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Hey guys… hope all is well. I’ve been totally out of contact on here for a while and I think I’ve come to accept that I probably will never be a good blogger. However, I do have a screenshot of results from a recent student. I know that choosing a coach is a tough decision and I want guys that work with me to feel confident they are getting good value. In that effort, I’m posting this here so you guys can see others have had good results from studying with me.  This has been over the last couple months as he’s one of the crazy 20-tablers. 

Having said all of that, there’s only so much credit I can really claim from any student. At the end of the day, you get what you put into it. A student who gets good results likely put in some hard work along with the coaching to get those results. More than anything I try to teach guys how to think about poker, and how to study poker. It’s up to you to make it happen!

Nice turnaround!

Due to the news today that the DOJ gave the green light for both PokerStars and Full Filt Poker to pay back their US customers and the phrasing of the statements. FTP responded in a way that has raised a few eyebrows. The documents are out there to read, and I won’t get into the specifics here.

The discussion is centered on “FTP doesn’t have the means”, “FTP clearly has no intention”, and “FTP doesn’t have the money”.  I don’t really understand the arguments fully.  Honestly, maybe somebody else knows more about the situation than I, but I’ve been actively keeping up on the situation. The wording FTP chose to use was admittedly a bit spooky, but I think people are reading WAYYYYY too much into it.  It sounds like a case of a lot of confusion.  My reading of it is:

The DOJ is saying (paraphrasing)”We will help these sites return money to our citizens.  We never took THE CITIZENS money”.

FTP is saying “We will return the money to you, but we it’s a mess right now because we don’t know who’s money went where.  They seized our banks and payment processors so our accounting is all screwed up.  The DOJ harshed our mellow and there’s a lot of bridges to cross first.  So, don’t expect it tomorrow.”

Kind of expected, right?  I don’t really see how we can jump from these two statements to “FTP ISN’T RETURNING OUR MONEY!!!!!”  It seems like a case where the conclusion doesn’t really follow the premise.

As I’ve suggested to those who have asked my opinion on this, I think the best thing to do is to be patient and let the dust settle.  Right now both companies and the DOJ have expressed an interest to return the money to the people it belongs to.  The DOJ has a vested interest in doing this.  The poker sites have a vested interest in it as well.  They want to continue  making millions (billions?) a year.

Of course it’s a mess.  That’s expected.  I could be totally wrong, so don’t take my word for it.  Point is… let’s not jump to any strong conclusions just because of some spooky language.  As of right now, it seems all sides intend to return the money.  They have a lot to do to make that happen. And that was totally expected.

It’s been a pretty eventful day.  There’s definitely been a lot of stress in the poker community.  I, like many other poker players, have been hitting refresh every few minutes in forums to get the latest scoop on what’s going down with online poker. I’ve had a lot of people ask me for my take on it, and I’ve been asking others as well, so I’ll expand on it here.

Here’s a summary of where things seem to be right now.

1)  PokerStars isn’t allowing US players to play, withdrawal, or transfer.

2)  FTP isn’t allowing transfers or withdrawals.

3)  UB/AP seem to not care.

The announcement of charges definitely seem to be out of left field, but, in a way, they probably were a long time coming.  Many have felt that the online poker game wouldn’t be able to continue under it’s current inception, although I personally didn’t see it going down so abruptly.

This could be the last of you’ll see of these sites, or they could be coming back.  This could be the end of online poker in the US, or (more likely) it’ll be back in a regulated and legalized form.   There are a lot of variables and very little known information.  That typically leads to a situation where you can’t solve the equation.

My personal feeling is that this will make the community rise up to get something legalized.  From my perspective, it was already heading down the direction with D.C. legalizing it recently, and NV having a bill in the works.  This may be rough at first, but it may be the road to a sustainable online poker gaming industry.  In the end, this could be for the best.

I feel that we all will eventually get our money back from the sites.  I tend to be very optimistic, but I imagine that these sites would still like to do business somewhere else in the world.  The road to do that would not be screwing over the entire US population of poker players.  It may take some time, but we’ll get our money back.  Just hunker down.  Live light.  Look into a job.  Play some live poker (if possible).

If you’re outside of the states, I think it’s a good ideal to at least keep a minimal amount online.  Your money is safer in your bank account, and there’s plenty of sites you can play that aren’t under this scrutiny.  Play there.  How many bb/100 are you giving up compared to the odds your laying on losing a significant chunk of your roll?  Your odds on leaving it in are pretty poor.  Muck that hand.

Just sent in my update to my bio on DC.  The powers that be want to understandably have some more transparency, so they asked us to include a lot more information.   That should be appearing there in the next few days.  They asked us to include some recent graphs.  I’ve always been pretty meh about posting graphs.  It’s usually bragging, whining, or if it’s not one of those people often wonder why it’s not  going to be 20bb/100 over 2 million hands. Most, if not all, poker players underestimate variance.  However, I do as they ask!    So, there should be recent graph of mine popping up there in the next few days.  I figure since it’s out there I might as well link to it.  So here goes!

Also, they asked us to say how many students we’ve had… I’ve now coached about 75 students.  When did that happen?

I’m coming up on 3 years since I quit my job.  Awesome!

I’ve been coaching a ton lately.  I decided a few months back to get more into coaching as well to balance things out in my life.  Things are going well in that regard.  It really is rewarding to help people get their game up and running.

Also, I plan on putting out a few more shorts for DeucesCracked in the coming weeks.  If you guys have any idea for specific concepts that I could talk 10-15 minutes about, feel free to let them fly.