Reprieve?

I was 10 seconds away from kicking the stool out from beneath my feet, when Joe came running in.

"Looks like a French group will be buying Full Tilt!" he shouted.

"You sure?" I asked. It had taken me a good 25 minutes to set up a makeshift gallows and I wanted confirmation before removing the noose.

"It's all over 2p2!"

Prudence and past disappointments dissuaded me from jumping for joy.

My first bad beat jackpot?

A huge, dead satellite tumbling to Earth is falling slower than expected, and may now plummet down somewhere over the United States tonight or early Saturday.

NASA expects about 26 large pieces of the UARS spacecraft to survive re-entry through Earth's atmosphere and reach the planet's surface. The biggest piece should weigh about 300 pounds.

NASA officials have said the chances that a piece of UARS debris hits and injures one of the nearly 7 billion people on the planet are about 1 in 3,200. I haven't won a lottery in my life but I've got an eerily good feeling about this one.

Latest Full Tilt Poker Press Release

"On April 15th 2011 the United States Department of Justice unsealed a federal indictment against a number of individuals employed by major online poker operators. After the issuance of that indictment and a related civil case brought by the United States government, Full Tilt Poker withdrew from the US market. Then in a related action, on June 29th, 2011, Full Tilt Poker had its operating licenses suspended by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission.

As a result, Pocket Kings Ltd. (provider of marketing and technology services to Full Tilt Poker) has adopted a cost optimization program and estimates that they need to reduce their costs by approximately €12m. This program is intended to streamline the company’s operations in order to better position itself for future growth and profitability in Full Tilt Poker’s markets outside of the U.S.

If all of the required cost savings were to be achieved through redundancies, approximately 250 positions could be affected; however the exact number cannot be confirmed until the conclusion of a consultation process with its workforce.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, Pocket Kings firmly believes it has a very strong future in Full Tilt Poker’s Non-US Markets, and is fully committed to ensuring Full Tilt Poker restores the site and repay players in full. To this end, Full Tilt Poker has retained Sea Port Group Securities, LLC as its financial advisor with regard to raising capital and/or assisting in securing a strategic partner in order to fund continued operations of Full Tilt Poker's non-U.S. business. The Company is in active discussions with several parties and will provide a further statement in due course."

The AGCC hearing will be held in camera on September 19. Here's hoping.

Life unplugged

I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. Most of my life roll ($17.32) is stuck on Full Tilt, and the resultant mental anguish is causing a severe case of writer's block which in turn is holding up the release of my new poker book. Lack of funds will probably mean I'll have to drop out of colon hydrotherapy school. If it's not one shitstorm, it's another.

My new book

I am devoting most of my spare time to writing a poker book. It will encapsulate over 10 years experience playing in the highest cash games* in Las Vegas, and will reveal strategies heretofore unpublished. Topics covered will include aggressive check calling, check folding, and open folding post-flop when first to act. Nothing will be held back.

Initially it will be in ebook format, available exclusively on the HP TouchPad.

* that I could buy into

Come on, Full Tilt!

I am still hoping that Full Tilt can pull out of this, and that all player funds are repatriated. I am doing my little bit by keeping their banner up on my site (right sidebar, bottom).

Poker Hall of Shame VII

Watch how 2011 EPT Grand Final winner Ivan Freitez shoots an angle.

Guillaume Darcourt

102 players left in the 2011 WSOP Main Event. I had the pleasure of playing a few sessions of $1-$2 NLHE with Guillaume Darcourt last July at the M Resort. The Frenchman, a very personable fellow, is currently 9th with 4,100,000 in chips. I hope he makes the November Nine.

FTP deal done?

Rumors are that the Full Tilt deal with the European investors has been completed and that the site will be reopening soon.

Thank you, Yahoo!

Now that I can't play poker online, I was looking forward to watching the tape-delayed Haye Klitschko fight on HBO at 6:45 PT (in about 1 hour).

Then I see this on my Yahoo! home page :



Generally Yahoo! and other sites have been pretty good in respecting East coast - West coast time differences (as well as American-European) when it comes to withholding spoiler results in headlines. This time Yahoo! fucked up big time.

LA Times: FTP to be sold to European investors

After Alderney pulled the plug, things were looking grim. Then this :

A leading online poker company shut down by federal prosecutors is set to be bought by a group of European investors in a deal that could allow U.S. players to recover as much as $150 million ...

Alderney suspends FTP license

Joe stumbled into the shelter at about 4:30 this morning and immediately headed for my bunk.

"The Alderney Gambling Control Commission has just suspended Full Tilt's license."

I threw down the 3-year-old Forbes magazine I was reading and let out a bloodcurdling yelp.

"Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!"

As I longingly thought about the $17.32 I have trapped on the site, I doused the candle and sought the refuge of sleep.

FTP developments

Subject: Poker is reporting that gambling icon Jack Binion is considering investing in Full Tilt Poker. While this has yet to be substantiated, it is certainly good news after all the doom and gloom we have been subjected to.

Are we close to capitulation?

Market capitulation is defined in Wikipedia :

Market capitulation refers to the threshold reached after a severe fall in the market, when large numbers of investors can no longer tolerate the financial losses incurred. These investors then capitulate (give up) and sell in panic, or find that their pre-set sell stops have been triggered, thereby automatically liquidating their holdings in a given stock. This may trigger a further decline in the stock's price, if not already anticipated by the market. Margin calls and mutual fund and hedge fund redemptions significantly contribute to capitulations.

The contrarians consider a capitulation a sign of a possible bottom in prices. This is because almost everyone who wanted (or was forced) to sell stock has already done so, leaving the buyers in the market, and they are expected to drive the prices up.

The peak in volume may precede an actual bottom.

Why didn't I buy stocks in March, 2009? Because, like everyone else, I was too scared to touch them. And that's when the big money was to be made.

Phil Ivey has capitulated. F-Train has capitulated and finally removed the FTP banner from his blog. TonyG has capitulated and PokerNews is not referring any more clients to FTP. Quadjacks have capitulated. Bill Rini is moving toward capitulation.

2p2 is full of threads harshly criticizing Full Tilt's management and team pros. The company is eulogized in every 5th post, with many US players having written off their funds. Non-US players are complaining about cashout problems.

I'm not sure if we have reached full capitulation, but what this all means to me is that we are closer to a surprise development in this saga. I've been wrong before, but if it were possible to purchase FTP shares, I would start buying now.

Justice for all

Wall Street bankers are still gallivanting around in their $1,000 suits. Not one of them has been indicted for the crimes that they committed in bringing the US and world economies to the brink. Yet the DOJ has finally managed to indict the heinous monsters responsible for polluting America with online poker. As long as we have our priorities right, the future looks rosy.

Following Black Friday, there is no doubt in my mind that the freedom-loving quartet of Frist, Kyl, Goodlatte and Leach will be rewarded with this year's Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences. Anything less than that, like a CNN Hero award, would be short-changing them.

RIP Spot. 1991 - May 28, 2011

We had to put the cat down today. She was 20 years old, a fighter to the end.

Your hand reading is atrocious

Young internet kid justifying a poor call : "I ran into the top of your range."

Back to live

Now that online poker is off limits, it's back to waiting lists, human interaction and 27 hands per hour. My last favorite venue was the Venetian, a spacious cardroom with good games and good staff. However, Xiulian, an accursed cooler-dealing witch, single-handedly wiped out 4 weeks of profits in 4 downs, so I have decided to try the Bellagio. The scenery is the same but for the extra addition of UIGEA refugees.

Poker face

Justice has been done

On the morning of September 11, 2001 at 8:30am, I was sitting at my desk in Queens, NYC, waiting for the NYSE to open. I had been trading from home for several months, but prior to that I had worked for a firm on the 45th floor of 1 WTC. CNBC's TV coverage was suddenly interrupted with shocking and unforgettable footage.

Fast forward to tonight, Sunday night, May 1, 2011 at 8:40pm. I am sitting at home in Las Vegas watching President Obama's address to the nation, reporting that Osama bin Laden has been killed.

"Justice has been done."