Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Click2Pay ewallet info

11Finger is running the first ever Pinoy online tourney this Sunday, Oct. 1. He's asked me to put together a quick post informing people how to sign up for a Click2Pay ewallet account to be able to fund an online account.

The tournament is being held on the Ongame/Pokerroom Network, so if you play on any sites supported by the network you can play 11finger's tourney.

FBAPoker is a site my group put together last December to make it easy for Asian-based players to create and fund online accounts. In partnership with Click2Pay, we have enabled semi-nontraditional ways to deposit.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to
FBAPoker.com and create a user account
2. On the site, go to cashier and choose Click2Pay
3. You will be presented with the online signup process.
4. You will have the option of either funding your account with a credit card or a bank wire transfer if you do not have a credit card.
5. If you use a credit card, a Click2Pay employee will call you to confirm; if you opt for the bank transfer, you'll get a confirmation email that your account has been enabled
6. You then go to your bank and remit, via wire, funds to your Click2Pay account. There is a bank deposit form available on the Click2Pay website to be completed. You can also contact me for the form.
7. It takes 3-4 business days for your C2P account to be credited. You can then deposit directly to the poker site.
8. Credit card deposits are instantaneous.

It may be a little late at this stage to get the C2P account funded via bank wire and still make the Sunday tourney, but if you do it now, you'll be able to easily play subsequent tourneys.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Cebu Weekend

Dirty Ice Cream gave me a call last Tuesday asking me to come down to Cebu for a tournament being run by the Cebu Players Club. It was a birthday tourney, being held for Nonoy Tirol, proprietor of the Rajah Park Hotel and major personality at the Cebu Players Club.

I thought it would be a great reason to get out of town and visit Cebu for the first time – I’ve heard lotsa good things about the city. So Barb and I rushed out, bought a couple of tickets, and got on a big old jet airliner last Friday.

We arrived at the hotel to see that the place was tailor made for us. The Cebu Players Club was running a ring game in a private function room, and the entire 2nd floor was occupied by a slot machine arcade! Now, if you know me and Barb, you’ll know that if you stick poker and slots in front of us, you’ll likely see a big smile on our faces.

Tito Nonoy, the celebrant, sponsored our hotel rooms, so we got an almost-100% comped suite to stay in. The service was impeccable…

We were joined by a crew of manila poker types, including Dirty Ice Cream, Mischa, Checkpoint Louie, Cousin Sean, Big Wally, and a group of guys from Sky.

All in all, there was a crew of about 13 of us from Manila, which made for a good-old 2-day party, to say the least.

We played some ring Friday night, starting at 25-50NL, then 50-100NL, going all the way to 100-200NL. I got lucky and cashed, having quadrupled up, and freerolling for the 5K buyin for the tourney the next day (that’s 5K with a 5K rebuy AND a 5K addon!)

The tournament was done shootout style, with 2 players from each table advancing to the final. Barb made it to the final, as did Cousin Sean, Dennis, and Cho from Manila. Sean topped the Manila list, finishing 2nd.

All in all, it was a fun weekend of poker and gambling in general. As for our first time in Cebu, Barb and I were able to see four poker tables and about 12 slot machines. That was the extent of our sightseeing. We will, however, be back for sure to take in a couple of beaches.

If you wanna get away, the Rajah Park in Cebu’s the place to go. What more can you ask for than a fine hotel that treats poker players like VIPs.

Thanks again to Nonoy, Richard (our TD), and the other Cebu Players Club folks for showing us a great time.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Handcuffing the Game

The blogs and boards have been awfully quiet about last Friday night's NBI raids on a couple of semi-regular poker games around the metro. It's Monday morning, and only Maverick has touched on Friday's events in any detail.

Perhaps it's because none of us have any real details on the raids. I've received a few phone calls with a tidbits of "info" here and there about the raids. I can't confirm any of them, as I thankfully wasn't around to have to deal with the stormtroopers. All I can do is wish those involved the very best. Poker players are not criminals; they are simply seeking venues in which to sociably improve their skills, have a good time, or in the case of the pros, ply their trade. The trauma of an NBI raid would shake up the social players, that's for sure, and is certainly a setback to further growth in the market.

The reality is this: PAGCOR runs a cardroom in the Metro, specifically at the Airport Casino Filipino in Paranaque. The room is almost 1 year old (opened December 17), and boasts 11 tables, spreading 20/40, 50/100, 100/200 NLHE.

I was one of the folks involved in designing and launching that cardroom.

Its early incarnation delivered value for the nascent poker community in one MAJOR respect: it was legal. It was situated in a professionally run PAGCOR casino. It was championed whole-heartedly by then Senior Branch Manager JB Bangsil (now running the Hyatt), and his great staff, from operations to marketing.

When I say early value, I mean that specifically. I ceased my involvement with the card room (save tournaments, which I helped them operate, along with Marco and Ed of PBT, until August, 2006) when I began to depart philosophically with its policies. On the cash game side, I sensed an urgency on PAGCOR's topside to earn as much revenue from those tables as quickly as possible. Thus my concerns about the long-term wisdom P10K max buy-ins in a 20/40 NL table, among other things like maximum rake levels, went largely unheeded.

Over the next few months, it became clear that the "grinder" market, those with modest bankrolls and sophisticated enough to know when they're underdogs in a given environment, would be looking elsewhere for their action.

So here we were, early in 2006, with one legal room in the metro (in the southern metro, no less, where the population is clearly thinner than the north), spreading games under policies that price many, many players out of regular play.

Nature abhors a vacuum. It naturally became realistic for others to spread games that were more accessible, both from a proximity and financial standpoint. They succeeded. They got raided. Guess what? They're unlikely to go away.

Poker is inherently and historically a home game. As it bled into popular culture, it found itself a major part of the casino landscape (it was always there, but a always a bit-player). But it remains ingrained in the home. People do not tend to view friendly poker games, even when held outside a traditional residence, as frightening as, say, an underground baccarat game.

Many of my friends have very publicly stated that the private games feed the government games, as they develop and promote the game to the markets they easily reach. The government's job in such a value-and-market building relationship would be to spread accessible, legal games in more than one venue. That would work.

The casinos ought to do everything in their power to protect players from going bust too soon. spreading only NLHE with big max buys relative to the blinds may earn rake revenue at a faster clip, but it'll kill Beginner Bob's bankroll faster than you can say "All-In".

I'm told that one of the venues shut down last Friday featured a very small game, accessible to the learners and end-of-the-week-unwinders. These guys weren't making loads of cash off this game...but they were building up a playing community.

Anyway, it is what it is...my comments above are simply my opinions, and I hope those affected this weekend got out painlessly.

Friday, September 15, 2006

What I do when I catch someone string-betting

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Seeking PSP

Guys,

My daughter's turning 7, and to celebrate, barb and i wanna buy her a sony PSP! If anyone has a great deal on a new one, with as many accessories as possible, with a price that'll beat the greenhills numbers, please comment asap. Need it by tomorrow heheh.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Wynn Macau and another thing...

Just got back from a 2-day trip to Macau, where I was lucky enough to partake in the opening week ceremonies for the 600-room Wynn Macau Resort and Casino. At about 1/3rd scale of the Wynn in Vegas (the Vegas Wynn has 2700 rooms), the Macau edition is nonetheless a fabulous place...a 200-table casino, ballrooms, restaurants, and all the amenities, it's a great place to hang out, even if you're not gambling. Mind you, you'll wanna gamble to try to get back the money you'll spend on the USD$400 a night rooms.

No poker yet, but Jack Binion's running it. And insiders tell me we should see some tables spread in 2007.

Part of the buzz at the Wynn, at least around the online gaming guys, was the recent arrest of Peter Dicks, Chairman of SportingBet PLC, parent company of Paradise Poker. Mr. Dicks was arrested September 7th in New York, on an arrest warrant issued by the State of Louisiana, which, like Washington State, has aggressively enacted legislation that criminalizes online sports wagering. Based on some other articles I've read, Louisiana doesn't seem to be making a distinction between sportsbetting and poker. But I haven't seen the actual legislation.

Are the doors in the US really shutting? Will things reverse from a player's perspective? It used to be that it sucked to be living here and trying to play online on international sites. It still sucks, for the most part. With the US lowering the boom, however, we'll see more and more companies aiming directly at us over here in Asia. Things should get easier for us then...

Monday, September 04, 2006

The Nation's Best Bet

This weekend, I witnessed another important milestone in local poker. A bunch of guys from the northside ran a 5-table NLHE tourney. "No big deal", you say? "Tourneys are a dime a dozen"? Well, this one was different. It was what I would call a gambler's (or at least tournament player's) dream come true. It was an early Christmas present.

Patterned after the 3-day WSOP NLHE event, it had several features that made it stand out:

1. Everybody started with a deep stack (T10,000 vs starting blinds of 50-100).
2. Levels were 1 hour long, with the final table playing 1.5 hr levels
3. Blind escalations were slow, with everybody starting with 100BB in their stacks
4. As mentioned above, 50 players sat (10-handed tables)
5. A big, guaranteed prize pool.

So what did we have? Small field, big pot, deep stack, slow levels. By all accounts a good bet.

The event ran over 3 days, with Day 1 playing down to 30 players. Day 2 took us to the final table, and Day 3 finished the thing.

And what a finish! The final table was populated by a good bunch of people that nobody was surprised to see there. It was a tough final table, and the folks sitting represented a gamut of specializations, most of them regular players either in big time ring, tourney players, online players. Several people who made the final have already logged big numbers in tourney cashes both live and online.

With 1.5 hr levels at the FT, the endgame was fun as hell to watch, as most had ample time to play poker and exhibit their skills as opposed to push all their chips in as they got short. It was a battle of player vs. player rather than player vs. the blinds.

It took a while to get to the bubble (7 places paid), and even longer to get past it. Again, a result of the blinds lagging well behind the average chip stack. The ITM play was great, because there were really only two players or so that were under real pressure due to stack size.

The final 3 decided to chop a significant pot. With 370K left, the chip leader at the time, Derek, the bracelet wearing PPT champ and real nice guy, picked up 130K. Barbie and Ken (hahahah) grabbed 120K each. All in all, a beautiful deal, with everybody locking in a great payday.

With the financial arrangements out of the way, the three played on till a champ was crowned. The eventual win was clocked by none other than my wife Barb, whose win made me real proud and compelled me to order yet another drink to celebrate.

So kudos to the winners, the final table finishers, and the folks who played for knowing a good bet when they saw one.

Congratulations and thanks to the guys who saw a need for this sort of structure and put it together and guaranteed a pool. We now know that this will be a critical feature of the tourney landscape from now on.

Great job to the TD and staff, who ran a smooth, professional event.

Nice...