I had a busy weekend, so a Quick Tip for today's post.

If you haven't used Groupon.com or LivingSocial.com, it's an awesome way to get discounts on stuff you would use on a regular basis.  My sister-in-law told me about it a year ago, but we never really got around to it.  Now that we're a little more "settled," I can't believe how awesome some of those deals are.  Lately, we've been buying stuff on there like once a week.  Stuff like:
   * $5 adult movie ticket and beverage at a local movie theater
   * 1/2 price admission to an inflatable playground
   * $25 for $50 worth of food at a local sushi place

Just in the last month or two, they had stuff for bowling, archery, paintball, handgun licensing, that Korean bath house we go to, and probably over a hundred different restaurants in the area.  It's not really just about the savings.  A lot of times, we have no idea what our restaurant and entertainment options are (since we moved here recently).  And the travel deals seem pretty good if you are planning for a cheap getaway.  As professional poker players, we can can travel A LOT more than the typical 9-5 schlub.  And we plan on doing a lot of traveling going forward.  So check it out.

Also, if you buy a lot of stuff on the internet (like we do), you can go thru ebates.com to get additional discounts off your purchases.  Over the years, Mrs. Fly and I have saved like $1,000 just by making a few extra mouseclicks. Those little 2-15% discounts really add up.

The most obvious way to get rich is to make more money, but it always helps to spend less too - especially when you can get the same things for less.  Since most of you guys are pretty young, saving even $1,000 a year on stuff (and invested wisely) will make for a pretty nice chunk of change when you want to retire.

[ ] These sites just recently opened.
[x] Old Man finally getting around to figuring out how to use the Interwebs.

The exciting conclusion to my quarterly PokerScout traffic commentary:

4.  888Poker.  $4 max rake when all the other majors are are at $3 (or lower in the case of Stars midstakes).  Hmm.   What's DoubleFly going to say about that?  That's right!  Go f*ck  yourself!  It's not clear to me whether a $4 max rake or penalizing winning players on VIP rewards sucks more - I would guess the latter.  But the spike in volume the last 2 months may warrant some investigation - maybe I should look into this more.  Did I say "warrant" and "investigation"?  Umm...  BTW, did I mention how much I love my DOJ spies?

5. Ongame. See iPoker.  BWIN left you.  Essence is offensive to anyone who likes to win.  The cranky old man says... Go f*ck yourself!

6.  [Edit: I wrote this before BCP suspended bank wires]  Merge. Now that their cashout issues seem somewhat resolved (you can make large cashouts on some skins), they should break into the top 5 by the end of the year - especially since sites 3-5 seem to be run by CCC dropouts who have no idea how to make money running an online poker site.  Unfortunately, the DOJ caused  Everleaf (Minted) to close to the US, so that's never a good sign for the biggest site still accepting US customers.  As a result, I keep a minimum balance on 1 skin.  Don't go gettin' crazy with keeping a huge roll here, but it's still worth playing.  I really like the network - good rewards programs, decent games and above-average software.  The games suck (quantity and quality) when the BBJ is low, but you can play a reasonable number of hours a day.

You might be saying, "well, I want to go where the competent regs won't go.  Sign me up for sites #3-5."  Good.  Fewer bumhunters to bother me.  Who knows?  Maybe I'm just shooting myself in the foot by  not playing much on sites that "may" be softer (not sure that they are softer).  But I'm not going to give significant volume to a site whose policies I think is crap, and whose policies are bad for the players in the long run.  I pay 6 figures a year in rake, and I'm voting with my mouse as to what direction I would like to see online poker go.

My quarterly review of PokerScout online poker traffic data continued from the last post:

2. Party Poker.  Seems to be a decent site.  I have no serious complaints - software seems okay, slightly fishy, and several hotkey packages to choose from.  The rewards are kind of chintzy tho.  I'm not sure why the unusual drop in volume over year-end.  Also, their BWIN acquisition was supposed to be integrated in Q1, but I can't tell if it's in the graph (since I never looked at Party before).  I'm going to guess not.  In this weird transitional time in the history of online poker, you can get ahead just by not doing something majorly retarded.  For example...

3. iPoker.  iPoker had planned to follow Ongame and go to a VIP rewards system where winners are penalized in favor of the fish.  The Robin Hoods of Poker - take from the skilled and give to the unskilled.  That's what you want to see in a competition of skill (like poker) - to reward the losers and the idiots.  No longer would winning regs know ahead of time what our benefits are... they have some black box spit out some number around 50% of what you were used to at you.  I just said, "Go f*ck yourself!"  If you don't want my business, you won't get it, and I immediately cashed out.  And I haven't looked back.

Unbeknownst to me, they TOOK IT BACK!!! and decided not to make that change. All they are doing is changing to weighted contributed rake next month.  If I wasn't blogging and doing some fact checking, I wouldn't have even known about it.  I'm probably not the only one, from the looks of this graph.  Shouldn't they have figured out I cashed out around the time the threads appeared on 2+2 and sent me an "OOPS - we F-ed up.  Here is some reload moneyz.  Plz come back!" email?  How does it feel to be the only site to not have had a significant gain in volume the last 6 months?!?  Idiots.  There is a seasonal increase in players playing online poker (as seen from some of the other sites) - probably a post-summer vacation/WSOP thing.  So having the same number of players in this 6 month graph is terrible.

Also their software was such crap.  You could have gotten a college software class to come up with something better.  I'm not talking about CalTech or MIT... I'm talking about the Chernobyl Community College for quadriplegics.  So they finally updated their software.  The reviews are unflattering and that seems to be a work in progress.

But maybe they deserve another look.  Maybe.

The exciting conclusion (#4-6) on Friday.

Aw crap!  I didn't realize I forgot to do my PokerScout analysis the second half of last year.  How can I be that senile when I wasn't even blogging that often?  But here's the link to the same period last year (pre-Black Friday).  This time, I thought I would include my thoughts of the top 6 online poker sites (that are not country-specific sites):

1. PokerStars.  There's a reason why Stars is the leader in the industry.  They know the real money in online poker is cultivating the business of high volume customers (i.e. mass multitablers).  They don't give a shit about fish.  Because they are f*cking fish - they play their 100 hands, lose their roll, make "online poker is rigged" posts on 2+2 and they move on.  Contrary to what Zach will tell you, you can't base a rake-generating business on that kind of customer.  You want the dude that's going to play 200K hands a month, regardless of who is at the table.  And you want to give them a six figure bonus every year.  At the end of the day, poker is a competition, and Stars wants to create an environment where the best want to play.  It's not an accident that they are over 5x the size of the next largest competitor.  That is crazy in ANY industry.

Not sure why their business took a dive in October.  But I think it's something that they are over 28K now, and they were a little over 30K last February.  I thought US players were 1/3 of the market.  What Black Friday?

Sure - they recently screwed regs by going to contributed rake (from dealt).  But that was to be expected - as I've previously written when FT made the change, dealt rake is "less fair" and bad for the games.  The thing I found awesome about Stars is that they reduced rake from the industry standard of 5% to 4.5%.  This is something when most of their clownboy competitors made rake grabs the past 9 months.  I'm hopeful this will be the start of a trend - whenever the industry leader lowers prices, it can only be good for the customer.

Sadly, they are also top of the class in most things related to online poker - including security - and I'm pretty sure I can't sneak through.

I've only covered 1 of the top 6, and I'm out of time today.  I'll have to continue this in my next post.

I thought I would answer some viewer mail.  I'll try to do this somewhat regularly, so if you have questions, let me know:

Q: What stakes are you playing nowadays?
A: Lately my average BI is probably like $300 (since NL 400+ games are somewhat scarce - especially for full ring on Merge).  I haven't been putting in much volume lately because my interest rate newsletter business has been surprisingly busy (later post), and with the holidays, birthdays and my researching my book, I've been a little busy.

Q: How is your play split between FR and 6max?
A: I probably play 60% 6max and 40% full ring... mostly because there are more 6max games going.  Sadly, FR is a dying game midstakes and above (NL400+), so small stakes FR regs should probably start getting more comfortable with 6max.  I think the small stakes full ring game could be around for a while, since a lot of the live noobs will be more familiar with the full table, but I just don't think you can move up and grow as a player playing just full ring NLHE.

Q: Do you play across multiple sites? If so, and if you don't mind saying, which ones?
A: Yes.  In the US, I think Merge is the only site worth playing if you are a mass multitabler.  The software is reasonably good (I actually prefer it to Stars, after a few minor fixes), and if you don't mind mixing up 6 max and FR, you can generally find enough NL200+ tables to play like 12 hours a day.  At least one skin allows for large cashouts (still takes a few weeks tho), so that is less of a barrier.  I don't like Cake since the HUD is limited to that session only, which makes it more difficult for a multitabler (especially since I don't take a lot of notes).  But I know a guy who just had a 5 figure month on there, so if you like playing a more read-less poker, that might be worth a shot.  Bodog is just retarded - I can't play just 4 tables (or whatever it is), and I heard some/all their tables went anonymous, and I thought they were supposed to be spun off or something this year.  AND virtually nonexistant VIP benefits.  Sorry - you don't deserve my business.

I play on one non-US site (top 5).  Can't really comment on it tho, for obvious reasons.  And it wouldn't surprise me if I didn't have some DOJ fanboys of the blog.  Hi DOJ spies!  I love you guys - especially if you'll process my FT refund before the end of the year.  Okay?  Thanks.  Bye.  Since many of the VIP rewards programs reward "exponentially" for higher volume, I don't think it makes sense for a mass multitabler like me to spread my play across multiple ROW sites.  I'm still having technical problems getting my hands/hr similar to what I'm getting on Merge tho.  I haven't had much time to work on it tho.  Multisiting makes more sense if you prefer to bumhunt higher stakes or don't put in a lot of volume.  I think the quality of the games at major non-US sites are about the same (except for Stars), and about the same as Merge.  I'll share my opinions of various sites next week when I do my quarterly PokerScout analysis of online poker volume trends.

If you have any questions you would like me to answer in a future post, let me know.  I know I owe one reader some answers to some trading questions, so I'll try and address them in a trading update post soon.

I have to give a shout-out to my NY football Giants for winning the Super Bowl.  I had a pretty good feeling a few weeks ago, even tho the Pats had one of the best records in the NFL and the Giants had one of the worst (among play-off teams).  But the Giants' defense and running game finally got healthy, came together at the end of the season, and the rest is history.  A special thank you to the handegg (i.e. football) for bouncing away from the Pats' receivers hands and always bouncing back to into the Giants' hands.

As a typical sports fan, I'm going to act all exuberant, like I actually own the team, know any of the players or coaches, or had any money riding on the game.  The owners, coaches and players all thanked ME (a fan) for being so awesome after the game.  They must know me...  how else would they know that *I* was so awesome?  (since I am)  This must call for some car overturning or something, no?

At the end of the day, while I love watching football and the Giants are my favorite team, and I'm happy for all of my fellow New Yorkers who are happy, I've already moved on.  Call me spoiled, being a Yankee and Giants fan (regular winners) and having moved to the land of the Mavericks, Rangers, Cowboys and Stars (more winners).  Or maybe I have perspective about what actually matters in my life - like my family and friends.  I guess I should have written this shout-out a few days ago, while it was still fresh in my mind, rather than that botting post no one seemed to like - call me grumpy old man.  Doh!

But congratulations anyway!

You can take the New Yorker out of New York, but you can't take the New York out of the New Yorker.  NY #1, Dallas #2.

Who's that knocking ay my door?

MIT is offering a course (for credit) on poker theory.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that a school known for technology and producing blackjack systems would want to capitalize on a more complex theoretical game as poker.  BTW, they have a second generation blackjack team out utilizing a completely different strategy - something I considered 20+ years ago when I was counting cards and shuffle tracking, but never pursued (can't really talk about it tho).  Anyway, MIT isn't the only school teaching poker.  Many colleges have had software classes for years where creating bots was a typical project.  There are two reasons why this is disturbing as a professional poker player.

Firstly, it just gets a lot of smarter-than-average people involved in poker that perhaps would not have otherwise been.  That's never good.  I suppose the competitive side of me will say "bring it on!", but adding a large crop of solid grinders to a game EVERY YEAR will only reduce my win rate in the long term.  Poker is a zero sum game (with costs) after all.

More importantly, I am quite certain that over time, a good bot will be better than almost all human players.  A lot of people on 2+2 seem to think that poker can't be beaten by bots.  They are outright wrong.  Why do I think this?  Because I've seen bots dominate large parts of the global trading markets over the course of my short career, and the trend will continue.  The technology hedge funds generally do multiples better than their human counterparts.  And the level of technological sophistication involved would blow away a lay person.

It's actually quite laughable to think that a game with a limited decision tree (only four rounds of betting and generally 3 possible actions per round) as online poker can't be beaten with a machine.  While poker bots tend to be simple now, a good bot will be able to do everything optimally - steal, bluff, bet sizing, ranges, etc. and most importantly, make optimal use of all datamined hand histories.  There have been plenty of times where I could have made the EXACT correct play preflop, if I didn't have just 2 seconds to decide.  There's only so much information I can process.  All the positive qualities you can imagine for a human player - creativity, applying pressure, etc. can all be programmed, and programmed to do so OPTIMALLY.  There are documented decent winning bots in small stakes NOW.  I do not think the bot I am envisioning is out there YET.  But if I can picture it in my mind, I don't see how it wouldn't be 5-10 years away.

So why do I keep playing?  I DO think it's in the poker site's long term interests to keep a site bot-free, so that's going to help "some."  And since I already have accepted the inevitability of bots and can think like a bot (programmer), that can only help me.  But at the end of the day, I enjoy the game and I enjoy the challenge.  So I keep playing.  And I have a few back-up plans in case poker doesn't evolve as I hope.  You should too.  As Joe Gibbs used to say, "A winning effort begins with preparation."