Karma

Nicholas: And you really believe that just because you publish children's books, people are going to care about my reputation? You can have pictures of me wearing nipple rings, butt-fucking Captain Kangaroo. The only thing they care about is the stock and whether that stock is up or down!

"The Game"

I did want to mention in the last post that I have taken on the advice offered from Duggle, and I am now calling for the 2 of hearts each time I am ahead and the money is all in (unless the villainous opposition needs that card). So far the system is 5 for 5, and the one time I forgot to do it, my opponent spiked a four outer to send me to the rail.

Is it stupid that I am putting so much merit into this? Yes it is. But what can you do?

Tonight I head back to the tournament directors gig at the pub. I’ve promised myself that if I don’t get paid this week then the dream is over...well, that is if your dream was to spend a few hours in a pub watching people go all-in with Q8 suited and win, then yes the dream will be over.

Noble poker have seen it within their wisdom to give me another $10 to muck around with. Hey, what do I care? It’s doing well, up to $25 or so, but this is what has always happened when they do this and I end up loosing it all sooner or later. We’ll see what happens this time.

So the whole blogging Universe is talking about the players getting busted for playing multiple accounts, and their lame excuses for doing it. I have to say, what did you expect? It is obviously an unethical approach to the game, I would have been surprised if they came out and said “Yep, I cheated, shame on me”. Of course, it does make you think how many others are doing it and getting away with it.

Which reminds me of this doco I saw on Discovery once about casino cheats. I agree with what everyone else has said, imagine if these guys got caught in a real casino trying to cheat. After going through all the ways people have tried to cheat before, inside jobs and card counting techniques, the head of security of one casino gave two pieces of advice that I think must be part of the mantra of casino security, and both of the recent cheats caught would have to agree with them.

Firstly, you haven’t lost a cent until you’ve paid them. They might have swindled all those chips into their pockets, but until they turn them into cash and walk out the door, it isn’t over. These two guys had close to half a million dollars taken off them collectively, money they had already “won” – is won the right word? – and had sitting in their bankrolls. What happens? *PING* Just like that it is gone, either to the coffers of the house or redistributed (which was a nice touch from Pokerstars).

And secondly, he gave the advice that you may cheat the house once, twice or even a thousand times. But if they catch you just once, they win. The house always wins.

There is no such thing as a famous cheat, they always get caught to become famous. I think we have two people that have just entered online folklore.

Do you think Lee Jones will offer them a position in security trying to catch other cheats? Me thinks not. But then again, he probably won’t make them dig their own graves out in the Nevada desert, so they were pretty lucky.

I think another sad thing is that these guys can obviously play. Sure, they used foul tactics and have all the resources of online programs at their finger tips, but to even be able to play those levels successfully they must have some poker smarts (if no common sense).

So where are they playing now? Do online poker sites share details of players caught cheating? Not that it isn’t easy for them to play under another different name, but one wonders…

Do you think people at the 1c/2c tables are running multiple accounts?