EPT Berlin Robbery

Posted by icemonkey9 on Mar 6, 2010 in pokerstars | 0 comments

Fortunately, first and foremost, nobody was seriously hurt. I was not on hand obviously, but I wanted to weigh in on the situation.

First, I am really happy to hear everyone is okay.  I know some of the media members on hand and they've all tweeted or reported back that everything is okay.

If you did not hear the news, the EPT Berlin event sponsored by PokerStars was the target of a German heist operation.  Guys armed with knives and machetes came in and robbed the casino and from early reports got away with 800k in Euros.  The events were disrupted and many people on hand are emotionally shaken.

In today's global climate it's somewhat surprising that something like this had not happened sooner. With lax security measures taken in European casinos, they seemed like a huge target with websites advertising millions of dollars flowing in for high stakes poker tournaments and cash games.  It's a little surprising this happened in Berlin and not a more economically challenged nation on the EPT tour, but it might be a taste of things to come.  We can't rule out something like this happening here in the United States, but certainly such an endeavor would be quite bloody with both security and robbers armed with guns.

Unfortunately I do not think this is a single isolated incident and the more desperate people become to survive, the more things like this are likely to happen.

A PlatinumStar Ultimatum

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 28, 2010 in pokerstars | 1 comment

I accomplished both goals I set a few posts back of getting the $50 Stellar Bonus as well as achieving PlatinumStar level of PokerStars.  This marks the first time I have reached this VIP level, so that's something to acknowledge.  See:

So there it is, finally.

The ultimatum I am issuing is of course unofficial and in no way something to reflect my professional standing as a writer in the industry.  But as a player and consumer, I do get to choose where I play online.  If PokerStars does not address the shortstacker issue as they say they will make an announcement about (either way) in mid-April, I will move my entire roll to Full Tilt Poker and play there for the foreseeable future.

Here's some of the criteria that have made me think about this decision:

1. The RakeBack at FTP and the VIP System (at Platinum) at Stars is about a wash
2. Cash game players are perceived by many to be slightly worse at Full Tilt
3. There are no shortstackers at Full Tilt
4. Full Tilt plans to revamp their VIP system to something kind of awesome (allegedly)

Those are just the first four thing off the top of my head.  It's not to say that PokerStars doesn't have a lot of attractive things going for it.  Such as:

1. Best table software / more reliable software
2. Biggest pool of players
3. SuperNova > rakeback at Full Tilt
4. SCOOP & WCOOP > FTOPS (in my opinion)
5. Better customer service

But the shortstacker issue really seems to be the kicker in this situation, so it's really what is going to sway me to one side or the other.

Goals to Achieve by the End of Feb

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 23, 2010 in pokerstars | 3 comments

Just got two goals to hit by the end of this month and they are both volume based (good thing cause I'm going through another fun rough stretch).

• 565 VPPs until I unlock another $50 Stellar Reward.
• 1248 VPPs to achieve Platinum Star.

At 50nl FR, that would mean I need 3,531 hands to get the stellar reward and 7,800 hands for Platinum Star.

At 100nl FR, that would mean that I need 1,822 hands for the reward and 4,025 hands for Platinum.

I have 6 days to achieve the goal!

Vegas Recap & NAPT Impressions

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 22, 2010 in pokerstars | 4 comments

Poker in Vegas!

My wife felt a little guilty realizing that her plans wouldn't allow me to play any poker during our trip, so she said she'd love to go shopping at the complex at Planet Hollywood and I could play some cash game poker for 2-3 hours.  Awesome wife.  I sat down right before noon and then I saw a bunch of guys in suits show up near where we were playing.  One guy stepped up, another stepped up and they shook hands.  What I found out from the dealer was that it was at that exact moment that Planet Hollywood became an official Harrah's property.

Anyways, at the table, the fourth hand in I am on the small blind and complete with 9To and flop a boat with 99T.  I check, the other two players also check.  Ace on the turn, I bet $5 into a pot of $4 and get two callers.  River is a 7 and I bet $25 into the pot and then get min-raised by the guy on my left and the other player folded.  I re-raise and the guy insta-folds.  Won about $75 on that hand!  About 2 hours go by and I'm completely card dead but make a few steals here and there and am up about $85 when I get dealt AJ suited in the CO.  Three limpers and I raise to $20, all folds except for the player to my right who called.  Flop comes A52 rainbow and he donks for $10 and I flat call figured him for a weaker Ace like 99% of the time.  I had seen this guy call down with 3rd pair twice so far so I figured I am just going to let him bet off the remaining $80 he started the hand with.  The turn is another 5 and he donks another $10 so I just put him all-in.  He tanks, then calls and shows ... omg ... AQ.  Really?  Turn is not a jack or a five, so I lose a $160 pot to a guy that limp-called AQ in the HJ.  My run-bad in Vegas continues ... anyways I got to play, I did have a lot of fun and left the table down just $20.

The PokerStars NAPT

I was not at the Venetian on official business but did manage to grab a press pass both for myself and my wife.  She had never seen the Venetian poker room and was really amazed at its awesomeness.  Here she is outside the hotel and casino:

As you can see the weather in Vegas was perfect, about 65 degrees!  We got inside and got our passes, which we were not ID'd for.  We got to have a nice breakfast, complements of PokerStars in their very nice media lounge which had an area to film interviews and plenty of tables with internet connections.  Inside the poker room we saw a few familiar faces, including Dennis Phillips who came into the media room and said hi to a few people.  If you've never met Dennis, he's every bit the nice guy he comes across on television and is really a great ambassador to the "every man" of the game.

Once the tournament started, most of the players (I think it was 800 entrants into the $5,000 Main Event we saw) had taken their seats, which took up the entire poker room and tournament area at the Venetian.

The tournament featured just about every big name player that PokerStars (and other sites) have to offer.  My wife's favorite all time player is Daniel Negreanu, so we spotted him in the tournament area and stood next to him as he played to watch him in action.  My wife was obviously stoked to see him and he turned to her and gave a smile.  Since she's very attractive she had no problem getting smiles from most of the big-name pros

Here are a couple of pictures I took at the tournament.  I didn't want to take too many because they had an official photographer already taking shots for us media types.  Also, I was feeling like CRAP because I had actually come down with a cold the night before which absolutely SUCKED.  Anyways here's a picture of a table in-action:

And here is a picture of Randy "Nanonoko" Lew (member of Team PokerStars Online) checking out the board:

Cool stuff.  I can't begin to tell you the names I saw at tables.  Maria Ho, Greg Raymer, Havad Khan, Kathy Leibert, Joe Cada, Vanessa Rousso, Chad Brown, Jeff Madsen and countless others.  Once the tournament got started, the number of railbirds at the Venetian grew to epic proportions.  There were also a few celebrities playing, including Montel Williams.  The official "Shuffle Up and Deal" was announced by none other than Jason Alexander (George from Seinfeld) himself:

Good stuff.  The entire tournament was well organized and considering this was the first major tournament that PokerStars had sponsored and organized in Vegas, they did a great job.   After about 30 minutes of just milling around I got real tired (again, feeling like crap) and decided to meet up with my wife and her friends who were in town at the Lux Cafe (awesome place to eat).  We got a table outside near the railing, and who walks by fashionably late to the tournament but none other than Joe Hachem himself.  I had to say something so I just said "Take it down Joe!" and he looked over with a HUGE smile on his face and waved and I waved back.  Apparently Joe loves being recognized as a celebrity, which is probably not a shock to anyone

That was my Vegas trip in a nutshell.  After the cafe we went back to the room and took a nap so I could have enough energy to make our show.  We bought discounted seats to see "Mystere" at Treasure Island which was a fabulous show.  I saw things in that show I didn't know were humanly possible.  Anyways, a good trip to Vegas, got to see the NAPT and play some cards too while enjoying a short vacation with the wife.

Thoughts on the PokerStars UK Promotion and the May Instant Bonuses

Posted by icemonkey9 on May 3, 2009 in pokerstars | 0 comments

Unless you live in a cave you've probably heard about the amazing promotion PokerStars is running that basically gives SuperNova status for 2009 for all players in the UK if they play to a platinum level in May.  This equates basically to a free $2,100 in "rakeback" which makes it just about the best promotion PokerStars has ever run in the 1.5 years I've been on or following the site.  Unfortunately, it sent the rest of the world in an uproar, myself included.

My beef basically is that this promotion doesn't bring any new "fish" to the site, just rewards the good players from the UK and gets them to play more.  Secondly, by not offering the promotion to the rest of the entire EARTH, they've managed to upset a lot of people (specifically US players who have yet to have a single promotion of their own).  I was in a chat thread at a popular site where Jurn8 basically boiled down the argument to (btw he is from the UK) PokerStars being able to do something like this for UK players and not include the USA players because those players from the United States don't have a choice in where to play, so PokerStars can treat them any way they like.

Well, that was exactly my point in the argument.  If PokerStars is going to give preferential treatment to a certain segment of consumers and exclude others (publically mind you), how loyal are the segmented consumers going to be?  Not at all.  In the USA it's only a matter of time before online poker is legalized, and when it does, regular poker players will remember things like this indicent when sites like iPoker and PartyPoker come back and offer huge promotions to come back to their sites.  A loyal customer group would stay, and a disloyal group would leave - it's that simple.

Zach, a good guy and an online friend who plays 200nl+, basically said all the whining (he is from the USA) is akin to one kid bitching about having a worse lunch than another kid.  I couldn't disagree more.  My business mind says that this is actually akin to a business offering a "special discount" to a customer base while making sure it's biggest customer knows about it but not offering the same discount.  In business, this always leads to disaster; you simply cannot offer lesser clients a bigger discount (in this case rakeback) while your biggest client knows about it and offering them nothing at the same time.

This week I'm hoping to get in touch with the PR guy from PokerStars and get an interview to run on one of the sites I write for, it'll be interesting what their response is.  And I'm not buying the whole "we're testing this promotion for the rest of the world" smoke-up-our-ass.

Anyways, where I have to be critical of PokerStars, I also have to praise them to be fair.  They ran a special "May Instant Bonus" promotion (available to the world mind you) where for 11,500 FPPs you basically get $185 in instant cash (which I have taken advantage of thank you!).  This comes at a good time in light of my tilt-a-thon 22-tabling massacre at 50nl!  Also I bought the 25,000 FPP cash bonus of $285 which will hopefully be unlocked around the middle of the month, so I'm looking at $470 in bonuses which is fabulous.  I have about 15,000 FPPs left, so by the end of this month I should be able to buy another $285 bonus award.

Anyways, I've taken the last 2 days off completely and doubt I will play today.  I have spent some time watching Stox videos specific to 100nl 6max, and I am hoping the first session with ChuckTs is scheduled soon.  That's it for now!