Pokercast Episode 341 - Ultimate Poker closure

This week on the show: Terrence joins in from Hong Kong to break down many of the stories in poker for the last two weeks. The guys talk about Ultimate Poker closing it's doors, Dan Colman versus Phil Hellmuth and the ESPN WSOP ratings for the final table. Next topic up for discussion is the news that Pokerstars is launching a casino product in the very near future and Vicky Coren's decision to leave Team Pokerstars as a result. The guys then talk about the new video game designed by poker players called Prismata and then recap the latest results from WPT Montreal. Matthew Hilger from Pokerstars joins the discussion to talk about the move to casino from the operator's side, as well as recap some of the current promotions going on at the World's Largest Poker Site. As always, the password for the Pokerstars Invitational for Pokercast listeners is given for this Sunday's event.

Music: TV On The Radio – happy Idiot (2014) - Ex Hex – Hot And Cold (2014)

Click here to Listen On 2+2 Player

Direct Download - http://pokercast.s3.amazonaws.com/twoplustwo_341.mp3

First?

And I'm 5 minutes into the podcast...it was a long two weeks.
Thanks for joining in Terrance.

Great Podcast as always! I even loved the behind the scenes portion near the end when Terrence got disconnected ( I assume it was suppose to be edited out ). Its nice to pull the curtain back once and a while!

I had one comment to make regarding Pokerstars and their self exclusion policies, and your (Adam) comments about how great and rock solid they are. I think people have the right to be concerned as the self exclusion doesnt always work the way it should. I had a self imposed deposit limit on my account set at $20 USD weekly. I did this to avoid going on tilt and depositing more than I could afford at any given time. ( Yes, I know. Micro stakes Donk). Anyways, earlier this week my Stars account was comprimised. I was alerted right away with an email notice that a new device had logged on to my account, followed by seven deposit request emails. I was panicked at first, but was comforted by knowing that my weekly deposit limit had already been reached, so the worst case scenario was the scammer would be able to blow through my bankroll. ( $35( My relief turned to shock however when I got an email confirmation that my deposit limit was succesfully changed from $20, to $1500! All the scammer had to do was go into the responsible gaming tab, and with a single click, the deposit limit was changed. Great protection there!! So, I too have doubts that AmayaStars will actually actively help customers avoid the perils of the pit!

( the rest may be TL; DR)

In case anyone is curious about how my story about the hacking was resolved. Here it is. I instantly contacted stars and let them know that my account had been hacked, and that it wasnt me on the site currently ( I tried to log on, but it said my account was already logged in on another device). The scammer attempted 6 deposits totaling $1555.22 using various Visa cards. 5 were declined, but one for $181.45 was approved. Before the account could be frozen he played a $200 six Max hyper, and finish in sixth place.

Stars did an investigation and concluded that my account had indeed been compromised, and the the ip address of the offending computer was in Canada, but not near my location. Even though they know that I had nothing to do with stealing the money, according to them I did not do enough to secure my account and therefore am liable for it. In order to regain access to my account I have to do a full verification of my ID, incldding sending a picture of myself holding my drivers license, and then deposit enough to cover the shortfall. I have since done a full virus and malware scan of my hard drive and haven't found anything. My password was never shared with anyone, and wasnt easily guessable. So I have no idea how it was compromised. I wont be repaying the stolen money, as I don't feel its my responsibility to do so. So after 8 years or so, and many thousands of dollars in deposits, I am not longer a pokerstars customer. Im very bummed out by this. Ive attempted to plead my case to Stars security ( always being polite and respectful) to no avail. They are standing firm that its my fault, and therefore my responsibility to pay for the loss

Isn't this boxing day or something?

(Phil) IV

5th and turkey/cranberry/stuffing sandwiches for next 2 days -doesn't get much better !

Seventh-bokked.

You really made that $5 dollars sound enticing lol

Not wanting to derail, but how is there a shortfall on your account?

Not only is Victoria Corens show still on but they moved it to a much better channel and time slot. She's turning in to a legit celeb these days, she even made it onto Goggle box last week ha!

Also, saying she's the first female to win 2 Ept titles isn't painting the best picture. She's the first and only 2 - time Ept champion!

I had $35, the hacker deposited $181.45 from a credit card, then played a $200 hyper tournament, leaving $15 in my account. Once stars determined that the account had been hacked they deducted $181.45 from my account saying that they anticipate the credit card deposit will be reversed, leaving me with a balance of -166.45

Count me as someone who watched Terrance's video to the end, and I've never been to Nevada.

If, when ultimate poker is starting operation, you know that the only states to be open to poker entering 2015 would be Nevada and NJ then is it still a go? It strikes me that many of the strategic decisions by Ultimate are pretty decent ones for an upstart hoping to be able to take on sites with greater financial resources and linked to existing gambling franchises. However, given Nevada is less than 1% of the american population and NJ another 2.x%, whilst perfecting the internal problems that terrance experienced first hand might just have allowed the site to survive for longer, it's still a hostage to the regulatory environment - not in the sense of getting approvals and documentation for things (which I imagine will get better - do people often complain about the regulation of casinos?) but in terms of the number of states open to business.

Also, when listening, I snap took the under on 75% being the percentage of a $200k earner's candian income going to the state, but it looks like you can pick the numbers to get to 60% (highest marginal tax rate of 46% plus highest sales tax of 15%) which is still pretty impressive.

And the subject of winners and how much they're winning is endlessly fascinating. There's a great Thinking Poker episode with Tsarrast (iirc) talking about Macau and private games that hints at how what we the masses know about where the real money is in poker is basically nothing. Obviously there are lot of assumptions and definitions needed in the discussion, but my working assumption is that the biggest winners are winning a bigger chunk of the total output than generally recognised.

Adam,here you can see the great Johnny Marr trying different drumkits

Terrence's blog:

Factor in property taxes, gas tax, liquor tax (etc etc etc) and it's basically 75% of your gross income.

Well played. I LOL'ed.

Are you saying thats a good or a bad thing?

Bit of a messup on the tournament this week: there were only 140 entrants or so because the password started with an unexpected capital (I guessed it, along with others apparently), and it was full-ring PLO rather than 6-max.
(I continued this trend by going out on the first hand with 9855 on a 984 flop against 44xy)

Meh... I don't particularly like ScamCity. When they visited my hometown Amsterdam we were kind of surprised to see the 'scams' that allegedly were taking place.

Long story short: National Geographic wrote the 'scams', and hired actors to scam other actors, whilst pretending that this was daily practice in Amsterdam. Kind of a shady thing to do.

Felix Stephensen finished 2nd in the WSOP ME

I just can't believe you guys (esp Adam) found your way to actually criticize vicky coren's decision....

Do you realize how rare it is that someone makes a decision where ethics, integrity > $$ in general, let alone in the poker world ?

And when Dnegs makes ridiculously stupid statements like "Winning players are actually worst than the rake" to back up rake increases, you *forget* to comment on it ?

You're so much sell outs to pokerstars it makes the show unlistennable.
Ho, and "pokerstars never told you what to say on the show" ?

Well it's even worst then I thought then.

gg pokercast

I didn't criticize her, I congratulated her on her personal choice but disagreed with her logic.

I love that if I don't take the anti-Stars stance on every issue that comes up I'm a giant sell-out.

Adam, you called Phil Hellmuth "Philmuth".
To fans of Huff & Stapes/Two Jacks in the Hole, that´s called a Morlock (a reporter called Morgan Spurlock "Morlock", then Huff & Stapes coined the phrase).
And morlocks are AMAZING!
Thank´s Adam, you made me lol!