Posts Tagged ‘play online poker’

Tom Breitling offers Reasons for Ultimate Poker Struggles

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

Ultimate Poker’s initial year in the US online gaming market didn’t exactly finish out in dream fashion. In Nevada, where they’ve been offering online poker since last April, Ultimate’s player base fell from 180-220 hourly-cash-game players last summer to its current low of 55 players. As for New Jersey, UP’s online poker revenue dropped from $100k in March to $50k in April. So yeah, there’s a little bit of a reason to worry.

So has Ultimate’s CEO, Tom Breitling, hit the panic button yet? Not yet, and he actually seems pretty optimistic about where the US online gaming market’s future is going. Through a video called “Year One: Lessons Learned – Market Size,” Breitling talks about how several factors are currently holding internet gaming back.

The key hurdle that Breitling discusses in the video is “friction.” What’s causing this friction is all of the extra steps that players have to take to play online poker. In the past, the biggest headache that players had involved the depositing process, which usually wasn’t that bad. Now they have to provide a lot more, as Breitling explained with this statement:

People who’d played online poker in the past never had to go through this new, detailed process filled with extra clicks. No company ever before had asked for a Social Security Number or for geolocation information. It was like asking people to take their shoes off and step through a metal detector at the airport after years of walking straight to the gate.

The red tape isn’t the only thing holding Ultimate Poker and other legal US sites back. Breitling covers some other good points in the video, including how very few other states are running legal poker operations. Check out Breitling’s speech below:

Staying focused during Live Poker Games

Tuesday, November 6th, 2012

Many grinders these days like to play online poker because of the convenience and ability to get more hands in per hour. But that’s not to say the live poker scene is dead because many players feel they still have a big edge here. The only problem involves keeping this edge since it’s harder to stay focused during the lengthy process of playing live hands.

First the dealer has to deal cards to everybody. Then players decide how much they want to bet, which involves lots of chip counting. Finally, there’s no official timer in live games like with online poker, and this can sometimes lead to people abusing decision-making time.

Taking all of this into account, it’s not always easy staying focused during live poker sessions. However, there are a few tips that can help you with this process, and here’s a look at some of the best ones.

Use some Motion in between Hands – One way to keep yourself into the live action is to have some sort of motion in between each hand. For example, you could move your chip stacks around or count chips while waiting. No matter what the motion is, you’ll be able to reset your brain following each hand.

Don’t stop thinking when Hands end – When we’ve folded, most of us like to enter La-La land and stop concentrating on the game. However, you can keep your focus better by sticking with hands after folding your cards. This could involve either thinking about what you’d do as an opponent in each situation, or acting like you are still playing a hand.

Constantly analyze Opponents – One very simple way to stay in the game is by mentally documenting each move your opponents make. Sure you might not pick up on everything this way, but as long as you are trying to figure out what each opponent is doing, you’ll rarely get bored with live poker.

Online Poker removed from Wire Act – Legal Now?

Monday, December 26th, 2011

In a surprise bit of news the other day, the US Department of Justice clarified the Wire Act of 1961, and stated that online poker is no longer considered in violation of this law.

This is a pretty big victory for online poker in the United States because the Wire Act outlaws gambling when it crosses from state to state. Seeing as how internet poker no longer falls under the Wire Act any longer, it’s not technically illegal.

Of course, it was never “illegal” for people to play online poker – except in the state of Washington – but it’s still good news that federal lawmakers no longer consider internet poker breaking the law. Instead, the only online wagering activity that the US government views as illegal now is online sports betting.

So does this mean that lawmakers are turning a blind eye towards online poker and chasing after sports betting operations instead? Absolutely not, and you can still expect the UIGEA to continue hampering US online poker until regulation and legalization is set in motion.

After all, the UIGEA prevents banks from dealing with gambling-related transactions, and this is the big reason why some poker sites have committed bank and wire fraud in order to service players. They need ways around the current laws, and unfortunately, these methods have turned out to be illegal in certain situations.

So while online poker may not fall under the Wire Act anymore, we still have a ways to go before those in the US are playing poker free and clear. With talk of regulation some time in 2012 or 2013, it may not be an eternity before the United States sees a better structure in place for online poker players. But we’ll have to wait until that day actually comes.

Daniel Negreanu back in Online Poker

Friday, August 26th, 2011

Like many people who live in the United States, Daniel Negreanu has not been able to play online poker at PokerStars. After all, the world’s largest online poker site pulled out of the American market following the US Department of Justice’s crackdown. Fortunately though, Negreanu was only kept out of the online games at PokerStars for a few months since he moved from Las Vegas to Canada.

Negreanu talked about the big move in his blog at FullContactPoker, and he began the post with the following:

It took a couple days, but I successfully set up shop in Toronto so that I can play on PokerStars again. I already had the Canadian passport, but just like everyone else, I needed to attain the necessary documents then wait for the call from PokerStars security to verify the phone number, and voila! I’m back in action! I jumped right into some $25-$50 PLO 6 max deep with ante games, and within 5 hands I lost my first buy in HAHA.

The last well-noted instance of Negreanu playing online poker was when he took on Viktor “Isildur1” Blom in the PokerStars SuperStar Challenge; Kid Poker lost the first matchup after quickly blowing his $150k buy-in, but he came back to win a rematch after finishing with $25k more than Blom.

Getting back to the blog post, Negreanu got a little controversial as he discussed how little freedom the US is giving people by taking away online poker. The Toronto-born player wrote this excerpt about the subject:

During the Cold War, the “Big, Bad, Communist, U.S.S.R.” was seen as an oppressive regime, while the U.S.A. represented freedom. Who woulda thunk, that to enjoy the freedom of playing poker online you’d have to move away from Los Angeles and and head to Moscow. That’s just bizarre.

Poker has changed dramatically over the last 40 years, and in order to survive, you have to adapt to the newer forms of poker, as well as adapt to new locations. These days, that just means, stay away from the U.S. because poker is on life support, but there are tons, and tons, of games across the globe to choose from.

Seeing as how the US is still in the middle of working out possible poker legislation, it seems like Negreanu is making the right move by going to Toronto now.