Bluffing with Nothing

I am sure most of us has seen the PBA (Philippine Basketball Association) incident where a player by the name of Arboleda pummeled a fan who was verbally abusing him. I would like to chime in with my take on the matter. Let me just qualify this by saying that I have no vested interest in any side. I have not watched the PBA games for a long time. I do not know anybody in Burger King and I certainly am not remotely acquainted with the Katigbak guy who was assaulted.

Simply put, I think both guys deserved what they got.

1. Fan being pummeled. If you are going to verbally abuse someone in whatever setting. Then you have to be prepared for the consequences. I'm sure it went something like this. By what I saw, Arboleda did this fake falling down but actually making sahod to the Smart Gilas Player. Katigbak is livid and shouts something to the effect of "Put...ng Ina mo, arboleda, gago ka talaga" Arboleda hears him, has had enough of the abuse since it was not the first time the guy said something abusive, and starts walking towards the fan. I am pretty sure the fan thinking he is safe within the confines of his front row seat does the fake taunt that everyone does when faced with this kind of situation. "Oh ano, laban ka" or some similar phrase. Arboleda vaults the divider to the utter surprise of the fan (you can see it in his face) and starts raining kicks and punches down on him. Fan cowers in fear and covers up his face.

You are rude and obnoxious to somebody who was just doing his job. You get punched in the face. Karma. In poker analogy, you're like the guy with the big stack who keeps pushing players around by going all in, but then somebody decides to call you and you show a 6-3.

2. Arboleda being banned for a year without pay to the tune of around 2 million pesos. Quite extreme, but you assaulted a paying customer. No matter how abusive or haughty the guy was or how hyped up you are with anger. A player has no right to physically engage a fan. It simply cannot be done and tolerated as you are essentially harming the reputation of the whole league you are in.

You violate the rules and cross the line. Fined 2 million pesos. Karma. You decide to call the poker bully with your A-3 and delighted to see his 6-3. Until the flop comes and its 6 6 K. You lose your stack but at least you feel you made the right move and showed that you were not going to be pushed around.

See if it had ended here, then you just say. Both guys got what they deserve and leave it at that. But in a sudden twist to this incident. Lawyer of fan writes the PBA and wants Arboleda banned for life. Now this is just plain pathetic. I am sure that the Katigbak guy's ego was crushed. All his grandstanding and he ends up in the fetal position cowering like a girl. I mean I symphatize with what happened and we all know that Arboleda is bigger. But you could have at least tried to throw out a weak kick or something to save your pride. But you didn't do it and the damage is done. Threatening somebody's livelihood doesn't put back the inches in your dick.

Actually, legally, it was the best thing that could have happened. Trying to retaliate would have made his case weaker and Arboleda might be slightly justified in his actions. But if this was caveman times, the fan would be like the cave guy who ends up sweeping outside the cave while the alpha cave man bonks your girl with his club and drags her inside his cave. You cannot solve the problem by complaining to the elders and having him evicted from his cave. The only way is to pick up your club and battle to the death. LOL.

Fantasy Basketball Season

OK, it's fantasy basketball season once again. This is one of my other hobbies besides poker. If you have zero to little interest in NBA basketball, then feel free to skip this post as it has nothing to do with poker.

This year, I joined 2 leagues with live drafts. Both are 14 team Head to Head leagues counting 9 categories under the normal yahoo system of having PG, SG, G, SF, PF, F, C, C, UTIL, UTIL and bench as positions.

The first league is a local money league. Everybody puts in a certain amount and cash prizes go to the one who finishes with the best regular season record as well as prizes for finishing in 1st, 2nd and 3rd after the playoffs. The 2 teams who finish in last place are also required to pay an additional amount that goes into the pot. (This was done to prevent last place teams from colluding and trading their stars for scrubs in exchange for some favor)

I drafted 7th in this money league and here are the players that I got in the order that I got them. The number inside the parenthesis is the overall draft position

1.(7)Kevin Durant SG,SF
2.(22)Joe Johnson PG,SG
3.(35)Brook Lopez PF,C
4.(50)Nene Hilario PF,C
5.(63) Mo Williams PG
6.(78) Charlie Villanueva SF,PF
7.(91) Eric Gordon SG
8.(106) Greg Oden C
9.(119) Louis Williams PG,SG
10.(134)Courtney Lee SG,SF
11.(147) Brandon Jennings PG
12.(162) Nenad Krstic PF,C
13.(175) Antonio McDyess PF,C

Overall, I was pretty satisfied with this draft. Durant as a 1st round pick is quite good as he will absolutely explode this year in Oklahoma. Some experts were picking him as high as no 4, so getting him at 7 is good value. Eric Gordon at the 7th round 91st overall is an absolute steal. I took a risk with Oden at the 8th round even though he's been injured every year, because he's tearing it up this pre season and I see a lot of upside as long as he stays healthy. Louis Williams inherits the starting point guard position in Philly with the departure of Andre Miller to Portland and he should be in for a big year. Courtney Lee takes the place of Vince Carter in New Jersey, so that's another pick with a lot of upside.

The 2nd league that I joined is a champions league. The managers are screened. If you don't have a fantasy gold trophy in your yahoo profile, then you cannot join. This assures everyone that it is a very competitive league even without money involved as there is some pride at stake of being the best among the best. It is composed of players around the world who love to trash talk and the live draft was one of the tightest ones with lots of nasty comments. Everybody knows their basketball and draft steals were harder to get.

I drafted 12th in this league and here are the players that I got

1. (12)Dirk Nowitzki PF
2. (17)Joe Johnson PG,SG
3. (40)David Lee PF,C
4. (45)Kevin Martin SG
5. (68)Russell Westbrook PG
6. (73) Jeff Green SF,PF
7. (96)Greg Oden C
8. (101)Mike Conley PG
9. (124)Thaddeus Young SF,PF
10.(129)Samuel Dalembert C
11.(152)Al Thornton SF,PF
12.(157)Drew Gooden PF,C
13.(180) Terrence Williams SG,SF,PF
14.(185) Steve Blake PG

This is just a fair draft for me. Good picks were Nowitzki in the 1st round and Kevin Martin in the 4th. Oden at 7th was too early but this was caused by a dropped connection. Conley at 8th was also a bit early as TJ Ford was still there and I missed drafting him. The only steal I think I got was Thaddeus Young at 124th overall. The rest were just average picks and not so much upside. Again, as I said, everybody knew their stuff and all the players I were targetting were coming off the boards before my turn.

Oh well, I've been playing long enough to know that fantasy leagues are won through free agent acquisitions, so I'm hoping for a good pick up during the course of the season to bolster the team.

For those poker players interested in fantasy basketball, comments about the teams above would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

I made 2nd by folding AA

Just finished playing the above tournament. 271 players with 504 rebuys and 126 addons. Buy in of only $3.30. These are the kind of donkaments one tries to avoid playing for the sake of maintaining one's sanity. But sometimes when luck goes your way. It's still a good return on a $6 investment.

Played basically ABC poker. Doubled up on my KKs and AAs in the early part. Went into the money (50 players) with a short stack. Then proceeded to play aggressive short stack poker. Got lucky once when I pushed Q6s in the dealer position. SB called with JJ. The Q flopped and allowed me to survive.

Went into the final table with an average stack. Then went into a heater of AQs and AJs and eliminated a guy to bring my stack up to around 300k which was 2nd in chips at that point. Then this hand came up when there was 9 of us left.

I got AA in early position. Raised 3xBB. Got called by chip leader at BB. Flop is K J 9. Chip leader checked. I made a 1/2 Pot bet. Villain called quickly. Turn is another J. Vilain bets pot at this point which was ringing alarm bells but I made the call. River is a harmless looking 5. Villain puts me all in and he's got me covered. I had about 140k left behind. Blinds were still at 4k-8k. So still a lot of poker left with my stack. I tanked then decided to fold.

I actually think it was a wrong read on my part as succeeding plays with the guy showed me that he was actually a fish overplaying top and middle pairs. But I made the fold and it allowed me to finish in 2nd place. The villain chipleader busted out in 5th if I'm not mistaken.

So all's well that ends well. =)

Fast Withdrawals Make My Day

As I've previously mentioned in this blog, Cake Poker has one of the most convenient and fastest withdrawal methods available. I am not pimping Cake because I play there. I am just stating a fact. I know a lot of Pinoy players have a difficult time withdrawing online funds because of various requirements that are in place. But seriously, the way Cake does it is just ridiculously easy and you wonder how come the bigger sites cannot do it the same way.

Once a month, the site allows you to make a withdrawal request (minimum $500) by cheque and they will send this to you by courier free of charge. Any additional withdrawals for the month will get charged the normal courier fee of about $30. For recreational players who don't really withdraw that much, once a month is just perfect.

The other great thing is that the cheque that they send is a local cheque. It is not a US Dollar or Euro check which takes ages to clear in our banks. It is a local cheque for pesos that is addressed to your name that clears in 2 days. Seriously cool.

I made a withdrawal request last September 25, 2009 right before Ondoy hit. The Fedex envelope containing the cheque was in my office on October 1. Not counting Saturday and Sunday. That's just 3 freaking days. I'm sure there was even some delay caused by logistical problems due to the typhoon.

In terms of exchange rate, its not too bad. Right now, the official rate is about 47 pesos to US$1. The rate that they gave me in their conversion less whatever bank fees is about 44. So about a 6.5% deduction to cover bank fees and exchange rate spreads. I think that's quite acceptable.

So from your online poker account to your bank account in about 5 working days and in pesos to boot, ready to be used. No hassles. Just a simple, fast and efficient procedure.

This really leaves you wondering about the procedures of other sites. If a small site like Cake can do it, I'm sure the bigger sites can do it better. It just adds to the conspiracy theory that they are deliberately adding layers of red tape to delay your withdrawal. I think this is primarily being done for 2 reasons : (1) It conditions your mind about the negativity of doing withdrawals. This obviously works to their advantage as you would just tend to play with the money and delay your withdrawals or do it less often. The more money you have in your account, the more playing time you spend and in the higher limits which earns them bigger rake. (2) Any delay that they cause means more interest earnings. Let's just say average withdrawal requests for a day sum up to about US$100K. Just delaying its transfer by 3 days earns them a few hundred dollars in interest earnings alone. Multiply this by the number of days in a year and you can imagine the thousands of extra dollars they earn by simply delaying your withdrawal. Quite unethical but financial institutions have been doing this for ages and poker sites are no different.

Again, since online poker is pretty much unregulated. We just accept and make do with whatever crappy procedure is currently in place. The only protest we can do is to take our business elsewhere. But then, other sites are even worse. So wala ka ring choice. Heheh....