What's in a number ?

Iphone 4S instead of the much hyped Iphone 5.

Faster processor, 8 MP camera, HD video capabilities and what else ?

Hmm ... I think that's it. Still no flash support, no 4G.

IOS5, Siri, Icloud .... nope. Doesn't count. Those are software upgrades and everybody can get those. Software upgrades are a dime a dozen.

So basically, Apple fans waited in bated breath and giddy anticipation for a whole fucking year for the announcement of something revolutionary and they get SQUAT. Heheheh ..... They get a slightly (emphasis on slightly) updated phone wrapped in Apple goobledygook.

Of course, Apple fanatics will defend their beloved phone and gush about the camera and the faster speeds. But c'mon, who are they kidding ? Android users have had those since last year. Deep inside, we can all stop pretending that nobody is disappointed.

The truth is Apple users and potential upgraders are hugely disappointed. Apple was the victim of their own hype. People overexpected and the product underwhelmed. The worst possible combination. Of course, it will still sell tons of units as it is still a good product. Just not the great product that everyone was expecting. This will obviously lessen the gap between Apple and its competitors. Stock prices of Samsung, LG, HTC went up while Apple stocks went down and rightfully so. Apple really dropped the ball on this one.

By the way, I am not an iphone hater. Although I use an android phone, I do own an IPAD 2. So I'm actually open minded about the whole thing and enjoy new gadgets with no bias. I was actually seriously considering the Iphone 5 as a possible replacement to my HTC phone if it did came out. But I am obviously not dropping serious moolah on the Iphone 4S as there is nothing I want from its feature set that I am not getting from my current Android phone.

So disappointing. =)

NBA Madness

I am sure most of us have heard that the NBA Stars are coming to the Philippines this Saturday and Sunday to play in exhibition games against a PBA selection and the Smart Gilas Team . For an NBA fan like me, this is like one of those WTF ... HOLY COW,,, ARE YOU KIDDING ME moments.

And we're not talking about those over the hill players that usually come here in the past for charity and goodwill missions. We're talking about full pledged all stars from the current era. Kobe, Durant, Rose, Chris Paul, Tyreke Evans. Heck, I'm even excited to see Javale Mcgee and old man Fisher.

It's a once in a lifetime chance to see these guys up close and personal. Unless I hope to travel to the USA one of these days and get lucky enough to watch an All Star game, this is basically as close as it gets. The current NBA Lockout has given a unique opportunity for the organizers to get this done. Normally, these guys would be hard in training for the upcoming NBA season and would not even contemplate coming to the Philippines.

Since last Saturday, there has been a mad rush for tickets and now everything is sold out. Scalpers are making a killing as tickets are now being sold at 4 to 5x their face value and people are still buying. That's how crazy Filipinos are for basketball. And I cannot blame them. Looking at it a certain way, the original ticket prices are actually a bargain. Imagine getting to watch an NBA game live right in our own backyard.

As for me, I basically had to use up all of my known connections and begged and cajoled certain people. But it was worth it as I have in my grubby little hands lower box tickets to the game for my brothers and me. Woohoo. Fucking A.

My connection told me that it was next to impossible to get good tickets at face value as every politician and his mother wanted one. There were even foreigner VIPs calling up wanting to come over and watch. That's how great the demand was for tickets.

So for everyone who's gonna enjoy this live or in TV, let's take a brief moment to thank David Stern, the NBA owners and Billy Hunter. Your greed and pigheadedness may cause an NBA lockout this coming year. But who cares, thanks to you guys, the NBA stars are coming !!!!!

Check from Full Tilt

As indicated in a previous post, I withdrew majority of my bankroll from Full Tilt due to the Black Friday brouhaha. I requested for a check and the first one arrived yesterday.

To my surprise, the check was from a Philippine bank and it was already in pesos. I have already done previous withdrawals from FTP and it was always a foreign check that arrived. But this time for some reason that could be related to Black Friday, it was already a local check.

Conversion was not too bad. Our current exchange rate is hovering at around 43 and I got around 40 : 1 for the dollars that I withdrew. This is certainly better than the rates being offered in Pokermanila forums if you're selling FTP $.

So for anyone reading this post. Withdrawal by check from FTP is actually now a valid alternative. It took about 2 week for the check to arrive in the mail from the time I made the transaction. So the wait was not too bad.

In another bit of poker news, Pokerstars recently changed their rake and blinds structure. This has caused an uproar especially among SNG and MTT grinders. It seems that the rake for the lower buy ins have increased and this has led to a lot of complaints. Marginally profitable players are thinking that the increased rake will totally wipe out their profits.

In my personal opinion, the rake is actually not too bad unless you play the micros which had a really big increase. But if you analyze it, it takes the same amount of server resources to process a micro tournament and a mid level tournament and obviously Pokerstars gets a lot more rake from the higher buyin tourneys. So raking micros higher makes sense from a strictly financial point of view.

For the 5 to 20 dollar tourneys that I sometimes join, the effect is not that big. There was one big change though The 15+1 9man turbos are gone. This is actually one of the most cost efficient SNGs that you can play in the online poker scene. The rake for this tourney is only 6.6% considering that the Industry average is about 10%. So obviously, Pokerstars had to get rid of this one to fuck over all of its loyal SNG grinders.

Anyway, for casual players, the increase in rake is not that noticeable. For grinders, it depends on what games you play. But at the end of the day, its all about making profit and due to Black Friday and the withdrawal of US players. Pokerstars' profits were significantly reduced and all the talk about being customer centric flies out the window if you're not making money.

When there's smoke....

there's fire.

This is an often used quote to describe a situation where if a person sees signs of something unusual, then there is something bad going on and one must be alert and suspicious.

Right now, this is happening for Cake Poker. It appears like the site is having financial difficulties based on the length of withdrawal time and the flimsy excuses thrown at you by their customer support. Before, a withdrawal usually takes a few days. Now, I have a withdrawal pending for a month and its still sitting there.

Their customer support is claiming technical issues but that is a load of crap as my previous withdrawal took 3 weeks and they used the same excuse. How can you have a technical problem with your software for more than 3 months and you still haven't fixed it.

With black friday, one would think that Cake would experience some relief as US players would probably flock to their site as they are one of the few remaining still accepting US players. But I don't know, 1 month is a long time to process a small amount of money.

It was the same thing that happened to Banco Filipino which closed down recently. A few weeks before the actual close. I heard some rumblings about their financial state. It piqued my interest because my wife had some of our funds invested in their time accounts. So I did some research and discovered that they were actually not doing so well for quite some time now. So I asked my wife how much we had invested there and what was the interest rate. My suspicion became full blown paranoia when she told me that they were offering almost double what the other banks were giving out and this has been going on for the past year or so.

HUH? I may not be the brightest guy in this world. But I know one thing from player poker for this long. Nothing in this world is free and of course, when there's smoke, there must be fire. Why would a bank offer you a much much higher rate than the 2 biggest banks ? Did they have some genius fund manager who knew something most of us didn't ?

This led me to the decision to pull out all of our funds there. My wife was a little skeptical since she knew the manager and she reassured her that nothing was going on. She also felt that the interest was "sayang". But I was adamant and she finally agreed. She also told one of her aunts who had money there. The aunt withdrew most of her funds but left some money behind as she was also thinking of the wasted interest.

Exactly one week after our withdrawal, the bank closed. It was open Monday and then suddenly with no warning. It did not open anymore. A lot of my wife's friends and acquaintances got stuck with significant money in the bank. Yes, there is PDIC, but that's only for 500k. The rest is pretty much up to the whims of bankruptcy procedures.

My wife now thinks I have some kind of ESP or something. But it wasn't that or anything supernatural at all. Sometimes we are blinded when there is a chance to earn good money. We do not read the signs for what they are. Greed acts like a blinder. But if you just step back a little. You will see the real picture and you should act accordingly.

This is my last withdrawal from Cake as I have been slowly pulling out my funds and the amount I have left is insignificant. Sharkscope tells me that I am actually a shark in that site with an average ROI of more than 100%. But who cares about ROI and the fishes there if your funds get stuck. If a bank that is tightly regulated can close, what more a poker site with dubious regulations.

Repeat after me. Where there's smoke .................

Back to the Grind

Wow ! Last post was September 2010. That was about 7 months ago. Just to quickly update, I did not really stop playing poker. I was just too busy to update my blog as I can no longer access blog sites thru our office internet. And when I come home, I only have so much time to do all the family stuff plus play my usual hours. So this blog was the least of my priorities.

In any case, the biggest news in the pokerworld is Black Friday where it seems that the DOJ equivalent in the USA has filed fraud and laundering charges against the 2 biggest poker sites: Pokerstars and Full Tilt. This has led to the complete banning of US players from their sites and the freezing of their accounts. For the past week, US players have been in limbo and I would guess that hundreds of online pros who rely on poker for their living expenses are banging their heads on their monitors and shouting WTF.

Based on latest news that I heard, Pokerstars has already begun the process of allowing players to withdraw their money. But nothing definite yet from Full Tilt.

Although the 2 poker sites have repeatedly reassured their non US players that its business as usual. One cannot help feel a bit of apprehension about the continued viability of their business models. Logically, they should still survive and thrive well enough as other countries have no restrictions in place and international players are still populating the tables.

But to be safe, I withdrew 80% of my bankroll from Full Tilt and almost 90% from Cake. Both have been approved and I am just waiting for the checks to arrive. Hopefully, there will be no issues and I can deposit them in local banks with no problems. Since I only had less than a thousand dollars in Pokerstars. I decided to just leave that behind for playing.

Although everything seems ok for international players and my withdrawals quickly approved, I actually want to kick myself for being lazy and keeping a huge chunk of my bankroll in the sites themselves especially FTP. I was confident that Pokerstars and FTP were too big to fall. But the events that have happened has shaken this confidence and although I will continue playing. I will make sure that I only have about 50 buyins in each site that I play in. Everything else will be withdrawn promptly and kept locally.

OK. That's about it for now. Hopefully I can update this blog more often. I don't even know if I have any readers left. Heheh.

3rd Time's a Charm

Last night was another tourney night for me. Played in 3 low buy in tourneys simultaneously. The $1K Guaranteed at Cake, the $2.5k Rebuy, and the $7.5k Guarantee at Full Tilt. All these tourneys start at around 7-8PM which was my preferred schedule.

Well, confidence seems to breed luck or maybe luck breeds confidence. In any case, I've been doing good in tourneys the past few days and this enabled me to play relaxed and loose which is the best mindset to be in when you play tournaments.

1. I finished 8th in the $1k guaranteed for practically peanuts. Just around 4x my buyin. But this was ok. I was low stacked from the middle of the tourney and I was glad just to reach the final table. So I pushed with the first decent hand I got (K9s) wherein I was first to act and was called quickly by BB who had Ace rag. Ace flops and that was it for me.

2. In the 2.5k Rebuy, I was slightly below average around middle of the tourney when the defining hand came up. Some random guy in early position raises. I see AQ suited and push all in. No Pause or thinking whatsoever. Nemo just insta-calls and show J9 off. Flop comes ragged at 4 5 7. Turn is a 6. And river is a .......you should be able to guess it after playing poker for this long. River was an 8 so that he makes his higher straight and busts me out. Hyuk.

3. Last is the 7.5k guarantee at FTP. I don't normally play this because of the number of people. I wanted a tourney that would end somewhere around midnight so I can still get a good night's sleep even if I reach the final table. When it started out, it only had around 400 something players. So I thought it looked manageable with a chance for an overlay. But once the late registration period ended. We ended up with 916 players. WTF. Should have known it looked too good to be true.

Anyway, I was already in it so griping doesn't help. I tried to play patient all throughout. Don't remember too much of the hands. Was in danger of busting out near the bubble with a low stack. But my luck was holding as nobody called my all-ins which allowed me to steal some blinds and survive. Bubble breaks at 90 people and I was still in it.

By the way, never be scared of pushing near the bubble. The chance of someone calling is quite small especially if you still have a decent stack. Before I used to wait around for the bubble to break before pushing when I'm low stacked which is safe and logical. But I always ended up busting out with peanuts as every other low stacked guy called your push. Now I just push whenever I was in position with a semi decent hand without any regard for ITM and it seems to be working.

Second lucky break. I was in SB with K6 suited. Folded to me. Had an M of around 8 or 9. So I quickly push. BB gives me a very long pause. Then finally calls and shows AAs. FUCKING SLOWROLLER. But fate has a unique way of fucking up the fuckers who do this. Flop shows a 6 and the other 6 comes up on the river and I double up.

Down to around 50 people I think when finally I get KKs. Standard 3x raise. Reraised by one player. Next player pushes all in. Thought for a while but couldn't really fold Kings. So we gamble on a 3 way. The reraiser shows Ace fucking Jack and the other shows 88s. My KKs hold up and I triple my stack. (I love KK, it always seems to carry me through)

This stack enables me to coast and then we're on the bubble of the final table. I had a healthy stack of around 100k at this point. I get 10 10. standard raise again. Pushed all in by somebody with a 60k stack. Fucker. I think this was a wrong move on my part but I call anyway and he shows AK. The K flops and I was now in danger of busting out just before the final table.

Again, as I emphasized before. Waiting is not really an option. Although this time, the jump from 10 to 9 is quite big so there is some logic to waiting it out. But the gap between 9th and 1st is bigger and I was in this to win it. I push a few hands with no callers and this keeps me above water and then finally two mid stacks collide and I reach the final table with an M of around 5.

And then I get hot. I get some AKs and JJs and ended up doubling each time. There was a maniac with a huge stack who was the ultimate luckbox and busted out everyone until we were down to 3. I had about 100K, other player had 200k and luckbox had a million something in chips.

And this is where my run ended. I flopped an open ended straight draw which I needed to push because calling with my stack was not really going to do it. Luckbox had top pair and I bust out at 3rd. It would have been nice to win this one, but I think that's asking too much from lady luck as I already copped a couple of wins prior.

Tourney ended at 1:30AM but was definitely worth it. One or two more ITMs like this and my Singapore budget will be all locked up. Heheh.

Repeat Performance

After taking down the $1k Guaranteed over at Cake a few days ago, I decided to try out my luck again. Wasn't really doing anything last night. Really planned to play the Sunday Million that Monday morning but I didn't wake up in time as usual, so this was the best tourney for my schedule after a long day with the family.

Right off the bat, it looks good. Only 82 people playing giving a $180 overlay. After a few hands, I doubled up with a well hidden straight against somebody's two pair. So I had some buffer to have a leisurely dinner while sitting out.

Came back, still had a good stack, and about a third of the field gone. Time to go aggressive. Stole some blinds, stayed patient. Then bingo. Got KK with 2 players coming along for the ride. And just played TAG the rest of the way and reached the final table comfortably. I actually didn't know that I had already reached the final table until somebody mentioned it in chat. I thought there were 2 tables left. Heheh.

Final table was just me using SNG strategy, stealing some blinds to stay afloat and picking off the small stacks. Unfortunately the big stacks were consolidating. And when we were 3 handed. I had about 35k left against the 2 other players who both had about 90k in chips.

Checked out both player's stats in Sharkscope and found out they weren't really that experienced and were negative profit players. So it gave me some confidence to try out some moves. But I wasn't really getting any cards and knew I'd be blinded out if I didn't make a stand. Finally, in one flop, I had a flush draw. I knew opponent had hit something (top or middle pair). When he led out, I just pushed all in hoping for the fold. But alas, I underestimated the fishiness as he instacalled and showed middle pair. Luckily, river gave me the out and doubled me up.

This tilted opponent 1 and he starts spewing his chips. Unfortunately for me, my other opponent gets the benefit as he flops a set and proceeds to clean up when fish again overplays his middle pair.

And then we were heads up. I had about 70k. Opponent 2 had about 150k. Long way to make up but the blinds were still manageable. So this time, I just raised everything. I wasn't even looking at the value of the cards. Just raised everytime when I was first to act. Folded a few to make it seem like I was honest. But eventually opponent 2 sensed that I was raising with crap and he started playing back. And then I got lucky again. I raised with crap. I think 7-5 or some shitty hand like that. He called. I then proceeded to get the straight on the turn and he was on a flush draw. So he just called me all the way down.

And now I had more chips than him. And this was where he lost his patience I think. So I went back to being hyper aggressive only folding when he obviously had something. Finally I got AQ, raised it up, got reraised, pushed all in, and got called with KJ. All low cards. And that was it.