SickRead.com Latest Posts

Black Friday, One Month Later

Tue, 17 May 2011 22:03:28 -0200

It’s been a very busy time since Black Friday. My new project, pokerfuse – a new independent news site for online poker, has consumed me pretty much full-time. We’ve been live since the night of Black Friday, it’s been an incredible month, we’ve had a fantastic response from the online poker community, thousands of people have visited the site and a lot of you have contacted me to show your support. So thanks to all of you who have visited the site, given feedback, tweeted and blogged us.

I’m the developer and designer half of a two-man team behind the site. That means every day I’m working on something awesomely new, and almost daily I’ve been rolling out new features live. In less than a month we’ve gone from a one-page bare-bones news page to a complete news portal. It’s been hectic but extremely rewarding.

Over the weekend we created an interactive timeline of events since Black Friday. We collated all the major news and split it up over the 3 major sites. It’s fascinating seeing how each site dealt with the news and the industry’s reacion.

Along with this and my duties at Drag The Bar (my new live-play series started last week if you missed it!),it means that it’s been tough to get in hands. I’ve played less than 10k hands this month.

And that’s not likely to improve as “Hood’s Epic Summer Trip of Win” starts in just one week today! I first fly home to the UK for a few days, then i’m off to Tobago for 10 days for a friend’s wedding (and I still have the best man’s speech to write!), then the trip kicks it up a notch in to the zone of “Hardcore” as I fly to New York, Chicago, and then on to Vegas for WSOP.

Can I Just Connect Over VPN?

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:15:45 -0200

Update Oct 2011: PokerStars Cracks Down on Players Using VPN to Conceal U.S. Location – it seems Stars ar continuing to act forcefully to prohibit players from using VPN. Read more on pokerfuse.com.

So, VPNs. This subject is now popping up and being discussed in public (2+2 thread), so I wanted to cover this in detail. The tldr version: It’s technically possible, but probably a lot harder than you think, and you run a high risk. I will explain what VPN is, and why I strongly recommend that you don’t try it. But for those who still want to try, I will give a few pointers below.

A quick explanation to those who don’t know: A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, allows you to securely route your internet connection through a server. There are many possible benefits to doing this. Corporate VPNs may allow you to access intranet data or email; they offer increased security when using insecure public hotspots; allow you to get around web access filtering from your country or ISP; give you increased anonymity whilst browsing; and – what is most relevant to US poker players right now – if you tunnel through a computer in another country you will appear to any service or website you access that you reside in another country.

However this is really only one part of the equation. To do this playing poker, you need to demonstrate that you actually reside in your destination country. This means showing proof of address. And it means that you have an online wallet or bank account that matches that country. And to open a Moneybookers account, this needs to be connected with a real-world bank account in the same country. And it’s not easy to open a bank account. Usually it requires proof of residency or citizenship.

And of course, you will be running a very high risk with your online account. Pokerstars and Full Tilt decided to comply with the DOJ and stop offering online real money poker play to US residents. Therefore if you try and get around this block through a VPN, you will be in direct violation of the terms of service and risk forfeiting your online bankroll if discovered.

PokerStars have recently added a 'USA FAQ’, and on the list it states, “Can I use a VPN? No. Real money play is not allowed from within the US under any circumstances. Players who attempt to play for real money from inside the US with the aid of VPNs or other technical workarounds may lose their playing privileges and/or funds in their account.*”. So you will now be explicitly breaking the terms laid down by Stars and will be risking the funds in your account.”

If you use a public VPN service – say BetSecure.net (note: there is no reason to choose specifically a service that is targeting the gambling community) – PokerStars could block all betsecure.net IP addresses and ban those who connect through it. Or perhaps you forget one time to connect through VPN and fire up the PokerStars lobby. Of course they may not choose to do anything, and instead turn a blind eye. Only time will tell to see how they react; but it’s a high-risk gamble.

So as you can see, I don’t recommend you try a VPN to get around the US block. There are, however, many legitimate uses of VPNs. I have used a VPN service to improve security whilst using public hotspots. As a UK citizen but resident of Spain, it’s also had a few other advantages: I connect through the UK when using online banking, as connecting through a Spanish IP address may raise security flags. It also allows me to access BBC iPlayer.

So for those still interested in VPN, I will give a few recommendations from my personal experience. I strongly recommend you use a service that uses OpenVPN. OpenVPN is an independent, open source application for PC, Mac, linux and other platforms, that offers secure SSL connection. It means that you are protected against your traffic data being snooped – which is a serious consideration when using a public VPN service. Without this you would need to have complete trust on the VPN service – but as OpenVPN is open source and independent, it removes that requirement. I repeat, *do not use any VPN service that does not offer connection through OpenVPN.

A second very important consideration is reliability, especially if you plan to play poker through VPN. There is now an additional failure point. No public VPN will offer the same uptime that you get through connecting directly, and you will see a reduction in connectivity speed as all your data is encrypted and routed through some other point in the world. However a reliable and fast provider is essential.

I used StrongVPN.com and the times I’ve used it (not much) reliability has been good and speed has been acceptable. However I did have one major problem: I couldn’t connect to Full Tilt. My guess is that the IP address I connected to had been banned by FTP; perhaps some scammer or bot user had used StrongVPN in the past and used the same server; or perhaps FT blocks everything through StrongVPN anyway (although there are legitimate reasons to use VPN, a service that offers anonymity and security will certainly attract a higher incidence of those trying to cheat or scam).

I could have changed the StrongVPN to another server (they offer dozens in the UK, US, and countries throughout Europe), however I was concerned in general that I didn’t want to associate my account with an IP address that potentially had been used for illegal activity. So for now, I have stopped using the service when playing poker.

And this underlines the major problem that I highlighted above: using VPNs is inherently risky. Risky in the connection, risky for using a public service, risky for sharing IP addresses with others that may be using the service for more nefarious activities.

So if you are still interested in playing poker over VPN, my advice is: understand the risks, then run your own VPN server. Get VPS hosting in your destination country with root access, and read up on setting up an OpenVPN host on tha server. Or find a geek to do it for you.

pokerfuse.com: An Independent Source For News

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 05:46:09 -0200

Overnight we launched pokerfuse.com. Over the next few days the site will evolve; for now it will be your fastest source for independent of news as it breaks as the Black Friday story evolves.

The pokerfuseproject has been incubating for some weeks now; along with other professional poker players and journalists, our goal with pokerfusewas to provide a truly independent voice to online poker. We had planned to launch the site in June.

However things all changed last night. It was acutely apparent how the poker community needed a fresh voice for real news, as community sites and blogs buckled under the increased traffic. People took to twitter and Skype chats to update each other with news.

We decided to do what we could. We’ve put up a very basic, one-page website (and natty logo) at pokerfuse.com. It will be updated continuously over the following days as the story unfolds.

The site will evolve over the next few days.

And I’m writing this at the airport, soon to fly to Munich for a week’s break!

Black Friday: US DoJ hit Stars, FT and AP with indictment; 75 bank accounts seized, 11 defendants na

Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:03:29 -0200

Things are going fast.

Pokerstars, FT, and AP .com domains have been seized.
Seizure of dozens of bank accounts in 14 different countries have been subpoenered.
Arrest warrents for 12 of the heads of the big 3 poker sites have been issued.
Pokerstars has locked out all US players from accessing real money tables and transfers.

And everything seems to be buckling under the stress. 2+2 is unreachable; donkdown radio is intermittent; pocket5s can’t be reached. Pokerati is right now your best bet (http://pokerati.com/2011/04/15/poker-panic-11-update-on-domain-name-seizures/), and pokernews is up although not updating much. Twitter is your friend.

This shit is huge. It’s headlining Hacker News right now. It’s starting to break on mainstream media, and it will feature tomorrow morning. As professional or avid amateur players, things for us will significantly degrade for the foreseeable future.

Pop The Hood

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 07:45:07 -0200

Even for my normal anti-schedule of infrequent updates it’s been a while since the last blog post. Last couple of weeks have been especially hectic. My debut video came out on Drag The Bar last week, and it’s been a really positive response. My next is scheduled for next Tuesday. Whilst you’re over there, be sure to check out Sledghammer’s first vid that came out over the weekend.

I’ve also been working hard on Combonator v1.4. You can read more about it on the official combonator blog. It’s certainly the biggest update since the initial release, so i’m going to be doing a Beta roll-out. Keep an eye on the blog, in the next couple of days I hope to offer a v1.4 beta release. If all goes well I hope to do a proper release next week. There’ll be a small price increase on the release of v1.4 so if you’ve been umming-and-arring on purchasing a Combonator license, now’s the time. Get it on the low low $25 price now and get free upgrades to v1.4 and all future releases!

I’ve also started twittering. I’ve actually had this account for ages but never really found a use for it; but now and then there’s a shorter update I’d like to make, like a new DTB vid or linking to the latest SrslySirius creation, that aren’t worth a blog post on their own. When I get a moment I will integrate the stream on the blog here. I’ll also post a tweet on blog updates, so you can subscribe to that rather than the RSS feed to keep updated.

Along with all this I’ve got another software project I’m working on, which I quite clearly don’t have any time to be doing.

Oh and I also try and play some poker now and then, what with it being my job and all. I’ve been aggressively moving up in stakes this year, I’ve only got in 15k hands so far this month, but with an average stake of around $20 (with some 15/30 and 20/40 thrown in there) I’ve been really happy with the action.

And 2 months today my epic summer trip to the states begins! 50 days away that starts in Tobago, passes through New York, pauses in Chicago, swings by Colorado and smashes in to Vegas during WSOP. If you’re in these places around June time give me a shout, would be great to meet up with fellow pokerers.

I’ll end with a quick seat selection quiz:

Fishy in the 3 seat
Regbot in the 4 seat
Gotta make your mind up
Which seat do you take?

answer: Seat 2 because it’s Friday so the table is going to snap fill up with other fish obv.

I'm Now A Video Producer For Drag The Bar!

Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:37:09 -0300

I know, you thought the sporadic, lengthy witterings of this young hooded Englishman would forever be confined to this small corner of the e-globe. Yet in a crazy, unexpected twist in this mad world we call internet poker, poker training site heavy-weight DragTheBar.com – video hosts for the likes of leatherass, Hunter Bick and GiantBuddha – approached me to turn my LHE musings in to poker videos! And they want to pay me for it!

In all seriousness, I am really excited about my new gig. I’ve been a subscriber and big fan of DTB for a long now, so to be asked to join the ranks of LHE Drag The Bar coaches – the coaches who don’t have bars to drag – is quite an honour.

In 2010 it was like a secret LHE awesomeville. Not as well-known as some of the bigger players, but putting out some of the best LHE content out there. They only started adding in a LHE section to their site at the start of 2010 – up until then they were predominantly a NL cash site – but they brought on Giantbuddha to start growing their LHE videos. Check out his excellent “Grindathon” series, where he did bite-sized LHE strategy content, every day for a month, and his “Sixth Sense” live play series.

Around June time they added in Emil Jonsson, a big winner in HU and 6max mid- to high-stakes and a superb video maker. His “Perspectives” videos – where he interviewed other big high stakes winners and reviewed some hands – are probably the best LHE vids I’ve watched, and they had a profound impact on my approach to the game.

Later on in the year they added in Dustin Cook (La Peste) to fill in the low stakes with some excellent review and live-play vids. Together the 3 of them have created a superb library. There was a bit of a lull the last couple of months as a couple of the coaches took short breaks, but now they are back in full force, adding me and some dude called sledghammer who absolutely kills the games.

So it’s pretty humbling to be included alongside some excellent LHE minds, players who have been instrumental to my 6max game as I moved up during 2010.

My first video is already done, I hope it will be up on the site within the next week or two. So you can join along as we tick off on the things I do in my 'things you shouldn’t do as a poker video producer’ list]

For some crazy insane mindblowingly foolish reason you haven’t yet become a Drag The Bar member, just go and sign up already. All the vids are DRM free. Oh, did I mention that it’s totally free if you rake a little on party poker each month? If you are blessed with being born European, then check out the PartyPoker promotion. Make 1000 party points (easy game) and get free monthly DTB access. No hit on any other bonus or points or anything else. Along with all the LHE content, if NL’s your bag they seem to have every corner covered there. Oh and Bill Robertie, [i]the[/i] name in backgammon, making regular backgammon vids. Oh and Jared Tendler, ex-Stox Poker mind coach. And they seem to have brought in a bunch of awesome SNG and MTT guys too.
Seriously stop reading now and go and sign up already.

¹Actually one of the things I’ve always like about DTB is their high quality video output. Some of the ground-rules I was given for creating videos were: Consistancy in video quality, high audio quality, and not using derogatory terms for your opponents. They are also the only site that publish their coaches results right there on the coaches page.

Improving Your Mental Game: Posts, Books and Videos For The Pro Poker Player

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:08:46 -0300

Improving Your Mental Game: Posts, Books and Videos For The Pro Poker Player

improving-your-mental-game-posts-books-videos-for-the-pro-poker-player

The last 9 months or so I’ve had a growing interest in the 'meta-game’ aspects of poker study, to improve my poker game through better concentration and mindfulness, less tilt at the table, and clearer separation between work and life away from the table. The result is this list of recommended resources.

Poker Videos

Tommy Angelo – 8-Fold Path To Poker Enlightenment.

9-part video series on Deuces Cracked. It’s a superbly presented series covering many of Angelo’s key ideas presented in his book (see below). It’s de-tilting just listening to the series.

Jared Tendler (various)

Jared Tendler is a mental game coach who works specifically with professional poker players. He did 2 series on the now-defunct Stox Poker training website; one of these series, Playing Your 'A-Game’ has been made available on Cardrunners.

When Stoxpoker went down, he moved with Dusty Schmitt (leatherass) over to DragTheBar.com, and has produced 5 videos, including a 2-part series on making SNE.

He takes a scientific/neurological approach and focuses on practical steps to reduce tilt at the table and improve your concentration and grind-ability.

Book will be out this spring.

Travis Stephan – Shuffle And Flow

Author of Peak Performance Poker (see books below), Travis Stephan, Sports Psychologist, has his own DC 10-part series covers many general practical topics such as time management, diet, exercise, and drug supplements. Much of the advice isn’t specifically related to poker play but it’s all good stuff.

Jimmylegs – Brain Fail

I haven’t watched much of this but I include it because it looks like an interesting and entertaining watch and it’s highly rated. It’s a 6-part Cardrunners series by CR coach and pro poker player JimmyLegs, covering various topics of poker psychology. A lot of it focuses on understanding your opponent to best exploit them, but it seems also related back to your own game.

Books

Elements Of Poker (Tommy Angelo). Pretty much the bible. Beautifully prsented, short byte-size reflections and whimsy. Read it through in a couple of days, then stick it in the bathroom and flick through daily.

Finding Your Zone (Michael Lardon). This isn’t specific to poker and the book title may put you off; but this is a brilliant read. It uses a lot of examples from golf, tennis, and other sports that have a high mental/concentration component. Poker fits in perfectly in much of the discussion. The core focus of the book is to aid you in entering 'the zone’, that peak state of alert mindfulness that allows you to perform at your best. Lessons like 'trusting your ability’, 'managing your emotions’, 'acceptance’ all have direct relationships with poker. I know it sounds pretty wishy-washy, but it’s actually offers very specific, methodical and practical advice.

The Poker Mindset (Matthew Hilger). This book is very highly regarded. I read this kind of late in the game having consumed most of the other stuff linked on this page, so I honestly felt it didn’t really cover new ground. But it’s a very good primer that covers tilt, bankroll management and dealing with downswings.

Peak Performance Poker (Travis Stephan). Like the accompanying DC poker series (see above), most of this isn’t specific to poker. The book argues that by improving your nutrition, diet and exercise, you will be in peak mental state to play poker. It’s good stuff.

It’s worth mentioning another book, Poker Mindfulness (Eric Beck). I haven’t read this one; you can read a comprehensive review over on 2+2 forums by poster 'Foucault’, with a comparison to Peak Performance Poker.

Meditation

Before discussing meditation, let me pass on something from Tommy Angelo:

“One thing I suggest when reading these articles, or any of the books, or anything at the website link below, or the stuff I write, is that when you come upon words or phrases that flip your bullshit switch, just move on along until you get to words that resonate or at least make sense.”

This is probably the most important advice I read before starting to look in to meditation. The practice has been around for over a thousand years, and has become part of many different faiths and religions. In the broad sense of mindfulness and self-reflection, one could argue meditation is a corner-stone of nearly all faiths: From prayers and chants of Abrahamic religions, to the mysticism in new Age, from Hindu Mantras, to Eckhart Tolle’s 'Power Of Now’, these core practices all have the goal of bringing us in to the present in a state of quiet stillness and personal reflection.

The point is, with all these hundreds of years of sprawling practice across so many faiths and disciplines, you are bound to find some bullshit. In the excellent primer to Vipassana meditation, the free e-book Mindfulness In Plain English, you will find – despite its title – sections that cover the possible development of extra-sensory powers. Don’t let this detract from the main core of the book which is an otherwise interesting and down-to-earth look at the history of mindfulness and in practical steps in getting you started.

So, as our man Angelo says, just skip over what sets of the bullshitometer and on to the bits that make sense to you. If you have a particular faith, you might want to look in to their mindful practices, be they meditation, prayer or just private personal reflection.

As an aethiest, I focus more on the secular practice of meditation. It has practical uses of stress reduction and pain reduction. Recent esearch certainly suggests physical changes to brain function from the practice of meditation, here is one recent study (and some follow-up discussion 1 2 on hacker news)

Further recommended resources:

2 google tech talks on meditation and mindfulness: 1 2. When google is recommending that developers take up meditation, perhaps there’s some real sense behind it. These vids offer an excellent overview of secular practice.
A nice little primer on meditation practice on Dharma Haven.
And, of course, I can’t leave out Angelo’s excellent resource.

Sleep

Just really a short foot-note on sleep, as I took an interest recently on bi-phasic and polyphasic sleep, and you will likely run in to this as you read other resources.

A very detailed, science-heavy summary on healthy sleeping.
Same site, a look at our understanding of polyphasic sleep and debunking some myths.
Polyphasic sleep wiki

If you find other resources, please leave a comment or get in contact!

The Uberscript

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 09:35:08 -0300

3 Feb: Fix for currency calculations.

One of my goals for 2011 is to become less results orientated (framing a session as 'good’ or 'bad’ based on how much I’ve won or lost), but process orientated. So instead, I consider a good session one that I’ve played well in. I set some session goals for the year that are based on game quality and stakes, and less focus on playing lots of tables and grinding it out. I want to scout out better games, heads up or ultra-shorthanded (where I feel my biggest edge lies), and play more 10/20 and 15/30, with my sights set on higher stakes as the year progresses.

So now for me a 'good session’ is one with a high average big blind, and low average number of players at the table.

Thus is born the uberscript. It’s a batch file that I can fire up whenever I get the itch mid-session to check how I’m doing. Type in the timeframe (last 2 hours, last 7 days), and it spits out all relevant information I want.

I can also use it to review the week or month to see how well I’ve 'performed’.

You can download the batch script below. To get it working, you first need to allow host access to the postgres as outlined in a previous blog post. Then you need to edit the first lines in the script:

set dbname=holdemmanager
set pgpath=C:\Program Files (x86)\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\psql.exe
set pguser=postgres
set playeralias=YourAliasName
set minbigblind=100

Put in your database details and the name of your HEM player alias (if you don’t use an HEM player alias, create one and put your SN in it). Min big blind is the minimum big blind in cents that will be included in the counts; anything below doesn’t count (I added this to exclude low stakes 'test’ or messing-around type hands from the regular count).

It’s customized to exactly the info I want (average # of hands per table, average $ BB, average tournament buyin). You will probably want to customize the queries to exactly the information you want to check on a daily basis.

Download Sickread Uberscript

Combonator v1.21 And New LHE Vid

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 07:56:47 -0300

Just a quick note to say I recently released v1.21 of The Combonator. If fixes a bunch of bugs and one main new feature: support for exporting to Equilab. An old favourite of mine, Equilab went offline last year and has since re-appeared under the full tile of Pokerstrategy.com Equilab. The Combonator now supports exporting ranges to this equity calculator.

Read more and get the latest on the download page of combonator.com.

I’ve also done the first part in a new Combonator In Use series focused on balancing your own range. Check it:

Time-lapse Poker

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 08:39:32 -0300

A short little time-lapse film I made from screen-recording my poker play during a 5-day period over christmas.

Stream the video below, or if you prefer, you can download it directly (right click and 'save as’).

The music is 'Sin Rumbo’ by the Argentine Otros Aires

Your Average Stake In HEM

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:58:25 -0300

I wanted to find out the average stake I played in 2010, but this information doesn’t seem to be readily available in Hold’em Manager. You can do it manually by doing a report by 'stakes’, then exporting the data to CSV, firing it up in Excel then working it out, but this is a bit of a chore so I thought I’d write a short SQL script to pull it out of the database.

You can execute the below in pgadmin against your HEM database. Change the text 'Hood’ to the name of the alias you use in Hold’em Manager (if you don’t use an alias, you can change the code a little to just run against one player ID; or you can create an alias with just one player in).

The dates are set for 2010, but you can easily tweak these to query between different dates.

It handles multiple currencies by querying the currency rates in the DB and converting to USD (it doesn’t calculate the average blind at the correct currency rate at the time each individual hand was played).

The result is your average big blind for the year, in USD. My result spits out $4.8 – so my average big blind was just under $5 (i.e. 5/10).

select sum(handweight * totalhands) / sum(totalhands) from (
select gt.gametypedescription as "gametype",
count(ph.*) as totalhands,
gt.bigblind * c.current_rate_in_usd / 100 as "handweight"
from playerhandscashkeycolumns_hero ph 
join players pl on (pl.player_id = ph.player_id) 
join pokerhands_hero pkh on pkh.pokerhand_id = ph.pokerhand_id 
join gametypes gt on gt.gametype_id = ph.gametype_id  
join currency c on gt.currency_id = c.currency_id
where ph.player_id in ((select a.player_id from aliases a join players p on a.aliasplayer_id = p.player_id where p.playername = 'Hood')) and 
ph.handtimestamp between to_timestamp('01/01/2010 00:00:00','mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss') and to_timestamp('01/01/2011 00:00:00','mm/dd/yyyy hh24:mi:ss')  and
gt.pokergame = 1  
group by "gametype", gt.bigblind, "handweight" order by bigblind desc
) as aggdata

Combonator v1.2 and a 6-Max Limit Video

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 12:46:00 -0300

Last week Combonator v1.2 was released chock-full with a bunch of awesomecool new features. To find out more you can read and watch a demo vid on the blog, or get downloading at combonator.com.

Over the next few days and weeks, I plan to release some accompanying videos under the title “Combonator in use”. The goal is to demonstrate using the software in “real life” study situations.

This first vid looks at an interesting hand I played at 5/10 6max limit. Hopefully the content will be interesting to those who play the game, but for everyone else it demonstrates some ways the software can be used.

To stay up-to-date with the videos, I suggest you keep an eye on the combonator official blog. I’ll be cross-posting some of the LHE content to my personal blog here, but not others (the next one will be NL).

SickRead.com Latest Posts

Black Friday, One Month Later

Can I Just Connect Over VPN?

pokerfuse.com: An Independent Source For News

Black Friday: US DoJ hit Stars, FT and AP with indictment; 75 bank accounts seized, 11 defendants na

Pop The Hood

I'm Now A Video Producer For Drag The Bar!

Improving Your Mental Game: Posts, Books and Videos For The Pro Poker Player

Poker Videos

Tommy Angelo – 8-Fold Path To Poker Enlightenment.

Jared Tendler (various)

Travis Stephan – Shuffle And Flow

Jimmylegs – Brain Fail

Books

Other Poker Posts And Articles

Meditation

Sleep

The Uberscript

Combonator v1.21 And New LHE Vid

Time-lapse Poker

Your Average Stake In HEM

Combonator v1.2 and a 6-Max Limit Video