online poker coming to the Canadian provinces

I saw a story recently where Loto-Québec is going to launch online poker. I also read that Ontario is thinking of launching a similar site.

To some this might seem like a good thing. It would seem to legitimize online poker more.

For me I'm concerned about it. Right now things are pretty good for online poker players in Canada. You can deposit money to the sites easily, [I'm told] you can withdraw your money easily and the banks will take the cheque no problem, we can play on whatever sites we choose for real money in the privacy of our homes without being hassled by the government about it. While online we can play against other Canadians or anyone in the world for that matter in cash games of any stakes or in play money, small buyin, and up to High Stakes Poker Tournament.

Here's what I'm concerned could happen if the Canadian provinces attempt to muscle in on the online poker scene. First the lotto corp declares legal monopoly rights over online poker. They make it illegal to play online for real money and pressure ISPs to block access to PokerStars, UB, Full Tilt, etc.

With only being able to play on the provincial lotto sites players would be required to enter their SIN number to be able to play. This becomes important below.

With a legal monopoly and a government agency running it and a limited player base the sites, games, security, software, support etc. will all suck. Rake will be prohibitive and it will be exactly like lotto tickets - the only people able to win will be favored insiders whose blatant cheating is disregarded.


Speaking of rake, with player SIN numbers the lotto will treat won pots as T4 taxable income while disregarding money lost at the tables. It could play out something like this.


A casual player sits down at $25 NL with $25. He then loses down to $10. Then he gets all in on the flop with a flush draw and catches on the river to double up to $20. He then leaves down $5 right? No the $10 he won in the all in is sent on a T4 in January as raw income and he has to pay $5 tax [at 50% tax, standard in Canada]. So he really lost $10. By requiring players to give their SIN number to play they can basically make it a raw cash grab from the captive players.


So all in all I hope this doesn't happen. Right now things are pretty good for Canadian online players and we don't need some government bureaucrats coming in to take it over and ruin it. A lot of bad could come of this and not much good.

on acid? uh no

I was playing $1/$2 at the local casino last night. It was around 11:30 PM or so.

So between hands, this guy two seats to my left asks me if I'm on acid. what the?? First I asked if he was talking to me. He said he was. He said he'd been at the table for two hours and during that time I hadn't played a hand or spoken. I guess he thought probably jokingly that I must have been spaced out on an acid trip to act like that.

Alas he was incorrect. I wasn't on anything. I do play tighter than most of my $1/$2 live opponents. Although at 25 hands an hour live that's only 50 hands without being dealt anything. Anyone who plays on the Internet knows you can go card dead for considerably longer than 50 hands. Although I'm sure I was involved in a couple of hands the previous two hours, he just didn't notice.

It's true I usually don't jump into the ongoing table banter. I'm not unfriendly, but I'm not real talkative. A lot of the regulars know each other well and so I'm not really part of that clique. And that's fine. I do talk, we got talking about pro football, pro hockey, where to buy Kem cards locally in Halifax, and my card protector [it's a New York Jets challenge coin I got on ebay]. I guess he just missed it.

He was pretty good natured and I didn't take it personally. Although the drug chat continued among some of them; and the guy to my direct left was going on for around an hour about how he'd like to go out for "a smoke". I don't know why he just didn't step out if he wanted a cigarette. I'm a bit slow on the uptake since as I was about to leave he and the guy two seats to my left did leave for their smoke. He asked me if I wanted to join them for a doobie. I politely declined and said I was leaving shortly and would be driving. lol


I don't normally talk about bad beats on this site. After all nobody cares about your bad beats. But this one I put on a guy last night at the casino was pretty bad. I'm dealt KK in the big blind with around $275. A loose kind of spaz player made it $5 in early position. Around 3 people call. Small blind who has around the same as me raises it to $25. I reraise to $75. Everyone folds and SB shoves for over $200. I didn't really think and quickly called. I've never folded kings preflop. We roll and of course he shows AA, lol.

Then an Ace flops and I'm thinking well I just dropped a buyin. The turn is some blank and the dealer mentions that I now have a flush draw. Of course the river is another diamond and I win the nearly $600 pot with runner runner flush lol. Horrible, an Internet hand. I felt bad about it but what can you do. Before the flop I was thinking I'd lost three times in a row preflop all in to overpairs [always to short stacks] so maybe I'd get my 25% here. Opponent said nothing and just stormed out, perhaps to the blackjack tables. That was a mistake. I would have quickly reloaded full if I was at a table where I could get it all in preflop with Aces.

smart poker players

I can`t think of a prominent poker player who is clearly dumb. But I can think of some smart ones. Action Dan Harrington former competitive chess player. Chris Ferguson PhD in math. Ed Miller worked at Microsoft. The great man David Sklansky is clearly a genius; which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill.

k I`m lazy and taking the path of least resistance here. But I`ve always dreamed of taking a shot. $22 is over my bankroll so I'd love to have a chance.


I have a  new computer plugged in after my old PC died. My Dell inspiron is running pretty well so far. Lots of poker stuff to download and install including HEM (had to install postgres first and separately because of windows 7 install glitch); PokerStars (was able to re-import my old notes, sweet); UltimateBet (now that my Stars reload bonus has expired I should play at UB again); pokerstove (I calculated that 72o vs KK has 12% equity, that hand came up playing live last weekend; 72o has 11% equity against AA, I guess because it's harder to make a wheel).

One issue is my new PC doesn't have MS office. I tried OpenOffice and that's fine for the spreadsheets but my old Access poker MDB won't load. I got a 60 day trial of office so that buys me a bit of time but I need to come up with some scheme. I may just use HEM only for results and put my live results just into a big spreadsheet. So basically get by without Access.

PokerStars blogger championship

The blogger freeroll is running again this year. I missed it last year. It looks like a week long event this time so I should be able to find time to participate. This is traditionally a very good freeroll with large overlay. The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 877925

2010 poker goals

Well its about time to think about my poker goals for 2010.

I did ok on my 2009 goals. It was a good poker year. I made my debut at $1/$2 NL at the local casino with modest success. I was up a little bit over a few visits there. I should try to get more live play in for 2010. The goal is to continue to chip up at $1/$2 live at the 2009 hourly winrate or better.

I'd like to try some live tournaments too in 2010. There's a $55 early bird tournament. That would be worth a shot. I may also try to satellite into some of the $200 or $500 monthly buyin tournaments at the casino.


Online 2009 was a pretty good year. I took a shot at $25 NL and have done OK over a small sample size so far. Online goals are to stick at $25 NL and be a winner there. Like live I'd like to get in more play; but that seems to be a goal every year.

I'd like to take a shot at pot limit hold'em. That's available at the $25 level on Stars. I haven't tried a new game in some time so that might be fun.

I have it in my mind I'd like to try out heads up no limit hold'em; like at the $2 NL level. But I'm not sure if I'd be able to go back to full ring after all of the action in HU. So might have to think about that one.

For online tournaments I'm not much of a tournament regular. They take more time than I usually have to play. Still tournaments are fun. I would like to play in the big Stars Sunday $11 1/4 million tourney. By the 2% guideline I can take a shot. It's just about finding some time for it, Sundays are usually pretty packed. Also for MTT is to cash in a $5 MTT for the first time.

Collusion on PokerStars story

I was playing at the local casino last week. As sometimes happens some people at the table got to discussing online poker.

The dealer said he wouldn't play online because he likes the interactive aspect of live play. That's fine, I can understand that playing against "avatars" instead of real people might seem unenjoyable for some.

Then some others felt that online was insecure because it was too easy to cheat. The example they gave was that you don't know if the people you are playing against are all just from the same college dorm room.

They discussed IP address checks and how these can be ineffective as it is not hard for people in close proximity to have distinct IPs from different ISP [with NAT the converse is also true where large numbers of people at different computers may appear to be connecting from the same NAT IP address]. Thus they felt it would be too difficult to detect collusion and it could be gotten away with.

I was just listening and probably wisely didn't say anything. Although they seemed to miss that there are more sophisticated ways to detect collusion. Big sites like Stars have proprietary advanced software to detect cheats. Stuff coming right out of graduate schools in math, statistics, economics.

Also of course there are the human detectives. The watchful eyes and ears at the tables. The players who will report suspicious activity to alert security to keep the games clean. On 2+2 its no secret that Stars security relies heavily on watchful players to report suspicious activity. Players will "rat out" cheaters since it is themselves who are being cheated.

So back to the casino. One fellow went on to tell a story about two people he knew who attempted to collude at small stakes on PokerStars. He said it worked for a little while but then they were caught by Stars security. The accounts were closed and their funds confiscated. The amount wasn't large, around $300 he said.

Now it gets interesting. To the table talkers, this seemed to confirm that it is possible to get away with collusion on PokerStars! Uh no, that's not really true. What it actually proves is that would be cheaters [even at the lowest stakes] will be caught and their funds will be taken away.

It seemed strange to me the fact that the cheaters were caught somehow then proves that you can get away with cheating. Oh well if they don't want to play online that's their choice of course. And yes this story confirms there are people attempting to cheat and collude at online poker at all stakes [and in live poker too]. But the big sites realize that security is in a sense their only product and if the players don't feel comfortable, that the game is clean, then they just won't play and the site will go under.