GG Willis McGahee, YGHN.

Willis was finally traded to the Ravens and wasted no time telling Baltimore what he thought about living in Buffalo.

Fortunately, a Buffalo News columnist has fought back. My favorite tidbit:

"You even started talking about Buffalo’s women. I suppose we’ll have to wait for nine months or so to see if you actually met any."

NH sir, NH.

The Bills also traded Spikes (and Holcomb!) to Philly. I loved Spikes, but with all the injuries he's not the same player Buffalo signed as a free agent.

In other Buffalo sports, the Sabres have been voted the BEST sports franchise by ESPN the magazine. We get the most bang for our buck here (and that's no lie - although the new jerseys are priced a little steep).

They must have found out that every Saturday night is bacon night!

Disconnect Abuse Is Just Fine With Poker Stars, Pt. 3

***Epilogue - Just like Barnaby Jones!***

Welcome back, faithful reader. We left off with my 3rd try to get some kind of genuine response from Stars:

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your reply.

Perhaps I did not express the scenario correctly in my last email.

The player that disconnected received 120 seconds of disconnect extra time over several consecutive hands, more times than he should have according to your rules. If he was doing this somehow within your rules, he was abusing this rule and it needs to be reconsidered. By abusing this rule he received MORE disconnect extra time (by intentionally disconnecting and reconnecting) than the rule was designed to give him.

The disconnected player was allowed extra time (without facing increasing blinds) and the ability to defend his stack when blinded all-in. He/She never "officially" reconnected in the game. The player behind the disconnect also gained superior positional advantage in the tournament. This scenario gave some players an unfair advantage over others.

Just to clarify, TURBO tournaments have 5 minutes blind levels, while regular tournaments have 15 minute blind levels. This vastly affects the number of hands a player has to play against a larger stack at a final table. A disconnected player getting 15 consecutive hands of maximum disconnect extra time in a turbo = same player getting 45+ hands of maximum disconnect extra time in a regular tournament.

So the unfair advantage (or my disadvantage) is more pronounced in a turbo tournament.

I'm quite taken by surprise that Poker Stars thinks this disconnect abuse is OK, just because it is within the written rules. This loophole also opens the possibility for collusion at final tables among large stacks by using disconnect extra time to force smaller stacks to play each other.

I realize I'm a small potatoes player to your big company. But I'm staying away from all games that allow disconnect extra time, until this rule is modified.

All I want is a fair game for all.

Thanks again for your time and consideration.

Regards,

Pokerstars id - 66Buffalo66

Finally, a reply with SOMETHING.

Hello 66Buffalo66,

Thank you for your email.

Unfortunately we have no way of telling whether a player is intentionally disconnecting and reconnecting. There is no way for us to tell if this is the case, or if he is legitimately being disconnected.

I must confess that I do not see how it is possible to gain any advantage from doing this deliberately, or how this forces smaller stacks to play against each other.

If a player receives disconnect extra time, then the Tournament Clock is stopped at that moment. It does not restart until that player has acted (or timed out). So there is no way to increase the blinds by deliberately disconnecting. If there was then I agree that there is potential abuse in raising the blinds so that shorter stacked players are forced to participate sooner.

Nevertheless I have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate people. If many players dislike this particular feature it is something that we can change in the future.

Regards,

MarkW
PokerStars Support Team

Deny, deny, deny. Ignorance is bliss. What have we learned?

1) Poker Stars - BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION - cannot police intentional disconnects. You can disconnect as many times as you wish and face no penalty.

2) Pokerstars "officially" sees no unfair player advantages in disconnect abuse. Deny that any advantage exists, because it can't be enforced. I think this might come back to bite them in the ass if it does happen in a big tourney.

3) Pokerstars support doesn't know the main difference between a Turbo and Regular MTT, which is just sad. No mention (or response) of the positional advantage either. There's no such thing as positional advantage in hold 'em, I guess.

The real answer seems simple to me. Modify the "disconnect extra time" rules:

1) Eliminate DET in Turbo tournaments.
2) After a player disconnects and uses 10 consecutive hands of DET, they will be sat out until they reconnect.
3) When a player reconnects after using DET, they must stay completely connected one complete orbit before receiving additional DET.

This would eliminate all incentive to abuse the disconnect rules. Are you listening Stars?

Disconnect Abuse Is Just Fine With Poker Stars, Pt. 2

Having received only a canned reply from Stars, I tried to reply with a little more vigor:

Hi Veronica,

Thank you for your reply.

"Disconnect extra time" kind of defeats the purpose of a TURBO tournament, don't you think?

Not only that, but the player in question got maximum disconnect extra time in over 10 CONSECUTIVE hands, which is not supposed to happen, according to your rules.

This situation gave the player acting just after the disconnect a tremendous advantage, and of course he won the tournament.

I'm not about sour grapes, but I feel this was not how the software was supposed to act and gave some players an unfair advantage over others.

Thanks for your time.

Regards,

pokerstars id - 66Buffalo66

Now it gets a little more interesting. I begin to realize Stars support and myself are NOT on the same page:

Hello 66Buffalo66,

Thank you for your email.

Disconnect extra time is available in all tournaments, whether Turbo or regular speed. 'Turbo' refers to the length of time you have to act before your hand is folded if you are connected, which is shorter in these events.

The disconnect rules are available on our website here:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/rules/disconnect/

'Note that for all tournaments, the DET is reset each time the user reconnects. So suppose a player is at the final table of a multi-table event, disconnects, and is down to 30 seconds per action, then reconnects. If he disconnects again, he'll start with 240 seconds for his next action.'

Therefore in theory it is possible to receive disconnect extra time for a limitless number of consecutive hands. This is how the feature is intended to function. I will however, forward your feedback to the appropriate people for their review. If there is anything else that we can do for you please let us know.

Regards,

MarkW
PokerStars Support Team

W... T... F???? Last time I checked, Turbos had 5 minute blind levels, while regular tournaments had 15. Well, so far, no acknowledgement of an advantage or the possibility of abuse. Read on - Things open up in the next go around.

Next: My final exchange with Stars and an admission on their behalf.

Basketball Lock of the Week: Memphis (+3.5) vs. Texas A&M. High scoring game favors Memphis even more. [2007 Record: basketball 2-2, football 3-0]

Disconnect Abuse Is Just Fine With Poker Stars, Pt. 1

I've had a crazy series of emails with Stars support over the last few days. I'm not sure how much of it is look the other way or just plain ignorance to the situation I encountered.

Here's what happened to me:

I was playing in a TURBO 18 man SNG. 5 minute levels. We get down to the final 6 players and I have a shorter stack (currently 4th in standings). Player in 2nd place disconnects. Over the course of thew next 15-20 hands, the disconnect receives 60-120 seconds to reconnect each hand dealt. He maxes out his time and folds.

1st development: This disconnecting player should not have been given this much time according to Stars rules. (IMO, he must have been connecting and disconnecting intentionally.) Now the tournament clock stops during disconnect extra time, but this is not the point of the story. By disconnecting intentionally, he is "sitting out "without the sitting out penalty of folding immediately or folding to any flop seen. Also he is "sitting out" without the penalty of facing quickly increasing blinds, due to tournament clock stoppage.

2nd development: The player acting just after the disconnect (and just before me) had a tremendous advantage over the other players, as he never had to worry about the disconnect re-entering the game when his turn to act arrived. Therefore, he raised aggressively. This aggressive player won the tourney with his positional advantage and the disconnect finished 2nd.

I must admit I played this situation like I thought the disconnect would be sat out after a few hands. I was surprised he was given 60 and 120 seconds over and over again. I did cash in the tournament, but was incensed that the disconnect was so protected and the positional player got such an advantage.

This also made me realize that two players at a final table can abuse this rule to force the smaller stacks to play each other.

So I wrote Stars support and here is my first (canned) response:

Hello 66Buffalo66,

Thank you for writing regarding this feature of our software, known as "Disconnect Extra Time". This feature is described in detail on our web site at:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/rules/disconnect/

This page is referenced in our tournament rules, rule # 8:

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/rules/

To explain, when a tournament is down to where the larger money prizes are on the line, it is important for the awards to be based upon poker play rather than on Internet connectivity. A player whose ISP goes on the blink in the end game of a tournament deserves every chance to return to the game and play for the prize rather than being blinded off.

While sometimes this extra time may delay an event a little longer than necessary (for example, when a player keeps disconnecting and reconnecting), the feature has been very positively received.

We ask your patience when you find yourself in such circumstances, as next time it might be your stack that Disconnect Extra Time is protecting. The slightly longer wait time to wind up the occasional tournament is well worth the protection this affords to all our players, yourself included. Good luck in your future tournaments, and thank you for choosing PokerStars.

Regards,

VeronicaC
PokerStars Support Team

Next: I wrote back and received another (lame) reply.

Hoops Quickie

Happy St. Pat's! Business before beer:

Basketball Lock of the Week (con't.): Vanderbilt vs. Washington St. (-1.5). West coast game favors the rolling Cougars. Virginia Tech (+1.5) vs. Southern Ill. Salukis had their hands full with with Holy Cross, expect more trouble with an ACC team. [2007 Record: basketball 2-0, football 3-0]

(Lack Of) March Madness

I had written a post about Syracuse (and Niagara) getting jobbed but Blogger deemed it unworthy and ate it.

A new eBay project is taking up most of my time but poker is still played on a regular basis. Results have been goot.

Basketball Locks of the Week: Texas Tech vs. Boston College (-3). BC playing at an ACC venue and is a better FT & rebounding team. Arkansas vs. USC (-2). Late west coast game favors USC, plus a game time decision on an injured Razorback (11.1 ppg). [2007 Record - basketball 0-0, football 3-0]

More hoops on Saturday.

OT: RIP, Captain America

Apparently, Marvel has decided to kill off Captain America.

He wasn't the most popular super-hero of our generation. In fact, he had a hard time re-adjusting to the changes in American culture after almost 20 years in suspended animation. The Vietnam era Cappy was quite the bitter dude. But he fought on, believing in American values even though our way of life constantly changed around him.

He will be assassinated by a sniper. One man, one bullet. What a disappointing symbolic statement about American strength in our current day and age. But it certainly hits home for some of us.

Cards, Cards, Everywhere There's (Debit) Cards

Strange things are afoot in the Visa/MasterCard universe. There's some force changing their policies left and right, on the hush-hush and very Q.T.

I previously blogged about Virgin Mobile not offering their Stash Debit Card to new users. Now, Paypal is giving me serious headaches.

I have a Paypal Debit Card and was visiting my sister in Boston when I tried to make a couple of incidental purchases. I had funding in my account to cover the purchases. But the card was denied everywhere I tried.

First call to Paypal... 1 hour. They don't know what the problem is, "Please try again, sir."

I try again and get denied.

Second call to Paypal... 45 minutes. "All I can say is I'm sorry, sir. I've reset your card, please call back if you have any more problems."

Another denial. All of these attempted transactions are between $3.99 and $15.85. Not exactly earth shattering amounts.

Third call to Paypal... 1 hour. After the usual go around, the service rep blurts out, "Some people are flagged as high security risks by the system." I explain that I have the funding in my account and I want to use my funding to buy $8 in groceries from Wal-Mart, like I have the previous 12 times without incident.

She apologizes up and down and gives me $25 for my inconvenience. I tell her I'm grateful, but what's the point of having the card if you can't use it?

I now realize that the denials are coming from Paypal. I also realize that the denials started around the time I began using my epassporte Visa for a few purchases on eBay. To do that I had to register my epassporte Visa with Paypal. That apparently made me a "high security risk". So no Doritos for me.

I understand Poker Stars is releasing a new prepaid Visa card, partnering with a company called PayTru. It's becoming available in waves, going by total lifetime FPP's earned.

I have found what I consider to be the BEST prepaid option available (especially in conjunction with my epassporte virtual Visa). It is the Obopay MasterCard, and it has VERY low fees - NO ATM FEES (USA) and 1.5% load fee for Visa/MasterCard, NO FEES for bank account. If you needed cash in a hurry, you could drop from Stars to epassporte to Obobay to ATM in about 10 minutes, paying minimal juice (probably $1 plus 1.5% of the amount cashed out). I suggest you give it a try - free $5 to sign up.

Damn, this is becoming a banking card blog.

I've been traveling this past week, so very littler poker was played. I need to commit to playing regularly, as I've lost a VIP level on Stars.