Nat Arem's Blog

Well, the plan for going to Europe has been a complete disaster. Ozzy hasn’t been able to secure a visa to travel to the EPT Monte Carlo, which he won a seat for on Stars. He has a Pakistani passport and a US green card, so he needs a visa to travel to Europe. Unfortunately, the French consulate has not been very helpful thus far. Therefore, he won’t be making the trip and neither will I (I was only going if Ozzy, Roman and I were going to travel around after the tournament).

I’ve since made alternates plans. A bunch of 2+2ers are planning to go to Turning Stone in upstate NY. I had already planned on going to visit my sister, who is a senior at Cornell, and my grandmother, who lives in the area. It was logical to combine the trips because Ithaca is on the way to Verona, so I will be leaving for Ithaca later today, then continuing on to Verona on Wednesday of next week.

Once at Turning Stone, I’ll be staying with ActionJeff/Jeff1187, AaronBeen, and PeglegMcgee. I don’t know Aaron or Pegleg except for brief conversations online, but I spend a lot of time talking to Jeff online. We got two rooms in “The Lodge,” which is supposed to be the nicest place to stay at Turning Stone. Ozzy and thorladen both cautioned me against staying anywhere else at the resort.

The reason for the trip is two-fold. First, there are a number of decent size tournaments going off, including a two day $1K event next weekend. I’m not much a tournament player, but I’ll definitely play the cash games. Maybe I’ll find my way into a tourney or two if I get the urge. I’d want to look at the structure first though. The second reason is just to meet up with Jeff and other 2+2ers that I talk to online. People like Exitonly4, Ansky/supernova9, gobboboy and a number of others are supposedly going to be there (I’m not sure if it’s final for all of them). If anyone is in the area next week, please stop by.

Also, stevesbets is planning on playing the Foxwoods Poker Classic in April, so I plan on going up there for some cash games and to hang out. I also want to visit some people in Boston, so I’ll probably combine that trip as well.

Lastly, my plans for May. schaefer is going to spend his spring driving around the country going to every baseball stadium, so I decided I should meet up with him when he gets to Philly. His current plans have him being here on May 4th, so we’ll go to the Phillies-Braves game that day. After that, I still plan on doing a roadtrip with ahh_snap, but we haven’t worked out any details. I do have to be in Ithaca on Memorial Day weekend for my sister’s graduation, but other than that I’m pretty much free.

That’s it for now, time to go get a haircut before packing to go to upstate NY for ten days.

I uploaded two video clips that I took with my digital camera.

You should right-click and do save-as or save-link for both of these:

Steve’s Introduction: Starts just as Jack Effel is about to introduce Steve.

Steve’s Bustout Hand: Starts just as Steve is about to go all in with his nut flush draw and two over cards.

Please look at my previous entry for pics and other info.

On Friday morning, I went down to AC to watch my friend Steve Jacobs (stevesbets online) play the final table of the Harrah’s AC WSOP Circuit 10K event. Eric Haber (sheets) picked up Ozzy on his way down to AC so Ozzy could watch the final table and then come back to Philly with me for the weekend.

Here are the chip counts at the start of the final table:

Name – Chip Count
Brian Jensen – 191,500
Herbert Cheng – 168,000
Abraham Korotki – 160,500
Steven Jacobs – 149,500
Ed Corrado – 147,500
Jody Garaventa – 137,500
Harry White – 109,000
Jianhua Zhou – 108,500
Ernie Shepherd – 68,000

Also, here are the payouts:

1. $433,008
2. $240,560
3. $132,308
4. $96,224
5. $84,196
6. $72,168
7. 60,140
8. 48,112
9. 36,084

Anyway, play got underway around 2:30 PM on Friday afternoon. The blinds were at 3K/6K 500A for a few minutes before moving to 4K/8K/1K. The levels were 2 hours long with the progression being 3/6/.5, 4/8/1, 5/10/1, 6/12/1, etc, so it was a great structure.

Steve never played that many pots, although he did manage to pull out a big win here:

“Friday, 17th of February 2006 05:44 PM

Brian calls the blind, Steven raises to 40K. In the small blind, Eddie has to add 35K to call, but doesnt. Herbert in the big blind does call. Back to Brian, he calls. Huge skillet brewin’. Threeway action. A K Q rainbow on the flop. Checked. The turn is the Tc. Checked around to Steven, he takes the opportunity to bet 25K and Herbert calls. Brian does not. The river brings the Th. Herbert is first to act and he checks. Steven now moves all in for 66K. Herbert is in the hot seat. He sends his cards to the muck. Steven Jacobs picks up the biggest pot of the day so far.” -PokerPages.com

I know what Steve had, but I won’t reveal it here because he might not want people to know. If you want to read all the hand descriptions, Sharla’s final table blog is pretty good.

I took a lot of pictures, so here are twenty of the best. There are a lot of repetitive pictures, but this post is just as much for Steve’s friends and family who might want to see a lot of pictures from the event. Here we go, in order of when I took the pic…

Deep (Steve’s roommate), Bree (Steve’s girlfriend), Steve and Eric Haber (sheets). Steve is filling out his WSOP profile sheet.

The final table getting ready to start

Ozzy was almost immediately kicked out of the tournament room, so he had to wait outside during portions of the final table and just try to hear what was going on inside

He did manage to sneak inside for a little while before being re-kicked out

Steve

Steve

Steve

Different view of the final table

Bree and sheets texting to friends (mainly Bax in the case of sheets)

Steve cracking AA with QT on a Q high flop. You can read about the hand at PokerPages.

Table from above

Table from above again

Steve

Steve

Steve

Steve

Steve

The rail starting to get tired. I think Deep passed out in his sweatshirt hood (he had to turn it around because it said Borgata on the front)

Steve

Herb, the 4th place finisher, going out with AJ v AQ

After Steve busted: Ozzy, sheets, Steve, Bree and Deep waiting outside for sheets’ car to be brought around.

I also have a few videos from the tournament. I’m going to upload them and post links on here in a bit.

That’s it for now.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, a big controversy has blown up after people found out that JJProdigy played the Party MTT on at least two accounts that we know about. Some of the relevant threads can be found: here, here and here.

This is a difficult issue to deal with — not the issue itself, but how people discuss it. I don’t know how many people truly understand exactly what is going on. Here is what has been going back and forth.

Disclaimer: This is not directed at JJ as I don’t know his situation. I only know about this happening in the past with other players. Don’t think that a comment I make here is directed specifically at JJ, although I do think that a number of them could easily apply to him.

A lot of people are saying that it’s against the rules to knowingly enter more than one account in a tournament.

My response: Agreed, it’s against the rules.

People respond that they are playing on their brother’s, dad’s, mother’s or cousin’s account.

My response: C’mon, be serious, that’s not what’s happening. We all know that’s a way to play on other accounts while staying within the rules (somewhat).

Some people even say that they take over someone else’s account after that their normal account busts, which should be okay because people take over for each other all the time.

My response: We all know that people take over for each other. Everyone has done it or had someone do it for them. If you haven’t, then you’re in the minority. That being said, using that as an excuse for playing multiple accounts is pretty transparent. We all know that people don’t just suddenly have 8 relatives playing in every big sunday tournament from the same house. It’s just another way to try to present it as if it’s within the rules. That’s not to say that it hasn’t happened legitimately, but most of the time I believe it’s used as an excuse.

Various onlookers who clearly don’t know what’s really going on in online poker all get outraged when they find out that people are playing under the disguise of being their sister or friend. They demand action on the part of online sites to deal with this “cheating.”

My response: Sorry, but it simply doesn’t work like that. An online site can’t stop something like this with some magical line of programming code (I’ll address this in the next paragraph). Also, this isn’t quite like cheating as most people use the word. True cheating is collusive activity such as sharing hole cards, dumping chips or the like. Playing two accounts that are very likely to never get seated with each other is certainly cheating, but let’s not get crazy here. It’s not on the same scale. Don’t claim that it is, because people who do are being just as ridiculous as those who claim there’s nothing wrong with playing multiple accounts. Let’s be honest: it’s wrong, but not nearly as wrong as knowingly dumping chips or sitting with a friend at a cash game table with the intent to share info. The two situations just don’t compare on the same level.

On to the technology aspect. Does anyone really think it’s possible to stop this type of activity? I’ll clue you in now that not only is it hard to slow this activity down, it’s impossible to stop it. The main suggestion from internet newbies is that sites can just ban MTT activity from the same IP address. That doesn’t work for a few reasons. First, people play at their friend’s house all the time. Second, getting a new IP is INCREDIBLY easy. You can get a new Verizon DSL internet connection for $15 a month. If I want to play 8 entries in every Party Poker tournament, you don’t think I’d just pay a few hundred a month for more IP addresses if they decided to ban multiple connections? Look at it this way. There’s a super every night. There are multiple $109 tourneys every day. There are three $215 tourneys every week and sometimes they have a $640 or a $378. If my ROI is 100% in MTTs (reasonable for a good player), I’m gaining THOUSANDS of dollars per internet connection per month. Therefore, top players won’t be fazed by the idea of a rule like that. If the player is careful about only linking each Party account to a certain IP (ie, only logging in to that account on that IP), then there’s no way for a site to know that the player is using more than one account.

Finally, people say that top players should be embarassed, etc. That they shouldn’t “need” more than one account to beat online poker.

My response: Wow, you couldn’t have missed the point more. This isn’t about needing more accounts to beat online poker. After all, two shots cost twice as much. Eight shots costs a staggering $1720 in the Party or Stars Big Sunday. Does that mean the players will play differently because “they have more shots” or whatever? NO. It means they get to “apply their edge” more often. Here’s the simple math:

In a given $215 tournament, a “good” player might have a 100% long-term ROI (maybe more for some). That mean they expect to profit by about $200 for each time they play that tournament, give or take a few due to the rake factor. If they play it once, that’s $200. If they play it eight times, that’s $1600. If a player has a dual monitor setup and plans on being there all afternoon, then they might as well fill up the 8 spots with tables. It has nothing to do with having a different mindset or cheating in terms of actual play at the table. It’s a simple matter of multiplication. Therefore, this doesn’t help them beat online poker, it just helps players to reduce variance in relation to time. Only being able to play 52 sunday specials per year will result in a much greater ROI/time variance than being able to play over 400 sunday specials per year. In addition to the reduction in variance in relation to time, it should also increase expectation (which translates to profit in the long run) by 8 times or so, reduced by the skill that is taken away by the lack of paying close attention to each table.

Okay, so now you know why people do it and why it can’t be stopped. Is it okay? I don’t think it’s particularly fair. Isn’t it greedy? Yes, it is, but it’s hard to turn down that much money when it’s that easy to go and get it. Hundreds of thousands of dollars year isn’t easy to turn away from, even if it’s against the rules. In addition, people who do this don’t see it as cheating because they are just saying they want more shots at a final table with a bunch of lucky fish. They aren’t changing their gameplay in any way. Therefore, they say, it’s not quite as bad as people make it out to be. Do I really care? Not really. Why? Simply, I don’t concern myself with things that I can’t stop. This isn’t something that can be stopped even if the sites get really vigorous, although that may stop it from happening casually.

If the sites DO ever start taking this seriously, then people will just take it even more underground. It’s just how online poker will be and you should probably stop playing if you don’t want it to happen in your games. Pretty much the only “100% safe” area from any sort of cheating is HU games (STTs or cash games)… and that’s assuming that you trust the site.

I have a lot planned for the next few months.

First, I still have that Europe trip as a strong possibility. There are a few complications that have arisen, but I should still be going. The plan is to go to Italy, Spain, France and the Netherlands. We’d fly back from Amsterdam. I’ve been to most of the places that we plan on going, but spending a month travelling around Europe is a lot of fun and I might not have the chance to do it again for a long time, if at all. Therefore, I’m going to go if I can. We’ll see how the details iron themselves out over the next few weeks.

The next trip in the works is a US-based road trip in the May-June timeframe, although the trip itself would probably be 2-3 weeks. The idea is to travel around the south and midwest areas of the country. I’ll probably be going with my friend Nick (aka ahh_snap) as he wants to do the same things that I’m interested in. One priority would be seeking out some of the best amusement parks and testing out the rides. I’ve always wanted to go to places like Cedar Point, so this seems like a good opportunity to do that. The trip will likely be planned as we are travelling, so I’m not sure how much we have to figure out right now.

Also, I’ll be at the WSOP in Vegas during the summer. I’m not sure how long I’ll be out there, but I know at least a week or two. I have my weigh-in for my bet (read about 5-6 posts down if you don’t know what I’m talking about) plus I’d like to experience the WSOP’s atmosphere. And there will be a lot of people there that I’d like to meet.

I also reached an agreement today that should help out my bottom line, so I’m excited about seeing that develop over the next few months. I don’t think I should post exactly what happened here, but the key is that I’ll be pulling in a lot more than I have in the past from something that I own the rights to… and it has a decent amount of potential.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but there isn’t that much going on right now except working out and random database things. I went to Jersey City, NJ (located just across the Hudson from Manhatten) for the Super Bowl to meet up with some my long-time friends. And by long-time, I mean REALLY long. I’ve known all three of them for about 20 years as we went to the same private school outside of Philadelphia from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade. Unfortunately, we don’t live near each other anymore so it’s good to catch up with them. I also brought Ozzy with me since he lives somewhat nearby, then I hung out with him in Staten Island on Monday.

There isn’t much to say about the game. It was a good (meaning exciting) game, but I think it was clear that the Steelers were a better team and were going to win. I normally would bet giving the three points when I feel this way about a game, but I just didn’t pay close enough attention to football this season. I also didn’t find anyone who wanted to bet and I don’t like to pay the vig so I didn’t bet it online. This is the first Super Bowl in 5 or 6 years that I didn’t bet on, so that was a bit strange.

Ozzy is missing the France tournament (as I suggested might happen in an earlier entry), but the complications that arose really weren’t his fault. However, he won a seat to Monte Carlo, so I’m about 99% sure he’ll make it there. The tournament starts on March 7th, so Ozzy, Roman and I plan on gong over on the 5th. After the tournament is over, we’ll travel around Europe for a month and return in the beginning of April. It should be a fun trip and I’ll definitely be posting a ton of updates and pictures as the trip is going on… that’s clearly a lot more exciting than what I do on a day to day basis here in Philadelphia.

I’ve been working on a script to rank players in the database. I finished a beta ranking, but I think I need to change the point system before I put it up on the site as I noticed a bunch of ways someone could skew the rankings by varying their tournament choice. Once I get the formula right, we’ll release weekly rankings for overall, by level and by game type. The rankings won’t actually show you any information about the results that were used to calculate the ranking, just the points that resulted from the formula as well as the formula used to calculate the results. Also, I think we’ll do it on a trailing twelve month (TTM) basis, so each week we pick up this year will be one week that we knock off of last year.

I’m buying a new cellphone today (Motorola Razr for Verizon), so I’m pretty excited — as I always am when I’m about to pick up a new gadget. That’s it for now.