Morning all. I figured that since I didn't play last night (took my mom out to dinner for her birthday) I would still sit down and do a little writing. I will apologize now to everyone, but going to get up on my soapbox here for a little bit. I suspect that I will be preaching to the choir, but an attentive room of people listening makes me feel important, even if it is only in my head 🙂
As we are all aware the online gaming and poker world has changed substantially in the last 6 weeks. April 15th, 2011 was a day that will forever change a lot. I don't want to dwell on the player situations or aspects as I think the poker world has done a good job covering and debating that. What I did want to talk a little bit about is global impact the US DOJ move made. As we sit here in the end of May and look back on the last 6 weeks what do we see. Of the three sites initially targetted 2 of the 3 essentially remain. Based on the traffic flow information from Poker Scout (check their weekly reporting to see player traffic, pretty interesting stuff) AP/UB is essentially dead. Pre-BF they were averaging 2k+ players at the cash tables at peak, and now are <100 players at peak. I think the nail in the coffin was hammered, they just haven't acknowledged it yet. Am I upset or disappointed about that, not really. I think that this is a bit of a karma thing for UB. Their history is well documented and doesn't need to be rehashed by one more person. The more interesting part of things from my perspective is the percarious position Stars is now in across the world. With the US taking action the Austrailian government is now contemplating action against the company for violating an advertising law essentially allowing the Aussie's to shut them out of their market as well. I am sure that other countries are looking at their legislation where iGaming/iPoker is in an ambiguous state and looking to see if there is money to be made. I think that this is a dangerous time for them and could spell big trouble if governments start to smell money. FTP…I'm pissed at you. Plain and simple. We have for years put up with poor to non-existent support because the games were good, the system worked and things ran pretty pain free. Now when your entire global customer base was watching you to make sure that you did the right thing by your players, you fumbled the ball. If Stars was having the same problems processing payments it would have been one thing, you could have claimed that there was a problem in the financial system that was complex to work out. With Stars turning funds around within weeks, you look like schmucks. For the first week or two you looked incompetent, now it looks criminal. I am okay as my BR isn't critical to my life, wasn't intending on playing the WSOP this year so I'm not on the outs for that, but still, this is a principle thing and now things just look bad.
Mondays actions are interesting and I am still reading analysis and looking at opinions to see what the gaming world thinks of Blue Monday. The fact that Doylesroom and TruePoker got caught up in a sportsbetting bust is interesting, but I don't know enough to comment on the situation. The two things that I do know from it are sportsbetting is a no go and Bodog looks scared. That is very much so black and white illegal outside of Nevada in the US, treading there is truely showing a level of arrogance and daring the DOJ, bad move if you ask me. Allowing players, especially US players to access it and engage in it will bring trouble, plain and simple.
So what does the rest of things look like? Not sure. It looks like the Merge boys have decided to put a halt on cashout processing and are starting to deny US players from specific regions to try to stay under the radar. I understand that the landscape is cloudy and that they are concerned as no one is sure what is happening or where things are going. As far as my perspective, all I really want is a place where I can play to keep my skills sharp and growing. When Black Friday hit I became very comfortable with the fact that moving money in and out was going to be difficult at best and nearly impossible at worst. I made peace with it (I would recommend other US players trying the same until clarity hits). What I did come to realize though is that the sharpness of my skills as a recreational player directly translates into expected dollars in the $1/$2 and $1/$3 games at the casinos. Am I going to make retirement money or live off these games, no. I understand that and I am okay with it. What it does mean though is that the skills and abilities that I hone in the smaller tournaments and cash games will directly translate into winnable monies against other low stake live players and will afford me the opportunity to pad vacations and make a few extra bucks for fun.
Well that is it for now, a little more disjointed that usual, but I just felt the need to rant a little bit. I'll be back Friday with decidedly poker talk, going to be doing some reading and studying tonight so I am sure I will come up with something interesting to chat about. This is the Gman signing out!