regs where you find clownery like that?

Landing in Bangalore and spending a few days there, then going to Hyderabad. After those two stops, I will be playing it by ear. The ruins near Arangabad that I saw from google do look cool. I will have to keep them in mind. What brought you there, Pete?

congrats Mike. Rooting for a relatively quick and painless delivery for Mrs. Mjcace.

x-post so everyone sees it

[x] auto voting for Lacky

grats MJ!

Anyone know any good books/resources for learning about currency trading? Im not looking to jump in the fire by any means as I'm a nit and I have this impression that it's MUCH harder than it sounds. However, stars is forcing me to switch between euro's $ a lot, so now seems like a good time to start learning...

Oanda is supposed to be pretty popular amongst poker players swapping large amounts of currency. Don't know if you can trade there as well.

BTW, I think the use by Forex, et. al. of "play money" trading to attract new fish/for-$$ customers is much more devious than the poker sites offering play money options for people to learn the game and some to (eventually) become for $$ customers.

It mirrors the real thing better, and a % of idiots are going to kick ass over a period of months through sheer dumb luck. Time to take out a 2nd mortgage honey, we're gonna get rich!!!

well, I appreciate the support, but seeing as I don't currently play any of the three, and gramps plays 2 of the 3, I vote gramps.

fwiw, real money trading and play money trading is just about equivalent to play money and real poker. I think anyone else that has done both would agree, assuning we are talking a day trading type scenario with time critical trades.

I feel like instead of currency trading you should just make sure you always pay as close to 0% vig. Also stars has some sort of clause that they will lock your account or ban you or something if they feel you are using the software to currency trade. Why do you have to switch between Euros and Dollas?

Yea i read that. I'm not planning to actually trade at all via stars client, but to cashout, I HAVE to receive Euros. Lebanon runs on the $ though. So they convert my cashout from $ to Euro, then in the bank I can choose when I wanna convert back to $ (opened 2 accts, 1 euro 1 $). I just would like to sorta take advantage of the situation when possible and/or take lowest vig possible when no other options.

Basically it just seems like a great time NOT to be clueless about this stuff :P

There's some people in parts of Mexico who have similar issues, something to do with one-too-many-steps for Stars processors so it gets converted to Euros to get wired from one of Stars's own bank accounts or something weird like that.

Do you have a USD Lebanese bank account? If so, you might be able to use MB/Skrill and go Stars USD > MB USD > Lebanese bank account USD for less than 1% vig. If you ever have questions with MB, just make sure to call them vs. email as their response is >>>> better that way.

I have USD and now also Euro Leb bank accts. The problem is MB and Neteller aren't available in my country (as well as partypoker, paypal, among other things)

I think it has something to do with lack of security on internet here?

aren't available in your country or aren't available over your internet connection?

glgl mj

My country. They don't say why.

nice place

Posted about march madness in the bet thread. Go there to gambooool

Melatonin + Xanax + two double bloody marys = lost time. Make sure you ask someone to wake you up when you land.

My friend's (since 1st grade) family is from India and he was going there for a cousin's wedding so the two of us and another friend (who we knew in 1st grade too) went and did touristy things until the wedding. Then I saw an insane Indian wedding to top it all off.

I spent a day in Hyderbad. My friend's parents' villages were ~6 hours away somewhere. We spent most of the touristy part in N India in places like Jaipur and New Delhi but it was all planned out for us basically. One of his cousins was our "chaperone" but my friend had been around in different places enough we didn't really even need him.

I did get sick twice - each time for a day. Eating only really rich Indian food just wreaked havoc on my digestive system too. But it was for sure worth it. Also, it really is a 3rd world country so the infrastructure is messed up (uncovered raw sewage lines, uninsulated electric lines, etc.) and everything is pretty corrupt. It's great to trust someone local who can help you or a tour guide you trust.

However, no matter who you talk to they will try to "rip you off" unless you haggle something super hard. I haggled a few things but a lot of the time I either didn't want something b/c it was junk, or I paid what I thought was fair b/c they needed the $ more than I did.

Indian weddings are ****ing insane.

Take a vacation to Canada or Mexico to get a USD account up and running there?

Easy solution, minor detail that you have to return pretty much whenever you want to withdraw

My PT just randomly stopped working. Anyone have a good suggestion to get it working again? Though playing without a HUD is a nice change of pace .

EDIT: apparantly I just had to press "start HUD", never had to do that before tho .

Speaking of Stars withdrawals, anyone else having problems of late? I've literally been waiting 6+ days for a MB withdrawal, and no e-mail reply from security when I inquired after the 72 hour period was up.

Assume they're reviewing new hyper play or something, but it's extremely weird by Stars standards.

Just send them a new mail imo. Pokerstars sometimes for some reason doesn't reply the first time I send them a email. I feel like if there was a real problem there would have been reports on it by now, probably some weird variance/someone reported you and they are looking into your HHs. Though I'm not sure wether they would put cashouts "on hold" if you're a player in good standing in that case.