Poker

Finally, a response from Neteller about the questions I posed in the comments on this post a couple of weeks ago.

I'll try to speak to them next week, but first I wanted to share my email reader's insight on the matter:

Doesn't really do them any favours, does it? 

In case you had any concerns about how secure your money is with Neteller's dodgy prepaid debit card, this reply I had from them should help to scare you away completely.

Looking for a way that I'd be happy to use it to take some of my money out at an ATM, I asked whether it was possible to have two separate accounts so that my whole balance would not be available to a card that has zero consumer protection.

Thank you for sending us an email.

Unfortunately one customer can have only one NETELLER account and one Net+ Card. 

The security is our first priority and NETELLER has various security measures against fraud or theft. But the system can never be perfect. In this sense we would think it is important to use the NETELLER account and the Net+ for not a big amount depositing only the amount necessary to use.

In fact the limits of cash withdraw as well as the purchase using Net+ Card are quite limited; For cash withdraw 500GBP/day and 1500GBP/4 days and for purchase 1500GBP/day and 4500GBP/4 dasy.

Please understand NETELLER is offering the service of money transfer online and is not a bank. 

It's quite the supreme failure in terms of offering reassurance to a customer.

If I may paraphrase: "Our system isn't perfect", "Don't trust us with more money than you absolutely have to", "The most you could lose to fraud is eight grand a week" and of course "We are not a bank".

We knew the last part already, but at least they're not trying to pretend any more.

The Grand Series of Poker III is two weeks of online tournaments hosted by Gala Poker.

With relatively affordable buy-ins compared to other online series ($50 to $200 per event) and added value for a leaderboard of top finishers across the series, I'd decided I would take a punt at this.

I'd even accepted that if things were going well, I'd have to play the 6-handed Omaha tournament.  That would be seriously -EV, but it's +Eleaderboardpoints, so what can you do?

According to Gala's web site, things were due to kick off tonight at either 8pm or 9pm UK time.

I'm vague about the start time because it's not exactly clear.  The site says: "All GSOP events start at 21:00 CET (20:00 GMT)"

This is confusing, because right now, with daylight savings time in effect, GMT is two hours behind CET, not one.

Given that the clock at the top of Gala's own web site shows the time incorrectly - for example it says "19:30 GMT" when it's actually 19:30 BST - my best guess was that it would start at 8pm UK time (20:00 on Gala's not-GMT clock) but I figured there was a chance it would actually be 9pm (20:00 actual GMT, so 21:00 BST).

So, when I thought I was turning up in plenty of time to play it, logging on at just before 7pm to load my account and pre-register, you can imagine my surprise when I saw the event start right in front of my eyes almost exactly at the moment I went to buy in.

I guess that'll teach me to check the times in the lobby when I want to play a poker tournament on an unfamiliar site.

Not that it would have done me much good, because for this tournament the lobby showed a start time of 19:00 CET.

So that would be 17:00 GMT or 18:00 BST, right?  (Trust me, it's right).

And yet there it was, starting at 7pm - and with no option of late registration.  I just don't know how I could have seen that coming.

I thought I'd call Gala to see if anyone knew what time it was.

"Hi, your poker series event tonight, what time was it meant to start?"

I'd naively assumed that just because they'd answered the phone with "Gala Poker, can I help you" that I'd be speaking to someone who actually worked for Gala and would therefore be aware of this multi-million dollar poker event.  I should know better by now.

So I gave him the full title of the tournament and waited patiently on hold for an answer.

"Sir, I just checked and on the web site it says 20:00 GMT, but as we're in the summer right now, it's actually an hour behind and it started a few minutes ago".

"But that would make it 9pm, wouldn't it?" 

"I'm sorry, I mean it's an hour ahead"

"OK, whatever.  But it's only 18:00 GMT right now". 

He put me on hold to go and check, and came back a couple of minutes later to tell me that he'd looked at a world clock and it said the current time was just after 20:00 GMT.

The world clock web site I found told a different story (this screenshot taken after the call, but compare GMT to the times in Dublin and Frankfurt).

After holding once more, I came to the conclusion that nobody in the call centre knew what time the tournament was meant to start, what time it actually did start or even what time it was in the part of the world they were meant to be talking to.

At least he gave an honest explanation: "I'm from India and I'm struggling myself to see what's going on with all the different timezones involved here".  He took my details and said he would ask a real person at actual Gala to send me an accurate schedule.  Whether they'll have any more of a clue remains to be seen.

To be fair, this was one of the most helpful Indian call centre dudes I've dealt with in a long time.  Very polite, and he seemed keen to help me out with something that nobody could actually do anything about.

Really, it was just me having a whinge and being a bit awkward.

In a sit-and-go tournament at PokerStars, I'd reported a hand where two players (showing as from the same country) appeared to dump chips to each other to prevent one from being blinded all-in on the bubble.

Naturally, that fate then fell to me.

Blinds were 200/400 with a 25 ante. Villian 1, sitting on about half the chips in play, raised to 1,200 and then folded after Villain 2 moved all in for a total of 1,275.

With the dead blinds and antes, his pot odds were 37-1. It's an instant call for just 75 more chips, even if all you have in your hand is one 3 and a bridge score card.

A couple of weeks later I got a reply from PokerStars with the result of their investigation.  It said they couldn't find any history of these guys playing together in the past and concluded that the first player almost certainly clicked on the wrong button and folded by accident.

They even found hands earlier in the same tournament where those two had played hard against each other - and sent me two hand histories that showed it.

PokerStars has a reputation for providing first class support to players and they've yet to disappoint me.  Ideally I wanted my $16 back, but I can accept their findings.

I had forgotten that after this hand I wasn't able to keep my mouth shut at the table, and their response also went on to reprimand me because of this:

On a related note, I noticed that you accused these players of collusion at the table. Three problems exist when you make an accusation at the table:

1) You may be accusing two perfectly innocent people of being dishonest. If they are innocent, then you have sullied their reputations amongst other players at the table without cause.

2) If they are guilty, you have just alerted them to your suspicions. This allows them to come up with cover stories and alter their play all of which makes it more difficult for us to confirm the suspicion.

3) In an environment where there is already concerns about cheating in different forms, making such an accusation only serves to propagate the existing fears. Our support staff works extremely hard investigating collusion complaints and dealing with the integrity of our site. A lot of that work is undone with an accusation of this nature.

Please understand that accusing a player of cheating at a poker table is extremely serious and should never be done. If you have concerns regarding the play of two or more individuals, we encourage you to notify us immediately so that we can investigate. Include as many details as possible including their player IDs and where they are playing.

As you can see, we have a lot of tools at our disposal which help us keep our games honest and fair. In addition, the thousands of honest, vigilant players who point out situations that merit investigation are an important part of our arsenal. Thank you for doing your part to protect the integrity of our games.

Well, that's me told.

But I have to admit I had never thought about this in so much depth. Kudos to PokerStars, it's a good point well made.

Even if it is a cut-and-pasted standard response, it's a damn good one and I wanted to share it.

At the Luxor, playing in a $1/$2 no limit, I have a pair and I'm one of 6 players limping in to the pot.

The flop comes low - 854 - and all different suits.  I quite like my overpair so after the big blind bets $5 I raise it to $15.  The button calls my raise cold but the original bettor gets out of the way.

The cold call scares me a bit, and the turn card scares me a bit more: it's a 6.  There's still no flush possible, but if the other guy has a 7 for a straight, I can't win.  If he already made two pair or a set, I'm in bad shape.  I don't see many hands that I'm beating liking this board any more, so I check but I still call a bet of $20.

The river was another 8, so there's still no flush possible but now even more ways I can lose the pot.  I just check and call again, relieved that his bet was only $40 into a pot of more than $80.

"I have an eight", says the villain, before flipping over eight-nine for a flopped top pair with inside straight draw, which became three-of-a-kind on the river.

"Oh you do?  Nice hand", I reply.  "But I win too".

I table my pocket aces and wait for a floorperson to bring me a shiny new stack of red chips.

At Luxor, when you are holding pocket aces and lose, you still win $100.

Several casinos have "aces cracked" promotions, but one that runs 24/7 and with a substantial consolation prize (relative to the stakes) is pretty unusual.

At Imperial Palace, for example, you can win $100 when pocket aces are beaten and $50 when your pocket kings lose, but this is only on offer between 8am and 11am as an incentive to get their games going earlier in the morning.

While at Excalibur you get to spin a wheel of fortune any time your aces are cracked, but the typical payoff is about $30.  Certainly not to be sniffed at, but not enough to change the way you would play the hand in a no-limit game.

This is, in fact, the first time I have ever limped in with AA in a no-limit cash game.  And I think I just about got away with it.

If I'd raised pre-flop, I probably wouldn't have seen much action.  That eight-nine offsuit might not have called a raise, and given that nobody else was interested in a fairly unthreatening flop there probably weren't many other hands that would have paid to stick around either.

My net profit of $23 is quite likely more than I would have made by playing the hand "properly".  Which, of course, is results-oriented thinking, but what the heck.  I'm sure in theory I make more money by limping here too.

In fact, if I'd been playing a stack shorter that $100, you actually want your pocket aces to lose.  The minimum buy-in at Luxor is $40, so if you're already playing a short stack strategy the value in this promotion is huge.  You would have to have an all-in bet called in three spots to win more money when your hand actually holds up!

As I was playing deeper than that (I began the hand with about $250 and the eventual winner had enough to cover me) I fancied a bit of two-way action: slow-play the hand for deception in the hope of winning a bigger pot, but with a $100 safety net if it all went pear shaped.

Back to the table: "Nicely done", says the winner of the pot and we almost high-five across the table.  Except because we're sitting at opposite ends, there's about six feet of air between our palms.  But the thought is there.

$100 for cracked aces is great value for the player.  You're dealt pocket aces one time in every 221 hands, which means that roughly every 22 hands someone at the table will see them.  They win about 80% of the time against one other player, which means aces are going to be cracked roughly every 110 hands at any given (full) table.

It's even more frequent than that when you slow-play and allow more opponents the chance to outdraw you.  Which is inevitably what this promotion causes to happen.

As the casino takes $1 from every pot to pay for promotions and pays $100 for cracked aces every 110 hands, it means that pretty much all the money taken is given back just in the aces cracked promo.

But as Luxor also pays an instant high hand jackpot (which is also fairly generous because for aces full of tens or higher counts, as well as any four of a kind or straight flush) right now they're definitely giving away more to the players than they are collecting from the pot.

Another reason to love the aces cracked promotion is that it actually saved me money on a later hand as well.

I'd raised pre-flop with pocket queens and the player to my left - who I had pegged as a solid player and (from an earlier conversation about not chopping blinds with pairs or suited connectors to try to win a high hand jackpot) someone who knew about all the promotions at Luxor - just called.

Another player made it $40 to go, which I called and then my neighbour moved all-in for $106 more.

It was a fairly easy decision, so after the raiser folded I also threw away the queens and asked whether he wanted his hand to get cracked or actually to win a big pot.

He duly obliged in showing the aces, increasing my smug factor significantly, made some noise like "Bah!" and said "I wanted to have them cracked".

Aces cracked is a funny promotion and it does change the game, particularly when there is a decent prize at stake.  There's just something morbidly appealing about the prospect of winning more money by losing a hand than you could by winning it.

I don't use Moneybookers very often, but I have an account there for the odd times I need to receive money that way.

This was one of those times.  I was sent a sum of money, originally in British Pounds but it got converted to US Dollars as that's the currency on my account.  It landed in my balance as $96.20.

Then I went to withdraw it.  As I hadn't really taken any notice of the actual amount in dollars so far, I just agreed to everything - including a $2.50 withdrawal fee.  It said I could withdraw up to $93.69 and I asked for the lot.

Did you spot it?  $96.20 minus $2.50 cannot result in a number that ends with a 9.  There's a penny missing somewhere, and I almost wan't paying enough attention to notice.

Thankfully, it showed me a handy statement afterwards:

Great, everything balances in the end.  They just made a penny disappear to compensate for the error.

$2.51 minus $2.50 is zero.  Apparently.

I don't think there can be anything more embarrasing for a wannabe bank than not being able to add or subtract two amounts of money.  Perhaps that's why their software has this error correction built in: "If something goes wrong, we'll just pretend that it didn't and hope nobody notices".

Guess what.  I noticed.

The penny is insignificant, especially when the amount of money we're talking about has already been converted to once and will be converted again to end up back in a GBP bank account.  When that happens, you have to expect to be hit by an unfavourable exchange rate and that they'll skim off fractions of a penny at every possible opportunity.

But that's not what's happened here.  The statement simply does not add up - it is blatently wrong.

We're not talking about a dodgy online casino that only has to pay a sum of money to a random island nation in order to call itself licensed.  This is a financial institution regulated by the FSA in the UK, and it's very worrying that such an organisation could make any sum of money vanish without an audit trail.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's not hard to make sure that your software handles decimal numbers correctly.  And, yes, I am available for consultancy work.

Let's see what they say...

I just had this offer in an email from Party Poker.

Wow, a $975 bonus.  It's a random amount, but it's huge.  How can I resist?

5,850 Party Points sounds like a fair chunk, but to be honest it's so long since I played there I couldn't even remember how you earn them.

Playing tournaments, you earn 2 Party Points for every $1 paid in fees.  You pay $2,925 and get back $975, so it's equivalent to getting precisely one-third of your fees back.

Not a bad deal.  But do you remember the last time you paid three grand in tournament fees in a month?  Me neither.

Admittedly, I rarely play much higher than the $20s, so I'd be looking at around 70 sit-and-gos a day for 21 days to unlock this bonus.  That's a full time job - assuming you can play a dozen at a time, and I can't.

It's more achievable for high stakes SNG players.  The $100s have a $9 fee and Party have capped it $10 per tournament for higher buy-ins, right up to the $5,000 tournaments.  It would take 325 $100 tournaments or 293 at any higher level to get there.

That's roughly 15 per day, which is still high for a casual player, but it's more realistic.  However I can't help thinking that if you can play that many of high stakes tournaments, you're serious enough about poker to already have a rakeback at least as good as this elsewhere and that you wouldn't want to jeopardise your VIP status by taking a few weeks out for this bonus, when you'd get almost no perks from Party after the bonus is over.

So... if it's going to happen, it'll have to be cash games.  A few years ago when Party Poker bonuses were just great, I used to clear them playing $1/$2 limit, which meant relatively soft games with fairly low variance, and the numbers meant that Party was actually giving away more in bonuses than you paid in rake.  It was awesome.

Now, things have tightened up.  At this level, it takes 57 raked hands to earn 10 Party Points, so for this promotion, you'd need to play 33,345 raked hands!

From my past experience, it takes about 5 hours four-tabling $1/$2 to play 1,000 raked hands, for which you'd pay about $55 in rake.  It's possible, but it's a lot of work.  In fact, it's a full time job again, about 7 hours of solid play - that's one-third of the 21 days you have to complete the play requirement.

For what it's worth, the rake you'd pay is about $1800 so the $975 bonus is equivalent to a little over 50% rakeback.  Not bad at all.

The number of hands that are raked increases slightly as you move up limits, but that's not as significant as the amount of rake you pay.  That's why at $3/$6 you only need 14 raked hands to earn 10 Party Points.  That brings down the total number of raked hands required to 8,190 - or about 40 hours of play four-tabling.

It's a pretty attractive bonus, but it's also pretty inaccessible to the majority of players and I guess that's the point.  They're trying to deter the small-timers and serial bonus whores and get players who are prepared to commit a big chunk of time to Party Poker, then hope they stick around afterwards.

I'd love to be able to find a way to do exactly what they don't want, but as I only have a week left before I head off to Vegas, I just can't see it happening...

I didn't get in half as many hands this month on iPoker, mostly because I spent most of my online poker time playing turbo sit-and-gos on Poker Stars in order to clear a bonus that was about to expire.

I had less than stellar results at both sites, but I guess I can't complain that despite losses at the tables, they both gave me net wins on the month:

Stars: Lost $189 to release $240 bonus and redeemed 10,000 FPPs for $160.  I was about half way towards both the bonus and the redemption award at the start of the month so I'll count this as earning $200 of bonus and cashback.  Net: +$11.

iPoker: Lost $102, released $90 bonus, received $68 rakeback.  Net: +$56

I have to say, though, it certainly doesn't feel like a winning month.

It wouldn't be the same without a graph, would it?

I'm always delighted when a reader crawls out of the woodwork and says "hi", even if it is to set me some maths homework.  Kevin Stevens, author of the blog Flipyouforit (check out his brilliant Online Rounders parody) swelled my known audience last week to as many as five, and wrote:

I was wondering if I had a partner playing the HUP 4 man games on stars and we split the profit, would playing as a team give us any additional mathematical advantage?

Now I also know that at least two of my readers are maths teachers (that's, what, 60% of them?) so I may be getting graded on this but here goes...

I'm assuming that you already feel you have an edge over the field, and therefore the question is whether a double entry will improve your edge, although it will also be interesting to see if this strategy affects a losing player or a break-even player.

Let's say your probability of winning any given heads-up game is p (and therefore the probability of losing is 1-p).  For simplicity, I'm assuming that both members of the team are equally skilled - or that one person is playing under two different accounts on two PCs.

The 4-man tournaments in question are two round, heads up shootouts with just one prize to be won.  I'm going to assume a 10% entry fee on all buy-ins.  So let's say the buy-in amount is b, making the amount you pay to enter 1.1b and the prize pool 4b.

If you enter the tournament alone, your expected return is 4bp² - the prize pool multiplied by the probability of winning both rounds.

We can use this value to find out what it takes to be a winning player.  Your ER must be greater than the amount it costs to play, so with the 10% rake structure this is:

     4bp² > 1.1b
=>    p² > 1.1/4
=>     p > 0.524

So to be a winner in this format, you have to win - on average - more than 52.4% of your games.

However, to be able to compare to the other strategy, which has several scenarios to consider, a more useful number to remember is the EV per dollar played, which is 4bp²/1.1b = 3.636p²

Let's ignore the obvious ethical issues and say Bill and Ted are on the same team and Evil Bill and Evil Ted are your opponents on any given sit-and-go.

Statistically, the first round draw will throw up Bill vs Ted one-third of the time.  When you're playing against your partner, all that happens is you pay double to guarantee a seat in the final. 

If you have an edge over the field, you're losing out by not being able to play a meaningful game in this round.  As one of the two players will always progress to the final, exactly 50% of your team will win. Therefore if you normally expect to win, say, 60% of heads-up encounters, this draw has reduced your variance but it's also reduced your overall edge.

As you don't need to play poker, you could spend the time studying the other two players which might give you some useful information to use in round two (or, if you think they are watching you, you could throw off some wonderful false information).

However, in terms of probabilities, your ER from the tournament when you draw your partner in round 1 is simply 4bp (prize pool multiplied by probablity of winning one round).

The other two-thirds of the time it wil be good vs evil in round 1, and this is where it gets interesting.  One of three things can happen:

1. Good triumphs.  Bill and Ted both win round 1 and you're guaranteed to take all the money in the final.

Just like when you play each other in round 1, you'd rather be playing the final with an edge than splitting the money 50/50.  However, when you're both winning players you are each more likely to get to be in this situation than the evil robot dudes.

This part of your ER is 4bp² (prize pool multiplied by probability both players of winning round one).

2. We only have one bodacious hero in the final.  This part of your ER is 8bp² - 8bp³.

Cubed probabilities, wtf?  OK, let's check it with Bully...

The probability of Bill winning and Ted losing in round 1 is p(1-p).  We end up in the same situation if Ted wins and Bill loses so overall we're looking at a probability of 2p(1-p) that we have just one hero in the final.  When we get there the probability is p that we will win prize money of 4b. 

Multiply it all together

      2p(1-p) x p x 4b
=> 8bp²(1-p)
=> 8bp² - 8bp³

I think.

3. Evil Bill and Ted both prevail and you're boned.

This happens the rest of the time, and we win nothing so we don't care.

Right so time to stick it all together.

Overall, your ER is

1/3(4bp) + 2/3(8bp² - 8bp³)

Yuck.  And don't forget that this strategy costs 2.2b to play, so we need to divide by that to get the EV per dollar. 

As we now have some expressions that are verging on the horrible (and, certainly, they're horrible to type) it's at this point I give up on the algebra and hand over to Mr Graph.

Excel hasn't rendered the graph very smoothly, but you should get the idea.  Unless you're a particularly awful player, entering the tournament as a team reduces your overall edge.  Not only that, but the better you are, the more dramatic the impact is.

For really large values of p, this stands to reason.  If you could win every single game without fail, why would you ever play with a partner when you could scoop the prize money by paying just one buy-in instead of two.

However, what's significant is that even if are an "average" player and win precisely half your games (p=0.5) you are better off going it alone than playing as a team.

It's not that clear on the graph, but for low values of p, you're slightly better off playing with a partner.  It doesn't turn you into a winner, but dollar-for-dollar you lose money a little less quickly.  (You'll spew more slowly with two entries in  $5 tournament than you do with one entry in a $10).

You can just about see this if you zoom in really close.

The magic number - the likelihood of winning which is good enough that you're better off not playing with a partner - is 0.25.  If you win 25% of encounters, it makes no difference whether or not you play yourself in round one and win a quarter of the finals, or if you just roll the metaphorical dice and win a quarter of all your games.

Let's be honest though - if you can't win one heads up game in four on average, you'd be better off playing roulette than trying to cheat at poker.

EDIT: Already found one error with my graphs.  The "magic number" should be 0.5 not 0.25, although this does not affect the conclusion that this is a bad strategy.

I wasn't aware of this until I just noticed this blog post announcing today is the last day for pre-orders of a new poker book by Ed Miller called "Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em".

Immediately all the right ingredients seem to be there for this to be a great title.  There's no doubt that Miller is an excellent writer and seeing his name on a book makes me pay attention.

In particular, "Small Stakes Hold'em" is the definitive text on loose fixed-limit poker games and his contribution to "No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice", co-authored with David Sklansky, is no doubt the reason that this is the only Sklansky book that I've read that didn't feel like a chore.

So with all this potential, I clicked through to learn more.

It turns out this title is a self-published e-book.

I'm familiar with the format.  Usually it's used to distribute manuals that tell you how to make a fortune buying televisions on eBay for a couple of quid, or how to earn thousands of dollars every week for filling in surveys.  The same way the author does, who generously chooses to share his secret with anyone who has a credit card.

Personally I love the irony of the ones that tell you how to make a career out of selling ebooks.

Miller explains this unusual decision by saying: "E-books are the new wave in poker training".

I was not aware of this.  However a quick Google search did throw up such gems as an online poker "algorithm tracker" that can have a decent guess at what's going to be dealt next, or an unashamed "cheating system" which claims to show you other players' hole cards.  Both these notions, of course, are preposterous.

So if this product is genuine - and I highly doubt that self-proclaimed Noted Poker Authority Ed Miller would put his name to a scam - what's so good about making it an e-book?

Does having to read it on-screen on your computer, rather than at your convenience on a train, in bed or on the toilet make the material somehow superior?

I guess you could read it while playing online poker without having to move your head to look between the screen and a book. That's marginally +eCalories, but those small edges do all add up.

Here's the kicker though.  The book's tag line is "The affordable poker book".

Because all those $20-$30 books out there are just a pipedream for anyone who doesn't already play for nosebleed stakes. 

So how much is this one?  It's $39.95.

If you pre-order today.

If you wait until tomorrow, the price will be $99.95.

As I've been told that my potty mouth often causes this blog to get blocked when people are reading it at work, I won't repeat my first reaction - but you can take a pretty good guess.

It really does say $99.95.  As if $39.95 wasn't already taking the wee wee for a book that you have to print yourself if you want to read it on the tube.

Miller's prevous books, published by Two Plus Two with all the overheads that come with producing and distributing products made out of dead trees, are priced between $24.95 and $29.95.  Even the cash cow Harrington on Cash Games only weighs in at $69.90 for both halves of the book.

The Internet has been responsible for helping to drive down the cost of all kinds of stuff.  If you can sell it online, it's cheaper than having a shop.  If you can distribute it electronically, it's cheaper than sticking it in the mail.  As a result, those savings are usually passed on to consumers.  There are very few exceptions.

I have issues with the price of music at iTunes compared to the cost of CDs, but at least it's no more expensive and you're not committed to buying a full album if you only want a few songs.  It's really only Ticketmaster that has such flagrant disrespect for its customers that it charges you a "convenience fee" when they have a monopoly on an event, and then charges you again for the privilege of printing your own tickets.

(Obligatory Ticketbastard rant: I just bought two $15 tickets for The Donnas in Las Vegas next month - yes, really, they rock and you know they do - and the total was $48.50.  That's more than the cost of an extra ticket in fees!).

And then there's this book.

Miller also doesn't mention whether Two Plus Two wanted to publish this book.  Surely if they did but he'd made the decision to do it independently, this in itself would be a great testamonial to the quality of the work.  When you've had 150,000 units shipped through this channel in the past, it's a big leap of faith to go it alone.

If they didn't want it, why not?  And what - apart from the fact that you'll only have to sell a few dozen copies to make the same amount of money as you would from the royalties from thousands of printed books - makes it worth nearly a hundred dollars?

Unfortunately, I can't feel anything other than cynicism towards this book's launch and, regrettably, I will be looking for a free copy on thepokerbay tomorrow.

If I can find it, I'll send Ed Miller $20 and a link to this post.

EDIT: Publisher Mason Malmuth comments on the price compared what it would have been through 2+2 here:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=10550513&postcount=18

A quick summary of my poker results for May, if you'll allow me to indulge.  Shall we let the graph speak?

What on earth is that meant to tell me?  I started off poorly, then had an awesome recovery followed by a massive tilt-off, then ran hotter then fire and gradually dribbled money away for the second half of the month.

In case you didn't bother to count it, there's a swing of $700 in less than 2,000 hands.  Variance is a bitch.

One thing I do know is that I had better luck at $3/$6 than I did at $2/4, which has to be a significant part of the reason for the net win.

I hardly even touched no limit this month.  The loss was mostly down to one big hand where I flopped a nut flush draw with an inside straight draw and there were three all-ins in front of me.  I'd quite like to have run that one twice like on TV but what can you do?

Are these numbers good?  Who knows... but it's better than a breakeven month, which is all I need to make money.

In addition to the $304 win, I cleared $250 of bonus and received $169 of straight rakeback.  The 25,000 points I earned are worth roughly another $50 when you spend them on stuff and sell that stuff straight away on ebay.  I also won $50 in the VIP freeroll.  So overall, $519 back from the $670.80 I paid in rake, which is equivalent to 76% rackback.  I still love this deal!

So not a bad month at all really I guess

The Facebook of poker shirts.

Photo gratuitously borrowed from Wicked Chops Poker, it's just too good.

Gala's weekly casino bonuses are still going strong.  I've now played their free £10 on roulette three times, and £10 for blackjack the same.

I also checked out their Three Card Poker game when I received an email alerting me to a £10 bonus for £100 in action.  That's half as much as you need to play on Blackjack or Roulette, and while you'd except the house edge to be higher on that kind of carnival game it would have to be higher than 10% to make this bonus a dud.

There are other weekly bonuses I've not participated in for slots and a scratchcard game, because there's a very good chance that these do pay back less than 90%, and there's just no way of knowing for sure.

However The Wizard of Odds clocks Gala's Three Card Poker paytable at a very playable 3.7% for the main bet (the perfect strategy is ridiculously easy: bet if you have Q64 or better, otherwise fold) and 2.32% on the "Pair Plus" prop bet.  I played them both, and I'm glad I took the side bet because I hit a super hot streak of straights (each paying 6-1) to give me a total profit of £36, plus the £10 donation from Gala for showing up.

I must have been owed something good though after a brutal blackjack session earlier in the week which cost me £30.  That's after offsetting the free £10, so it was a pretty severe £40 loss from 200 hands, playing £1 per hand.  The effect of the bonus money makes it twice as easy to win £30 (as I did the first time I played) than to lose £30.

While the expectation of these quickie bonuses is good, the swings can be wild.  Fortunately, with so many of them to play (now at least 3 per week that I know are profitable), things should start to even out fairly quickly.

Here's the story so far.  I am working on a house edge of 1% for blackjack, 1.35% for European roulette on even money bets only (but 2.7% the first week, when I didn't know about this rule) and 3.7% for Three Card Poker.

Not too far off then.  Keep 'em coming!

I had a heads up on this as I saw the results page yesterday, but this email just in confirms it.  My Poker Stars monkey photo won a prize!

Hello Christopher,

We have awarded 5,000 FPPs for your PokerStars Monkey Photo. Thank you for playing on PokerStars.

http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/store/promotions/monkey/

Regards,

Scotty
PokerStars VIP Team

The winning picture is excellent, but to be honest this one is my favourite:

What I wasn't expecting was another email that arrived at exactly the same time announcing I had been upgraded to Silver Star status (I didn't play enough last month and fell out of the VIP tier).  No idea how it works, and it's not really that big a deal because Poker Stars are literally giving away VIP status this month, but it was a nice surprise.

5,000 FPPs would put me at Platinum Star, but they've weren't added as status points (understandable, because I didn't earn them) so it must have been a manual adjustment; either a 1-tier upgrade for winners or just "here, have Silver Star so you can spend your points on something other than another monkey".

Anyway, as the photos I entered into the competition of monkey in Vegas were (ahem) creatively enhanced, here's one I actually took last month, straight out of the camera.