Nat Arem's Blog

I was playing pool last night with some friends of mine at a place called Twain’s in Decatur, GA and this happened, which I hadn’t seen before:

This is an iPhone pic so it’s a little hard to see, but the balls are basically pinned against each other. The 14 isn’t even really on the table, it’s basically hanging over the pocket. And it got stuck there after a shot.

I’ve been getting really into pool lately and I *wish* my apartment had a spot big enough for a pool table. It’s frustrating because there’s a bunch of extra room in my apartment that I don’t use, but none of the empty spots could fit a pool table. My next apartment/house will have a pool table for sure.

On a sidenote, I ran into foshio at Twain’s. He hasn’t been playing as much lately, but he’s ready to win the PCA. I’ll be down there, although I’m not going to play the tourney. Which readers out there are going? And if I don’t know to say hi to you, be sure to say hi to me if you recognize me and see me walking around.

I have to give Dell a lot of credit. They’ve been terrific in their management of my issue with my latest computer order. I made a post about it here. The basic story is that I ordered a computer, but didn’t realize until it had already shipped that it was going to my old address in Las Vegas. I got in contact with Dell before the computer was delivered and they told me that it had been redirected, but it was delivered anyway and now it can’t be located.

So the latest update is that Dell just sent me an unsolicited offer for a refund or replacement.

Hello Nat,

Thank you for your email.

Since you have not received the computer order, I can offer you a replacement or a refund for the order. Please confirm if you wish to receive a replacement order or a refund of this order.
If you wish to receive a replacement, please confirm the complete shipping address, where you would like to receive the replacement order. A reply/confirmation within 24 hours is appreciated.

Your case number for this interaction is [snip]. Please retain this case number on file. Please reply to this email, without changing the subject line.

Respectfully,
Dell employee name snipped
Case Manager (Central Resolution Group)

Keep in mind that I hadn’t even asked for a refund or replacement yet. I was planning on doing so, but to this point all of my communication has been about trying to locate the machine itself. It’s a testament to customer service at Dell that they take a pro-active stance on making offers like this. It may be because I’m a long-time customer with a long history of high-end orders, but still, it gives me a lot of confidence in Dell and I’ll probably go back there for a long time to come because of things like this.

All that being said, I’ll probably get a MacBook Pro with Windows for my next laptop.

Here’s a bonus clip from thepokerfilm that we just released. It features yellowsub86 and his friends playing 200/400 PLO on FTP after a night out in downtown Athens, GA.

That’s according to CNN. I’ve never seen “dreary” as a weather description, but it does seem accurate.

I have a good interview with Jon “PearlJammer” Turner ready to post, but I’m waiting on his approval first. I told him that I’d let him look through it, but it’s been a few days now because he’s doing well in the Five Diamonds main event and he hasn’t had a chance to look through it.

In other news, a recent purchase of mine was a Logitech Harmony 880 remote. I saw it on Amazon for $130 and I thought I should probably finally pick one up. I’ve been hearing about how great they are for awhile now. Anyone out there have one or another sick universal remote like it? Do you do anything cool with it?

I also attempted to buy a Dell desktop with Ubuntu (Linux) on it. I think it’s great that Dell is offering a non-Windows operation system pre-installed, so I both wanted to support the initiative and check out Ubuntu for myself. The only problem? I didn’t notice that Dell had my old Las Vegas address stored in its system. I bought my most recent Windows desktop when I was out there in May. So I noticed while the order was on the way that it was being shipped to the wrong side of the country, I notified Dell, they supposedly notified Fedex, but it was delivered anyway (argh). And Dell claims DHL went out there to look for it and try to ship it to Atlanta, but DHL says they can’t locate it at the address. So either DHL is dumb or someone stole it. Luckily it was only like $430 or something and it’s deductible for me, so I’m not out too much if I can’t get ahold of it, but it’s still kinda annoying.

Anyway, I guess that’s it for now.

Preface: I did this interview over at BLUFF. It’s on BLUFF Mag’s website here. I’m x-posting it so people who don’t read the homepage of BLUFF Magazine will still see it.

Kenny Rap is a professional online tournament player. Kenny recently became the #1 ranked online player in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings.

Nat Arem: What is your real name, how old are you and where are you from?
Kenny Rap: My real name is Kenny Weinstein, I’m 24 years old and I live in Galloway, NJ.

NA: How long have you been playing poker?
KR: I’ve been playing poker for almost 15 years now, but it’s been my only income for 5 years.

NA: When you say it’s your only income and you’re 24, did you do the college thing?
KR: I graduated college completely; I have my degree and everything. Maybe junior year I started to make decent money and from there I was just finishing college for the sake of finishing college.

NA: So when you graduated college you just decided to see how it would go as a full-time player and you haven’t looked back?
KR: Yes, exactly.

NA: Recently, you ascended to #1 overall in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings. While you’ve been a top online tourney player for awhile now, being #1 in a major rankings system is a new spot for you. What do you think helped you get over the hump?
KR: I think some of the subjective websites where opinion comes into play in the rankings have me lagging behind due to not being around the online community for very long. This is basically my first year of doing the high volume/high stakes online tournament scene full-time. The sites who do their rankings strictly based on results make me look better. But honestly, being ranked somewhere in the 20s like on P5s might be more accurate, it’s kind of hard for me to claim to be the #1 online tournament player in the world right now.

NA: You placed 7th in WCOOP 14 for $70K, the $1K NLHE won by mig.com and one of the biggest tournaments ever held online (I think 3rd biggest after the ME from the last two years). Can you describe how that tournament went and what that felt like?
KR: That tournament was an absolute marathon – it was like 16 or 17 hours and it just got very grueling at the end. Towards the end, mig.com was just running everybody over and I still regret a little bit not taking a stand here or there. There was one hand discussed a lot where I folded QQ preflop and I still think about all these hands a lot just because I didn’t win and you just go back and look at it, but I don’t think I got particularly lucky that tournament. I remember one hand with maybe 40 people left I doubled up with a king high draw so I wasn’t really scared to put it in. I think for the most part I just kind of stayed alive and kept my head above water and stole blinds and let mig.com do his thing. I hoped to win a flip late, but I just didn’t.

NA: So that is your largest tournament score ever?
KR: Yea, that’s my largest ever. I’m more proud of some wins for significantly smaller amounts but because that was such a high profile and featured final table I guess yea, it is my biggest win. It’s definitely my biggest win dollar amount wise.

NA: So you mentioned mig.com as a tough player. Who are your toughest opponents and why?
KR: I think zangbezan24/Imper1um is a nightmare to play against. He’s capable of betting his entire stack at any point and he’s absolutely fearless. When you can’t scare your opponent when he’s in control at all times, it’s very very difficult.

Some of the more aggressive players who a lot of people fear are actually not who I’m scared of. For example, the BeL0WaB0Ves and Andy McLEODs – I think that a lot of these guys are just too aggressive and very trappable and I don’t really mind playing against them. But they’re also geniuses and they know what you’re doing also, so they’re still hard to play against. But for the most part, people like westmenloAA/mjorgenson13 and Imper1um really have my number – Menlo seems to know what I have every time.

NA: Everyone knows you’re supposed to be aggressive, but what’s the difference between someone who just throws their stack around and someone like Imper1um?
KR: I know exactly what you’re saying because, a year ago, I was this hyper-aggressive “bet bet bet bet” type of player and I was amazing at accumulating monster stacks. But I wasn’t winning because you get the monster stack and you just blow it up every single time because you just have no idea how to put on the brakes. Everyone figures out that you’re very aggressive and it just doesn’t take long for someone to pick up a hand and trap you. So I think that the real key to poker, because the game has changed in the past year, is being able to sniff out the coolers and all of these situations where you’re not good anymore. The toughest part is when you’re stealing blinds and you’re raising with trash for four or five straight hands and everybody rolls over and dies and you pick up chips it’s nice – and then you finally get dealt a hand. You finally get dealt AQ, but then somebody plays back at you and it’s that much harder to fold because you’ve been raising with trash forever but the fact of the matter is they’ll let you run them over and if they re-raise you, you have to fold the AQ. I’d raise with 76 four times in a row and then I’d get dealt AQ and I wouldn’t be able to fold, but it’s actually an easy fold once they re-pop you. I think that people who are aggressive and raising a lot, they don’t know how to fold, so yea, everybody’s good at accumulating chips and stealing blinds, but who’s the guy that can fold the AQ or 99 in the bad spot? I think making big laydowns is a bigger problem nowadays for most people than accumulating chips.

NA: What are your favorite tournaments and why?
KR: I used to like the 11r, but I would have to say just your standard 109 freezeout on Stars is my favorite tournament because you can be aggressive and pick on people and that’s the most fun thing to do in my opinion: winning pots without showdown when you don’t have it. When you play the 109r and the 1K tournaments, everyone’s good and they know you don’t have it every time and you can’t just run over the table and bluff, so you have sit there and be patient and be tight. I’d kind of rather just raise every hand and outplay people and you have to take it down a little bit on the buyin, so I’d say the 109 freezeout is my favorite tourney.

NA: According to thepokerdb, you’ve played somewhere in the range of 3,000 tournaments this year. That’s around 10 a day, how do you pull that off and stay profitable?
KR: I admit I’m not going to be able to do this forever. I probably will get a little bit tired of it and at least slow down, but right now, every morning I wake up and I look forward to doing my job. I enjoy what I do and I make money. I guess my answer is just that it’s easy right now and I’m not burnt out, I look forward to it every minute and I really love what I do. The people that get burnt out are probably the people who are doing it only for the money and don’t really love the game and the challenge. I do love it and right now I do not have that problem.

NA: You’ve been to a number of live events previously – I remember meeting you at the 2007 PCA. Which live events do you expect to play in 2008?
KR: I have not been to the World Series yet at all. I went to the Bahamas for the PCA the past two years and I’ll probably go there again this year. I’m definitely going to do the WSOP this year. I play all of the Borgata events because I live right next to Atlantic City, so I’ll probably play Borgata summer, Borgata winter, WSOP and the PCA. All in all, I don’t love playing live too much. Like we discussed with my volume, I kind of like the fact that you can lose an online tourney and just sign up for another one so the loss isn’t devastating. When I dedicate a week of not just time, but emotion and effort, you really put your heart and soul into a live tourney and maybe I’m just too emotional a person but I really feel crushed after busting from those events. I’m not really sure I’m the best live player – not even skill-wise, just being able to deal with the swings and I’ll play a few times a year, but I’m not that big of a live player.

NA: So you don’t really go over to the Borgata and play 2/5 or 5/10 NL?
KR: Occasionally. I’m not going to say I don’t, but cash games are not my strongest point and if you’re going to be a poker professional your job is to find your edges and pick good games. If I can sit online and crush tourneys all day being one of the top online tournament players in the world, that would make a lot more sense than going to a casino and just be your average everyday 2/5 NL player. I’m not sure I would be one of the best live 2/5 NL players in the world whereas I can pretty confidently say that I feel I’m one of the top online tourney players. I do play live cash sometimes but it’s not my strong point.

NA: Congratulations on holding the #1 overall rank in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings and we wish you the best of luck in the future.

A followup to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Things that I am very confident in and I have proof for (although I cannot reveal the evidence for all of the points):

1. MCBILL did not cheat when he won the $100K Absolute Poker Dream Package

When I was in Costa Rica, I did a few things to confirm MCBILL’s innocence.

First, I looked at the name/address on the account. I confirmed that the information was the same as the info that I received from other sources online. In addition, I confirmed that there was a “MCBILL” registered with the same IP and email at thepokerdb. Therefore, I concluded with 100% certainty that Absolute Poker did not manipulate the data in MCBILL’s account.

Second, I examined the tournament history where MCBILL won the $100K Absolute Poker Dream Package. I viewed the entire hand history with hole cards exposed and while I cannot reveal the entire history for obvious reasons, I did clear certain hands for public release. The reason Absolute agreed to let me release these hands was because they went to showdown and were therefore available publicly to people observing and/or playing in the tournament. Here are the MCBILL Selected Hands. I think you’ll agree with me that MCBILL was not a superuser. In addition, speaking from the point of view of having seen the rest of the history, I assure you that MCBILL could not see hole cards on AP.

2. OSCAR133 is not Oscar Hilt Tatum (one of the AP execs mentioned in the investigation) and did not cheat during his tourney wins early in October 2007

I did similar things for OSCAR133 as for MCBILL. I would retype the same paragraphs here as I just typed for MCBILL, but there’s no point. He wasn’t cheating when he won the $150K weekly tournament. Like I did for MCBILL, I reviewed OSCAR133′s play and he was not a superuser. Once again, here are some OSCAR133 Selected Hands. And as I stated for MCBILL, the rest of OSCAR133′s hand history was not suspicious. Also, his satellite win into the $150 Weekly was not a suspicious hand history, although I did not clear any of those hands for public release, so I cannot do so.

3. Absolute Poker was operationally run, to a significant degree, by AJ Green

Why is this significant? Well, a major question in my mind was exactly how involved was Scott Tom and how involved was AJ Green. I simply didn’t know beyond what my sources had told me. Once problem was that a few of my “best” sources were actually not employees as recently as this past summer, so they didn’t know. Of course, my ex-employees sources were able to tell me that Scott and AJ used to be VERY involved in Absolute Poker operations, but that didn’t really speak to the cheating during this past August and September. So I used my time in Costa Rica to ask current employees questions about the two of them. I often asked different employees when others were not in the room a series of questions, some of which were dumb and obvious, some of which were more important to me. I received very very consistent answers about Scott and AJ’s roles at Absolute during the period in question. And everything pointed to AJ having significant operational control over Absolute and, to a certain degree, Ultimate Bet as well. In addition, the current employees that I talked to “off the job” (ie, some lower level people who weren’t officially showing me around) confirmed the same thing.

In addition, my friend Shaun Deeb (known online as shaundeeb, TedsFishFry, etc) provided me with the following email that was sent to him:

—–Original Message—–
From: [AP/UB employee email address]
To: [shaundeeb's email address]
Cc: ‘AJ’ [edited].COM>
Sent: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 12:42 pm
Subject: [edited]

Shawn
Great to talk to you – im excited for you about your Euro trip – i know your love it!
I hope you make it to Aruba – let me know when you have your seat and we’ll get you invited to a few special invite only events with the other pros.
All the best
[edited]

So, basically, AJ was still receiving CC’ed copies of customer-level emails on Sept 3rd. This basically confirms what I already knew — he was very involved in operations during the cheating period. For all intents and purposes, he was not a high-level consultant, but an operational manager.

4. Absolute Poker does not have significant poker knowledge within their organization

You know, when I made my post way-back-when outlining these points, some people made some sarcastic comments about this point. They were like, “oh, gee, really?” and generally clearly thought this was something that I shouldn’t have focused on. I disagree. I find it to be a very important point. Here’s why…

Basically, Absolute Poker is claiming that a certain high level person said “there’s nothing to see here, move along” and that the rest of the company said “oh, okay, sounds good” and that the issue was therefore ignored internally. In order for that story to be even remotely believable, isn’t the level of poker expertise in the company pretty important? I don’t think people realize exactly how compartmentalized the departments are at a poker site like Absolute. For instance, I spoke with a well-known Montana guy who basically runs the payments at Absolute. He *clearly* did not focus his daily efforts on actual gaming. I doubt he’s reviewed a hand history in years. He spends his time moving money around, making sure they can get deposits smoothly (he told me some funny stories re: deposits), making sure cashouts happen fast, etc. There’s no way he spent time reading BBV or customer-level stuff. Lots of the higher level people don’t EVER look at hand histories or even play poker at all. They’re business people. Would you expect someone in the accounting department at Tylenol to know about cyanide in the pills? Or how to even figure out what went wrong? As poker players, we take it for granted that anyone with a clue about poker would know that something was wrong. What about people who never looked at the hand history because someone told them it was okay or about people who looked at it but didn’t know the first thing about poker? Would your brother/sister/parent who doesn’t play poker know something was wrong? The answer is probably not.

Therefore, I needed to know what the lowel-level people at Absolute knew about poker. I’m talking about the people who might actually review a history that was reported as suspicious. What I found was shocking. Basically, VERY few people at Absolute Poker understand poker at all. Their “security” department is mainly a credit card fraud prevention outfit. They don’t have poker experts in the same vein as PokerStars support. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this thread on 2p2 about how Absolute Poker support did not even know the rules of Razz (in addition to their software being incorrect). Everyone I spoke to from current employees in charge of showing me around to ex-employees to people generally familiar with Absolute told me the same thing: They don’t know anything about poker in their security department. Now, is this excusable? No, certainly not. Absolute Poker, as one of the largest poker sites online, is being paid significantly to employ the best available poker security experts. It’s actually an enormous organizational fault of theirs that they have not brought in significant poker expertise to catch issues like this. And just imagine, if they can’t spot this, how in the world would they ever spot sophisticated collusion? The answer is that the chances of them catching skilled cheaters are slim to none.

I should note that the person who is now running the Absolute Poker organization has told me that he wants to significantly change the poker expertise in their organization. He says he’s been given a quasi-”blank check” to get it done. I haven’t heard, specifically, about anything being done as of the writing of this blog. However, the audit is still not out (as far as I know, I think was was supposed to be out on Friday the 7th) and I understand that it takes time to move on things like this. You can be sure that I will post and update everyone on the “poker expertise” matter as I find out over the next few months what has/hasn’t been done.

That’s it for this part, I may be posting a part 5 at some point in the future. Also, I’ve received some comments about why I am not posting this stuff on 2p2, P5s, etc. The reason is that I don’t want to be seen as spamming and there aren’t good/already-made threads to put these posts in. So if someone else wants to do it, great. If not, so be it. I’m just not going to be the one to do it and I figure it will get posted/linked eventually at some point if there’s something of value.