BUCKINGHAMSHIRE-REMOVALS

Life finds a way 

In 2012, French beekeepers in the Alsatian town of Ribeauvillé faced a problem wrapped in a mystery: their beehives had started to produce honey in unnatural shades of blue and green. The anomaly began in late summer, but continued into the autumn, prompting an investigation from the beekeepers who were understandably concerned.

2011 had been a particularly harsh winter and dozens of beekeepers in the region were already dealing with high bee mortality rates and dwindling honey supplies. This new turquoise-tinted honey was unsellable, so a cause and solution had to be found and fast. 

When nature failed to supply enough sustenance, the bees improvised.

The investigation led them to a biogas plant three kilometers away. The plant was processing waste from a Mars factory which manufactured the popular candy M&M’s. With insufficient natural flowers available to forage on, the industrious bees had turned to the residue left by the multicolored candy shells as an alternative sugar source. When nature failed to supply enough sustenance, the bees improvised. Life finds a way.

Black Friday

If the winter of 2011 was inhospitable for the Alsatian bees, it was even chillier for global poker players. In April of that year, the United States Department of Justice seized the dot com addresses of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker and froze 76 bank accounts in 14 countries associated with the processing of payments for these entities. Player funds were withheld and prison sentences were sought for 11 defendants on the grounds that they were engaged in an elaborate criminal fraud scheme, using a small bank in Utah to mis-code transactions with other banks to bypass the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) restrictions.

In May, Blanca Gaming of Antigua, the parent company of Ultimate Bet and Absolute Poker, declared bankruptcy. Player deposits were lost. Player deposits on Full Tilt were also in jeopardy as it was revealed that the company had stopped segregating player funds, using player balances to fund future marketing campaigns and as a shareholder piggy bank.  

In July 2012, the US government dismissed “with prejudice” all civil complaints against PokerStars and Full Tilt, but only after coming to a settlement with PokerStars which included them purchasing Full Tilt and making the players whole. This was good news for the players with balances on the site but what followed were lean times for all players in an industry that had been booming. 

Trust lost

Poker had emerged from the primordial goo of road gamblers and riverboat shenanigans to become a respectable thing: a legitimate pastime, a mind-sport, even a TV product. The game grew its own mythologies. You’ve got to know when to hold’em and when to fold’em. A chip and a chair. Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser. You call, it’s gonna be all over baby. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour, then you are the sucker. Trust everyone, but always cut the cards.

online poker’s opponents were handed a blunt weapon

Trust was the issue again as the game that takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master was rightly under fire. An all-encompassing vision of the Wire Act was ultimately defeated in court in 2018 but, in the period following Black Friday, online poker’s opponents were handed a blunt weapon. Billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson campaigned relentlessly against the legalization of online poker in the US and his significant efforts greatly reduced the willingness of several states to enter into interstate gambling compacts. 

From 2011 onward, the United States was shut out of the global online poker market, of which they had accounted for 35%. US citizens who played online poker for a living lost their livelihoods. Some emigrated, some began playing live, but many were forced to quit the game. Professional players the world over suffered, too, in a shrinking market and there was also a negative knock-on effect to live poker as the three indicted companies had been qualifying a large proportion of World Series of Poker players via online satellites.

A poker world fragmented

To make matters worse, in the years that followed, poker in the rest of the world became even more fragmented. France, Italy, Spain and Portugal became walled-off segregated markets, eventually choosing to pool their liquidity in 2017 but remaining separate from the rest of the world. Regulations in several other European countries, while arguably well-intentioned, strangled online poker operators, curbing their ability to market and promote the game. 

Meanwhile, the legal situation for online poker in Asia continued to be murky. In Japan, the game was legal and regulated by the government. In the Philippines and Thailand, it was legal, but not regulated. In China and South Korea, it was illegal. Australia followed in America’s footsteps, saying hooroo to online poker in 2017 when they passed the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill. This forced online poker companies to stop offering their services, citing consumer protection and responsible gaming. 

Through the 2010s, poker was actually still growing in popularity, thriving in some countries, but regulations, licensing, ring-fencing and draconian tax laws made it very difficult for many players to access trustworthy games. Market leader PokerStars was one such place but in 2015, they sold out to Amaya Gaming, a small publicly-traded Canadian supplier of poker tables and other gambling equipment whose previous contribution to online poker was helping to run the Ongame poker network into the ground. 

Amaya squeezes the players 

What poker needed badly was Amaya to be a caretaker for the game, but from the get-go, the company treated its vast poker-playing clientele like a giant email list to which to cross-sell other forms of gambling. Amaya purchased PokerStars for $4.9 billion, 60% of which came from loans from Deutsche Bank, Barclays, and Macquarie Capital. Those loans had to be paid back quickly and the players would bear the brunt. Amaya PokerStars immediately increased rake, worsened structures, created more lottery formats, and divested the top tier players of their hard-earned annual loyalty bonuses. 

many understandably looked for alternative ways to sate their poker appetites

Far from nurturing poker, their objective was to squeeze the players, drastically reduce the number of people who could make a living from the game, and push casino and sports betting to their customers. Players reeling from a combination of government overreach, nanny state regulation, and the price-gouging behaviors of a poker operator with 70% of the market and enormous debts to pay, many understandably looked for alternative ways to sate their poker appetites. Poker apps were popping up everywhere, promising good games and offering workarounds for players from countries where poker transactions were banned. 

These apps were mostly unlicensed, but, undeterred, the agents for them spammed the DMs of poker players, encouraging them to join their poker clubs. Games on the app would technically be played for “play money,” but they would represent real money which would be accounted for off the app, the agents facilitating the movement of funds, collecting from losers and paying out winners via crypto-currency transactions. If this was the prohibition era for poker, then the clubs taking up residence on these apps were the speakeasies. 

Poker goes underground 

The historical parallels to Prohibition are striking. From Prohibition’s inception in America in January 1920, people still found ways to keep drinking. Pharmacists were allowed to prescribe whiskey for medicinal purposes. Pharmacies became the fronts for bootlegging operations. Church wine was still permitted under a religious congregation exemption. There was an uptick in church enrollment. Resourceful people learned how to make homemade moonshine, but the major consequence of the ban on alcohol was how it played into the hands of criminals who smuggled alcohol into America or distilled their own to sell in the back rooms of seemingly upstanding establishments. 

bootleggers have exploited the online poker landscape to make serious bucks

In the same way that organized crime syndicates flourished on the back of the black-market alcohol industry, criminal enterprises prospered from online poker’s prohibition and over-regulation. These bootleggers have exploited the online poker landscape to make serious bucks, encouraging their “customers” to use VPNs and bypassing jurisdictional issues and avoiding processing fees via a combination of third party, but not always really third party, agents and cryptocurrency transactions. 

The danger with these poker apps is twofold. While they are not themselves pyramid schemes per se, they do provide a platform and infrastructure upon which hundreds of pyramid schemes can be created. Agents move the money around, buying diamonds and other in-game virtual paraphernalia to give the apps their taste. Each of these agents acts as banker in a totally unregulated environment. If the agent goes rogue, the player is not protected. 

Unfit for purpose

The other danger with the poker apps is cheating. This is an issue on regulated, licensed sites, too, but those sites have dedicated teams who play perpetual games of cat and mouse and whack a mole with cheaters. Because the apps put little to no effort or investment into game integrity and security, the players are vulnerable to cheaters colluding, multi-accounting, and using real time assistance (RTA) far more than they would on a regulated poker site. 

it has gotten so flagrant and widespread that it is no longer whispered about

In more recent years, some of these apps have become so successful, gobbling up so much market share, that they are now bigger than many of the regulated online sites. A few of them are even making strides to conduct their businesses more legitimately, hiring security teams and attempting to become, or at least be perceived as, white label operators. There has, however, been no relent when it comes to turning a blind eye to VPN use and the use of the agent system. In fact, it has gotten so flagrant and widespread that it is no longer whispered about. Players from the US, Australia, and ring-fenced countries are playing against one another on these platforms while the agents act as the financial go-betweens and there is a very real chance that this behavior brings about the next poker Black Friday. 

The money made on these apps is being effectively laundered via crypto currency exchanges or dodgy payment processors which are themselves pyramid schemes. Just as the French bees found a substitute sugar source and 1920s Americans found a place to drink, poker players from banned territories are finding games. Life may find a way, but the players could soon discover that that the in-game money that they make on these apps is unfit for purpose. It might turn out to be turquoise honey. 

The post Turquoise Honey: Why Online Poker Went Underground and How It Will Bring About the Next Poker Black Friday appeared first on VegasSlotsOnline News.

Latin American Poker Tour organizers in São Paulo, Brazil have disqualified local poker star Rafael Caiaffa after he tried to claim extra poker chips in a tournament event. Not only that, but the player can also no longer participate in any other tournament in the Brazilian Series of Poker (BSOP), which runs until November 29.

Caiaffa failed to notify anyone when a dealer handed him an additional 100,000

The player received the duplicate stack in error at the beginning of the BSOP R$5,000 (US$1,022) Mystery Knockout competition. After receiving 100,000 in chips from a floorperson, Caiaffa failed to notify anyone when a dealer handed him an additional 100,000 as he sat down at the table.

Instead of notifying anyone to the error, Caiaffa added the additional 100,000 to his chip stack once his original total had dwindled to just 10,000 – giving him another shot at the top prize. This didn’t go unnoticed, however. His fellow player Eduardo Silva notified tournament organizers when he noticed Caiaffa’s stack size grow drastically. They then confirmed the incident via camera footage.

Caiaffa – who once won a World Series of Poker bracelet in a 2022 online international tournament – wasn’t the only entrant to receive additional chips by accident, although he was the sole player to try to get away with it. According to MundoPoker, several other players received duplicate starting stacks and all notified members of staff.

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Strategic adjustments

Our book Poker Satellite Strategy came out in 2019 and literally on the day we released it, legendary Tournament Director Matt Savage told us about a new format of satellite that could, in theory, render the book obsolete.

We were skeptical about Target Stack, Cashout, or Milestone Satellites and didn’t think they would last as a format. In actual fact, the reality has landed somewhere between our own and Savage’s expectations. Milestone Satellites have become a permanent fixture in live poker, especially on the World Poker Tour and in PokerStars Live events, but they are yet to penetrate online poker.

understanding the ICM of regular satellites gives you 90% of what you need to play Milestone Satellites

Since the book came out, we regularly get asked about Milestone Satellites and in particular if the advice in Poker Satellite Strategy is useless for them. The short answer is no, contrary to what most people assume, understanding the ICM of regular satellites gives you 90% of what you need to play Milestone Satellites. The adjustments are minor but very counterintuitive, so we have updated Poker Satellite Strategy with our take on Milestone Satellites.

What are Milestone Satellites?

In a traditional satellite, seats are awarded to anyone who makes the money. If 100 players enter, the starting stacks are 10,000 and there are 10 seats, the final 10 players win a seat, regardless of their stack size. If you beat the bubble with 300,000 chips or 3,000 chips, you get the same prize.

A Milestone Satellite awards a seat to players who reach a certain chip stack size. If 100 players enter, the starting stacks are 10,000 and there are 10 seats, each player who gets to 100,000 chips wins a seat, regardless of when they get to 100,000 chips. If you get to 100,000 chips in the first blind level, you win the seat and you, and your chips, are taken out of play.

Milestone Satellites are still an evolving format, but there are two variants that appear to be the most popular, which we shall call the American Format and the PokerStars Format. The way in which they differ is largely around what happens when somebody gets their stack above the target.

In our example above, the aim is to get to 100,000 chips, but rarely will a player get to exactly 100,000 chips. A player with 50,000 chips might shove, get called, and win a pot of 130,000, for example, when you factor in blinds, antes, and any other dead money.

When a player reaches the milestone, they and their chips are taken out of play. So in this example what happens to those extra 30,000 chips?

In the American Format, which you see mostly Stateside and in events like the World Poker Tour, the additional 30,000 chips are removed from play too. This means that the milestone becomes lower for every other remaining seat. If there were one million chips in play and nine seats remaining, after those 130,000 chips are removed from play, the new target would be around 97,000. The later the tournament gets, the milestone gets much much lower.

the big difference is the surplus chips get redistributed to everyone left at the table

In the PokerStars Format, which you see mainly in Europe in events like the EPT, the big difference is the surplus chips get redistributed to everyone left at the table. If Player 1 wins 130,000 at an eight-handed table, 100,000 chips and that player are removed from play, and the extra 30,000 chips get divided equally amongst the remaining players, so they all get around 4,300 each. If Player 1 busts Player 2 when they earn those 130,000 chips, Player 2 does not get the lifeline of 4,300 chips. Instead, the 30,000 is shared among six players instead of seven, meaning they each get 5,000 chips.

This may seem like a small difference between the two formats, but it is a significant one.

In the American Format there is an incentive to stall if you have a big stack, because you may already be at a future milestone amount if another player gets to their target.

In the PokerStars Format it is more profitable to be at a table with big stacks because when they inevitably win their seat, you will get a bonus.

Are Milestone Satellites better?

Milestone Satellites were created to combat stalling in satellites. There is no reason to hang on, the logic goes, because you need to accumulate chips. One of the big benefits is that you can win your seat very quickly, almost always somebody wins a seat in the first hour.

There is also less incentive to steal chips, which is a common issue in live poker satellites. In any live poker satellite when the event is over, the organizers collect the chips and discover there are less than when they started. Because you don’t need all your chips to win a seat, some players pocket some of theirs to use in a future tournament or give to a friend also in the satellite. This problem is solved in Milestone Satellites because you need to accumulate a certain amount and pocketing your chips is counterproductive.

A player with 95% of the target does not want to lose any chips and can collude with a shorter player

While chip stealing is not encouraged, this does not make Milestone Satellites immune to cheating. There is a collusion risk in Milestone Satellites just as there is in regular satellites. In regular satellites players can collude when a big stack with a seat locked up bet/folds to a short stack, helping them survive at little cost to themselves. In Milestone Satellites the collusion risk flips around. A player with 95% of the target does not want to lose any chips and can collude with a shorter player to get them to chip dump the extra 5% they need to get over the line.

A big negative of Milestone Satellites is that they favor superior players and can be off-putting to amateur players. They favor a more aggressive chip accumulation strategy, which on the surface sounds like a good thing, but in our opinion betrays one of the big promises of satellites. A satellite should always be about getting weaker, amateur, players into big ‘bucket list’ type events. While the slow, stalling, chip preservation strategy that is required in satellites may seem against the spirit of the game, it is one that a relatively new player can adopt successfully. Our question to you if you don’t like regular satellites is, don’t you want weaker players in the target events? Stalling seems like a bug in satellites, but we would say they are a feature.

The jury is also out on whether Milestone Satellites prevent stalling anyway, within the book, we will identify situations where stalling is the optimal strategy. At the time of writing, there is less stalling in Milestone Satellites if for no other reason than most players don’t realize the situations when it is to their advantage to stall.

Are Milestone Satellites better than regular satellites? Our answer is they are just a format like any other and in particular, we always welcome a new format that the solvers have not caught up to yet. At the time of writing, there are no commercially available solvers for the format. However, for the overall health of the poker ecosystem, we would hate to see regular satellites die out because we strongly believe they allow more amateur players to play in large events. A large part of the reason we held back until now about adding them to the book is we believe most recreational players prefer the traditional format, but now that the format is clearly here to stay the best way to decrease the knowledge deficit between recreational and pros is to educate recreationals on the optimal strategy so they won’t feel as reluctant to play them.

An updated version

There are specific strategic adjustments you have to make in milestone satellites, so Barry Carter and I have finished a new chapter for Poker Satellite Strategy on the format.

The updated book will be out soon. When it is, people who already own a Kindle version will get the new chapter automatically. Obviously, that isn’t possible with printed versions bought before the update, so we wanted to give owners of Poker Satellite Strategy the chance to read the chapter for less than the price of a coffee, rather than buy the book again to see it. You can do so here:

.com: https://amazon.com/dp/B0CNKQ8ZVK
UK: https://amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CNKQ8ZVK

Don’t buy the ebook unless you have read Poker Satellite Strategy OR you understand satellites quite well. Better to wait for the updated whole book if not.

Also, Barry’s ego is so bloated after his recent 14th place finish in the International Poker Open that he’s now insisting on being the big name on the cover. But we won’t talk about that.

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Huge Upset as Koon, Negreanu, Martin and Soyza crash out

As the best players from each team squared off in the final four-handed single table tournament, it was backs to the wall stuff for the best player in the competition Jason Koon, whose teammates Kevin Martin, Daniel Negreanu and Michael Soyza had all failed to get heads-up in their matches. Even though the points allocated for the final match were unknown, it seemed obvious that he needed at least a top two finish.

A King and Queen on the flop sent Koon and Team Clubs crashing out of the competition.

After some early skirmishes, Koon woke up with pocket Kings and was re-jammed on by Fedor Holz who had Ace-Queen and the shortest stack. A hold would have put him three-handed with an above average stack but instead, there was Ace on the flop and Koon was the new short stack. A few hands later, Koon was again up against Holz, this time in a virtual flip with A-5 offsuit versus K-Q suited. A King and Queen on the flop sent Koon and Team Clubs crashing out of the competition.

When the teams were randomly drawn, it seemed a little lopsided. Team Clubs and Team Spades (Fedor Holz, Charlie Carrel, Johan “YoH Viral” Guilbert, and Nikita Luther) both had three of the best seven players, but in a turbo short-handed format, anything can happen. Over the four matches, when it mattered most, Team Clubs lost all six of their all-ins, resulting in an unenviable record of fourth, fourth, third, and fourth to crash out in Round One of “Game of Gold.”

Put the players under pressure

Hosted by Ali Nejad, “Game of Gold” is a 16-player poker gameshow filmed in the style of Korean reality television with a gazillion cameras, fancy sets, high concept, and players mic’d up at all times. Elements of “Game of Gold” have been tried before in a poker context. The PartyPoker Premier League got funky with single-table formats over a decade ago. Talking heads are a part of lots of poker broadcasts. Brazilian stables have been treating poker like a team sport for years.

The question is can poker fuse in a broader way with the aesthetic and intricacies of reality television shows like “Big Brother,” “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” and “Masterchef.” The term reality television can be a misnomer as the drama onscreen is not always authentic and is actually scripted or at least pre-meditated. Of course, every show has a premise and the contestants have objectives, so it is naturally always going to be an artificial environment.

setting up a team component at the outset of what is ultimately a lone wolf competition

At its base, “reality TV,” like all TV, creates a world which has rules. The hope is that those rules are internally coherent and consistent and that the players are free to be themselves or compete in a manner of their own choosing. So far, “Game of Gold” does a great job, setting up a team component at the outset of what is ultimately a lone wolf competition. This is sure to create complexity and competing motivations in later rounds.

Execution lacking in spots

While “Game of Gold” is easily the most interesting and innovative show we have seen in poker for a long time, it has not absolutely nailed the execution just yet. It is not the producer’s fault that the tension went out of the fourth episode early on in terms of who would be the eliminated team. However, what was their fault was how the lead up to that moment was confusing.

occasionally the way it is cut is a little disjointed

Jungleman was left with just 200K after a hand versus Holz and we never got to see how he got back to over 500K, presumably an all-in that would have given Team Clubs some real hope. Several commentators have raved about how slick the editing is, but I actually think it could be a lot better and occasionally the way it is cut is a little disjointed. The Episode Two cliffhanger failed to leave us on anything particularly gripping.

The music is excellent, adding to the tension at key moments, but the highlight for me is the use of the green room where the other three players on each team rail and critique the lines taken by all the players. It means that there is no need for a commentator, which is great, and those parts have a Gogglebox vibe which is very revealing of character and creates a pleasing watch-party vibe.

Bottle magic

My prediction is “Game of Gold” is going to put the remaining twelve players through the wringer. With $456,000 up for grabs, there is plenty of motivation and contestants are going to be strategizing and plotting the best ways for them to win. It was interesting that when there were significant coin disparities between the matches in Round One, everyone pretty much fell into a pecking order based on presumed skill level. I suspect that things will not be so friendly going forward.

 this is ultimately going to be a game of poker survivor and allegiances will inevitably fray

After what has been a pleasant and relatively uncomplicated opening round, it is likely that the gloves will come off as more diabolical game formats put our players to more difficult tests. The team aspect was introduced from the get-go, but this is ultimately going to be a game of poker survivor and allegiances will inevitably fray.

If this show is ultimately about revealing character (for our entertainment), then the best thing the producers can do is put the players under pressure – pressure to perform on the felt, peer pressure from your teammates, and reputational pressure as the game tests out your morals and you know the cameras are watching. If they can do that, they may well bottle some poker TV magic that we will be talking about for years to come.

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