No post today or Friday.  Check back Monday. 

Actually, I'm not being lazy - I had an annoying family issue come up.

From http://jokinglmao.blogspot.com/2011/05/lazy-rules-1.html:

Lazy Rule #1:
The farther away the remote is, the more you like what's already on TV.

Lazy Rule #2:
If you have to say something more than once, its not worth the energy.

Lazy Rule #3:
If you spill water, it will eventually dry.

Lazy Rule #4:
I'll tell you later!!

Lazy Rule #5:
Don't charge your phone till it says 5% remaining.

Lazy Rule #6:
Screw the "T&C's." Just hit Accept.

Lazy Rule #7:
If its not on the 1st search page on Google, it doesn't exist.

Lazy Rule #8:
Why make your bed when you're just gonna get back in it again.

Lazy Rule #9:
If you are late, dont go.

lazy Rule # 10:
If you drop the ice cube, just kick it under the fridge.

This past weekend, something amazing happened.  G learned how to ride a bicycle.  I think that was the proudest I've EVER been of him.  In fact I even started tearing up as I was thinking about it before my nap.

You may be saying to yourself, "WTF Old Man?!?  ANYONE can learn to ride a bike.  You basically have to be retarded not to be able to ride.  How is that one of your proudest moments?"

And then I got to thinking, "yeah... why is it that I feel this way?"  and then I got a flash back to when G was born and I thought, "Koreans have awesome eye-had coordination (see child sweatshops, Starcraft, Andrew Song, women golfers, archery gold medals, etc).  There's no reason he can't be next Tiger Woods."  Sadly as the years went by it became painfully obvious to me that the boy was not going to be a golf prodigy.  No academic prodigy (later post).  No music prodigy.  No prodigy at all.  I know of no kid who likes to "race" as much as he does and always comes in last.  It was so embarrassing when he would challenge his friends to a race, and then halfway through the race, as he was choking on his opponents' dust, he would miraculously have a cramp or his shoe laces would become untied and thus would have to stop the race.  Mrs. Fly and I still get migraines because of all the facepalms.

I guess G's other big lifetime achievement was learning to swim.  When he was 4, we sent him to a 7 week summer day camp that had swimming twice a day.  Surely, he would learn to swim by the end of the summer.  The summer came and went, and he still couldn't swim.  #?!@?!%  So we sent him to the same camp again the following year, and he learned to swim.  But by then it was pretty anti-climactic, since the summer before we were expecting him to walk through the door any day saying he could swim.  When he finally told us a year+ later, we still acted like he discovered the cure for cancer - I am a professional poker player after all - but no tears of pride.

I was hopeful he could learn how to ride a bike quickly.  It was pretty embarrassing that he was still riding with training wheels.  It seems that here in Texas, kids get into sports at an earlier age than in the Northeast.  He even has two sibling friends his age who are riding dirt bikes - you know the ones with motors on them.  G's pretty good on the Razer kick scooter, so I knew he had pretty good balance.  But I wanted to get him riding before the spring.  I think his friends gave him a pass on the training wheels because it was his first year here, but I don't know if they would be so kind after year 1.  We recently had a week of 75+ degree weather (looove Texas winters), so we went outside.  It only took a few minutes of holding the bike as he pedaled.  and the magic happened.

When you grow up in the "type A" NYC metro area and in an Asian household, overachievement is expected.  Prodigy schmodigy.  As I always say to Mrs. Fly, lots of things are overrated (Ivy League schools, being a lawyer/doctor/professional, having a nice car, etc), but happiness always seems to be underrated.  G is happy.  We're happy.  I wouldn't trade him for any other kid in the world.  Call me a simpleton for being so happy about my kid learning to ride a bike, but life's all about taking the time to enjoy the the simple things.

Since I've been pretty busy this year with both work-related and personal activities, I found it very difficult to keep up with what's going on in the poker world.  Some of the threads are just so long and many of the threads are just outright retarded.  But I recently started listening to 2+2's PokerCasts (podcast) and to my surprise, I actually enjoyed it.  I knew it was around for a few years, but they were usually 2-3 hours long and I just never wanted to spend that amount of time listening to 2 guys talk about poker.  But I probably spend AT LEAST that on 2+2 every week and I don't get anywhere near the information content that they cover in the PokerCast.  The last few weeks, Mrs. Fly and I have been going on these 6 hour dates at the Korean bath house (we have another one today), and I wanted to listed to something other than music, while I worked on my book. So that was the perfect time to give it a try.

One time, the two guys (I have no idea who they are, since their names are not prominent on any of the ads) were talking about how Guy Laliberte (founder of Cirque du Soleil) was organizing a $1 million buy-in charity event at the WSOP, and they are expecting on the order of two dozen entrants.  I would've had no idea this was going on. There is just waaay to much info on 2+2 for me to go through.  The Pokercast isn't perfect - they could probably make it just an hour show (instead of 2.5 hours), so there's a lot of fluff and repetitive info.  But at least it's somewhat structured and no where near a big a time-waster as browsing the forums.

But back to Guy... it got me to thinking that some dude who's worth $2.5billion, and who has dropped $5million lifetime at the poker tables may not miss $100mil.  Why $100mil?  IMO, that's all it would take to "save" FT (later post - for now just assume this is "reasonable").  If the GBT deal falls apart, he would just look like a GOD to the online poker community.  Poker players like him anyway because he's a super-nice guy (and it doesn't hurt that he's a fish).  But saving the online poker community would put him on a level of respect that maybe only Doyle has - or higher.  Even if he doesn't want his name associated with an online poker site (he does run a circus after all), surely he must have a brother, sister, friend, or whatever that can be in charge?  And he probably knows a bunch of people with poker business savvy.

And then I got to thinking... even if it isn't Guy, why wouldn't some site with crappy community college software (like iPoker) make a lowball bid?  Cardplayer is implying the GBT deal is unlikely to go through.  FT's value gets less and less with each passing month.  iPoker could use the software, the patent on Rush, and obviously the ALL the ROW customers (see aforementioned later post).  And they already know how to "run" a poker business (kind of).  Eh hem.  What do you expect from community college dropouts?

I suppose this post is just the meaningless ramblings of an old man.  The main point is just to say, when you have the right information sources, it's easier to get ideas and be more analytical and productive.  As much much as I enjoy socializing with other regs in the regs' threads, knowing when Disco's going to order a hooker, Sabr's ass wiping habits and listening to UCD bitch about his girlfriend yet still stay with her is not going to add much value to my life.  As mentioned in my birthday post, I'm getting closer and closer to the grave.  I can't be wasting all that time on 2+2 - I need better time management.  I can listen to the Podcast while Mrs. Fly and the kids are trying to talk to me and kill 2 birds with one stone.  Carpe Diem.

Being an Asian-American from New York, I guess I should say a few words about Jeremy Lin.  I wasn't really intending to, but Mrs. Fly has been bringing him up during every one of our morning conversations for the past week.  It's not unusual for Mrs. Fly to be yapping away the first thing in the morning (it's quite cute tbh), but it's very rare she would ever want to talk about SPORTS.  She is literally one of those people who would say "Did Jeremy Lin score a touchdown last night?"

After his 38 point game vs Kobe and the Lakers, Jason Whitlock (a sports reporter) tweeted "some lucky lady in NYC is gonna feel a couple of inches of pain tonight."  And after their first loss, the "chink in the armor" comments flew around.  I'm a little disappointed that in today's age, we still have some racial insensitivity floating around in the mass media.  I guess it's kind of like Fuzzy Zoeller's "fried chicken" comments towards Tiger Woods a few years back.  These types of comments could actually be pretty funny if you were sitting around with your buddies and you actually have good friends who are Asian (or black).  But not when you are a professional sports journalist broadcasting nationwide.
   [x] KNUCKLEHEAD
   [x] probably a funny guy to hang out with

Sticks and stones will break my bones...

What I find disturbing tho is that some coaches in the business let pre- conceived notions of him cloud their judgement of his abilities - the fact that he is Asian and went To Haaavaaad.  This type of thing "could" happen in say... the corporate world, where "managerial skill" (sometimes known as "ass kissing") is kind of vague and very subjective.  But he plays a friggin' sport!  To take the example a little further, it's like if I was picking a team for a 4x100m relay.  I can see how fast everyone runs and passes the baton in practice.  Evaluating physical performance "should be" a lot less subjective.  I can see how you could go wrong in evaluating talent before a draft.  But when the guy is actually on your friggin' team, you can put him through any kind of "game" situation you want.  And there are only 12 guys on a team: 5 per side times two teams minus a few injuries means "everyone" gets to practice, no?  It blows my mind that a few teams had him in practices and passed him over - including the Knicks for part of the season.  Granted, maybe he sucked in practice.  Or maybe he's on a 9 game heater of a lifetime.

But being the spiteful cranky old man that I am, I hope some of the coaches of his old teams get canned.  It's kind of like how all the editors who rejected J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter manuscript (there were a lot of them) got canned (or so I hear).  If you can't spot talent, perhaps you shouldn't be in a position to evaluate talent?  All I know is, this guy has made the NBA, NY Knicks and (maybe) himself a ton of money in a short amount of time.  Moral of the story: being a short-sighted bigot could end up costing you in the long run.

On a side note... My worst fear as a former New Yorker is that Carmelo Anthony is going to turn out to be the next Allen Iverson - puts up great individual numbers but takes away from the team.  The last time I checked, basketball was a team game.

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?