The AI Bet

The ordinary mortal isn't supposed to notice this. Mostly because of the lack of a personal database of hands played, lack of paying attention to what's going on and getting cheated so often you can't buy in to a 25k game.

Now get this. Your eventual winners were the guy that had two full houses on the first two hands and the guy that disconnected seven times. Can't prove all of it unless my groupies have watched the game. But what I can prove is the guy to my left.

The disconnection is a convenient excuse to rig the cards and make the antes and blinds make the game become a crap shoot.

And I'm supposed to believe that twice a short stack that if they would lose the hand is left with an insanely small stack that they think they could make a comeback.

On a 25k buy in table if you're not AI the talent to get 25k chips and be interested in the game I just happened to be playing on screams to go all in instead of saving forty chips if your wrong.

But So Many Looking at This Really Cool Table

As I've said in the restart of this franchise, the previous writers have been fired and you aren't going to see the whining about bad beats that existed 10-15 years ago. There's something more insidious going on, which actually explains a lot of the bad beats. It's what I call "accidental cheating." But this post is not about that. This is again about the pervasive number of huge waiting lists on the free money Hold'Em tables.

My focus is the guy on the bottom of this list. GotYoChips08 (because 01-07 were already taken.) He's one of those guys that simply must play at this table. This is THE one. Like realizing you've met your soul mate at the roller skating rink. This is the table that will define his otherwise worthless life, just like with the rest of the wait list.

6:12 pm - join huge wait list.
6:24 pm - quick check to see if it's one of those playing five hundred tables at a time guys. Weird bug - he was at a second table, but the next find player request only shows interest in this.

Every ten minutes after this he crawls up the wait wait list. Surely the excitement must be building to near orgasmic frenzy. But after 50 minutes of waiting he's still more than 20 spots away from a seat at the magic table.

And after getting cheated at 7-stud hi lo for 15 minutes I come back and the magic Geldoria table is gone leaving a lot of pissed off AI in its wake.

Real human nature does not indicate joining a wait list that you can't reasonably expect to join the table shortly. Real human nature does not indicate there's someone out there that looks for things like this. But it's what I do. I've been doing this for about a third of my life. Because I can duplicate the inconsistencies every single day.

Some Majorly Juiced Cards

Normally I see my opponents being the only ones with juiced cards. But this table was surprisingly refreshing considering the way most 5 draw games go on PokerStars. I got more than my fair share of the juiced cards and other than one connection problem for a couple of hands and one player hitting the fourteen second warning three times the pace was that of a normal poker game.

I started counting the really big ones, but there was a ton of three of a kinds. And for a 45 minute game until I exited in shame in third place we can also guess that some of the raised hands that were not called were also huge.

Two four of a kinds, five full house, two flushes and three straights. I'm going to estimate the number of three of a kinds - and I'm not making this up - about35. The screen shots I show here are me catching four aces and then within a few hands being dealt a pat full house. Amazing.

But still bullshit.

Operation Wait List

Perfectly within the rules. I can log in and join multiple tables. And not play. Considering that the wait list is so huge it's not really that weird. I'm registering and waiting for that really cool table where xandy plays one hand, says "Hi" and goes to bed.

And PokerStars recognized the idiocy of the AI joining the wait list by resetting and starting without me being there. Can't prove it. So let's talk about one of those players that waited an hour for that really cool poker game to come up.

"AND TWO PLAYERS FLOP OPERN NEDED STRAITS"

40k buy in? Really? If you're that drunk and retarded you never would have gotten the 40k needed to sit at this table.

And in caps lock.

I believe you. You have more than 20 million. You have an infinite number of chips.

These rage/turbo guts have lots of trading and gifting going on.

But to take the time to actively post that you NEED to give some free chips is just stupid. You don't need to give away chips. You just need to turn off the computer, walk the dog, service the spouse and move on. 20 million free money chips places you i n the frame that you could have played for real money.

Of course the site can just say he's an idiot liar. But I play against these not caring about the amount of chips every day.

The Poker Prisoner

This lack of identity is approaching somewhere near alarming. When I wake up I think about what I need to do, what I want to do and sex.

I have played over a million hands of poker on the Internet, but far too often I see a lack of positions defining themselves. We've got Da Bears with a Fighting Irish avatar. We have someone that picked the name getalife. And ultrAsian from Germany.

I thinkses (real word) the getalife position was created specifically for me. I've got this project running that ordinary people wouldn't do. No details yet, but let's say for now it involves screwing with Internet poker. And if my asshole neighbors get annoyed the collateral damage is good. I've got way too many chips to care about the result of every table I play on. But to get there I've had to suffer an amazing amount of bullshit. And I have to put up with the creation of a player named getalife that makes me look like the bad guy for dedicating the time to truly work at being successful when the rigged cards can make someone earn more than I have in 15 minutes.

CI join the wait list. Not a peep. Play solitaire. The jackwipe that joins after me sits simultaneously with me. There's a flurry of French chat because we haveses (real word) two Canadians. Then we haveses two year old stupid chat. Needless to say I'm at a table where this mentality would never get enough chips to be allowed to sit at it.

PokerStars is the one that needs to get a life. Or lives. Instead of pretending 100k AI is playing for real.

Human Nature and the Low Buy In Tourney

I latched on to this table when it was already three and a half hours into it. With intent. Because I've seen it before.

Real human nature does not include going to sleep at eight at night and waking up at 2 am. Real human nature doesn't have someone with over two million free money chips not playing, just watching. And watching the poker equivalent of Plan Nine From Outer Space.

When I had 20k chips ages ago this kind of tourney was an attractive option. Drink a few beers, kill a couple of hours. Go to bed and get ready for work in the morning. But as the foremost critic of Internet poker on the planet, here I am actively working on pointing out what's wrong with this.

Poker, not on the Internet, is a competition. Luck plays a part, but the idea is to win and grow stronger. You buy a new video game and it strikes your fancy, so you invest some time into it and you get better.

PokerStars and every other site I've blown out of the water gives you 2k chips that you can lose and get reloaded back to. It's an industry standard. So let's pretend I have 2000 chips and I accidentally decide to buy in to an 8 game tourney.

Yes, I understand about multi-tasking and playing more than one table at once. And dedicating to play a single table while you have Shark Week on TV. But to do that for an estimated three hours just to place in the money with a net gain of 100 chips is ludicrous. And to drag out your night to gain 17,000 for first place requires another two hours. This is not human nature. We live in an age of instant gratification. Yet 447 people met up at a ridiculous tourney with a prize not worth fighting for and played for six hours.

And from the chat that was posted (shouldn't have done that with me around) some of them are into the game. Really? Five hours into a low payoff game and you're taunting?

Real human nature does not have a highly skilled poker player observing the bullshit. And PokerStars counts on it so every hand dealt gets logged as one of the many in their quest for a bogus 100 billion hands dealt.