Nat Arem's Blog

I am sure a lot of you heard about this but a few days ago it was announced that Bodog recovered Bodog.com. I read a few articles about it and it sounds like an extremely complicated and convoluted licensing and ownership process. Somehow it was not technically “bodog” which recovered it or something like it. It was Morris Mohawk Gaming or something like that. Seems like a bit of nonsense like most business legal arrangements. I’m just assuming bodog got it back for the purposes of this blog entry.

I think it presents a really interesting SEO question. There are two main options.

First, they can keep the bodoglife domain and just redirect bodog.com to the domain they’ve been using the last few years. The benefits are that they will preserve or improve their current rankings. They will also prevent any re-indexing and re-ranking delays which might take place over the course of a few weeks (that few weeks of limbo can mean a lot of lost money). They also will still get credit for the old links to bodog.com that were never changed — that is, assuming Google would give them credit for that. Lastly, they’ll get whatever remaining bodog.com type-in traffic exists. It’s a lower risk play to go this route because it doesn’t really mean a major change of any kind.

Second, they can redirect bodoglife back to the bodog.com domain and resurrect the bodog.com domain. As previously mentioned, they will lose rankings for terms like online poker for at least a certain period of time. They could also, potentially, trigger something in Google’s algorithm that would flag the site as some sort of spam. I know that sounds silly but crazier things have definitely happened in Google. I’m not saying that I know there’s something like that in the algorithm (obv) but one thing I’ve learned is that there’s usually no reason to make big changes with any sites that are currently performing well. Google can be very finicky and you never know what will happen to generic terms. Obviously bodog.com will quickly recover rankings for terms like “bodog”, “bodog poker”, etc. But the generic non-branded terms are another story. And those terms usually provide the most incremental value for an SEO-active poker site. In other words, even SEO braindead poker sites typically rank #1 for their own brand terms so it’s really a moot point how well SEOed they are when you’re talking about that set of keywords. The main benefit to this move is that it’s definitely better to be branded as bodog.com and it’s easier to promote in things like print ads and elsewhere.

Anyway, I’m told that Bodog plans on doing option two. I applaud their risk-taking and I’m also really curious to see how Google reacts. It’s always interesting to watch some other people make some big moves with SEO stuff! Usually, if you follow it carefully, it can reveal something or other about the algorithm that you never knew before. Good luck Bodog

Somehow I hadn’t seen this video or heard the song until a few days ago when my little brother Jake alerted me to it. I loved their song “Jizz in my pants” (couldn’t stop laughing at it) and I really like this one too. Out of obvious necessity due to the song, I am including a picture of me on a boat (sitting down).

Here’s the aforementioned picture:

Apparently I am extremely interested in my own hands.

I just got back from watching some tennis on the Champion’s Tour.  It’s basically like a senior tour for tennis players.  They held it at the Ritz-Carlton here on Grand Cayman and we saw two matches.  The first was Karel Novacek v Pat Cash.  Pretty boring match.  Cash (1987 Wimbledon champ) basically owned Novacek’s soul and Novacek didn’t put up much of a fight.  Quick two set victory.

The second match was much better but it didn’t look like it was going to be good at first.  I saw this short fat old guy walk out and I knew he was playing Jim Courier so I was just like “oh god this is going to be terrible.”  Here’s a picture of the guy:

His name is Mikael Pernfors and he’s a Swedish tennis player who was a mediocre ATP player. He did get to the final of the French Open in the 80s but he never really did anything of note. His physical presence is severely underwhelming — especially compared to Courier who is pretty intimidating on a tennis court. My first thought when I saw Pernfors was this commercial:

That’s been playing around the clock during the NBA playoffs on TNT. Pretty funny. BTW, does anyone know if that old guy is some NBA player from the 50s or something? That would make it even funnier.

Somehow, Pernfors is a really competitive tennis player. He put Courier in a lot of tough spots but he still ended up losing 6-3, 6-4. I got a couple of cool pictures of Courier. This first one is really cool I think.

I know it’s blurry but I had to take it without the flash. And I think that’s what made it cool. I really like how Courier’s racket path is visible. But way cooler than that is how you can see exactly where he hit the ball and the ball’s path off of his racket. I know I’m singing my own praises here but I really like how this came out.

Courier serving right in front of us.

This is a picture zoomed all the way out. You can see Courier on the left just after hitting a forehand.

Anyway, it was a really fun time and I’m glad I went. Also, go Sixers. Sick win tonight — I’m really pulling for them to pull out this series.

I was informed earlier tonight that poker media guy Justin Shronk passed away.  He was only 27 (basically my age) which is both shocking and really scary.  I think I first met Justin at EPT Monte Carlo in 2007 when he was working for PokerNews.com.  He was the video guy for Tiffany Michelle.  I also talked with him a bunch at the Nice airport because we were flying out at the same time at the end of the event.  I later hung out with him a bit at the 2007 WPT Championship a few weeks later when I was taking some pictures for BLUFF.  And of course at the 2007 WSOP.  I don’t think I’ve seen him in person since summer 2007.  Either way, really really nice guy and I’m not saying that because of what happened too him.  I don’t really know the cause of death.

Out of curiosity I searched through my email for messages from him.  Other than him following me on Twitter (totally pointless because I don’t really use Twitter right now) I found the following messages from last summer:

Hey,

Just read about the threatening.  That is MESSED UP man.

100,000%  OFF the record.  It will not appear in anything I promise – can you gimme some details?  who? when? how?

-shronk

He’s talking about when I received a threat in the UB investigation last year.  While I know he was, somewhat, looking for a scoop on the story (I think he was working with PokerRoad at the time) despite my potential comments being off-the-record, you can also tell that he actually cares when something bad happens to someone else.  And I didn’t even really know him that well.  After I told him I couldn’t really say anything at the time he replied:

Understandable.  Hopefully one day you’ll be able to.

If there’s anything we can do, definitely let us know.  Be safe.

-shronk

Once again, a very nice guy and always gracious in his dealings with me.  I did do an interview with PokerRoad which was the one and only interview that I did related to the UB scandal.  I didn’t really want to be too associated with the scandal and I was also extremely busy with work stuff at the time.  But I thought I should do one interview to get my story out there and I went with PokerRoad partially because of Justin and the respect I had for his work.

Very sad day, rest in peace Justin.

I’ve been really enjoying the Cayman Islands.  I got my car about a week ago and it’s been great so far.  Here’s a picture of it:

It’s really nice to be driving an Infiniti coupe again.  I missed my old G37 quite a bit while I lived in Costa Rica.  While this is, in some ways, a “downgrade” from my G37 I don’t really look at it like that.  I’ve always liked the exterior of the G35 more than the G37.  While the G37 interior is clearly superior I wouldn’t use most of the features here.  For instance, a nav system would be totally pointless.  The bluetooth would be pretty silly too because I don’t spend a whole lot of time on my Cayman cell phone.  So while the G37 is obviously better I think I saved about $20,000 by getting a 2007 G35 versus a 2008 G37.  I would have had to pay about $10,000-$12,000 more for the car and I would have had about $8,000 more in taxes due to a higher tax rate (40% versus 27.5%) while also importing a more expensive car.  Either way it seems like it’s an easy decision to save $20,000 and drive this around instead.  As it is, this is a really nice car and I’m very happy with it.

Anyway, to get to the real content of this blog entry (and the reason for the title), I’ve been going to the gym a bunch.  I joined the local gym about three weeks ago and I’ve gone almost every day.  I might have missed something like three days in that span.  I’ve been focusing a lot on doing cardio which is a very different thing for me.  I used to go to the gym and do like 20 minutes of half-hearted effort on the bike along with like 40 minutes of more intense lifting.  I’m trying to switch that around.  I’ve started doing 30 minutes of solid cardio at a minimum and over 60 minutes on some days.  The top end of that is actually the most cardio I’ve done in a gym in my entire life.

Not surprisingly, I’ve never been a good runner.  I think it’s largely due to a lack of training combined with my weight.  I’ve always been a big guy from the moment I was born to being six feet tall at the age of 13 to today.  It’s always been tough to run.  I ran cross-country as a sophomore in high school (over 10 years ago!) but I was one of the worst runners on the team.  I also had a hip flexor injury throughout most of the season that prevented me from doing a lot of training.  That being said, I think my best time in the 5k was something like 23:30 or 24:00.  Pretty slow.  Especially compared to the guys running sub-20 minutes at the top end of our team (and one guy who was doing like 16 minutes — freakin unreal).

Since I stopped running for the cross-country team I don’t think I’ve EVER run more than 1.5 miles at a time.  Meaning without stopping at all.  I’ve done workouts like 1 mile, rest for 5 minutes, 1 mile, rest for 10 minutes, 1 mile, etc.  But never even two miles straight.  Really pathetic but it always seems like my heart rate goes right to 170 when I start running and I just can’t keep it going for more than about 10 minutes at a time.

So today I got onto the treadmill hoping to get through 1.5 miles at a leisurely 5 miles per hour without feeling like I wanted to die and being totally out of breath.  I’d done 1 mile at the same pace without a TON of trouble the last few workouts and I wanted to see if I could start to push it a little more.  So I get to the 1 mile mark and I feel great.  I get to 1.5 miles and I’m not even close to out of breath.  I was completely and totally shocked.  I checked my heart rate and I was at 155 which is much more manageable than 170.  So I decide to keep going.  Before I know it I’ve been running for 36 minutes and I’m at the 3 mile mark.  I couldn’t believe it.  That is the FIRST time in my life that I’ve ran for that long (including cross country) without being out of breath or really wanting to stop.  I decided to stop but that was mainly because I needed to fill up my water bottle and I figured I needed to stop at some point.  But I definitely could have kept going.

Anyway, I know this won’t seem like a big deal to many of you.  For some people running comes a lot more naturally than it does to me.  For all of you 150 lbers out there tell me about the next time you run 3 miles with 70 lbs on your back.  For me, this is a huge deal.   I’m really thrilled and I think this is the result of putting in a bunch of time on the bike and elliptical pushing myself.  I’ve been doing a lot of 30-40 minute elliptical sessions trying to keep my heart rate around 155-160 and I think that really came into play today on the treadmill.  My body is now somewhat used to this level of exertion.  Now I just need to try to up the speed a bit at a time.  I’d really like to be able to routinely put in 4-5 mile runs at like 8 minute/mile pace.

The bottom line is that I really surprised myself and I’m really excited about the prospect of being able to use the treadmill as a cardio tool instead of limiting myself to just elliptical, bike and rowing.

Yesterday a few of us went out into the sound on my business partner’s new boat. He just got a 28′ Sea Ray Sundeck so he’s gotten really into the whole boating thing. With the way Grand Cayman is laid out, there’s a pretty large protected area that’s kind of like a bay. You can see it on this map of the western half of Grand Cayman:

Anyway, we went out there for some tubing. I have two videos of myself doing it but unfortunately no pictures this time. In this first video I am going back and forth across the wake while the boat was at about half-speed.

In this second video I asked the driver to go straight and fast. We almost got to full speed but then I fell outside the wake by accident and it’s impossible to get back in without slowing down. I bruised my leg on the water (it’s almost like a solid surface at those speeds) so I decided not to give it another go.

Also, I have no idea why the videos are showing up as different aspect ratios. Fun times!