Too legit to quit
Dorkus, I think zidane is right. This whole
online poker thing is starting to seem phonier than a three dollar bill. Full Tilt is way up there on the phony list.
I agree with his (zidane's) reasoning totally. The number of insane things pounding us on a daily basis is enough to convince anyone. Let me give you a little example from Full Tilt.
Every night at 12 Midnight Eastern Time they have the Midnight Madness tournament. There's a good size prize pool, and if you come in first or second in a satellite, it only costs you $3 to play. I've done it many times. The buy-in without the satellite is $10.
Watch it this week. At 10 minutes to start there will be about 250 entries. The tournament has 216 payouts. Two minutes before it starts there might be 500 entries. And then at start time there are 1500. Hunh? Check it out for yourself. All day long 216 entries and then in the last 2 minutes it fills 1500. Oh, I know, they're all sitting there waiting to the last minute to register. Ok.
Then during the first few rounds, try talking to the bots. Maybe you might get one or two real people who answer you, but you'll never get all of them to.
But here's the point, and zidane is right on the money. Sooner or later you'll get some insane group of community cards to knock you out on a hand that wins 9 times out of 10 at a freeroll or a simple one table sit n go, (say $10 buy-in).
They're getting subtle too, but I'm sure their developers have plenty of features to implement.
Here's a good one. You get A9s, there are a couple of small bets, three players remain, the flop is AK6 rainbow, and it's back to you. Now, you make a judgement call. You could be right or wrong, but you reason that nobody has AK, AQ, AJ or A10, or AA, or KK, and that unless someone has pocket 66s you have the best hand.
He has pocket 66.
If that happens to you once, you figure, "hey, good call on my part." If it happens to you twice, you figure, "wow that's odd, what are the chances of that?" By the third time you've switched to "what the f__k?!" By the fourth time, it's, "oh ok, I see, this is like the slot machine that used to be paying, but doesn't pay anymore."
You see the thing that they have working against them, is that there are too many people out here like zidane and myself that worked in software groups, or made software ourselves. Some things are obvious.
No, I think Zidane was right on the money with his observations, and that we have to be real careful about thinking this whole online poker thing is legit.
What, you think Absolute just happen to get caught and that's the only time it happened? Ha!
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"In New Jersery everything's legal as long as you don't get caught." Bob Dylan