The Lucky Donut

I thought I’d have a nice little piece to write about some seriously profitable bonus abusing.  Instead, it’s turned into a rant about me almost getting robbed by ECash Direct.  Allegedly.

I’d hoped the focus of the post would be about just how many magazines I’d bought this month to take advantage of a promotion by paysafecard (yes, it’s all lower case) that matched every £10 voucher you bought with another £10.

Foolishly, they had launched this offer without any restriction on the number of times any one person could use it.  You don’t need to give any personal details to buy a voucher, or to redeem a voucher.  All they seem to have done is to crudely banhammered my IP addresses so that I can’t ever deposit using paysafecard from home again.

That’s OK, I’m pretty resourceful.

However, I’m sure you’d agree that any chance of being blocked from redeeming the vouchers you buy does introduce an element of risk to the paysafe system.  I did a batch of these on my mobile phone, so anyone else trying to deposit through T-Mobile’s web proxy will be shit out of luck.

Every copy of Poker Player and Inside Poker this month carried the £10 bonus.  Poker Player costs £2.50 and Inside Poker is £3, so that means every magazine you buy is worth at least £7.

When I go shopping, I shop like a man.  No messing about.  I came back with a total of 154 magazines.

Don’t believe me?  Feel free to count.

I worked out the value of all this merchandise, after taking into account a few discount coupons and the cost of carrier bags at WH Smith, to be £1149.81 in my favour.

Certainly worth a couple of tanks of petrol and a few hours driving around to get them.

Hitting the major shopping centres and train stations is definitely the way to go: Manchester Arndale was a goldmine (30 mags) with Birmingham New Street an honourable second (24 mags).

While what I’ve been doing is clearly not within the spirit of the promotion it is certainly not against the rules.  I found an edge, and by jove I was going to maximise it.

I redeemed 25 paysafe vouchers at Dusk Till Dawn Poker.  That’s £250 of my own money and £250 matched with the magazine bonuses.  I tried my best to give them some action, but Cryptologic network is on its last legs (the last few remaining operators are actually moving to Boss Media in January) so it was a real struggle.  I played a bit, lost a bit then attempted to cash out.

I’d used my DTD account only once before, to pre-register for their opening night tournament.  My debit card had since expired so I called up ECash – the payment processor shared by all Cryptologic poker sites – to see how I could make a withdrawl.  Easy peasy, they said.  Just make a minimum deposit on the new card, then you can cash out the whole lot.

If only it was that easy.  I also needed to print and sign a form authorising that debit card transaction, and send them a copy of the card and a copy of my photo ID.

That’s not a big deal really, this happens a lot.  But usually once you complete the ID check that’s the end of it.  Then you can get at your money again.

The ID check was fine, but then they told me "your account is currently undergoing a deeper poker investigation that was issued by the DTD management".

This, I have since discovered, is complete horse shit.

I spoke to a manager at the Dusk Till Dawn club this evening who was extremely helpful, despite this not really being his problem.  He told me – as I suspected from the cracks that had begun to show in the yarns that ECash kept spinning me – that DTD would not ask for an account to be closed or investigated.

"That would always come from ECash", he said and confirmed that DTD did not carry out any investigations themselves.

He went to make a few calls and just minutes later my account was back online and all the money was there.

I can’t be bothered to compile and publish all their emails (most of it says the same thing over and over again anyway) but here’s the gist: ECash lie.

By email they told me:

This account will remain closed as it is being investigated by DTD, we can’t intervene until we have news from them.

Unfortunately, the DTD dedicated investigation team is not an internal department, nor does it operate in conjunction to our (or their) call centre.

However when I spoke to a supervisor at ECash he told me he had spoken to the security team, who were "just around the corner from my desk".

I don’t actually know which is the fib – that they are in the same building or that they are not an internal department – because I wasn’t able to speak to someome else who was apparently right next door, and he gave me an email address: fraudinvestigations@ecashdirect.co.uk.  So that’s for DTD and nothing to do with ECash, is it?

They kept hammering on about not being able to do anything until DTD say so, yet DTD knew nothing about it until I called them.

So why?  Well, I have a wild conspiracy theory.

When the Cryptologic network deals its last hand next month, ECash Direct may very well cease to exist too.  If my account is closed and therefore not migrated to Boss Media (who use a different payment processor) what chance would I have of getting at that money?  It could "just disappear" very easily.

I just can’t think of another logical explanation that makes any sense.

Sure, I abused a promotion.  But the victim was not DTD Poker or ECash, it was paysafecard.  It might have cost them a few quid in fees, in which case just make me generate a bit more rake before I can withdraw it.  Don’t call me a cheater and try to steal my money.

Did I collude or chip dump?  Of course not.  Their "deeper poker investigation" should not have taken long to see this either.  I counted my hand histories and I’d played one turbo sit-and-go and 173 ring game hands, mostly nitting it up at $1/$2 fixed limit.  It’s going to take a while to dump off £500 at those limits.

The whole time, I couldn’t get any explanation about what exactly was being investigated.  On the phone they told me it was most likely a "random security check".  How many poker sites do you know that randomly close their players’ accounts?

All I wanted to know was what they were looking for and how long it would take them to check it out.  They wouldn’t say so directly, but they were accusing me of something illegal.  I felt dirty. 

Bonus whoring should never make you feel dirty.

Anyway, if you want a copy of this month’s Poker Player or Inside Poker, just ask.  I have a few to spare…

It started out like this:

Seat 3: luckydonut (10336 in chips)
Seat 7: supra23 (3164 in chips)
Dealt to luckydonut [Ks Td]

I had been stealing his blind quite aggressively since we’d been heads up and I was in good shape to take the victory.

In chip equity alone, I was worth $20 and change of the $27 left to play, and so far he was letting me roll him over.  KTo here meant I was about to make another easy all-in move.

supra23 said, "ill pay you $30 to fold to me"
luckydonut said, "lol"
supra23 said, "no really"
luckydonut said, "why?"
supra23 said, "i just want the battle of the planetsp points"
supra23 said, "ill give you the first place money"
supra23 said, "i just want the first place points"

I stalled the game while we talked about it and eventually I timed out and folded on my massive king-ten.

I asked for $10 up front, which he sent, then I clicked "sit out".  The extra $17 arrived after he took first place.

But is this allowed?  I really have no idea.

Poker Stars haven’t contacted me about it yet, and their software much be able to detect this kind of dumping – especially if two player-to-player transfers take place between the last two players in a tournament.

There were only two of us left in the tournament and we made a deal that we both agreed on.  He got the leaderboard points he wanted and I locked in a win without any further risk.  We’re both winners, aren’t we?

To stand a chance of making the leaderboard myself I was going to need at least 4 first place finishes in my next 8 games.  So did I think that $7 in the hand was worth more than 18 league points in the bush?  (Remember, I was still getting 27 points for 2nd place).

Absolutely yes.

However it’s the other players who are competing for the same leaderboard that are disadvantaged by us agreeing to engineer his way up the league table.  That’s why, looking back, I think our deal could have been on dodgy ground.

So I was keen to check last week’s leaderboards as soon as they were final to see how well supra23 did.  If he’d pipped another player by 18 points or less, there’s a chance (albeit a very, very small one) I might have felt responsible.

In fact it didn’t actually make any difference.  20 places are paid but Poker Stars lists the top 100 and his name was nowhere to be seen.

Beats me why someone would go to that effort to buy a small number of points if they weren’t already in with a shot of one of the top places.

This was in an affiliate communication from PokerStars that landed today.

Using "PokerStars" within Domain Names

PokerStars does not permit its affiliates to use the term PokerStars or any of our trademarks (such as SundayMillion, EPT, LAPT, APPT, etc) in any domain used to send players to us. Any affiliate found doing so will be required to transfer the domain to us.

If you do own a domain containing any of our trademarks, please login to your registrar and unlock the domain which needs to be transferred. You should then send us the authorization code. We will then initiate the transfer and pay the transfer cost associated with this. Continued practice will cause the affiliate to be subject to termination and payments suspended. Please help us with this issue by either handing your domain/s over or reporting any such domains to us.

It must be the most feeble attempt to seize domain names ever.

In fact I can’t see this having a great deal of impact, other than providing cut-throat affiliates with an easy way to eliminate the competition: simply purchase an anonymous domain registration for something like notpokerstars.com and put the other guy’s linking code on the page, then snitch.

Claire got this email from Paradise Poker trying to tempt her back to play, which almost certainly won’t work unless they bin the horrible Boss Media network and reinstate their kitchy old software with food and drink at the table and flaming cards when you hit a high hand.

Personal greeting – fail.  The broken images are a nice touch too.  Good effort.

Still, at least they want her back I guess.  I haven’t had a sausage.

Poker Stars was offline for a while earlier today.

Could it have been because they were installing these special spooky avatars into the lobby, in place of where they normally show a handful of sponsored pros and last week’s leaderboard winner?

Neteller launched its new prepaid MasterCard product "Net+" today.

At least, I think that’s what it is.  This part of their blurb isn’t exactly clear:

So it’s a prepaid card that you don’t have to pre-load.  That would be free money then?

I think the idea is that it actually takes money straight out of your Neteller account – an idea that I’m far from keen on, given that this type of payment card has absolutely no consumer protection whatsoever.  I really wouldn’t want my entire balance to be in play on those terms.

A real bank would call this a debit card; they’d also let you dispute unauthorised transactions and your balance would be protected if the institution went busto. (Compare Net+ terms 2.5 and 4.13).

However most of what I’ve read so far is so badly written and confusing I really couldn’t say with any confidence exactly what is going on.

This is definitely the replacement for the old Altair card though, which is being phased out.  That one lasted just over a year.

In theory it’s is a good move, because if Neteller are dealing with both the e-wallet and the payment card, you only have to deal with one make-believe bank instead of two when you want to spend your money.

I’ve used my Altair card take some actual US dollars out of my Neteller US dollar account, from an ATM in America.  This is just about the only way to do such a radical thing.

Neteller will keep your balance in dollars, but you can’t take your dollars out without switching currencies, allowing them to use the exchange rate of their choice to cut you a cheque in pounds.

If you take a bank wire, the amount is converted from dollars to euros first at god-knows-what rate.  Then, unless you have a bank account in euros, it’ll be converted again by your bank when it lands at god-knows-what rate, plus god-knows-what additional charges.

The last time I tried to withdraw to my US Dollar bank account, I ended up losing $112 on a $3000 cashout.  I got that back eventually after complaining a few times, but they told me not to expect the same treatment again and that I would have to live with the unnecessary double currency conversion.

To make things even better, the charges for not being able to withdraw your own money the way you want also went up earlier this year.  It’s now $10 for either a bank wire in the wrong currency, or a cheque in the wrong currency.  Both used to be just $1.

Of course, now that Neteller operate their own payment card, the fees on that have gone up too.  Altair charged $4 for an ATM withdrawal; the Net+ charge is $6.

The thing that really takes the piss though is the new $3 "dormant account" charge, applied monthly if you don’t use the card.  If it’s like I suspect, you can’t just run your prepaid card into the ground and throw it away – this fee will come straight out of your Neteller account every month unless you cancel the card.  Which costs $20.

Anyway, I sort of saw this coming because at the end of September my old card expired and I asked Altair for a replacement.  No can do, they said:

I am sorry, but at this time we will not re-issue you a new Altair Card.  Our joint card programme with NETELLER has ended, and they have a new card offering for you.

The word "not" was indeed underlined as well as in bold type for emphasis.  But you know I’ve never noticed before that NETELLER is indeed officially written in all-caps.  That’s not for emphasis, it’s just their name.  The same thing goes NEOVIA, the awkward and instantly forgettable new name for their company, apparently.

Whatever.  They barely deserve one capital leter, never mind all of those.

I feared what money I had left on the card, all $33 of it, would be dead.  I snoozed, I lost.  However, despite their corporate bitterness Altair still offered:

If you would like a refund, we can send out a cheque to you, or if you would like your funds credited back into your NETELLER account please contact the NETELLER Card services team.

This I did.  Can you guess what Neteller said?

Unfortunately you will need to contact Altair for your funds thank you we do apologize for the inconvenience.

I asked a second time for good measure.

The funds is with Altair so it cannot transfer back to NETELLER we do apologize for the inconvenience thank you.

A real bank would be able to do something as complex as transferring money from one account to another.  How naive of me to forget who I was dealing with.

I got my cheque in the end – in pounds of course.  This shows just how impressive a financial instituion Altair was, to complement Neteller’s aspirations of greatness.  Hand-written cheque, number 23.

I’m considering printing out this screenshot and framing it as a reminder that, occasionally, when your dominating ace-king gets called by either a weaker ace or total garbage, it doesn’t necessarily lose.  In this case, both types of hands had a crack – and didn’t make it.  Yippee!

I think my Poker Tracker just broke.

I’m fairly sure that (a) I haven’t actually lost ninety two grand in one day and (b) that I wouldn’t need a computer program to tell me I was struggling to beat the game if I was spewing at a rate of $26 per hand.

That’s an impressive loss rate – more than four big bets per hand at $3/$6 limit, which is apparently where these hands all came from (despite me not having played that limit on Poker Stars for over a year!).

If you lost that much money every hundred hands, you’d have a pretty big leak.  But every hand?  You’d have to try really hard.  Like bet and raise on every street, hope someone else comes along for the ride and then fold, giving up a huge pot for a single bet on the river.  Every time.

Actually I guess it could be pretty easy if the other players are paying attention, but any poker site worth their salt would pick up this betting pattern and flag you as a chip dumper before you can say "I cap it!".

This wasn’t me, I swear.

God alone knows what’s happened, but I think I probably need to reload my database.