Neteller Paid Up.....but

The EFT from Neteller hit my old Oklahoma Bank account today, but the deposit was $70 more than my withdrawal request. And I withdrew the balance of the account.

My plan was to close the account in Oklahoma once and for all. Now what do I do? Do I leave $70 in that account for when Neteller comes calling for the money they transferred to me accidentally? Doing that would probably require me to pay a monthly fee as it would dip that account below the level that makes it a free account.

I'm not interested in collecting $70 that Neteller is surely screwing some other member out of by accidentally transferring it to me. Email has been sent but I haven't heard anything back yet.

Did anyone else receive the wrong amount?

Edit: Neteller responded to my email and said that my account balance was $3180.26 and that's what I withdrew. My only guess is that I typed the figure incorrectly when I put it into my blog and then remembered that number from that point on.

Edit2: You have my permission to declare me a retard in comments.

Neteller

I went to Neteller and withdrew my $3110.26. I had to withdraw it to my old bank account in Oklahoma which I kept open just for this occasion. I will finally be able to close that account and be done with this nasty business once and for all. Neteller says the EFT process could take as much as three days.

Here's hoping that folks like Iggy that had much more substantial sums of cash tied up in this get a smooth resolution too.

Poker Comic #152

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TripJax in Action

In my defense it was dark in there and hard to focus...but this is the best shot I got of TripJax playing at the HorseShoe in Tunica:

The Whole World Has Gone Stupid

Stories like this "Diet Soda linked to Diabetes, Heart Disease/Does Diet Soda Make You Sick?" are all over the news and internets today.

And if you look deeper into ANY of them you'll realize that the entire world of journalism must be full of total morons.

Here is the HIGHLY SCIENTIFIC content of all these stories in a nutshell. The rates of diabetes and heart disease is higher in those that drink soda, and NOT LOWER IN THOSE THAT DRINK DIET SODA.

There isn't one single shred of proof that diet sodas are bad for you IN ANY WAY. Not a single bit of research. Just that people who drink them tend to be less healthy.

Think about it. Who drinks diet soda? Skinny people? Not usually. Most people switch to diet soda because they are FAT. And what risk do fat people have in common? Higher incidences of diabetes and heart disease.

Basically the story they're telling is that DIET SODA DOESN'T CURE DIABETES AND HEART DISEASE.

Well no shit Sherlock. Yet the news all over the place has all these scare stories out about how "Diet Sodas will make you sick."

The bullshit is getting to me.

WTF?

Goddamn Rednecks

I found it difficult to believe that the CBS affiliate would show a 30-minute infomercial for Time Life 50's music albums instead of whatever the network wanted them to show in the 7:30pm (the HEART of prime time, 8:30 Eastern) time slot.

I had to check a national listing on the internet to find out which show I was being denied access. Apparently an episode of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" had a show with a "Tolerating Homosexuality" theme that is objectionable to the viewers in this area, or at least to the people who think they know what the viewers in this area can tolerate.

The number one movie in America this week is "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry." I haven't seen the film (and I won't because the previews look GODAWFUL and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a REMARKABLY low 14%) but I'm thinking that movie preaches some kind of homosexual tolerance, dispersed among a bunch of eighth-grade homo jokes. In fact, since all the jokes in the movie were approved by organizations representing "the gay community," I'm positive that it's full of moral lessons of tolerance.

I wonder how that movie's box office results skewed in the south?

Tunica Trip Report

I left for Tunica just before 8am and pulled into town around noon. I checked out the Gold Strike and the Horseshoe Casinos. Apparently at one time they were together but split apart, probably right around the time that Binion's was bought by Harrah's Entertainment.

When Trip and I had to get a Harrah's Total Rewards card to play in the 7pm tournament, they asked if I had a Harrah's card already and I said yes, I used to play in Kansas City. The woman told me that I had also gotten one at the Rio, but SHE DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO PRONOUNCE THE NAME "RIO." I told her it was a really nice place, she might think about visiting it sometime. She could also try the city in Brazil. Or any river.

Before Trip and surf arrived I played at the Gold Strike poker room. A decent small room that had a NL game going with a list, a O8b limit game going with a full table, and a couple of people trying to get the $3/$6 limit holdem game going. I sat at the table and a few minutes later we got the game started. One guy said he had been waiting for TWO HOURS for the game to start. Then he busted (ok, it was vs. me) in about 20 minutes and left.

Eventually the table filled up and I got what I had been waiting for. I pretty much only play live poker anymore to hear something that I haven't heard before at the table, and it seems like I am always rewarded for my efforts. A guy sitting to my right lost a pretty big pot to a little old lady who made her boat on the river to beat his straight. He let out a very frustrated "Nice catch, mom." You gotta love it when relatives (called "kin" down here) sit at the same poker table. With his tone, he might have said "Nice catch, donkey" if his mother hadn't been the opponent. I might have thought they were colluding if they didn't get heads up a lot, with him trying to bluff her every time, and her calling him down EVERY TIME. I think she finally busted him when her queen high was good.

I putzed around playing crap cards and frustrating the table when they connected until Trip and surf showed up around 4pm. I cashed out and met them downstairs. I had bought in for $100 and added a buck from my pocket to cash out that same $100. After four hours of poker I was down $1. All the dealer's tokes flashed through my head...there went my profit.

After a nice dinner of taco soup, prime rib, potatoes and cheesecake (ask for the special - it's not on the menu) the three of us made it to the 7pm Bounty Tournament at the Horseshoe. $130 buy in gets you T2000 and pays for your $25 bounty. Blinds began at 25/25 and were 30 minutes long until the first break after round three, then 20 minute rounds. The structure seemed fine, you could fold to the first break and be in okay shape. 52 or so players started.

I managed to win a decent pot (and a $25 bounty) when I called a shorty's all in with 55 when his AJ failed to connect, but gave it right back in the next hand when my set of threes lost to 77 which was all-in on the 8-high flop and made a runner-runner straight.

I made it to round 5 when my all in with AQ failed to improve against a caller's TT. Jax went out soon after me, I didn't see the hand. He outlasted me but I won a bounty and he didn't.

Surflexus, however, made it to the final table which started paying at 10 players ($100 for a net loss even if you won a bounty.) Surf made it down to 4 players left when the chip leader offered an even chop if he got the bounties ($75.) Surf was in fourth chip position and got second place money, he definitely got the best of the deal.

Your Winner

Winner (4-way chop) of the July 18 2007 Bounty Tournament at the Horseshoe Casino in Tunica Mississippi:



That's our buddy surflexus, playing the donkeys perfectly.

Back From Tunica

I made it back from Tunica in fine shape. Tripjax and surflexus stayed long enough to clean up at a poker tournament at the Horseshoe and then blew out of town headed for Okie-Vegas. I stayed the night, blew the rest of my money on -EV games and drove back to Tennessee with my tail between my legs. Craps be a harsh mistress.

I got some (illegal) pictures of Trip and Surf in the tournament, if they give permission I'll post one of each of them so you can see how formidable they really are at the table. I got plenty of shots in before the Tournament Director (a very nice guy actually) threatened to have security confiscate my camera.

Poker Comic #151

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Do Me A Favor

Go to surflexus and TripJax's sites and leave a comment for them that driving across Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma in the middle of the night after playing poker in Tunica is a BAD BAD idea!

Instead they should crash for a few hours of sleep in Tunica and take off early in the morning, all bright eyed and bushy tailed. I figure if they leave Tunica by 6-7am they can still get to OKC by 2-3pm.

My room can be the designated crash site, and I'd rather have folks crash there than on the road at 3am in Arkansas...

Tunica Tomorrow

The last time I went to Tunica Mississippi was 10 years ago, 1997.

It was January and I wanted to spend a weekend with an ex-girlfriend I hadn't seen for 3 years. She had moved away to graduate school and was back in town visiting her parents during a break. I didn't want to deal with the hassle of roommates and whatnot, so I proposed a trip away from Birmingham Alabama to Memphis Tennessee, one of my favorite cities to visit. All the Beale St. blues, good food and fun times seemed like a great getaway only a few hours drive away.

We drove through Tupelo Mississippi in my flashy sports car and I noticed that I was passing cars like they were standing still, yet I was barely exceeding the speed limit. "Why are these pansies driving so slow?" I wondered to myself. The answer, obviously because it was January, was that the roads were just a sheet of black ice. I adjusted my speed a few MPH and we still made Memphis in record time.

We checked into the hotel and went to Beale St. to find some food and music. It was FREEZING. Actually it was well BELOW FREEZING. Very unusual weather for the south in winter, the temperature was well below zero, and stayed that way even when the sun came out the next day. We didn't want to spend much time outdoors in the frigid air so I found another solution. We headed to the warmed air of the casinos of Tunica!

I was giddy at being back together with the love of my life, the woman who was to become Mrs. Bogey. She had never set foot in a casino before and was interested in what all the excitement was about. I showed her a few table games, she thrilled at hitting some moderate jackpots at the slot machines. Before long we had the whole weekend paid for. Overall it ended up being one of the best weekends of my life, even though it didn't even go nearly the way I'd planned it.

I've always wanted to go back to Tunica, but never had the right opportunity. Tomorrow I'll be heading that way to meet surflexus and TripJax. I can hardly wait.

Good Flop?

Just in case you've forgotten what a good flop looks like (I had):



In position, with two people betting into me even.

Guy to my left flopped a set which became a boat on the river, guy to my right made his J high flush.

Ching.

The BBT Scoring: FAR from Perfect

A lot of opinions have been heard from people about the BBT scoring, even one very questionable position that the scoring was "perfect."

First of all, a "perfect" system is impossible, because a perfect system would make everyone who might play in the series happy, and OBVIOUSLY everyone wasn't happy. If your definition of "perfect" is INCREDIBLY low, for example "A few more people played in a few more blogger tournaments," then I guess you could call the system "perfect."

This is ABSOLUTELY NOT a dig at the people that did A TON of HARD WORK for NO BENEFIT to themselves by putting this series together. This is merely my feelings about the system and how that system could be made so that more people might enjoy it if the series were to continue.

I DID NOT ACTIVELY PARTICIPATE in the BBT Tournament Series. I didn't exactly avoid the tournaments, but knowing they were going on made me not want to play in them.

Why didn't I want to play in the series? Because I knew I wouldn't be able to play in more than 30 of them. It would be impossible for me to play in 30 tournaments in a 60 day span. And if you didn't play in at least 30 tournaments, there's almost no way you could compete for the prizes. Let me say that again, because it's the point I'm trying to make. If you weren't willing to play a tournament at least half the days in a two month time span, you would not have a reasonable chance to win one of the prizes. One of the tournaments even required you to travel to Las Vegas to play!

Now this isn't as bad as it sounds, because there was no extra fee for the additional prizes, so there was no penalty for playing a few of them once or twice for fun. The vast majority of the players in the series played so few events that they obviously weren't interested in competing for the main prizes. But if you were making a commitment to try and win, YOU WERE MAKING A SERIOUS COMMITMENT OF TIME, and just for a chance of a final prize and a free $33 tournament entry.

How many people played in the BBT series? Overall there were 316 different contestants. How many played enough to seriously contend for the prizes? Well, that depends on how many you needed to play to win. Only 15 people played in 30 or more events which is the absolute bare minimum you could play to have a dream of scoring enough points to compete. Only 7 players played 33 or more, enough for serious contention. About 3% of the people who played the series played enough events to give themselves a good chance to win.

There is a way to improve the scoring system so that you don't have to give up half the nights in a two month span to have a chance. Lots of people played in lots of events, certainly enough that they should have had a chance to compete. 45 people played 20 or more events. 57 people played 15 or more. 75 played in 10 or more.

If you took the top 20 scores for each player and threw out the results of any below their top 20, not only would more people have had a chance to compete, more people would have had incentive to play more events. Those that played between 10 and 20 events (30 people!) might have been more willing to play in 1-9 more events to have a chance at the prizes.

There would still be plenty of incentive to play more than 20 events, to try and improve your overall score by moving a lower result out of your top 20. But it wouldn't penalize those people who were only able to play 20-25 events. The person who played in all 39 events would still have given himself the best chance to win the top prize, but it wouldn't have made it THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IT.

I know that the World Series of Poker counts points from every single event in its player of the year standings, and that's probably what the BBT creators were trying to emulate. but the WSOP POY is for Professional Poker Players. If they were trying to attract only professional online players to the BBT, this would be a good system. If they were trying to get as many bloggers (who might have outside lives and jobs) as they could to play and compete, they could have done better.

Deadline Days

Two major deadlines for poker players occurred recently.

The technical provisions for enforcement of the UIGEA deadline passed recently. In typical government fashion, NOTHING HAPPENED. Either this law is not going to be enforced AT ALL, or the government is going to drag it out forever. My wager is that while the stupid legislature passed this law, they didn't do anything to fund it. Sounds like the amateur government we have in this country, doesn't it? If nothing ever happens, I wonder if the geniuses at Party Poker will ever stop kicking themselves for the amount of money they SURRENDERED by abandoning the US market before they really needed to?

The second deadline is actually today, the day the Justice Department was supposed to reach a settlement with Neteller. For those of us who have money stuck in that site, this was a pretty big deadline. The Justice Department is a part of the government however, so I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. I haven't heard anything yet today (I was hoping to awaken to a wonderful email that said "come get your money!") but I will keep checking.

Edit: PokerNews is reporting that the Neteller delay is official. What a shock. Blame falls on the United States Attorneys Office, who blame it on "recent developments" aka "bullshit."

Poker Comic #150

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No Comic

Sorry no comic today...

I spent the day down in Birmingham with my mother, hopping from doctor's office to doctor's office. She was supposed to have Chemo today but the catheter tube that they administer the chems through was leaking. So she had to have an x-ray to check it, which verified it was leaking. We had to drive to another doctor to get an appointment with a surgeon to remove it. The surgeon(Oddly, the only surgeon available was one that does lap-band [that stomach shrinking deal] and laser hair removal surgery.) was back in the original medical complex where the x-rays were taken. That only took 10 minutes after an hour of waiting in a room full of....well...morbidly obese people. The guy must do amazing business, because the room was PACKED...and not just because the people were big, there were A LOT of them. Then we had to make an appointment replace it on Friday and yet another waiting room to pre-register for the surgery. That's five waiting rooms in one day, and that doesn't include the little "interior" waiting rooms they make you wait in.

I think it's good that she missed Chemo for this week though, because it sure seems like the treatments are killing her. She was in perfect health until the chemo started, now she looks very frail and is dropping weight like crazy. She can't even keep water down. They had to admit her to the hospital for IV feeding because she couldn't eat. I've never seen her so miserable.

While in the obesity doctor's waiting room I did get a chuckle reading a magazine called "American Hunter" which is really just a vehicle for the NRA to espouse political rhetoric. Pretty typical hilarious stuff like stories about 90-year old ladies that blew away teenagers who broke into her garage. Two ads close to the back had me giggling though. The first was for hearing aids (Get it? In a gun magazine?) and the second was for medicine for Erectile Dysfunction. I did show that last one to my mom and she did get a laugh out of it, so I may have managed to brighten her miserable day the tiniest bit.

Apparel Crisis

I wore a UAB shirt to work the other day, but when I got home Mrs. Bogey pointed out a small paint stain on it. I was disappointed that all my UAB apparel has gotten too old and worn out, and I wished I had some to wear. So on my way home from the hospital I stopped in a bookstore on the campus of my Alma Mater, UAB. I tried a department store in the area first but they didn't carry any UAB clothing. Hell, they didn't even have Auburn stuff, only Crimson as far as the sporting apparel section stretched.

I got to the campus bookstore at 5:40pm and the place closed at 6:00, but that didn't stop me from dropping $177 on UAB apparel. I basically ran through the store and picked one of everything in either Mrs. Bogey's or my size that wasn't too outrageously priced.

Apparel problem solved.

Quitting Anything, Including Poker

Katitude posted about "Falling out of love" with poker. It's bullshit of course. The reason she claims to be losing that loving feeling is that she can't handle the beats. And that's the worst reason to quit playing poker.

You can't quit something if you still care about it. If the beats bother you, then you have feelings. You care. You will always come back, trying to overcome the beats, until you either don't care anymore, or you are broke.

Here's what I left in her comments:

If you get upset about suckouts, you still care enough about poker to play the game.

The secret that NOBODY tells you about poker is that the ONLY way to keep from tilting when you take a beat ISN'T to be able to control your feelings. The secret is to NOT HAVE THEM. You have to ACTUALLY NOT CARE about the outcome. And when you don't care, then you can play perfect tilt-free poker.

But ask yourself...Who wants to play a game when they don't care about the outcome?

When you realize that, then you can quit.

Non-vacation Vacation

Day one of my non-vacation Vacation was almost entirely unsuccessful.

My attempts to improve the performance of the computer I use to play World of Warcraft were a near total failure. The only success part was that I got it put back together and (eventually) got it working again, as much as it was working when I started.

On the bright side, I learned what one short beep followed by two long beeps means.

See the CMOS of your computer has a method of communicating when all other means (your monitor) fail. It beeps. You need to speak this miniature version of morse code for this to be any help at all. A bit of internet research discovered that one short beep followed by two long beeps means "There's a video problem."

Well duh.

I remedied that problem with a different video card (not compatible with WoW) and tried to add some memory (fails parity check.) So I ended up right where I started. At least I didn't pay for the parts, they were salvage stuff I had laying around. No wonder they didn't work.

At least I have Mrs. Bogey afraid of what I will be tearing apart next.

Casual Week

Things are very casual at work this week because the company is usually shut down for the first two weeks every July. We still have things to take care of so we have to work (or take vacation time) but things are much more relaxed than normal. So yesterday I took the opportunity to wear my favorite Tee....the Snailtrax shirt!

This prompted several questions from those co-workers who actually decided to show up this week. The most popular question:

What the hell does that mean?

I didn't tell anyone the truth, but I did point one person to a certain online issue of "Truckin'."

Independence Day

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday dear America,
Happy Birthday to you.

Poker Comic #149

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What The Fuck?

Scooter Libby gets his prison sentence commuted for preventing a federal investigator from being able to identify a INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT LEAK IN THE WHITE HOUSE, yet these guys are in prison for EIGHT YEARS because THREE PERCENT of the FISH THEY CAUGHT WERE TOO SMALL!

Robert Blandford, Diane Huang, David McNab, and Abner Schoenwetter

Three American seafood dealers and one Honduran lobster-fleet owner are currently doing hard time for importing lobster tails that were the wrong size and that were packaged in clear plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes. They ran afoul of the Lacey Act, a federal statute that makes it a crime to import fish or wildlife taken "in violation of any foreign law."

The U.S. government argued that they had broken Honduran law because some of the lobster tails—3 percent, to be exact—were less than five and a half inches long, and because a Honduran regulation required that the lobster tails be packed in boxes. Yet Honduran officials testified that no laws had been violated.

Nonetheless, Blandford, McNab (the Honduran national), and Schoenwetter, three small-business men with no previous criminal records, were sentenced in 2001 to eight-year terms. Their "partner in crime," Huang, got off easy: two years' incarceration for the mother of two young children.

To quote the president:

But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive.

Take a look around retard, there's a lot of that going on.

The BBT is Over

The final tournament of the "Battle of the Bloggers" aka "The BBT" came to a wheezing finish last night with "The Blogger Big Game."

There wasn't a lot of drama at the end as Bayne_s demolished the field. Amazingly jeciimd came in third and won a total of $118.32 after playing in 32 events ranging in buy-ins from $10 to $75. Even with the added prize for third place in the BBT of $372.20, there's no way he didn't lose money in this thing. At $20 avg entry fee, he probably shelled out around $640 to win $490 total.

Only two people played in all 39 events, not surprisingly Bayne_s and surprisingly oossuuu754 who finished out of the money in seventh (top three paid, fourth and fifth got video game prizes.) They both shelled out $786 in fees and came out well ahead after prizes for individual tournaments. Bayne_s cleared $886 + $930.

I personally finished in 114th place, but profited around $160 overall. I only played in one event and didn't finish in the top 50, so I will not get to participate in the freeroll for the remaining $1850 in rake collected by Full Tilt that was returned 100% in the form of prize money for the winners and the freeroll prize pot.

Congrats to Tripjax for winning the final event and over $1200 in prize money for that single event, the "Blogger Big Game." I can honestly say I never thought they'd get more than 30 or so people for that $75 buy in event, so I'm amazed at the turn out. Before the BBT started there were about a dozen people playing in it. It's amazing how you add some points contest to the action and all kinds of dead money joins in. The prize money in that event skews the money results for the entire tournament.

Kind of weird that the overall money winner Tripjax finished in 16th place. The fifth overall money winner finished in 89th place and doesn't even qualify for the freeroll. 79 people won more money than the third place finisher, including me.

Someday someone will come up with a good scoring systems for these things. I've looked at a few, but they get so complicated people think you are rigging the results.

I hope people had fun with the BBT. I don't think interest dropped off too much towards the end as tends to happen when people fall out of contention in these contests. And I hope Iggy enjoys his Nintendo DS.


PS. I need Tripjax or surflexus to email me at the address in the right column, it's just my name at gmail. If anyone has a suggestion for an overnight stay in Tunica, I'd love some opinions. I can get a room at the Grand pretty cheap, and Sam's Town is another good deal.

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