I’m very stupid and I don’t know anything about ICE in regards to laws or rules. I know that my local county jail is located at an airport and has a contract with ICE/ US Marshall’s. And you can see military style helicopters out of a tiny window dropping off people every once in a while.

Ok see you soon, nerd

Dohrethy and the wicked witch of Ozz? Wasnt that in Kansas?

Lol. Close enough.

I think if d2 has a US passport or even if not he has family there, there is no judge in the world that can prevent a reunion of some sorts after 17 years of banishment.

You would be 100% wrong.

It's not even up top the judges, agg felon status is not appealable other than for things like administrative error, or, as I said, if the conditions out of which the status arose change retroactively. You can't just go to immigration court and ask them to lift it out of compassion, that's not how it works. They wouldn't even hear the case.

I would bet the law changed in 17 years and seperating families has become more of an issue.



"Sabraw had ordered the administration to find and reunite separated families."
https://de.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN1ZD1LY

You could also get in touch with this professor or another one specialzed in deportations/human rights.

"Separated Families: Barriers to Family Reunification After Deportation"
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...50241700500209

A I disagree.


This night not be applicable to all problem gamblers, but it's a compulsion. It's a very real possibility problem gamblers would get caught up in other forms for "addiction", primarily stuff that provides intermittent rewards.

When I start playing a game called Path of Exile, I'm playing till I burn out. It's a free to play AARPG with a living economy. The intermittent rewards, and highvalue drops drive me to keep grinding.

Another video game reference is loot boxes.

Finally, the brain activity or chemistry (forget which one) of a problem gambler matches that of a cocaine addict. In fact, coke addicts have a higher probability to be problem gamblers than other addictive drugs users.

In my own experience, the value of a bet changed depending on whether I had stable income (guarantee paycheck from the Army), the amount (cash made in the oil patch), and finally when I was destitute betting my last dollar with the hopes of winning a bit to get a hotel. Winning $175 with a $5 bet while I was broke meant more than winning 3k at BJ when I had money coming in.

I don't think you are understanding the point we are making. It is very difficult for many problem gamblers to get the same rush from lower stakes just because they have gone busto. And some problem gamblers make truly catastrophic decisions when they no longer have the ability to play the stakes that they now associate with the rush.

Everyone is different, but there are definitely a lot of people in the world who fit the profile we are describing.

IHIV - I think you are conflating someone trying to spin up their last $5 to get basic necessities and other types of problem gambling. I posit (and I think Rococo agrees) that these are different categories of behaviour, although related, of course.

This quote is accurate, though:

All money starts to seem like casino chips, is another way of putting it. Tokens.

Interesting read. Thx D2.

My experience was as a live game player logging long hours during The Moneymaker Effect, years.

Such great years to crush cash games, but i digress.

I never had the cumpulsions of addiction thankfully but when playing the biggest cash games available often with very drunk russian billionaires who where tilting after losing at $50k or more bets in craps and sitting in on poker because firing away like a canon still slowed their losses i too learned to look a cash chips as tokens or tournament chips. Considering the actual sums in play just was not conducive to good play.

Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Need some stories and HHs from russian billionaire cash games!

Yes please.

D2 you are a wonderful and gifted human being. And thanks for not attacking back yesterday. That was pretty classy from you.

Maybe if I have more time I'll elaborate more, but I think winning and losing is where the stimuli comes from for a gambler. I never got high by placing a bet, I got high from winning.

I will link this paper later.

It's all good bro, just chill out a bit - thread is on a short leash for being so off-topic as is, we don't need to be generating any (professional) mod interest.

Can you articulate in your own words the point you are making first?

Edit: sorry, I just saw your post above this one, will respond to it now.

The last part is a bit of a simplistic view. There is an old saying that goes something like "a gambler's idea of hell is a slot machine that pays the jackpot every time". The lows from losing are needed to get those highs from winning, especially when you're chasing your losses.

In any case, I don't think anybody here is arguing that winning and losing is what drives the "fix", not the act of actually placing the bet. I certainly wasn't implying that, and I don't think Rococo was either.

LOL. I think I played a fair bit of live poker with the sons of your drunk russion billionaires.

Yes bro you are right. I can steer this in political direction though again, and think this is very political.

First off how does the government deal with problem gamblers?

In Germany for instance, since October, we have a new law, a deposit limit on each site of 1000 Euro. I cannot even play on certain sites anymore since last month because of that. It's actually just winamax in that regard that I cannot play and have to cope with. They completely banned us from playing last month.

The other thing political itt is, how are the governments dealing with separated family members who are banned from one country?

And last but not least, how does society deal with (professional amd problem) gamblers?
Is is an addiction? Is it in our genes?

I actually have played with the thought of starting something to help gamblers live a more happy and healthy lifestyle.
What we do is a bit dangerous, looking at Stu Unger, Phil Ivey, Eric lingren, Brad Booth and Mike Matusow and etc. Or even the las Vegas shooter for Instance. I read all about that incidence in Vegas. He lost a lot before he went berserk.

Also our suicide rate, or the rate of suicides in gamblers is significantly higher than to the average person.

Well I think the Internet era ruined the cash game era stories as the internet has much bigger everything that I have seen.

But anyway, here goes.

For background, despite always being lucky enough to have money, I am more of a grinder in poker. My game is all about discipline and very selective aggression and edges. I have no fear of pushing all my chips in when I think I have an edge, and if I get sucked out on, oh well, sucks, but part of the game. Nothing I like more than changing tables to sit beside the loose canon, or drunk player, or anyone playing erratically while shoving lots of money in.

I was a staple in the early days of Casino Niagara and then Fallsview casino in 2004-2006 as I had just sold a company I was founder/partner in and was doing some consulting but had lots of time on my hands.

As you know Chris Moneymaker had his big win in 2003 and poker went nuts in the casino's. If you were a good player you were catching fish like a grizzly during the salmon run sitting up stream and having them just jump into your mouth. Honestly you could not lose money in those days as even just an OK player unless you were just running bad, as there were so many fish in every game.

The NLH games at Fallsview were 1/2, 2/5. 5/10 and on the weekends 10/20 but on request a table could have stakes raised if the pit manager approved. and weekend games would often bump up to 25/50 or even 50/100.

I had decided to do a Thursday to Monday session. I would typically sleep between the hours of 9am to about 3pm on session days but otherwise at the tables the entire time outside bathroom breaks. Even eating at the tables. Most lucrative times I found were 2am-7am as poker players were tilting chasing losses but you had a steady trickle of the Floor Game players, many with horrendous losses, looking to poker as a place to gamble more slowly and stem losses. Some foolish enough to believe they could bully these small stake games where $50k-$100k in front of you could last hours and not disappear in a hand.

There was always a handful of known casino whales some of which who might find themselves to the poker tables, especially on really bad nights at other games. They would typically roll into a room around 2-3am drunk and in a bad and belligerent mood. Often looking to take out their frustrations by bullying a poker table by shoving all sorts of stupid money into pots and taking great pleasure at how easily everyone folded.

They often asked for table stakes to be raised to the max of whatever that Pit Manager would allow and buy ins, that were typically capped per game went out the window. These guys would typically drop 2-3 times the top stake on the table which I love. I always found it weird that some people hated allowing others to buy in at level and they feared bully stacks. I love that I could always get max value on a shove and double off them and they could only a make a fraction off me. Some guys would leave the table due to the stakes but others would jump in.

So this was a weekend were I was running insanely hot. I arrived with $10k cash on Thursday mid day and by Sunday I had it up to a little under $60K. one of my best 3 day sessions. NOrmally for me if i went in with $10k and left with $25k that was a good weekend. My prior best was a $40k weekend.
So it is Sunday night, my last evening and i am almost done.

Enter the Whale.

This guy is in early 60's and typically very drunk whenever he stumbles into the poker room and is aggressive as it gets. The texts fly out and regulars who live close enough call in and get themselves on his table list and drive in no matter the day or time. he is so worth it. In a 50/100 game he is almost always betting $700 preflop with any two cards. If you play right back at him, he may shove $100k with any two cards. Few people wanted all-in with him on the flop as it was so easy to get him all in on susbeeqnet streets even if he was chasing an inside straight.

So most people tried to play premium holdings against him since you knew it was mostly going to the river for all your chips. Why not wait and see if you still thought your hand had value.

You would watch in amazement as he paid guys off, $10k, $30K or more a hand and simply reloaded. What you did not want is for anyone to run super hot against him, win every hand and him just get up and leave. He needed to suck out on some guys from time to time and win. Sad for them, good for the game, as he was not counting his winnings and losses, he just liked the rush of being a bully and winning. So you also watched guys get crushed by him usually in suck outs. He almost never got it in good.

I would say if he went preflop with any two cards for $700 and you flatted, his Flop bet would always be between $3000 -$10,000 depending on the chip he grabbed. It was automatic. If you bet the flop first he was likely going to shove. If you re-raised him, he was shoving. The only fold he would ever do was after the river card if he had nothing, so the money play was to let him raise every street and never re-raise him or bet out, just flat. If you felt your hand was best after the turn, re raise or bet out and get it all in then with one card to go. Even with an inside straight only he was not giving up at that point.

I have my entire $60k on the table. I don't count my winnings as 'earned' until I leave and I always show up prepared to lose what I take in, so i have no issues gambling what i have in front of me. The goal is simply, with this guy, to get my money in good, and hope to double up and i want to push that edge to the max. If I can double through him twice I am going home. Many guys sit at the table similarly, double once and go home. SOme bust once and go home. Most people had their entire daily stack (or maybe entire stake) on the table versus him.

I am sitting waiting patiently watching all this action around me, while waiting for premium cards to get in. I see about 3 guys double through him. One guy twice.

He makes it too expensive to play anything but premium cards because if you do not hit the flop or worse don't improve your hand but have some draws, the cost on the flop or after to chase anything will not be within pot odds. Not even close.

Anyway finally, I look down at two red Queens. Actually not my favorite starting cards against a guy like this. I would prefer AK suited as a hand that can typically improve. With a hand like QQ you call the pre-flop knowing you are good. You call the flop no matter how ugly knowing you are almost certainly good. And even with an ugly turn you are pretty much pot committed since he can have any two cards.

the hand is template. He bets $700. I call. Flop is rainbow garbage, (Jd, 8h, 3C). I check and he bets $5000K I call. Turn is 6h, and i want him all in now so I bet out $15k, he then puts me all in. I am thinking the worst i face is a flush draw. He has QS and 8C. 1 pair and no draws and his queen is dead so it is as good as I could hope. The other 8's beign his only outs. Of course the river is an 8 and he busts me.

He always has smart @ss comments too when he does win and his one for me was him laughing about how I could call my whole stack in after the turn with only 1 pair.

Generally he would be right against any decent player but against him, there was no point just shoving all in pre flop as you knew you could get him all in regardless. So if the board comes four cards to one suit you don't have, by the turn or something bad, you can get away from it. But with the texture of that board, unless i am playing someone I know is super tight, I am calling. I am only losing to sets or two pairs or maybe someone is trying to make me fold as they have the flush draw.

I did not reload. It is not my game to chase losses. And I had set that initial $10k as my single day loss limit for that weekend. I took my lumps and left. I was good for that game, but not for my own stack that night. I was told later he played about an hour more and dumped a bunch more money.

I know stories in the internet age involve much bigger sums of money but in those days in that casino, winning $100k in a weekend at poker was a big deal. If i could have doubled and redoubled through him that would have been a wow for me.

Wow, great story & write-up, all with a casual $100k bad beat thrown in. Thanks for sharing Cuepee. Have to admit I'm more than a little jelly, would love to be able play in games like that!

Good questions, all. I'll respond to the bolded for now.

This is a topic I'm ambivalent about, to be honest. On the one hand I'm not really a fan of regulation of vice in general - I think prostitution and drugs should be legal, for example; on the other hand, I do understand that it's the role of a modern government, at least to some extent, to save people from themselves. In the UK also, particularly in the last year, we've had ever-more restrictive responsible gambling regulations come into effect - whereas before sites might have done source of funds checks to catch money launderers, now they are doing them to check that players can afford their losses. I do feel this is rather intrusive. There is actually a discussion of this in NVG as well: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...oming-1774978/.

I think it's useful to be clear on exactly whom these controls like the new ones we have in the UK are really targeting. Resourceful hardened degens like me will always find a way around the controls (at least in their current incarnation), so if they are helping anyone, I suspect it's neophyte gamblers who might not realise that they even have a problem. To that end, I hope the new measures we have here are beneficial, but I would be interested to see if there are any studies available as to their efficacy. From what I've seen, the operators are really being pressured to focus on RG since the lockdowns - I've been watching the Snooker on Eurosport the last few weeks, and there are a ton of ads for gambling sites, but rather than being the usual spiel about odds and accumulators and whatnot, it's all about gambling responsibly.

So, I apologise for such an noncommittal answer, but I really don't know how to feel about these measures. They are a pain in the ass for me to circumvent and I'm not sure how effective they are in helping others, but I do acknowledge that something should be done. Another thing is that a lot of gambling is not presented as such, like random prizes in mobile games and whatnot. There is probably a lot of unregulated gambling that goes on because the operator gets away with marketing it as something else.

Would be interested to hear others' thoughts on the matter. Not sure how long this thread will stay open, but maybe we could have a separate thread for government's role in regulating gambling if it is locked.

I'll tell the story of the two times I have had machine guns (or is the proper term automatic weapons?) shoved in my face by jack booted thugs, in poker games.

Those thugs being the cops.

With gambling tightly regulated in Ontario Canada and Casino's being at distant hour(s) long travel for most, many small private games had jumped in to fill the void.

I got lured to some hearing stories while at the casino table, of games in the area I was living in at the time. Some of the regulars at my casino tables were also regulars to these underground games.

And these were not mob hosted, Teddy KGB, joints. Most were in coffee shops, or the like, after they closed in some secure locked area.

My first time being busted was just that. A quiet coffee shop in a quiet industrial area of town with no evening traffic. It was a Wednesday, every week tournament. Buy in was $300 and they would seat maybe 8 tables of 10. So you can do the math. These were not big stakes games but for a wednesday night, to sharpen your tourney skills, they were fun. But the House did take a rake thus the jeopardy.

The stairs to the upstairs room where extremely narrow, and the guy did have a security door put in place that was reinforced and heavy. Not sure if he had that in strictly for the poker or because it was where they kept the safe and did their private accounting work and cash counting.

Anyway, I had attended this maybe 5 times and got to know the hodgepodge of similar retrobait like me playing poker there. It was made up of some young players and a lot of geriatrics who found poker a pleasant alternative to their usual Bridge night. This was not a criminal element at all.

On this particular night I had a 70 something year old lady who was a retired librarian in a back brace to my left and a guy who was in his 50's and worked in pharmacy sales to my right.

As we play on thru the night we hear someone screech, 'OMG we are getting robbed'. There is a camera on the narrow stairway which they use to check out players and buzz them in and we can see about a half dozen men in black with heavy guns martialling at the bottom of the stairwell preparing to siege upwards. No signs of them being police.

Panic ensues in the room. I would guess almost no one in that room has been robbed.

The dealer at my table yells there is a back stairway in kitchen. Our table being nearest, I am up like George Costanza making for that door. I am one of the first at the door and just as I am about to open it and make my way down to freedom, I have this sense of dread that with the crush of people behind me, if there are gunmen in that stairway but I am pushed unyielding towards them, that is how I get killed.

I instead yell out, 'we cannot open this door as there might be gunmen behind it'. Turns out the cops had no clue, as it ran across the back of another store in this plaza and came out in another part of the parking lot. They would have only noticed and seen a flood of people walking in the parking lot too late, as they need to catch them 'in the game'.

So, yes I foiled all of our escapes as no one tried that back door.

As the still unknown cops were now at the top of the stairs, we hear a sledgehammer hit the door. One of the guys yells to everyone to 'sit back in their chairs, keep your hands on the tables and do nothing to get shot'. Everyone complies.

We then hear a cop yell, "Police, as the sledge hits again". The wave of relief in the room was immense. One of the dealers gets up and heads to the door to open it and calls out to the police he will open the door and the police scream back 'Stay away from the door. Do not get the near the door'.

We hear about 2 more big sledgehammer thuds and then a cop yells "OK, step to the door and open it very slowly". Good craftsmanship that held up (fairness to them there was no real room to swing a sledge) gave many in the room a little chuckle.

The door is opened, the cops stream in and are pointing the weapons in all our faces. Shouts of get on the floor, get on the floor, hands over your head, are causing stress and confusion in the room. I immediately move to the floor but the 70 year old librarian lady with the back brace does not move quick enough and her arm is grabbed and she is dragged off the chair and dropped and ends up on her back like a turtle in its shell struggling to turn over due to brace.

The cop who plopped her there is yelling for her to 'turn over and put her hands over her head' and when I say she is struggling due to her back brace, he points the gun again at my head and says for me to not talk. He then grabs her arm unceremoniously and flips her over so she can comply.

They take all the players names and ID and tell us we will not be charged but may be called as witnesses to Court if the owners of the game or dealers or others being charged fight the charges.

We are then let go. That is when i realized the back door escape was entirely open to us as they had all their cars marshalled at the front. Not a single person watching the back.


So lesson learned for about 8 months I avoided all such games outside the Casinos. I kept getting stories from other players I knew well about games they attended and how no new arrests had been reported in ages, and I bit and decided to try one again, when one of my best friends said he wanted to go.

That very night, we went, it all plays out the same again. But this time we are in a upstairs room that is not as secure in a factory warehouse. It has some warehouse like windows up high in the corners and a couple skylights.

So this time as this is going down and the camera shows the shadowy men coming up to the door I immediately say to the room 'these look like cops'. As I am saying that they get to the door, we hear a shout out step away from the door, 'take your seats, ...this is the police'. The door is then sledgehammered off its hinges but at the same time police breech the two upper windows and skylights and are repelling into the rooms. Flashbang and all.

its a full on raid of a low limit tourney.

This time again they let all the players leave but we all get an 'order to appear in Court'. At court, months later, we are told we can pay a $500 fine now and no charges will be filed and no record created. Or we can refuse and be processed. For what, I am not sure as playing is not illegal. Profiting from a game is. But as no one wants to be processed and have that attached to their name, we all line up to pay and are told that we may be called as witnesses if anyone fights this.

The goal is clearly now that to dissuade players more from returning to games otherwise there will always be someone will to provide one. It worked on me, as it was my last underground game.

Months later I met up with one my best highschool friends who was a career cop and head of his regions SWAT team. I told him the stories and he could not stop laughing. He said that when they find these games, they determine are low threat, they often treat them as training opportunities. They send out notice to every cop shop within a certain radius and ask if they want to get any training in for their tactical people in a low risk bust. He sends his people regularly.

He did not get why I did not appreciate his laughing so much but that just made him laugh more as we were old sports buddies.

He said I got lucky the police were not using this also a photo opp where they let the media know it was happening so they could show the 'criminal's being taken out'. He said when they do that for low limit games, they take and inventory all the cash in the room, whether in play or not. It might be a low limit tourney but they claim they just busted a big stakes game with multiples more money because of what might be in the house safe or in the players pockets if they are carrying their 'rolls' with them.

Ya. I did luck out. I work in finance and it might have ended that for me, had my face been plastered on the news.

No more stories from me D2. Your thread is yours again.

cuepee,

I played a fair bit of live poker in NYC around the same time. Playing in a 1-2 NLH holdem game or $300 buy in tournament in a private club always felt riskier from a police standpoint than playing in private games. That always seemed a little ridiculous to me because it was not unusual for $150-$200K to be on the table in the private games, whereas the games in the private clubs tended to be much smaller.

But the private games were played mostly on credit, and often in hotel rooms. Maybe that made them less attractive for raids.