The second running of the Battle of the Bloggers on FaceUp Gaming is Saturday, June 30 at noon PT. To play, just click here and use the bonus code “Pokerati” when you sign up. True invitational freeroll — no charge to play, no credit card to enter, and the tournament is open only to followers of Alcanthang, Ante Up, Pocket Fives, Pokerati, Dr. Check Raise, and THPT … so you have to attach yourself to one of the above.
Tournament name: Bloggers Only
Password: battle2
Top 20 finishers get prizes — ranging from an iPad for 1st to sundry clothing swag to points that leave you eligible for future tournaments … and oh yeah, don’t forget Blue Shark Optics. They also have some poker books by Tom McEvoy as prizes, which may or may not be a way for the perennial Hall of Fame bridesmaid to empty his garage.
We didn’t exactly do very well last time — I’m claiming technical difficulties and you can’t prove otherwise without a subpoena! — so I’m hoping for a better showing this go-round. Let’s collude on video with Team AlCantHang! show those nerds from Pocket 5s who’s boss! Arrrghh, yeah, poker poker poker POKER!! A game where bullies can still be winners, too.
Again, play here, play now. And it would be really cool if you told them Pokerati is your favoritest blog i the whole wide poker world — super duper cool if you doing so while giving a subscription membership a go. 14-day free trials still available.
Did you know Barack Obama uses an iPad?
This time we mean it … true freeroll, open registration. Come play for kicks on the new Face-Up Gaming poker site … minimal info required to sign up and play. This will be the first ever blogger tourney with live video interaction capabilities … as our blog-friendly pals at Face Up Gaming want to see their software in action with rough-and-tumble users. Seriously, not to get all tech-geeky, but think of the new dimension of trash talk we can enter with this.
To make it worth your while, Face Up has thrown together some prizes, including a cruise to the Bahamas, some sunglasses, and some swag. Yay, cool … but the real prize, I think, is in the lasts-longest they’ve made special for readers of Pokerati (and Pocket 5s, Ante Up Magazine, and AlCantHang.com). That’s an ipad for each, if I’m understanding things right. We’ve come a long way since the days when people played for an iPod Nano.
More info here.
Date: Saturday, June 9
Time: 13:00ET
Game: NLHE
Buyin: Freeroll
Password: BATTLE (password is case sensitive)
Face-Up Gaming is showing they mean business in the online space by doing more than Full Tilt could do and actually paying out players. They recently had an interesting $10k freeroll where 60 percent of the 316-player subscription field won real American cash prizes, including a $2,500 payday for the winner.
Register here. (And enter ‘Pokerati’ to beat me out of that iPad.)
We’ve got a new highly unscientific poll up. I’m curious … where do you like to go for information on players — whether it’s to see how a well-known entity has done over the course of a career or to see just WhoTF some new-name is?
Cast your vote over yonder in the sidebar on your right.
Totally subjective criteria. And though there have long been accusatory murmurs about who steals data from whom, I’m looking at the thoroughness and accuracy of their records, ease of use, and any creative touches that make theirs different. Though I suspect others exist* sites I’ve visited for player stats and (live or online) tourney results include:
Bluff
CardPlayer
Hendon Mob
PokerListings
PokerPages
Trying to decide on one as my go-to source.
* and some I knowingly omitted, like WSOP.com and WPT.com, because they include only their own tourneys, and what use is that to me beyond summing up totals?
NOTE: I also removed PocketFives from the list (they had no votes) … because they, similarly, only have profiles for their own members … though if you are looking for data and results from serious online screen names, they seem to have the best info, well-presented.
UPDATE: Just discovered (in the process of doing this post) PokerListings’ online-player database — complete with their cool MarketPulse thingy — and theirs may be better than P5’s.
Das könnte meine deutschen Freunde interessieren… PocketFives.com launched its German-language site (de.pocketfives.com) with news, a forum, and special promotions. Es ist wahr.
In the official press release, PocketFives co-founder Adam Small noted that the site hopes to expand the number of languages offered. (I vote for Italian, but I’m a little biased.)
PocketFives.com is home to 50,000 of the top online poker players in the world and quickly rose to the top after its launch in early 2005. Recently, the number of German members on the site has increased dramatically. PocketFives.com Co-Founder Adam Small explains what German users can expect: “Our goal is to become more involved in the German poker community. We’re reaching out with a new German forum and poker strategy articles (http://de.pocketfives.com/Group/Online-Pokerartikel) by some of the top poker minds on the planet.” Perhaps the most distinctive part of the PocketFives.com experience is the exclusive promotions that are available to members of the site. Small comments, “We’re excited to be planning promotions just for the German-speaking community. Make sure to check out the new site for details.”
Since I made some German friends this summer at the WSOP, I thought I’d kiss up so I have a place to stay if I visit Germany share a little news from the good ol’ U.S.
On March 6, UltimateBet acknowledged that at least one player exhibited an abnormal winning rate on its site. They noted that a third-party audit was in the works, and a complete and thorough investigation was promised.
A few interesting tidbits:
1. UB admitted that it was made aware of the allegations on January 12. They didn’t begin a formal investigation until March 6. It is now May 15, and not a peep has been heard from UB.
2. There are similarities between the UB scandal and the Absolute Poker scandal that stink of more than coincidence.
3. UB has not responded to inquiries on the subject.
A poster on 2+2 broke down the details of the scandal thus far. And Nat Arem posted on PocketFives that he has information that he simply cannot release (???) but assures the public that UB is working on the issue.
Not good enough. It has been too long. UB made the same mistakes as AP – taking too long to admit the problem, resolve it, and communicate with players about it. It is just unacceptable, and I, for one, will continue to publicize the scandal and recommend that players stay far away from Absolute Poker and UltimateBet. (This opinion does not necessarily reflect that of Pokerati.)
The BTT crew: Poker talk fused with gay jokes and fat commentary was all the rage in 2007.
Some of you have been wondering, why no new episodes of Beyond the Table? Tom, Karridy, and I have been wondering the same thing. It’s been a good run, and with drinks in the air, three guys who clearly love/hate the sounds of their own voices are calling it podcast quits.
Back when we started, our show about poker but not really about poker stood out as revolutionary in a sea of lame poker interviewcasts with questionable audio quality. Soon after iPod sales were booming as more and more of the world got hooked on downloading poker audio with funny intros and Angry Julie cameos. But Tom couldn’t handle the celebrity and Karridy developed a crack addiction lives got busy and producers for Beyond the Table fared about as well as drummers for Spinal Tap. The show hired Shamus at a fraction of a Cambodian farmer’s wage to pump up our numbers — did he ever get his T-shirt? — but with a new generation of poker podcasts getting better and stronger (Lou Kreiger, Gary Wise, 2+2, Pocket Fives, Ante Up, Poker Road, et al) old-school payola wasn’t enough to save us from going out on the podcast bubble.
Listen below to a heretofore unpublished episode (recorded on 2-27, my dream flop) as your favorite semi-amateur yammerers phone it in for the last and final-ish time:
Beyond the Table: Fin
[audio:BTT-2-27-08-remix.mp3]
Thanks for listening via RSS, iTunes, play-in-popup, and direct download … we already miss ourselves.
You can still prank call Karridy on the Beyond the Table listener line at 888-820-8091.
