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I’m playing poker on TV again!
It’s almost as exciting as being on an American cable show that got cancelled in the UK before my episode was shown. This time I’m going to be playing online poker under someone else’s name with someone else’s money, but still – it’s on Poker Night Live!
Not only can you watch this from 9pm tonight (unless it’s cancelled in the next few hours) on Sky channel eight thousand and something, you can watch live online here. Although the only time I’ve tried to watch their webcast before it was so blocky you couldn’t actually see what the hole cards were. Then again, I was trying to stream it using the 3G connection on my phone – what do you expect?
I’m making up the numbers in a $25/$50 blinds no limit game, sitting down with two dimes. Wow, looks like it’s a somewhat bigger game than I’d usually play, where a dime actually is 10c. Ah, the magic of television. The money is real, but every player in the game is a prop so it really doesn’t matter who wins or loses.
I’ll shatter two illusions in one go. It’s also not live. We’re recording about 2pm.
Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to be "Super Hero"…
A very bizarre – and a little premature – April Fool’s gag from Party Poker? Actually it’s not a joke, just a cock up – I have a 25% deposit bonus waiting on the account – but it was a very effective way to get me to log in to my account and check…
Pleasantly surprised by Neteller’s eventual response to this complaint.
I have given careful consideration to the concerns raised and I accept that we should have advised you prior to changing the currency of the withdrawal.
In the circumstances I am willing to refund the amount of $111.61 which relates to the exchange rates incurred.
It’s a dollar out, but what are you gonna do? It’s $111.61 more than I expected to get!
PokerStars offered me a whopping 300 FPPs to complete a survey. That’s worth about 2 quid on Amazon (assuming I ever regain VIP status in order to cash them in) or it’s three fifths the price of a Chris Moneymaker poster. But why would I want to go and do a thing like that?
I’m no expert on their range of posters, because I’m not 12 any more, so I don’t know which ones have proved popular. However I did notice that the Moneymaker medallion is the only one still available from the strictly limited edition set of three issued last year. Raymer and Hachem sold out a long time ago.
The survey seemed to be geared towards play money players, asking what kind of promotions I’d like to see in order to deposit and why I play for real money at other sites. Not sure why I got this – it’s not like I stopped playing there completely, and I still have a real money balance as well as T$ and W$ to spend. But it only took about a minute to whizz through the answers – all multiple choice – so worth checking your Stars account if you haven’t logged in lately.
I was only too pleased to answer this question:
Last weekend, Sporting Index threw a bonus deal at me because I hadn’t given them any action for atout 2 years. It was effectively free money. I had to deposit to play, but they would refund any losses up to £50 over the course of the weekend. This was a refund of net losess, not on a single bet. As they offer spread betting not fixed odds, taking full advantage of their generosity is a little trickier.
I hadn’t planned it that well last weekend and ran out of time before I could get one more bet before the deadline in whilst I’d still not lost the full £50. In fact, on my last bet I committed a cardinal sin – I had ended up with a winning bet, but the only result of that was that I won back some of the money they were going to repay me anyway – not enough to take home a profit! With this kind of promotion, the last bet you place should always make you busto (within the limits of the refund value) or guarantee a profit. With sports spread betting, I found this tricky to anticipate with my hurriedly placed total goals and corners bets.
The key would be to find a bet that has a limited downside so you can’t lose more than £50, but also has the chance of hitting it big. A total goals bet on soccer, buying at 2.5 goals for £20 per goal cannot lose more than £50 (for a 0-0 draw) but a three goal match only wins you £10 – you need to find a real goalfest to win a significant amount.
This weekend’s promotion is available to everyone, and is in a similar vein – a £30 net refund from your weekend’s bets, but for their virtual games rather than sports spread betting. These games are gimmicky rubbish, allowing you to bet on fake horseracing, fake poker games, fake dice, fake slots and fake roulette as well as some really silly novelty games like a cartoon tank that fires footballs with random numbers into the air.
However I liked the look of the roulette game in order to play through this offer fairly easily so I had a go. It’s a single zero game and you create your own market by placing chips as you would in a casino, and then betting higher or lower than an expected win amount that the system generates for you.
To keep things simple, I only looked at single unit bets and for every type of bet the market was set at 0.94-1.00. In other words, when you buy the market at 1.00, the amount you win is exactly the same as you would win on a regular roulette table. A single number still wins 36 times your stake and a red/black bet wins even money. The house edge for each bet comes only from the zero on the wheel – 1 in 37, or just over 2.7% – just as it does in a casino.
The 0.94 figure is for when you want to bet against the spin producing a winner for whatever bet you placed on the roulette layout. When you sell this market, you can win 0.94 times your stake but you risk the amount of the roulette payoff multiplied by your stake. Betting against a single number, you could win 94p or lose £36 for a £1 stake whereas on an even money bet, you are laying £1 to win 94p. The zero on the wheel works in your favour – you win 19 times out of 37, but the payoff is reduced.
If my calculations are correct, the edge on selling bet is very small. For a red/black bet at £1, every 37 spins you will lose (18 x 100) and win (19 x 94), a net loss of 14p. That’s a house edge of 0.38%! I’d love someone (if only I knew a maths teacher, for instance…) to correct me here – that seems far too small, and I wish I’d noticed this before I actually started playing out this bonus!
I had also assumed that I would have to buy in any market in order to hit a big payoff. Now I realise this is also not true. I would have been able to cover multiple bets on the layout (e.g. two separate dozens) and sell that market for odds of roughly 2-1. Effectively I’d be betting the other dozen as well as the zero, and this might have been a better bet than doing the bet the "normal" way round.
There was a five bet play requirement and although no minimum risk was stated I thought it was wise to at least make sure the £30 freebie was wagered in full. I began with five £6 bets on red, intending to move on to a bigger bet after these five bets were complete. Things didn’t start well: 22, 36, 26, 2, 6
Down to £12. I’d need a 2-1 payoff to get back to be only £6 into profit. It would have to be a 5-1 shot or longer to make it worthwhile. I decided to play it a different way – try to gamble back up to the free £30 and then go for one win for that full amount on a 2-1, aiming for a £60 profit.
I put the remaining £12 on red. 21. Hooray. £6 more to get back even, so I played red one more time. 18. Home and dry – almost. Now just the small matter of trying to win something…
I bet the first dozen for £30. If I win, it’s £60 profit and I’m cashing out. If I lose, I get my £30 back on Monday. A great position to be in.
Click here to watch the spin and retrospectively sweat it with me. Remember, we’re looking for any number between 1 and 12…
Both Party Poker and Absolute Poker have thrown free money at me this weekend. Which would be great, if I hadn’t blown it all on blackjack already…
Party seem to think it’s my birthday so they gave me $5 to celebrate with. In fact it just looks like I entered the month and day back to front, so I’ll try to correct that and see if I get the same offer again when it actually is my birthday! $5 won’t get you very far in any of their poker games, so trying to spin it up playing blackjack seemed like a good idea – the play requirement was $25 in total bets before being allowed to withdraw.
This is an eight deck game with the dealer hitting soft 17, and wizardofodds.com puts the house edge for these rules at about 0.8%. No point grinding through 25 $1 bets here to keep the swings to a minimum and cash in as much of the $4.80 expected value as possible – go for glory!
The plan here was simply to try to double up three times to $40 (actually $35 in total wagers – reducing my EV by a few cents) to get to an amount worth withdrawing. With the possibility of a 3-2 blackjack payout, it could even be a little higher than this. However I only got to see one hand – a hard 15 against a dealer 6, and the dealer did not bust.
Second try then. Absolute actually sent me two promotions for the price of, well, none. The first said "here, have $10" and the second said "here, have $20". Indeed this was a good mistake, as I found $30 waiting for me in my account. Both emails told me they missed me in slightly different ways. Funnily, I hadn’t been missing their clunky software and super tight players at all.
The only play requirement for the free money was to play something – anything would do. But I couldn’t be bothered to try to make something happen with poker – I already have a Party Poker bonus to clear this weekend – so this also came down to one hand of blackjack.
Absolute use six decks, but the dealer still hits soft 17. The house edge for these rules is ever so slightly better: 0.76%. Actually, playing just one hand for your entire bankroll messes up these figures somewhat – not being able to split and double down in favourable situations gives the house a bigger edge. Again, only giving up a few cents here in exchange for an easier life.
I saved this hand for posterity. They gave me a brief glimmer of hope for my useless hard 16 against a dealer’s face card, but it wasn’t to be.
Click here to view the hand in action!
EDIT: Of course, since replaying this I noticed the "surrender" button light up, which is the correct play here. I never even looked for it, dammit. I could have had $15 back to go on one more hand..!
For VIP read Very Important Promotion!
Congratulations! You have been promoted to EmpirePoker.com’s VIP program.
Our VIPs enjoy some of the best benefits on the Net.
This has been something of a mission of mine for a long time, but it’s taken a long time to get there. The Empire Poker loyalty points program doesn’t let you spend anything on junky merchandise until you’ve earned 5000 points and become a VIP, so otherwise all those hard earned FPPs are useless. Points are awarded in bizarre fashion, with ring game players penalised for playing too much – they number of points they get is the square root of the number of hands played in a day – whereas tournament players are rewarded for playing insane sessions – bonus points are awarded equal to the square of the number of tournament they play.
Since Party Poker took over, the number of qualifying daily tounaments has increased, and it would be possible to play over 40 tournaments in a day – thousands of bonus points! – if you were so inclined. I’m don’t quite have that stamina yet, but I’m getting there… On Sunday I’d worked out that I needed 642 points to become important, and so I played 25 tournaments – 625 bonus points, plus a few others based on the entry fees – which just pushed me into VIP territory.
5000 points should be enough for several shirts, caps, stress balls or blankets (I really wanted an Empire Poker blanket). But now that I finally made it, the VIP store appears to have been cleaned out. No key fobs, no playing cards, no mouse pads. Just cash. 5000 points is $50 cash, which is not to be sneezed at, but I wanted junk!
I ended up about even. Of course. About $50 down in real money, but also with a seat into a $215 tournament on Friday. In real terms, it’s a profit. Not bad at all, considering I was having to play 6 tables at a time at some points, and clearly wasn’t making great decisions when some all-in gambles I wouldn’t ordinarily take would have the upside of having more chips and the downside of being able to concentrate better on other tournaments. To get that far, I’d played 13 hours non-stop and was thoroughly knackered. Better get in training if I want to go for maximum points next time…
I also fell foul of bad karma after turning down a final table deal for the first time ever. My stack was crippled with four left, but my chip count offer was still less than third place money, so I didn’t think it was worth it. Of course, I busted on the next hand.
So my next goal is the Royal Flush Club at 15,000 points. This opens the door to a monthly $100 bonus with no play requirements. It’ll be worth it in the end… probably take a year or so to get there though at the rate I’m going!
Seriously, how could I refuse Neteller’s kind offer of some complimentary NETPoints? Well, probably because they’re the most worthless loyalty points ever, and I’d much rather just have them pay me the amount I got stiffed on my last withdrawal.
The sky appeared to be falling in yet again for online gamblers in America when Neteller announced last month that they were pulling out of that market. Last week, they revealed that they had $55m seized by the US Government and wouldn’t be paying out to any US players. In light of that, my beef does seem a little bit petty.
I decided that, even though in the UK we have the luxury Neteller being regulated by the FSA, that I’d be happier to see my money sitting in a proper bank than in Neteller right now. I cashed out $3000, paid Neteller’s $1 bank wire fee and then today got a text alert that a large deposit had been made to my bank. The amount: $2887.39. My last withdrawal was also for three grand and landed about $6 short (neither Neteller nor Citibank could explain where it had gone) and I decided it wasn’t really worth taking any further. But this time, $113 had gone walkabout.
It turns out Neteller don’t operate in US Dollars any more. Instead, they cashed me out an equivalent amount in Euro, leaving Citibank free to use whatever the hell exchange rate they felt like. Turns out it wasn’t a great rate – in fact, xe.net says the amount Netellersent works out at $3015, so it’s actually about $130 that Citibank are making on the deal – a handsome price, and the very reason I have a US Dollar bank account.
Some kind of warning that this is how they had to process a dollars withdrawal might have been nice. I’d definitely have found another way to withdraw if Euro was the only option, knowing that it was going to cost me to receive it into any account. My best option probably would have been to deposit into PokerStars and then ask for a cheque by mail. But if Neteller had offered to send the money in US Dollars using a reasonable exchange rate, that would work for me too.
As it stands, I’m $113 out of pocket and Neteller – so far – have basically told me tough cheese. I don’t think I should have to pay for this – after all, I asked for $3000, not EUR 2505. They recommended I lodge an official complaint, which I’ve done but don’t hold much hope for. You send that by email to complaints@neteller.com, for anybody who doesn’t want to have to wait forever on the phone to be told this. In my 45 minute phone call there was nearly five minutes of real actual talking, and almost none of that was useful.
SportingBet PLC announced this week that Paradise Poker is to be made redundant, and their players be swallowed up by a SportingBet branded poker client on the Boss network. Although I haven’t played at Paradise for a while – in fact I can’t actually remember the last time I did – I will always have a soft spot for it. It’s here that my screen name originated, after all.
One of Paradise’s gadgets is the ability to virtually order food and drink from a menu, and then a few seconds later it appears on the side table next to your avatar. It’s a great way to create superstitions. Maybe you do always get your aces cracked if you have food on the table. That guy is drinking a martini, he must be bluffing. You can’t call for a new dealer or new cards try to turn things around, but you can order a new drink.
I always used to sit down and order donuts. I felt it was lucky. Mmmm, donuts.
 Here’s a sentimental old picture of me and a plate of donuts winning a huge six-way all-in with pocket 8s. I managed to miss five overcards as well as ending up with a full house. Lovely. It also shows another feature of Paradise poker – the electrified cards when you hit a big hand. Sometimes you got flames instead of electricity, too. Features like that will be missed.
Paradise was also the online poker site that was endorsed, albeit briefly, by reigning EPT London champion Victoria Coren, although in all the photos I’ve found she’s actually wearing PokerStars gear. However, I don’t need any more excuse than that to put a stolen photo of her here. Mmmm, Vicky.
In other swallowings this week, details of Harrah’s takeover of Barbary Coast were announced. An article in the Review Journal says the new name will be "Bill’s Gamblin Hall and Saloon". Clearly a typo, but I’m hoping its a missin’ apostrophe, rather than a missing G. It’s named after Bill Harrah, founder of the corporation that’s slowly eliminating all competition on the Las Vegas Strip, and not Bill Boyd, chairman of the corporation that bought Coast Casinos in 2004 to eliminate their competition in the locals market.
This isn’t going to be a major rebranding – after all, it’s must only be a matter of time before Harrah’s pull it down – so I don’t expect much will change apart from the dreadful new name. Mmmm, Big Elvis.
This makes no sense at all. I’ve cashed out.
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