On This fun-filled episode of DonkDown radio I am joined by Hollywood Dave Stan to host a fun-filled hour and a half.  We touch on the giagantic UB data leak that dropped this week, where 3.something million user accounts and their personal data was leaked to the public.  We get a 3-team parlay play from 11 year old Jewish sports picker Menachum, and we discuss Goldfarb’s upcoming rendezvous with a female.

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The icy tendrils of winter are tightening their grip on the northern hemisphere and my sugar intake has increased 4000%. It’s December! Which, for the poker world, means not much at all. The felt is green all year round and money tastes as sweet as ever. Unless you play on Bodog or Everleaf, but we’ll get to that in good time.

Brits Can’t Stop Gambling

For now let’s start with some good cheer. UK gambling revenue increased to $4.2 billion during 2010, with bricks-and-mortar accounting for almost two thirds of that figure. Gambling is traditionally a recession resistant industry and in a country with an open – but properly regulated – market that adage appears to ring true. Noted number crunchers PriceWaterhouseCoopers predict that this UK uptick is part of global trend that will see gambling revenues increase 10% per year until 2015. [Independent]

Bodog Anonymous

Last week, Bodog unveiled poker tables which hide your ID from other users. The intention was to protect bumbling recreational gamblers from being stalked by evil grinders and their advanced HUD software. It didn’t work. Hackery hacking guys hacked into the client with their hack machines and hacked the whole thing to pieces. At least that’s what this article from data-miners HH Smith sounds like to me. At the very least, it says makes some important points about the responsibilities companies have to protect the privacy of their customer’s information. [HH Smithy]

Everleaf isn’t for Everyone

Over at the Everleaf Network, they’ve taken a similar dislike to winning players. If you generate too much income one week, expect to be barred from certain tables the next. Users are assigned a rating that accords with how much profit or loss they have recently made. Pass a certain ratings threshold and you’ll be penned into a small area with all the other successful players. And just in case you harboured any hopes of a clueless fish wandering into your sharks-only game, any player attempting to join a high rating table is presented with a pop-up encouraging them to find a seat elsewhere. [Poker Fuse]

Time for Contemplation at the AGCC

Amid the fallout from the collapse of Full Tilt, the Alderney Gambling Control Commission took a lot of heat from irate onlookers. In response to that criticism, Excecutive Director Andre Wilsenach has announced an independent review of the process that lead to revocation of Full Tilt’s operating license. The inquiry will be conducted by Peter Dean, the former chair of the British Gambling Commission and will be all important and official and stuff. [Poker Strategy]

The writing of this roundup has been punctuated by occasional bouts of rage as my football team of choice concede goals against inferior opposition. Quite literally as this sentence is being typed, we’ve pulled a goal back with 3 minutes remaining. Check the tone of next week’s column to discover if we’ve won or lost.

Security risks seem to be the name of the game this week, with UB and Bodog making headlines for all the wrong reasons. On the plus side, the $1 million One Drop Foundation tournament seems to be in good shape, and Pokerstars broke another world record for the size of their tournaments. Found out about this and more on this week's show.

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It’s been a few weeks since my last post but the grinding hasn’t stopped. Well, actually I didn’t play much at all over the Thanksgiving weekend as I spent the holiday in Palm Springs with some family. Here are some photos!

I went into a bit of a breakeven stretch over the following four sessions. I have only myself to blame for this because I failed to use any sort of anti-jinx methodology. For example, say you send a tweet talking about how hard you’re crushing a game or how amazing you’ve been running at the tables. I usually don’t like to write such tweets because over 50 percent of the time they carry the jinx-virus, which will abruptly halt any and all rungood and stop it dead in its tracks. That being said, it is possible to tweet such thoughts to the twittersphere, but it would be foolish to do so without using anti-jinx protection. You’re simply putting yourself and your bankroll at risk without strapping on a hashtag along the lines of #plsdontjinxitkthx at the end of your happy tweets.

I don’t know why we call the poker gods, Gods, but we do. They seem more like a bunch of high school dropout, weird uncle, goofball idiots to me. When they abandon you, it is the filthiest, loneliest feeling you can imagine. But when they reflect their light on you for any kind of extended stretch, you feel, well, enlightened. Chosen. So in tune with everything you can hear the hum of the earth.

I somehow managed to sneak a $117 victory past the jinx-bouncers playing $1/$3NL at the Rio on the 1st of the month. But the next day when I ventured into the Palace of Caesar, his games of $1 and $3 were not so kind. I left @CLVPoker $400 lighter in the pocket, and followed that with a small $85 loss on the 3rd. My spirits were quickly risen on the very next day, which was a Thursday. Thursday evenings, as you should know by now, means Pokerati game night. The PLO/NL mixed game has treated me really well since its incarnation @PalmsPokerRm (#nojinxnojinxnojinx) and this particular Thursday brought happiness in the form of a $520 win, erasing losses from the previous two sessions. Unfortunately the breakeven stretch continued another day; on Friday I played a long, 10-hour session at the Rio dropping about $700 in frustrating fashion. Actually there was a pretty interesting hand from said session…

More…

WASHINGTON DC — About 110 people or so are in DC for the Digital Gaming and Lottery Policy summit … essentially a two-day crash course on gaming regulation. The DGLP confab is addressing everything from technology to legal quandaries to very detailed proposals on taxation breakdowns … like by the percent! We all know online gambling can be a complex issue, with lots of minutiae that can impact the success or failure of businesses built around a sub-industry. And the way American lawmakers are picking it all apart is enough to make you think that we musta either totally forgotten about Europe’s relatively successful regulation of a multibillion-dollar industry over the past decade, or we Americans just consider the other side of the pond nothing worth a study — they are responsible for Full Tilt, after all!

No? Regardless, as part of the process of eventually “getting there” legislatively, and staying true to Pokerati’s motto In Negotio Pro Poker Meliori, my contribution to policy noise today will be addressing online cheating. Below are my notes from which I plan to wonk out with my donk out:

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Badge of Dishonor? Once upon a time the idea of Russ Hamilton wearing the scarlet triangle of Full Tilt Poker seemed laughable.

There seems to be a big gaming conference somewhere in the world every other week. iGaming, iPoker, internet gambling, eGaming … whatever you call it, lots of people seem to want to know how this real-money internet gaming thing is gonna work, or should work — and they apparently have specific questions about online poker.

Thus, a handful of policy-minded pokeraticos are headed to Washington DC next week for the Digital Gaming and Lottery Policy Summit. I’ll be speaking on a panel with Dan Cypra from Pocket 5s and Stephen Davis, CEO of IT GlobalSecure. Our topic (moderated by eGaming broker Sue Schneider):

As interactive gaming and gambling products become more sophisticated, so do fraudsters. Here panelists look at cheating in poker (particularly player collusion and the use of poker “bots”), the danger to players and the potential devastation of operators; how fraud is being effectively dealt with; examples of attempts to cheat (both successful and unsuccessful) and how they were detected/why they were not detected.

The basic premise I’ll be addressing is that not all cheating in online poker is the same. Ghosting, multi-accounting, soft-play, superusering, collusion, etc. are all different offenses, and a one-size-fits-all-but-friends approach to bankroll seizure and account suspension probably ain’t gonna cut it moving forward. (At least that’s what I’ll be pushing for various regulator and lawmaker types in attendance to consider.)

Our ole pal Tom Schneider introduced me to the idea back in 2007, when we left the recorder running for a Beyond the Table aftershow. Sorrel Mizzi was the hot name in cheating at the time … but Tom didn’t think his MAing with Chris Vaughan FTW was too terrible a crime, and certainly not the worst of all shenanigans beginning to emerge in online poker. This was shortly before Russ Hamilton had been discovered and subsequently vilified without getting any days in court, and LOL some of the things I say revealing that I still clearly subscribed to the soon-to-be dated belief that online poker could do no wrong.

Beyond the Table (Extra)
December 9, 2007

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POKER CON? Lo Toney plays his cards close to the vest when questioned about Zynga’s entrée into casinoville and supposed disinterest in the future of real-money online play.

Wall Street is buzzing about a coming Zynga IPO — set for December 15, according to the Huffington Post — and what it may or may not say about social gaming industry valuations and overall US economic health in a more-global internet age. Expected to raise at least $10 billion, this hotly anticipated initial public offering (one born of poker, mind you) could well be the biggest financial news in the history of our beloved little game.

Big Casinos are paying close attention, of course. It’s a fine line these days between social gaming and online gambling, particularly in a multinational economy built on virtual currency. I spoke with Zynga Poker General Manager Lo Toney a couple weeks ago … he wouldn’t make “forward-looking statements” about the IPO, and as per usual denied any interest in the future of legalized real-money online gambling … even as the company announced further steps into the casino world.

Toney had just two big developments to push — Zynga’s second live tournament event (he was really excited about Zynga players getting to compete against newly crowned WSOP champ Pius Heinz) and the opening of the new Zynga Casino … starting with Bingo, remade to appeal to grandmothers and the “younger generation” alike, he says.

But beyond the promo that usually would have little appeal to a grizzled old Poker blog like Pokerati, we did at least get to touch on the recent removal of tobacco (and water bongs) from the Zynga gift shop, my personal addiction to the Zynga Poker iPhone app, and the advantages, challenges, and social responsibilities that come with being able to market your poker (and now casino) games to 13-year-olds.

Have a listen …

Pokerati Interviews Lo Toney
November 16, 2011

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Even if Toney is totally sincere about Zynga’s indifference to the possibility of legalized online gambling in the future, brick-and-mortar casinos are still actively trying to emulate Zynga’s social gaming success. No wonder the company appears so well-suited for such a big investment in the next generation of poker player and casino patrons as they come of age.

This week we’re heading back to Macau – the Las Vegas of the Orient – to discover why Phil Ivey was really hanging out at the APPT. Here’s a clue: It has to do with playing poker for stupid amounts of money. Plus, a social media development that will surely plunge my homeland into an endless spiral of degeneracy or, alternatively, transform the nation into a utopia of Teutonic smugness. Depends on how the cards fall.

Megabucks in Macau

All eyes turned to the East last week, as the global poker media witnessed the long awaited return of Phil Ivey. Turns out, he’d been there all along, sat in a $1,300/$2,300 cash game chocked full of rich Chinese businessmen. Apparently ‘The Big Game’ has permanently moved continents and if the high rollers are still in town come 2013, they’ll be first in line for a 500 player tournament organized by Macau big wigs. The event, which has the support of local businesses, is mooted to feature an incredible $100 million prize pool. [Poker News]

PokerStars Join Soccer Brawl in Germany

PokerStars has recently joined soccer on the list of things the rest of the world enjoys more than Americans. To commemorate this fact, the world’s largest online poker site have recently announced a sponsorship deal with the German football team, VfB Lübeck. However, this not only a straightforward business arrangement. PokerStars have been vocal supporters of planned gambling legislation introduced by the state of Schleswig-Holstein, in which Lübeck is located. Rules which would fly in the face of those proposed by the German government. [CardPlayer]

Gambling on Facebook coming to the UK

Our final news nugget for today is undoubtedly the shiniest. Social networking megaliths Facebook have made detailed plans to provide real money online gambling in the UK. Soon, the denizens of this sceptred isle will be able to ‘like’ an inane photo of their gurning acquaintances and then stack off their entire bankroll all on the same platform. The likes of 888 are reportedly in talks to acquire a Facebook license, with FB credits being used in place of the pretend dollars we’ve been playing with up until now. [Tech Crunch]

At the end of this column I often say something like, ‘if I’m still here next week’ preceded by a flippant comment about one thing or another, but this time, I’m genuinely concerned for my well being. My fiancée has passed into another hemisphere for two months and there’s a very real chance that in seven days time I will be buried under my own ineptitude. So, if I’m still here next week…