They prayed to their gods
But their stone gods did not make a sound
And their Empire crumbled Until all that was left
Were the stones our workmen found
And all this time, the River flowed
The UStream wake for online poker continues here [Monday update].
Black Friday is over but it hasn't ended. It might be a long, long time before poker comes back. It could be decades, who knows? But after the mourning, life goes on. Good luck and best wishes to everyone out there.
Sting -- All This Time
Men go crazy in congregations We only get better One by one
Non-U.S. players will be unaffected by the FBI/DOJ shenanigans.
Unfortunately, and partly due to Twitter shorthand, people have gotten a false impression that, while the dot-com websites are going offline, that this could mean the clients will stop working as well. People saying the "sites" are going down in 48 hours just mean it will taking that long for the .com webpages to go completely offline.
It's true that the clients are just an Internet application, just like your browser is an Internet application. All the feds have done is broken the ability to view the .com sites on your browser, because they control a small part of the infrastructure the browser uses.
The clients are a totally different type of thing and completely beyond U.S. government control. PokerStars has already set up a .eu site, I'm sure FTP will set up a .eu site too soon enough beyond the DOJ's reach. That the U.S. controls the .com domain at all is a historical accident.
In short, the Internet isn't just the World Wide Web that you look at through your browser, in the same way the mall isn't just the J.C. Penny's. The client and the poker site servers -- which, again, are outside of the U.S. -- are like the music store by the food court. Nothing that's changed about what Penny's can sell has any effect on what albums your can get.
"PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and JANICE FEDARCYK, the Assistant-Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI"), announced the unsealing of an Indictment today charging eleven defendants, including the founders of the three largest Internet poker companies doing business in the United States - PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker (the "Poker Companies")- with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses. The United States also filed a civil money laundering and in rem forfeiture complaint (the "Civil Complaint") against the Poker Companies, their assets, and the assets of several payment processors for the Poker Companies. In addition, restraining orders were issued against more than 75 bank accounts utilized by the Poker Companies and their payment processors, and five Internet domain names used by the Poker Companies to host their illegal poker games were seized."
Update5: Well, this all looks pretty bad for U.S. players not to mention the 11 people indicted by the Feds, imo. Good game, poker. Game over?
Well, 31st out of 1207 runners. 27th would have been ok money, but I was happy with how I played. Got lucky in one spot where I called a maniac's shove with AQo, SB woke up with AA, but I got a Q in the window and another one on the turn (the maniac, whose screen-name was actually Maniack79 had 55). Still, it was during a period where, for a half hour or more, not a single hand that was ahead when the chips went in held up, so I'll chalk it up to it not being my turn for the doom-switch. And likewise if behind's in front...
I saw some really weird play even when we were down to 100 players. What was the deal here?
Final Pot: t89250
BB shows 9 A (high card Ace)
Hero shows K K (a pair of Kings)
Hero wins t89250
It was a long 4 1/2 hour slog, so thanks to my tweeps for keeping me entertained in the meanwhile!
Procol Harum -- A Whiter Shade Of Pale
If music be the food of life
Then laughter is its queen
And likewise if behind's in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed
K
A
