Black Friday: My (Non-)Thoughts

I want to begin with appreciation and an apology. I’m flattered that so many people have been eager to hear my thoughts on the recent events that rocked the online poker world, and I’m sorry that this post is going to disappoint you.

The truth is that I don’t know what to think and at this point I don’t want to speculate. Unfortunately my relationship with PokerStars doesn’t give me access to any inside information, so I’m as clueless as anyone about what’s going on and what will happen next. I do think the situation will get clearer soon, though I don’t know how soon.

I know that for some of you this is an apocalyptic moment, and I wish that I could be of more help. The best I can do is point you to the best advice I’ve come across for dealing with the present situation, which comes from Jared Tendler:

“It’s hard to know what this means, but I do think it’s important to avoid speculating or get caught up listening to others who are doing it. Stay tuned into facts, listen to credible people, and do what you think is best. It’s easy to think only of the absolute worst case, and on one level it can be smart to prepare for that possibility, it also many not be the most helpful when ultimately figuring out what you need to do. Try to brainstorm some options so you’re prepared to make decisions as more information becomes certain and avoid making premature definitive conclusions.”

…

“Right now you’re looking for answers. The problem is that some of you are so desperate for answers you’ll listen to almost anything or anyone. That desperation is very similar to feeling desperate to win. You’ll do almost anything to shake this feeling because the uncertainty is almost too much to handle.

The reality is that there aren’t many answers out there right now. If you try to force an answer too soon, you’ll be making the same mistake if you were forcing the action because you need to win money right now. You have to stick to a sound and logical strategy.”

Jared has a lot more to say on the subject, and he’s made a free excerpt from his new book available, so I encourage you to read the whole post if you’re feeling anxious right now.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who has expressed concern for my situation. It’s very touching to hear from you, but the truth is that I’ll be fine no matter what happens. I’ve got plenty of money saved up and actually enjoyed having a free weekend for once.

Despite my silence the last few days, I do intend to keep blogging. I’ve got plenty of poker-related stuff in the hopper, but you’ll probably see an increase in the number of stories, musings, and low-poker-content posts. I get the sense that some of you would enjoy that anyway. I know I will.

34 thoughts on “Black Friday: My (Non-)Thoughts”

  1. B.F. didn’t have much impact on me, as I don’t play all that much any more, and mainly for my amusement. Also, I live twenty minutes from a decent cardroom (Tampa Bay Downs).

    I was kind of looking forward to that SCOOP Five Card Draw tourney, though.

      • You’re not dreaming. I lived in Las Vegas and played poker for a living there for several years up until about four years ago.

  2. There’s very few information and a lot of speculation out there, so that’s really the only reasonable post you could have made on the topic. Because I’m not living in the US I’m not directly affected, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a bit worried. What worries me is that I have no idea how “stable” Stars is financially and what impact the loss of a great number of players and also the unusual amount of cash out requests will have.

    I always enjoyed reading the non-poker stories and I’m sure most readers on here did.

    • I wouldn’t worry too much about the financial stability of PokerStars. We’ve gotten so used to seeing 200,000+ players playing on the site that people forget the days when PS busting the 100,000 mark would spark a blizzard of 2+2 chat about how totally awesome that was.

      • Stars and Tilt can obviously downsize no-problem, but the charges they are facing are severe enough that they could potentially go under anyway, due to financial penalties and other issues. Still, I’d say that’s fairly unlikely at this point.

        I do wonder how many poker shows will stay in production now. Big Game, HSP, and PAD are definitely not safe.

        • Big Game didn’t deserve to be born to begin with. No big loss.

          I gave up on HSP because I never know when it’s on, I hate that one game is spread out over X weeks, instead of shown every night for one or two weeks like on PAD, and I liked AJ.

          FTPAD is cheap to produce and NBC can probably sell enough advertising to pay for it even without the online sites. It’s a major network, after all, not a backwater niche cable channel like GSN, and they’ve got nothing else to show that time of night. The bigger question might be what to do with all the older shows that have everyone wearing logos. Dithering multiple objects on an entire one-hour show is pretty expensive. Also, getting the big-money pros to play on it now that they have to put up their own buy-ins.

  3. I’m looking forward to an increase in content here, and I’m glad to hear you’re prepared for this.

    I’m interested in knowing if anyone is playing at any of the other online places. I play for amusement (my bankroll is modestly bigger than when I started playing, but this has fueled only a move up from teeny micro stakes to merely tiny micro stakes, so I’ve never cashed out), so the shutdown of PS and FTP is no financial hardship, but I do miss playing. I’d consider going to one of the sites that has stayed open, but I don’t know what the good places to play are, and I’m not eager to desposit money elsewhere if it’s likely they’ll get hit soon anyway.

    • Vanilla,

      I’m in the same boat as you. I’ll probably play on another site, but only after doing some research and waiting a few weeks to how things develop. I think a month or so off from playing online poker will be nice anyway. I was playing too much, so the break will be good.

    • I think that’s wise. If the big boys are having trouble getting money into the US right now, I’d be very skeptical of smaller sites claiming that they can do so. I’d also feel less comfortable having money with them in the event that they faced charges and fines comparable to what we saw on Friday.

    • I just received this e-mail below from quicktender. I’ve heard of Bodog and Cake, but not the others they list. They must be getting a marketing payment from these sites for sending this out.

      “In light of the recent high profile Poker site market withdrawals we just want to assure you that QuickTender continues to support your gaming activities 100%.

      Your QuickTender funds can be used to play at a wide variety of gaming sites.

      So why not transfer money to one of these listed sites offering poker play today?

      SuperBook
      SportsBook
      Bodog
      Poker.com
      Cake Poker
      Poker4Ever
      24poker

      If you have made a recent withdrawal request but would now like to cancel it please contact our 24/7 QuickTender Help Desk.

      Sincerely,
      QuickTender Team”

  4. This is a big bummer for me. I had just started playing Rush on FTP and was finding it enjoyable.

    It’s not a big hit for me either as I just played for fun. I’d deposit like 50 bucks every couple of months and play for a long time. Sometimes I’d cash out a couple hundred up or sometimes I’d just lose the 50 bucks but it was hella cheap entertainment for me for the amount of time that I got.

    It was either 50 bucks for a couple of months of poker playing or 50 bucks to go see a movie with the wife one night. (don’t get me wrong I love my wife but we’ve moved on to RedBox)

    I’ll have to go back to MTGO or WC3 now. But MTGO is such a faster money sink. 🙁

    • Good to hear you’ll be ok and that you don’t have 90% of your assets tied up online. I’ve already seen some people on 2+2 stating they might be in trouble due to the amount of money that they can no longer access.

      • Not that I don’t feel sorry for them but keeping such a large % of your net worth online is pretty short-sighted, especially after the whole Neteller thing. I was far less committed than that and I’m still kicking myself for not keeping smaller balances.

    • I’d never heard of MTGO but correctly guessed what it stood for before googling it. FU for making me aware of it!

      • Like they say, you never really leave the game. I personally like the Pauper format. It’s all commons but you can still make some sick decks with all commons. (Lotus Petal, Dark Ritual, Brainstorm, Counterspell)

        It’s fun to play every once in a while but then you get mana screwed and remember why you hate the game so much. 😀

    • I was also thinking of getting back into MTGO, or even paper Magic. MTGO isn’t that huge a money sink if you’re good enough and can play off your winnings. Of course if you’re thinking of buying a competitive standard deck (read: 4 Jace), then yeah that’ll be expensive. The other problem with MTG is that you really have to devote a lot of time to be competitive, although I think I do enjoy Magic more than I do poker (blasphemy I know). Maybe I should just focus more on school or something, crazy thought huh?

      • I thought you were already playing. I saw someone post on the Channel Fireball article with your name “Bond2King”.

        Although I guess you don’t have to be playing to follow/read about MTG still.

  5. Andrew,
    It is not surprising, but it is pleasing to hear you were adequately prepared. Thanks for the Jared Tendler quotes; good stuff for dealing with any major life “crisis”.

    I hope you have time to keep up the blogging but wouldn’t blame you for taking a hiatus.

    This may be out of line, but I would be interested in your version of “philosophy for dummies”. Engineers like me received no introduction to this in college, and your blog has piqued my interest.
    Thanks,
    Russ

  6. I’m curious to see how this will affect attendance at the WSOP.

    I have to imagine a lot of folks used their online balances to bankroll their play there, and Stars even let you do withdrawals from your online account right at the event, right?

    • I’ve heard from inside sources that only about 25% of entries were coming from online sites even before Nevada Gaming sort of made that kinda somewhat illegal.

      Other than the pros who show up to feed on the fish, most of the people who go to the WSOP want to be there so badly that they’re willing to put up with long lines, shitty dealers, shitty food, overpriced rooms, desert heat, etc. etc. and so they can have an approaches-zero chance of winning OMG A BRACELET!!! People like that will find a way to finance their fantasy.

      When I was living in Vegas, no one I knew played in the damned thing, except for some dealer friends who played the casino employees event. Otherwise the last place the locals wanted to be during the WSOP was at the Rio.

  7. I’d just like to add that I’ve gone busto a couple times in my life, for lack of health insurance and not because I can’t play. You get through it. The worst part is having to ask for help, but there’s always someone who will help you if you’re not an ass with a bad rep for not repaying your debts (and sometimes even if you are – I don’t want to put AB on the hook for libel here so I won’t name names, but there’s any number of TV poker stars who are known deadbeats, and suckers still loan them money).

    Also, at this point there’s no reason to think we won’t eventually get our money. When I hear someone at the DOJ or PS say we’re not going to get it back, I’ll start worrying. So for most players, it’s a temporary cash flow problem.

    The bigger problem for a lot of online pros is that the great bulk are marginal players who scraped a living from rakeback and grinding out 1-2bb/100h per table playing 12+ tables at a time. There’s no way to do that in live poker, where you actually have to know how to play to make a living.

    • I agree, there’s no reason to expect the DOJ is going to seize the money and not give it back to the players. That would create a much bigger shit-storm that they don’t need and obviously wouldn’t be necessary to successfully press charges against the sites. Of course stranger things have happened.

      On the last point, these are probably the people most hurt by this. The unemployment rate just got a little higher.

      • Also, it’s unlikely the DOJ can seize any more than they already have, because the money is outside US jurisdiction.

      • On the last point, these are probably the people most hurt by this. The unemployment rate just got a little higher.

        It’s a sign of how much poker has changed that you could even stay in one place and make a living at it. In the “old days”, if you were a poker pro, you were basically itinerant. You followed the games around the country. A few pros managed to settle down in Las Vegas or AC and scrape out a living in the public cardrooms and maybe doing some sports betting, but the real money was in private or illegal backroom games and getting yourself invited to them.

        Even after legal cardroom poker started expanding, you had to follow the money if you wanted to make a lot of it. If you stayed in one place too long, people would figure out how to play against you, or would refuse to play against you, or go broke playing against you and not come back. And there were seasonal swings in a lot of places (and still are), like Arizona, where the games are way better in the winter. Also, when big-money tournaments started catching on, chasing the side game action proved profitable. In any case, most real pros didn’t stay in one place long.

        They didn’t call them road gamblers for nothing.

        • Very good point. I think online pros, myself included, don’t really appreciate how good we’ve had it. It was just so easy to assume that there would be good, easily accessible games forever. Well before last week, it was easy to find a zillion examples of people taking that for granted. It seems like once upon a time charisma was an essential skill for a poker pro, since he had to be liked to get invited to games. To put it mildly, courtesy is not a virtue embodied by your average online grinder.

          • I was talking to a guy once who is a professional home game cash player. He’s a young guy and has never played online. The games he plays in have some very loose rich players. The thing is to get into the game, and stay in the game, there were two requirements: a) you had to be fun to play with and be nice to the other players (especially the live ones – if you’re mean at all to any of them insta-ban); b) you can’t be a nit – you have to give action to the other loose players.
            I’m not sure if many of multi-tabling online players would be able to play in this kind of game.

  8. Hey Andrew, I have money on both full tilt and pokerstars but obv withdrew most in panic. Do you think I should redeposit?? I live in australia btw. I hope this all turns out well for Americans, Iv played the last couple of nights but it feels hollow knowing so Many people are In limbo.

    • I honestly think you’re fine as long as you can legally play poker online where you live. As others have said, Poker Stars and FTP will continue to do business as usual in other countries.

    • Sorry but this is just the sort of thing I don’t want to comment on. I don’t have any information that you couldn’t get for yourself by perusing 2+2, and I certainly don’t feel comfortable giving advice about what anyone ought to do right now.

Comments are closed.