28 February 2007

BitTorrent = Rip-off?

I have nothing interesting to post about poker, so I'm going to deviate from the normal topic here and post about something Quatloos alerted me to the other day.

It seems, according to "Variety", BitTorrent has gone "legit". Now, this may come as a surprise to many of you, like those who don't have their heads firmly planted where the sun doesn't shine, as you probably thought BitTorrent had always been legit. Perhaps some people may have used BitTorrent to violate the copy rights of others, but this has nothing to do with the BitTorrent protocol or any of the various and sundry clients available. Indeed, Bram Cohen, the creator of the protocol, has always gone out of his way to emphasize that BitTorrent was created solely for the legitimate distribution of software and other media, with the full permission of the copyright holders.

I'm not going to go into the whole "legit" thing because anyone with a brain knows the Hollyweird view on this is total nonsense. No, what I want to talk about are the specifics of BitTorrent's bending over for the Hollywood lawyers.

So, here's the deal. For prices in the $3-$4 range, you can spend several hours (if you're lucky) downloading a rights-restricted copy of a Hollywood movie. (It appears to be about $2 for the average TV show single episode.) You can only watch this movie via Windows Media Player 10+ because that's what it uses for rights management. You get 30 days after downloading to begin watching the movie. Once you start watching, you must complete your viewing of the movie within 24 hours.

I think somebody tried a scheme like this once before. It was called DivX. (Not that one, the one they named it after to taunt the greedy bastards in Hollywood.) And it failed miserably. And DivX wasn't this restrictive.

I can't believe anyone thinks this is going to fly. Renting from NetFlix is far cheaper than this if you're a regular movie watcher. The quality of the DVD is going to be better. And if you live near a NetFlix distribution center the delivery time won't be all that different.

They do have some free content, so I picked an old movie and started it downloading. It's been moving at a decent clip, but the ETA is wavering in the five to six hour range for a 1.85GB file. I have a cable modem connection that is not even close to maxing out on this. I've seen BitTorrent download rates more than six times faster than this. (If you want to see what BitTorrent can really do, and what it was intended to do, go download OpenOffice with BitTorrent.) Frankly, considering I'm connected to 30 seeds and 21 peers for this one file, the download rate is rather disappointing. I've seen files NOT hosted on a commercial site download way faster than this.

So, let's sum up. You pay more than you're likely to if you rent from NetFlix. You have a limited time to begin watching whatever you download and you have to finish watching within 24 hours of starting. And, oh yeah, you have to help defray their distribution costs by sharing the file over the BitTorrent network while you're downloading. They, of course, hope you'll continue sharing once you've finished downloading so they won't have to shoulder all of that burden. This is a good bet since downloading appears to take hours, and most folks won't be babysitting their client waiting for the movie to finish downloading so they can immediately shut it down.

I'm very disappointed to see BitTorrent go in this direction. It started as a noble effort to improve the speed of large software distributions like Linux, and it has succeeded fabulously in that. If I give them a lot of benefit of the doubt, maybe they've done this just to keep Hollywood's lawyers off their backs and they're hoping as much as I am to see this fall flat. In the meantime, I suppose it won't hurt to check out the free content. "Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women" here I come! I wonder if my free voyage will have to complete within 24 hours?

Add: A couple quick updates. I just noticed they have "mature" titles available for $4. This is actually quite funny since if there's something there's tons and tons of available on BitTorrent, it's "mature" videos. I'm sure they're going to get lots of takers on the $4 downloads you can only watch for 24 hours.

The other thing I noticed is that most of the TV series available via this new BitTorrent service are also available on DVD. And, in most cases, you can buy the complete DVD set for about the same price as the downloads. I suppose you someone might download one episode to see if it's a series they'd be interested in, but, seriously, who's going to go spend $50 on a TV series DVD collection if they don't already know they want it?

ETA on my trip to the Planet of Prehistoric Women has increased to 7 hours. Damn flight delays.

Add#2: My download finished sometime overnight. All I can say is it took more than one hour and less than seven.

I took a quick look at the movie. It's an old film and the source was obviously pretty beat up to start with and a bit on the grainy side. Even taking that into account, this doesn't look like the best encoding job I've ever seen. I'll have to look around some more and see if I can find something newer that might have a better quality source.

It occurred to me that I should make plain I'm not suggesting the BitTorrent folks are raking in money hand over fist on this deal. I'm sure the Hollywood types are the ones making whatever money there is to be made with this. BitTorrent is probably lucky to break even. I'm also sure the incredibly restrictive terms on these rentals are not the doing of BitTorrent. They certainly would have come up with a far better deal for the renters. Only the Hollywood folks could imagine an expensive 24-hour rental to be something that would fly.

25 February 2007

I'm a donkey

You might find the Donkey IQ Test interesting. It's geared very much to NLHE, with a mix of cash and tournament questions.

I'm not going to post my score because, frankly, it's embarrassing. The test is apparently timed and they judge your "computational speed". I scored lower than primordial ooze in this category. I strongly suspect that's why my overall score was so low. In many of the other categories I did quite well.

I've always had a problem coming up to speed with poker situations that are described in written word. My reading of Harrington's books was very slow due to my inability to "feel" the situation after simply reading what someone else thinks are the relevant facts. Trying to work my way through the maze presented in "Why You Lose at Poker" took me forever. It doesn't help that the online donkey test is not consistent in the way it presents the information. At least Harrington went out of his way to do all the examples in the exact same way.

I don't generally suffer from computational slowness in a real game. Assuming I'm not giving most of my attention to the TV or some other distraction, I generally grok the game at an almost subconscious level. Having spent hundreds (thousands?) of hours four-tabling limit hold'em I've developed a pretty keen ability to follow multiple tables and decide upon potential actions in my head. "If it folds around to me I'll raise. I'll call if there are three or more limpers ahead of me. I'll fold to any raise." Plotting these actions usually takes only a second or two.

So I rather think the "computational speed" factor in the donkey test is measuring something that has no true parallel at the poker table. In real world, or even virtual, poker, you don't jump around from scenario to scenario without any context of the situation. You've either been paying attention or you haven't. There's no primer you have to read to bring you up to speed.

Or maybe I'm just whining because I didn't do as good as I thought I should.

The whining post that wasn't

I was precariously close to making a very whiney post about the injustice of poker. I played several tournaments today and got knocked out or seriously wounded by donkeys in all of them. I know that's the kind of thing to expect in $5 tournaments (hey, I felt like playing a big tournament and it was the only one starting in the next hour), but you'd think after the second break the donkeys would have mostly been eliminated. I was kind of proud of lasting as long as I did considering I was card dead most of the time and with a table full of dice rollers it's really hard to bluff your way through a pot. But the donkeys finally got the best of me.

Then I played a satellite to some kind of $30k tournament at Full Tilt. Was doing okay in that, got my money in with way the best of it and suffered a horrible suckout (even according to my definition).

One more $5 tournament with a very quick exit, again with me having way the best of it when the chips went in. I know that's the best I can hope for, but it's been a while since I cashed in a tournament and even that was for very small money. It starts to build on you in a very bad way.

As a last shot at some kind of success today I entered a $20 SnG at Stars. I played what I think was a pretty smart game, occasionally stealing a small pot, mostly going to bat with decent cards. When we got down to five players I hit a mini-run, knocking two players out within a couple hands, getting past the bubble with more than twice the chips as the next closest player.

I felt I was a better player than the other two (what a shock!) and tried not to rashly rush into making big plays. We stayed at three for quite a while. Finally one of the other players knocked the third one out. I had a 2000-chip advantage going into heads up play. I don't think the other guy had a lot of heads up experience. He was playing fairly passively and appeared to mostly be playing his cards.

I finally got a huge lead and it appeared to be all but over. I call the BB with Q2o. The flop comes KQ8, two spades. The other guy pushes all-in. I was reluctant to call given my opponent's tendency to only bet good cards, but I figured he would have raised pre-flop if he'd had a K, so my Q's were probably good. I called. I was right. He had two small spades. He rivered the fifth one and started his climb back. Long story somewhat shorter, I went card dead, he kept pushing all-in, and he eventually took back the lead. Even on the final hand, I got all my chips in with the best of it and he rivered another flush to beat me. But I took second, made a small amount of money, and restored just a bit of my faith in myself.

On a different poker-related topic, it seems the folks at "Poker After Dark" felt the players weren't making enough noise so they decided to mic the chips this week. EVERYBODY at the table was shuffling their chips. What a horrendous racket! I always record it on the DVR and watch at a more reasonable time during the week. I started watching last night and couldn't make it past the first 15 minutes. I tried again tonight. Didn't make it five minutes. Deleted the whole week's worth of episodes without watching them. Listening to this was like having your head stuck in the coin tray of one of the old dollar slot machines (back when they gave out real coins) with the machine stuck on permanent payout. NBC, hire a sound man who doesn't need a hearing aid!

19 February 2007

Words mean things.

My very first real blog entry (not counting the place holder just to get things rolling) concerned suckouts. Big surprise, eh? Poker blogger writing about suckouts. Someone alert the media!

Not so fast, Sparky. This wasn't about a specific suckout or even a group of suckouts. No, it was about what actually constitutes a suckout.

I raised this topic again last week in a comment on Jordan's blog and thought perhaps it deserved another visit.

Poker has a lot of esoteric terminology. Flop, turn, river, top-pair, the nuts, drawing dead, back-door, suckout. And that's not counting all the hands that have names. One thing many of these terms have in common is that they are very specific. Their meaning is not vague, at least not to those who understand them. "The nuts" is a good example. This term is so specific that variations exist to explain differences from the parent term -- "Second nuts", "nut flush", "nut straight", etc. Not all poker terms are quite so specific, but many are.

Suckout is one term that seems to be an exception to this. It has taken on a Humpty Dumpty-ish air of words mean what I want them to mean. About the only thing that is definite in all usages of the term is that somebody who was perceived as being at a disadvantage eventually won the hand. (I say 'perceived' because I've seen it used to describe hands where the alleged underdog was actually the favorite when all the outs were counted.)

I've always been interested in words. Their usage, their origin, their changing of meaning over time. I've also always been somewhat of a purist when it comes to words. Words without fairly specific meanings are, well, meaningless. There are several words and phrases that are misused far more often than they are used correctly and it grates on me when I hear their more common misusage. (My friends will be rolling their eyes about now because they know what's coming next.)

The common misuse of "begs the question" is one of my pet peeves. Proper use of this phrase is largely limited to formal logic and argumentation. It has little application in the everyday world. (Look it up in Wikipedia if you're curious about proper usage.) In common misusage it is synonymous with "raises the question". I'm particularly taken aback by misuse of this phrase by professional writers who should know better. I've largely given up on correcting the common misuse of this phrase, but it still sends little shivers down my spine when I hear it misused in commercials and TV shows.

Poker terminology hardly comes from such lofty origins as the Latin derivation of "begs the question", but this doesn't mean accuracy in usage is any less important. Like "begs the question", it is perhaps too late for "suckout" to return to a more specific usage for which such a term would be justified. But I'm going to add it to my bag of windmills anyway, take it out every so often, and have a good tilt at it.

To that end, I'd like to attempt a working definition of "suckout". Even without an understanding of the poker-related use of the term, it sounds extreme. I believe this was intended by the originator. "Suckout" was a term intended to be applied only in cases where very long odds were overcome, where a very unlikely event occurred.

Prior to writing that previously mentioned blog entry I did a fair amount of internet research looking for a definition of suckout. I found lots of hand-waving attempts at defining the term, often by people who admitted they knew nothing about it but didn't let a little thing like ignorance keep them from expressing an opinion. There was very little written by anyone who seemed to actually have an understanding of the true nature of "suckout". My search did unearth one shining gem of understanding. I quote now from that old blog entry.

"Jobe Gilchrist over on the Full Tilt forums posted something which I will now paraphrase. A suckout occurs when at some point in the hand a player made a very, very bad decision and won the hand anyway. Bad decision here is used in the sense that if you could see all the cards you would not make that same decision. Very, very bad decision is used in the sense that if you'd just gotten paid after six months at sea and were already on your sixth Mojito and could just barely see your own cards, you'd never make that same decision if all the other cards were face up."

Literary license aside, I still think this is a pretty good definition of suckout. This definition provides no clear percentage point at which an outcome becomes a suckout, and I think that's appropriate. Like almost everything related to poker, the specific definition of suckout depends on the siutation. If a player is getting money odds that justify making a play based on the perceived odds of the cards, then it's a good play and when it comes in it isn't a suckout.

This, I expect, more than any other aspect of this definition, would be a point of contention for some. I can imagine it argued that simply getting the right odds for a call doesn't result in hitting a 3-outer on the river not being a suckout. But if the true essence of suckout is dumb luck triumphing over proper play, then good play can not be a suckout regardless of the card odds.

I don't expect the world to start moving toward proper usage of the term suckout as a result of this blog entry. If only one or two people move in that direction, I'll be happy. If a blogger or two writes out their thoughts on this topic, even if they disagree with me, I'll be happy to see a dialog begin. If anybody, anywhere, even once, stops themselves from incorrectly using the phrase "begs the question", I'll be ecstatic.

Words mean things, regardless of what Humpty Dumpty might say on the topic.

14 February 2007

Mid-week update

Not much excitement to report. I played the WWdN last night to little effect. Despite the opportunity, I didn't suck out on Hoyazo again. Broke my streak of crippling or eliminating him with suckouts. (Well, he called them suckouts. I prefer to think of them as optimizing the return on disadvantaged hands.) We were at the same table for quite a while but never tangled in a big pot.

I was doing so-so until somebody slowplayed AK on me and I fell for it. Somewhere inside me alarm bells were going off when he min-raised me on the flop, but I ignored them. Instead, I decided to flex my muscles, at exactly the wrong time. I've been doing that a lot lately -- the bad timing part. I got outkicked and went from comfortable to almost hurting.

Somewhat later, with my M down to about 4, I optimized the return of a disadvantaged hand. It looked like a rather nasty suckout, rivering an inside straight, but it was really just taking a 3-to-1 dog to victory the hard way.

My mini-recovery didn't last long as a few hands later I again pushed with a weak ace and got outkicked. I gotta stop doing that.

The night before I played Mondays At The Hoy. I was also playing a $1 rebuy at the same time. I don't know why I got into the rebuy. Generally, I don't care for these things. But this one seemed cheap enough to rebuy several times without serious damage and it would be a chance to play crazy. There should have been some therapeutic value in that.

The rebuy turned out to be a real snooze-fest. Literally. I swear two-thirds of my table were asleep or entranced by the magic of Howie Mandel in "Deal or No Deal". (Which has to be the stupidest concept for a show in the history of television. On the excitement scale it's just slightly above observing the gathering of navel lint.) There were no crazy rebuys and there were endless delays and timeouts from those who were clearly paying no attention. I only rebought once and then did the add-on.

Perhaps it was the stress of playing two tournaments at once, something I've never been particularly good at, or just the accumulation of boredom from the first hour of the rebuy, but I totally donked out of both tournaments within minutes.

There was one incident in the rebuy that bugged me, and bugged me even more that it bugged me in the first place. I get something like QQ in MP. UTG and UTG+1 both call. The blinds at this point were high enough that they were well worth taking, so I pushed all-in. It folds back to UTG, who had not previously demonstrated any obvious lack of attention to the game, and his timer counts almost all the way down before he calls. Then he turns over AA. I thanked him for the slowroll, but I think my comment went over his head. This is just the setup.

Maybe ten hands later, with me pretty seriously short-stacked, the same guy puts in a small raise before the flop. I've got 33. Not great, but I'm in trouble so I have no real choice but to push. He calls and, again, turns over AA. No slowroll this time. I comment that this is the second time he's turned over AA to my all-in. He makes some illogical comment and then, as I'm eliminated, types "LOL".

I don't know why, but this really pissed me off. Maybe I've played too many blogger tournaments where the level of civility tends to be considerably higher. Or at least the insults are aimed at friends (even if only virtual) and understood by all to be in fun. I'm far more used to people saying, "gg", as someone exits than seeing any kind of derogatory comment. The idea of someone laughing at my having been eliminated on a perfectly legitimate play just really got my dander up. I didn't reply. Even at the moment I knew there'd be no point in that. But it really made me wonder if the mature poker players have been scared off by all the UIGEA stuff, leaving only a few diehards and a bunch of immature kids.

Later I became more upset at my having been upset. Even if I hadn't been eliminated on that play I don't think I'd have gone on tilt big time, but I might have started gunning for this jerk, a less significant, though still potentially dangerous, form of tilt. Anyway, I just wanted to rant about it a bit and get it out of my system. I feel better now.

No Mookie tonight in deference to the restauranteurs', florists' and greeting card people's favorite pseudo-holiday.

08 February 2007

Of Home Runs and Strikeouts

Last week Hoyazo posted about a hand I observed in WPBT Event #1. I commented on it and we had a short comment exchange concerning the strategies involved in the hand. In that exchange I suggested that he and I have different strategies in certain areas of the game. No surprise there.

Hoy likes to play long ball. He often swings for the fences. He often hits it over the fence. Me, I tend to go more for singles and doubles. I've tried to play long ball and it almost never works for me.

It's well known that Babe Ruth long held the record for the most career home runs. In a career that spanned 22 seasons, he hit 714 home runs. This record stood for a very long time. Lesser known is the fact that he also struck out 1330 times. Hank Aaron, who broke the Babe's record, hit 755 career home runs. He struck out 1383 times.

Swinging for the fences means committing early to a strategy that is difficult to alter in mid-course. If the ball tails off in an unanticipated way, you often miss it completely and end up dragging the bat back to the dugout rather than trotting around the bases.

It's the same with poker. Swinging for the fences is often going to end up in a strikeout rather than a home run. It's just the nature of the game. This doesn't mean that playing long ball is wrong, it just means it's a strategy that has a frequent, unavoidable downside. After you've skillfully disguished your hand, lulled the other player into thinking you're weaker than you actually are, got him to commit far more of his chips than he would had he been able to see your cards, after all this, the other player will often catch the card he needs to beat you.

In a blog imitates life moment in last night's Hammer Day tournament, Hoy and I got into just such a hand. I was UTG and Hoy was in the BB. I raised to 3BB (720) with ATs. Ordinarily I wouldn't raise with this, but I was getting very close to seriously short-stacked and needed to get something going. This was the best hand I'd seen in a while so I thought I'd give it a shot. It folds to Hoy with AKo who simply calls, already setting up that long ball play.

The flop is 9hQdAh. Hoy. continuing his swing for the fence, checks. I check also, planning on at least going for extra bases.

The turn is the 4d. Again Hoy continues his long play by checking. I have to admire his fortitude. Me, on the other hand, I don't have that kind of discipline. I switch back to the short play I'm more comfortable with. I bet 1200 into a 1760 pot. Hoy calls. At this point I'm thinking he's got maybe a Q, maybe a flush draw.

The river brings the Th. This gives me two pair, but also fills his flush if that's what he's going for. He completes his long play with a classic Hoyazo move, putting me all-in minus one. I was pretty sure I had the winning hand if he didn't have the flush. After a bit of navel gazing, I made the call. My two pair took down a huge pot, leaving Hoy with crumbs.

My point in telling this story is not to criticize or denigrate Hoy's play in any way. He did exactly what he intended to do with this hand. He disguished the strength of his hand by simply calling before the flop. He gave no indication whatever of what he held on the flop and his turn call could have meant almost anything. He expertly set up the big swing. Then the deck threw him a curve and he dragged his bat back to the dugout.

This is the price sometimes, maybe often, paid for playing long ball. This is why I seldom make such plays. When I swing for the fences like that I almost always strike out. The other guy rivers his two-outer with incredible frequency. Hoy, on the other hand, has apparently had far better luck with this type of play, as witnessed by his many significant cashes.

I have no conclusion here. I'm not even sure I have much of a point. These are two different styles of play. One is not clearly better than the other, nor are they mutually exclusive. A skilled player can shift from long ball to short ball and back again with little difficulty. I do know that the long ball hitter will sometimes hit the ball out of the park and move way up in winnings as a result. I also know he can strike out and go home early. Long ball hitters should not be surprised when this happens. I suppose the key to success is to get more home runs than strikeouts. Duh.

Hoy, down to crumbs, busted out a few hands later. Sadly, I was unable to use his chips to particularly good effect. I was borderline short-stacked when the hand started, so while doubling up improved my lot considerably, it didn't leave me with a stack I could bully the table with. Hoy finished 33rd; I finished 23rd. Given the 158-runner field, neither of us has anything to be ashamed of nor much to brag about.

Congratulations to JoeBrooklyn for winning the first Hammer Day Poker Event. I read somewhere there would be four Hammer Day events this year. The other obvious one is 2 July. I'm guessing the others to be 27 February and 27 July. Maybe 22 July since that would be 7/22/7. More details as they unfold.



CC's Thursday Bash is apparently back on this week. Just when I thought I might have a night free for other pursuits... Oh well, see you there.

07 February 2007

Happy Hammer Day!

Just in case somebody has overlooked it, today, 2/7/07, is Hammer Day! Come celebrate at Full Tilt tonight.



Let's see, played in the WWdN last night. I had the 'pleasure' of having Maigrey at my table right from the start. I don't know her and to my knowledge haven't played with her before, but there are apparently a lot of other bloggers who are well acquainted with her. My introduction was somewhat less than cordial.

She came out of the blocks playing very aggressively and then quickly moved into super-hyper-aggressive mode. Her play was either brilliant, suicidal, or, more likely, a mixture of the two. She ran roughshod over the table, blatantly stealing hand after hand. I knew exactly what she was doing, but couldn't afford to stop her and wasn't getting cards to go against her. She also had luck rivaled only by Jamie Gold. If I hadn't been on the receiving end it would have been quite humorous to watch.

She rather quickly built a gargantuan stack as player after player tried to play sheriff, only to be gunned down in the middle of the street. It was brutal. I mostly tried to avoid her.

I kept waiting for good cards. They never came. I eventually bluffed at a flop I couldn't see hitting anybody too hard and somebody moved all in. Looking at the hand history I can't see what prompted me to do it, but I raised all-in for just a bit more. I guess I just had a feeling that the flop couldn't have hit anyone hard enough to put them so far ahead that they'd push. I was right. A'arab Zaraq turned over a straight draw. I was ahead with two overcards. He rivered a pair and I was down to crumbs.

I doubled up a couple times, but was still seriously short-stacked when I pushed A7o into a pair of fours. I flopped a 7, but brdweb turned another 4 and I go home well out of the money.

I also played a 45-runner SnG. Third hand of the tournament I get pocket 7's and call a min-raise. The flop is 773. It checks around. Turn brings a T and finally somebody ahead of me puts in a small bet. I call. Guy behind me raises it to 260. One fold, one call. I go slightly more than a min-raise, making it 480 to go. Two callers. The river is a blank. I bet 440 -- a really weak bet at this point -- and get one caller. Third hand and I'm in second with double the starting stack.

I stayed near the top for quite a while, but a couple false starts and a number of blind increases later and I'm in trouble. I again finish out of the money.

02 February 2007

This and that

I intended to play the WWdN Tuesday, but I had to work late and didn't get home until after game time. I donked my way through the first half hour of The Mookie on Wednesday. Should have worked late that night too. At least I wasn't the one Hoy was ranting about on Thursday, though I did have to go check the hand history to be sure. Nah, wasn't me, and didn't sound like me from the rant anyway. As bad as I did play, I didn't call an all-in with AJo.

I was all set to play CC's Thursday Bash last night, but I couldn't find it. Not sure if it's dead or just on a semi-regular schedule. If I thought anybody would show up I'd start up the WWdNot again.

If you play any live poker, you should seriously consider picking up "Read'em and Reap" by Joe Navarro with minimal help from Phil Hellmuth. "Caro's Book of Tells", as good as it is, pales in comparison to "Read'em and Reap". At least that's what it seems from just reading it. I haven't had an opportunity to put it into action yet.

Joe Navarro is a career FBI agent specializing in non-verbal communication. This guy can read body language -- the often very subtle type that indicates our TRUE emotions -- like it's a newspaper headline. In this book he divulges many of the secrets of this art. Considering it's only $13 from Amazon, if you win one pot as a result of reading this book you'll likely be money ahead.

I wrote previously about a tournament I played at the Hard Rock in Tampa where one guy practically disappeared into himself after pushing all-in. At the time I applied the weak-is-strong principle. This guy couldn't have possibly looked any weaker without breaking into tears. So I folded. After reading most of Navarro's book I'm now convinced this was a totally wrong read of the situation. In this case, weak was weak. This guy was scared to death somebody was going to call his all-in. I don't recall what I was holding, so it's possible I couldn't have called him anyway, but I'm pretty sure he was nowhere near as strong as I thought at the time.

Last night I played some more limit at PokerStars. I'm not really working on my remaining bonus -- I've got another five months before it expires -- but I wanted to see how much of an impact my Silver Star 50% point bonus would make on my VPP rate. The 1/2 tables were so bloody tight I couldn't tell any difference at all. 165 hands and I earned all of 62 VPPs. Considering the 50% bonus, that means it was only 41 base PPs. Fewer than 25% of the hands resulted in pots over $10. That's pathetic even at 1/2.

If nothing else, the UIGEA has made it almost impossible to find a decent game of limit online. It looks like all the purely recreational players have taken up other pursuits and left online poker to the dedicated few. The blinds are going to eat us all alive if this is truly the case. I wonder if places like Pacific Poker are as fishy as they have historically been. They always seemed to draw more players from outside the US. I'll bet the GBP tables at the Cryptos have gotten soft again too.

On the plus side for me, last night was the first clear winning session I've had in what seems like ages. Maybe the luck has finally started to even out.