misplayed a drive on the second easiset hole on the course and instead of having a good birdie opportunity, he had to scramble for bogey. I was, however, correct in my prediction that Sergio would be too inconsistent and ultimately unravel. Padraig Harrington ultimately beat Sergio in a 4-hole playoff, shooting E to Sergio’s +1. There was lots of fun to be had on the 18th, which was to be expected after Jean Van De Velde’s collapse at Carnoustie in ’99. I was only able to catch the last two playoff holes after driving back from the beach, but Harrington had a chance to win it in regulation and hit it into Barry Burn TWICE while Sergio’s championship-winning par putt just lipped out on the left edge and his bogey led him to the playoff. I’m happy for Harrington – not only cause he’s the cousin of famous poker player Dan Harrington (kidding…), but also becuase he was able to come back from what seemed like a devastating, Open-crushing double bogey and win the playoff playing composed, smart golf. He was starting to enter the Best Player to Never Win A Major chat, but he’s shown he’s got the stuff to win the big one.

• So this is just ridiculous. In Maryland, Mahamu Kanneh was charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year old. That trial has now been dismissed, due to the violation of the right to a speedy trial. What was the hold up? How about this:

“Charges against a man accused of raping and repeatedly molesting a 7-year-old girl have been dropped because the court took too long to find an interpreter fluent in his native West African language.

Montgomery County Circuit Judge Katherine D. Savage dismissed the nearly three-year-old case against Mahamu Kanneh last week, saying the delays had violated the Liberian immigrant’s right to a speedy trial.

A court-appointed psychiatrist recommended that an interpreter be appointed and judges who handled subsequent hearings heeded that advice. But officials could not find a competent interpreter of Vai who would stay.

The first interpreter stormed out of the courtroom in tears because she found the facts of the case disturbing. A second interpreter was rejected for faulty work. A third Vai interpreter was located, but at the last minute, that person had to tend to a family emergency.”

The worst part about it, if you keep reading the article, is that the prosecutors DID find another translator, but the judge ruled it was already too late. I guess the key to getting a free pass from the American judicial system is to speak a really obscure language that no one will be able to translate – or one that will take a long time to find a translator for. I should start to learn Elvish and claim to not know English, then maybe I can get away with felony offenses. Fucking stupid judges.

-K

Harry Potter 7, Restaurant Week, and More

So yes, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out about 10 hours ago on the East Coast when thousands (millions?) of little kids, teenagers, college students, and probably grown adults lined up at bookstores across the nation awaiting the last installment of the series. I, myself, am unabashed to say that I pre-ordered the book from Amazon.com all the way back in February. I’m a huge fan of the whole Harry Potter series so I’m highly anticipating getting the package very soon later today and reading the whole thing in a day. As it stands, Snape has killed Dumbledore and Harry vows to not go back to Hogwarts and seek out Voldemort to finally kill him. Did I say I was excited? I have a few of my own predictions on what is going to happen, but I just want to read the god damn book and get a definite conclusion. I’ve been trying to stay away from the Internet in fear of coming across ANY spoilers, but I did read a synopsis of the NYT review and everyone is saying that the conclusion is very un-Sopranos like – aka satisfying and conclusive. My dick of a friend Jim has probably already finished the book seeing how he was one of the thousands to line up at bookstores last night, and as promised, he sent me a text with probably a huge spoiler. I hate the feeling of having an unopened text, but Harry Potter is much more important than with the way I feel. But fuck Jim regardless.

Last night, I headed into the city with my parents to meet up with my sister for dinner at The Sea Grill, a seafood restaurant in the bottom of Rockefeller Plaza. This past week and next week are the semi-annual event regarded as “Restaurant Week”. Some of the best (but not the really really extraordinary ones, because those fuckers don’t necessarily need the publicity) restaurants offer price-fixe menus for lunch ($24.50) and dinner ($35). The lunch is much more worth the money, because you get essentially the same food and portions at a discounted price. But with my whole family working, dinner was the only option. The food was pretty good, I had some crab prawns for an appetizer, grilled sea bass for an entree, and some sort of pudding + strawberry sorbet for dessert.

On my way in to the city, however, I noticed something that I just need to rant about for a bit. We had just entered the city through the Holland Tunnel and I saw a billboard for “World’s Best Rum”. This bold statement caught my attention, but the ad was pretty stupidly retarded. From about 500 feet away, I could not discern the actual name of the rum from the billboard. I thought the whole point of having a 40 x 60 foot advertisement on a road was so that you could catch the attention of motorists as they were driving by at pretty high speeds. Even worse, however, was the fact that when I was DRIVING BY the billboard, the name of the rum was still too small to actually tell what it was. Someone needs to fire the person who designed that shit… cause it was definitely a huge waste of money. What am I supposed to do? Google “World’s Best Rum”? Well that doesn’t work out so well…

I’m currently watching the British Open on ABC, with the possibility of playing some poker and firing up a few SnG’s (Sit n Go’s). Tiger, unfortunately, has yet to make his signature “I’m going to play superhuman and fuck up the rest of the field” move on Saturday so far, but he still has a few more holes to have this round put him back into contention. I say “unfortunately” not because I’m a huge Tiger fan, but watching Tiger play at his best always leaves me awestruck. Sergio Garcia is the current leader right now at -7, with KJ Choi two shots back at -5, and a few others at -4. Assuming that Tiger doesn’t make a miraculous run through the last few tough holes and finishes the day at like -4 (which is probably a bad assumption, but whatever), I’m going to pick KJ Choi to win the Open this year. He’s playing extremely well (winner of two big tournaments in the Memorial and AT&T National in the past two months) and the course is fit perfectly for his game. It’s not too long, and KJ is an extremely accurate tee to green player. Sergio is also one of the better tee to green players on the Tour (some say when he’s on, one of the best), but once we’re on that green, only God knows where that shit is going. Sergio showed so much potential in his battle with Tiger at the 1999 PGA, but has since choked away tournament after tournament. Additionally, through the first 4 holes of today, Choi is driving straight and hitting his irons well, whereas Sergio has been a bit wild off the tee. The penalty of a bad drive isn’t necessarily as bad as it was at the US Open, but getting into the deep feskew is never a good idea. I’ll take KJ and his steady game over Sergio, his lead, and his extremely volatile game (check out the Driving Accuracy and GIR stats).

**update** So it’s like noon right now and Sergio is at -9 (with a good putt for -10), Steve Stricker is at -6, and KJ Choi is at -4. Oh yeah, Tiger finished at -1. Maybe I was wrong about Sergio and it could be his week, but then again, you never know when the Sergio Collapse will come.

Some more sports… The NFL is mired in the Michael Vick scandal (which I will not write about until we start to get more facts – lesson learned from the Duke scandal), the MLB has Bonds’ chase of Aaron’s HR record (which brings to light racial divides and the whole steroids issue), while the NHL… well the NHL just absolutely sucks right now. Right when we thought that the NBA was the league that could do no wrong with rising stars (Lebron, D-Wade, Greg Oden, Kevin Durant) to complement it’s established stars (Kobe, Shaq, Nash, Duncan to name a few), it got a huge fucking bombshell yesterday. A veteran NBA official of 13 years, Tim Donaghy, has been accused of betting on NBA games, including ones he has officiated. That last part, “including ones that he has officiated”, is probably the most disturbing one as a pretty avid NBA fan. It’s one thing to gamble on horses, other sports, or even other NBA games you’re not officiating (I am, of course, not one who is against the concept of gambling), but a completely different thing to be betting on games you are officiating. Could Donaghy have actually affected a game in a point shaving scheme? I doubt he could have had that much influence on a game since each NBA game is officiated by 3 referees and it would become pretty obvious if one guy was just calling tons of stupid fouls on one particular team. And basketball isn’t like baseball, where the home plate ump clearly has much more authority than the other umpires calling balls and strikes. At the same time, however, one has to wonder if Donaghy actually did use his officiating power to affect the outcome of games. Someone, throughout the course of this investigation, will probably have to go through the game film of any games Donaghy both officiated and gambled on. It’s sad that something like this will severely damage the trust fans have with officials and the integrity of the game. Let’s hope we can learn something from this and prevent it from happening in the future.

-K