I think you underestimate the resourcefulness of bad actors, and progression of exploit technology available now and in the future.

Not implying that the trend won't continue toward digital gaming, I think it will.

That said even IT companies of the highest order have been victims of exploits. Link

Here is the Wired article on the famous Game King exploit, and that was undertaken by degenerate rubes. And they got off, as they should have obviously.

I'm guessing modern machines are built on top of a lot of reused code littered with exploits, if not now than sometime in the future with more expert bad actors. Stuff like network communications, cloud data collection, bad interfaces like Game King, and so on. Perhaps nobody is in the right place to pull it off, or perhaps tournament/cash poker is a small fish in the big pond and won't attract nefarious attention.

not really.

In general I.T. terms. yes, anything can be hacked and nothing is totally secure.

In practice and specific to technology on the floor of a licensed casino , you might be underestimating what is involved and how many different companies would have to be involved to coordinate much less profit from any altered / hacked device. 100 times more tin foil hatted if we are talking about a elec poker table.

If you want to learn more... Call GLI and tell them you have a new slot machine that you want to put on the floor and ask them what you need to do to be ready to sell it to a regulated casino in the US (or really anywhere)

p.s The gameking exploit is the part of the lore of gaming industry and pretty crazy story, but not close to what we are talking about.

--------

OK, back to Corona. IS WSOP HAPPENING OR NOT ? If not, I agree with someones post from a few days ago that if no ME, we should just vote for a winner. I vote for me.

I wrote a brief list of pros of electronic poker tables a couple pages back. But I forgot a huge con: horrible poker players stay away because they are convinced they're getting scammed. In reality they are perpetual losing players, and will lose anywhere they play. They also don't realize they have a much higher chance of getting scammed by actual players and dealers than by a highly regulated machine. I'm not calling out pokerhero77 bc ofc he is not alone.

"some" horrible players . some good ones too, though. rigtardiness disease does not differentiate between good and bad players. it can infect anyone.

ok, thats my last etable post ITT for the next 7 days.

I look forward to it all year - starting like August.
However, if it happens, I'm going to evaluate what health authorities are saying. You can bet it will be smaller.

I'd like it if they just sucked it up and moved to October.

I’d guess that the majority of recreational players would not be able to play if the WSOP were moved to October.

It could be argued that the biggest factor contributing to the growth of the WSOP in the mid-2000s was not online poker or ESPN, but moving the tournaments to the summer (from April/May to June/July).

A friend told me that the reason more blacks are dying of COVID19 than whites is because of discrimination and lack of access to health care. Is this true or just social justice warrior speak?

Probably something to that IMO:

:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...remain-n753936

Makes sense. Also the diet for people living in inner cities would tend to be poor I would think. Fast food joints on every block but very few fresh markets so their diet would be heavy on refined sugar, fatty foods and carbs. A healthy diet is a major factor in warding off disease.

I just want to say this that NT has now registered its 6th day in a row where no new cases have been reported.

And from a broader Australian perspective that I reckon it is premature the talk about lifting preventative measures given that some believe the curve has well and truly been flattened. It was always going to be the case where if people were told not to undertake any non-essential travel and work from home if you could that Australia was going to experience a decrease in the number of cases detected with the warm weather here still but the big problem is 6 to 8 weeks time when it becomes colder where we will again be in the midst of a severe crisis. So the authorities are in a position where they can't really bend on these preventative measures until we get to about October when the weather is warmer and the cases, from winter, while not being terrible because of the measures taken will still be on a downward trend like what we are seeing now in Australia. But at least then you have the weather you can bank on but some preventative measures like working from home will have to remain.

The growth was already happening before that. Raymer's win was the last ME totally played at Binion's before they moved to the Rio. (Only Hachem's Final Table was at Binion's).
That year, the main event finished at the end of May and it was madness in terms of numbers vs available space. They just had to move to a larger space.
I don't think they were able to use the same dates at the Rio for 2005 due to pre-booked conventions, hence the two month shift.
The growth was happening anyway.

You could argue that if they had been able to keep the old 2 month window, there would've been even bigger numbers as all these dads wouldn't be using up time when their kids are off school. I'm sure there are plenty of parents who can't play the WSOP as it is because they want to go on vacation with their children.

Only a total moron would make that argument.

Oh wait.

Yes, a bit off topic, but still interesting. Anyhow, I think you're the one who doesn't understand regulatory frameworks or technology. The casino business is one of the most regulated out there. Yet casinos get cheated all the time. Think its only angle-shooters and inside jobs like with Phil Ivey? Think again.

Just look at some of the stuff that has gone on with slot machines...

https://www.888casino.com/blog/slot-...asino-industry

The fact that we are in a digital era doesn't mean cheating is going to become harder. The opposite. This is why digital security is a booming business.

I'm not saying casinos are going to mess with the computers for some sort of gain. They would not risk that. But individuals certainly could and would.

Most places use Bravo to track Rewards Program Points ... Dealers even log Players out of hands when they step away.

I don't get into the pits much, but I do play a game called Ultimate Texas Holdem and I try for the 'last' seat similar to a lot of Blackjack players. Whenever a new Player sat down I would increase my bet since I would now get the Dealer hole cards. This bet was very successful though it certainly wasn't even close to a legitimate sample size.

Now the casino has added two cut cards and the Dealer gets their cards off the deck after the Board. They say that they added the cut cards because some of the Dealers were inadvertently exposing the Dealer hand when they transferred it from the shuffler to the felt.

I'm not really a huge conspiracy guy, but just think about the shuffler's ability to place the two cut cards exactly where they need to go for the game! I'm not really suggesting that there's a guy behind the curtain rigging poker hands either ... but I'm not going to sit here and say that it's not possible. GL

PS ... Back to WSOP ...

I don't think it would be wise to fully open back up Vegas until pretty much all the states are back open for business and IMO it's hard to tell when that will be. Folks from certain states are supposed to 14-day self-quarantine when they change location or are experiencing symptoms. How do you 'police' that in Vegas? No one is going to roll into town and sit in a hotel for two weeks before exposing themselves to the rest of the city.

Presumably we will be past that, but what if NY, MI and maybe some 'new' state is still having issues ... Do you ban them from Vegas?

It will be a feeding frenzy since I'm assuming that LOTS of reservations have not been canceled and if people can travel, they will. So I think the WSOP will almost be forced to put out something 'significant' or the casinos that are open at that time (probably a lot in June) will just scoop up that opportunity to entice Players into their facilities. GL

The summer is when Americans go on vacation. Parents for the most part can’t go on extended vacation while their children are in school, and many people have jobs where they can’t take extended vacations during the Spring or Fall. I know if the WSOP were in April or October, I would almost never be able to play in it.

Parents for the most part won't go on extended vacation without their children when their children are off school.

Yes, I am aware of summer camp, but it's pretty much exclusively a US thing.

Oddly I know a bit thru 10 years of direct working experience in regulated land-based casinos with personal, corporate, and product licensing in most US states and a few intl (100% of it in electronic table games space).

Strings on a coin, magnets, slugs etc and the two notorious and always mentioned cases in your article aside,, I'll stand by all I said about the near impossibility and ludicrous suggestion of an epoker table in a regulated casino not dealing a fair deck .

There is a long list of valid reasons you might not want to play on them but if rigged is the reason, then OK, but I'll have to put you on the list of people who probably think the moon landing was faked as well.

(I promised not to mention etables for 7 days, so please save this post and read it on Friday)

No need to reply. I think we are at an impasse. While online poker is not as regulated as B&M casinos, one would think that online poker companies would go to great lengths to make sure their games are on the up an up. And yet, we have seen numerous cheating scandals involving technology in online poker. This is one of the main reasons I don't play online. And one of the main reasons I would be skeptical of digital poker. But caveat emptor I suppose.

Can somebody, anybody, explain to me the cognitive dissonance of how in Canada wearing masks is "no longer discouraged" but in some American municipalities it's illegal to go outside without a mask?

Is our scientific understanding of the role of masks in the prevention of disease transmission evolving fluidly or something? Shouldn't the jury have been out on this like back in 1800 sometime? How is this still some sort of debatable scientific anomaly?

I was reading the WHO site earlier today. They recommend only medics need masks, and that there is no need for the public to wear them, unless infected in which case wear one to stop passing on the infection.

But the crazy thing is, as so many are infected but unaware, it does make sense to have people wearing masks, to stop unwittingly passing on infection. But the stupid experts don't realise this.

I'd be curious where this is true.

Early in the process there was a combination of two factors leading authorities to not recommend masks:

1) a shortage of masks and wanting to reserve them for people on the front lines in healthcare and,

2) no scientific basis for the idea that wearing masks would do a lot to protect the individual wearing the mask. In fact there are reasons to believe this could make things worse if you're constantly bringing your hands close to your face to fiddle with the mask.

Now, after some time, both factors have evolved...

1) there are now more masks available through all the crazy logistics efforts being made and,

2) while I don't think there is any additional evidence that wearing masks protects the wearer to any large degree, I think there is a growing body of evidence that there are a pretty large number of carriers who are asymptomatic and wearing masks protects others from them. This is particularly true since asymptomatic carriers would be more likely to venture out in public

And so you see governing bodies pivoting towards "suggesting" mask can be worn as a strategy to battle the spread of the virus.

There's no downside to mask wearing. The whole dialog is ******ed.

https://abc7.com/health/covid-19-la-...rder-/6093020/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...288_story.html

Edit: I understand supply had to be steered in the direction of healthcare professionals, that doesn't mean they had to spin a whole web of nonsense about the usefulness of masks. They could have just said **** you, the doctors get them for now, and all reasonable people would've been okay with that.

Healthcare workers can't keep 2m away.
When you go shopping, you can.

People who wear masks can get a false sense of confidence and are more likely to stray into the 2m. The masks don't cover your eyes, and not all of them cover your nose.

Sort of peripheral to my main gripe though, which is who really gives AF who says what about masks? If they're on the market and available and you can afford them and would like to wear them then wear them. I do not understand why globally there's like 20,000 news articles asking questions about whether citizens are ALLOWED to wear masks when the environment is in some counties you HAVE to wear masks.

Like I'm sorry, but when exactly did I bow the knee to some extranational authoritarian regime? What the hell happened to planet earth LOL.

You're still mostly dancing on the periphery bud.