A Quick Zip Around the Sites
I had an inexorable urge yesterday to go to www.pokerfaces.com. Don't ask me why. It was inexorable.
Anyway, I was confronted by the same message which was there when I last looked about a year ago: "Our new site is under construction and will be appearing here very shortly". Exactly how shortly is "very shortly"? I mean, this is ridiculous, it's taking them more time to launch than it does for Jac Arama to turn over his cards when he's got the winning hand! At least it must be worth the wait, if it has taken this long to construct it's clearly going to be something special. Or maybe not.
Over at the Hendonmob all the talk is of Mark Napolitano of pokerpages taking the Mob to court over alleged theft of poker tournament results information. Frankly, I am surprised Mr Napolitano has got the time to mess about with court matters, after his starring appearance in the Pokerpages calender I would have thought he would be snowed under with modelling contracts. Anyway, I am no legal eagle but I'm not quite sure how the results of poker tournaments can belong to someone. Let's take a hypothetical tournament at the Vic which is won by Jim Britton (I told you it was hypothetical). How can the fact he won the event be "owned" by pokerpages or anyone else? Surely once the result is known the information is in the public domain it is owned by everyone. When QPR beat Man Utd 4-1 at Old Trafford a couple of years ago who owned that info? Was it the teams who provided the result? Was it the Premier League? Was it whichever news agency who you gathered this glorious information from? Or does everyone own it?
The legal action certainly smacks of sour grapes. Pokerpages had all this information at their fingertips for years and never did anything with it. The Mob got their fingers out and turned the data into a valuable and excellent resource. It is certainly a shame the user will be denied using the Mob's database in the future. Let's hope some agreement can be thrashed out and everything will return to how it was.
Maybe I'm not impartial but I believe Cardplyer.com is not nearly as bad as some people (well, Big Dave D in particular) reckon. Granted Hellmuth's column is usually pure drivel and Sexton's piece often isn't much better. And the less I say about Tom McEvoy the better. But, Daniel Negreanu's articles are without exception fascinating. Roy Cooke might be one of the most insightful thinkers on limit hold'em. I am also a fan of Ciaffone and Brier while keller shows promise. Allyn Shulman might not write to everyones tastes but her feature on Gus Hansen this week is excellent.
There are a couple of new kids on the poker websites block. I am not sure if Dave "The Queen Mother of Poker" Colclough knew what he was getting into when he secured the services of Tony Kendall for his new website www.blondepoker.com. Blondepoker has been set to comprehensively cover the uk and european poker scene. DC is notoriously laid back and tikay is, well, decidedly not. The guy writes great tournament reports and profiles and will certainly be an asset to the site. Tikay is a lovely bloke but I certainly wouldn't want to work with such a workaholic. He will want everything to be 100% right from day 1 and while that is admirable, poker players in general aren't so hassled by details. I hope it works out for them and early signs are certainly positive. Www.best-hand.com is a new magazine style site with lots of intersting stuff and the best odds calculator I have seen. The only criticisms I would have is the site is pretty hard to navigate and the online poker tournament directory is nowhere near extensive enough. Still both sites are well worth checking out.
However, one site which certainly isn't worth checking out is ukpoker.com. It looks like Mark Strahan has totally given up on the site. A grand total of 5 new threads were started on the site's forum in the whole of January. And each and every one was spam!
I'm sure nearly everyone who reads my nonsense also reads www.pokerbastard.blogspot. But if you don't I urge you to check out his post "From The Mailbag". It's not really the post which is worth reading, it is the comments (29 so far and counting). The early parts of the thread involve DY trying to claim intellectual ownership of his initials and various people arguing this point. And later on it becomes a surreal debate on the pros and cons of professional poker play. There is a list of pro players and my name is surreally sandwiched between Stewart Reuben, Donn O'Dea, Surinder Sunar and Ben Roberts. If I had 10% of the money or ability of any of these guys I would be happy. In fact the whole thread is surreal. In the words of the bastard himself "You couldn't make it up."
Anyway, I was confronted by the same message which was there when I last looked about a year ago: "Our new site is under construction and will be appearing here very shortly". Exactly how shortly is "very shortly"? I mean, this is ridiculous, it's taking them more time to launch than it does for Jac Arama to turn over his cards when he's got the winning hand! At least it must be worth the wait, if it has taken this long to construct it's clearly going to be something special. Or maybe not.
Over at the Hendonmob all the talk is of Mark Napolitano of pokerpages taking the Mob to court over alleged theft of poker tournament results information. Frankly, I am surprised Mr Napolitano has got the time to mess about with court matters, after his starring appearance in the Pokerpages calender I would have thought he would be snowed under with modelling contracts. Anyway, I am no legal eagle but I'm not quite sure how the results of poker tournaments can belong to someone. Let's take a hypothetical tournament at the Vic which is won by Jim Britton (I told you it was hypothetical). How can the fact he won the event be "owned" by pokerpages or anyone else? Surely once the result is known the information is in the public domain it is owned by everyone. When QPR beat Man Utd 4-1 at Old Trafford a couple of years ago who owned that info? Was it the teams who provided the result? Was it the Premier League? Was it whichever news agency who you gathered this glorious information from? Or does everyone own it?
The legal action certainly smacks of sour grapes. Pokerpages had all this information at their fingertips for years and never did anything with it. The Mob got their fingers out and turned the data into a valuable and excellent resource. It is certainly a shame the user will be denied using the Mob's database in the future. Let's hope some agreement can be thrashed out and everything will return to how it was.
Maybe I'm not impartial but I believe Cardplyer.com is not nearly as bad as some people (well, Big Dave D in particular) reckon. Granted Hellmuth's column is usually pure drivel and Sexton's piece often isn't much better. And the less I say about Tom McEvoy the better. But, Daniel Negreanu's articles are without exception fascinating. Roy Cooke might be one of the most insightful thinkers on limit hold'em. I am also a fan of Ciaffone and Brier while keller shows promise. Allyn Shulman might not write to everyones tastes but her feature on Gus Hansen this week is excellent.
There are a couple of new kids on the poker websites block. I am not sure if Dave "The Queen Mother of Poker" Colclough knew what he was getting into when he secured the services of Tony Kendall for his new website www.blondepoker.com. Blondepoker has been set to comprehensively cover the uk and european poker scene. DC is notoriously laid back and tikay is, well, decidedly not. The guy writes great tournament reports and profiles and will certainly be an asset to the site. Tikay is a lovely bloke but I certainly wouldn't want to work with such a workaholic. He will want everything to be 100% right from day 1 and while that is admirable, poker players in general aren't so hassled by details. I hope it works out for them and early signs are certainly positive. Www.best-hand.com is a new magazine style site with lots of intersting stuff and the best odds calculator I have seen. The only criticisms I would have is the site is pretty hard to navigate and the online poker tournament directory is nowhere near extensive enough. Still both sites are well worth checking out.
However, one site which certainly isn't worth checking out is ukpoker.com. It looks like Mark Strahan has totally given up on the site. A grand total of 5 new threads were started on the site's forum in the whole of January. And each and every one was spam!
I'm sure nearly everyone who reads my nonsense also reads www.pokerbastard.blogspot. But if you don't I urge you to check out his post "From The Mailbag". It's not really the post which is worth reading, it is the comments (29 so far and counting). The early parts of the thread involve DY trying to claim intellectual ownership of his initials and various people arguing this point. And later on it becomes a surreal debate on the pros and cons of professional poker play. There is a list of pro players and my name is surreally sandwiched between Stewart Reuben, Donn O'Dea, Surinder Sunar and Ben Roberts. If I had 10% of the money or ability of any of these guys I would be happy. In fact the whole thread is surreal. In the words of the bastard himself "You couldn't make it up."
7 Comments:
a couple of years ago,when qpr thrashed those vile red devils?surely it was early in the last century..wasn't paul parker still in your team,or had he gone to the evil ones by then?
Wonderful Winterburn.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
New Year's Day 1992. Bailey (3), Sinton. Happy times. Parker had indeed joined the dark side by then. Good full-back, outstanding centre-half, despite his lack of height.
Post above removed due to anti-Ferguson content which might attract unwelcome glory-hunting losers to infest Keith's blog :-)
Andy.
Are u pissed again? One or two cherries in a turd pie does not make it into a birthday cake. Granted the Gus interview is moderately interesting, as was another the other week..but not so interesting that I can remember who it was! Roy C is always good. Brier has been gone for a life time. Bob C, bless him, seems to have turned his hand to writting about all the most boring stuff he can find, instead of talking about how to play. If I subscribed to it...which remember some people do...I would be very unhappy to get 1 or 2 pages to read a month.
On the THM vs Pages thing as I posted on Andy's site I disagree. Page's can prolly rightfully argue that they got those results not from the public domain but through their own sources. The fact that THM screen scraped them proved the point. Thats why web pages have copyrights on the bottom. It may be useful but its still theft. And Im sure that THM is not run ona philanthropic basis.
gl
dd
PS. Someone asked if I was Bob Ciaffone today on Paradise..I wasnt sure if it was a compliment or an insult :)
I remember way back in the mists if time, when Intel were about to move from the 386 to the 486 processor. There were rumors that they tried to copyright the number "486".
I din't know if this is true, but that was the first thing I thought of when I heard of the case.
I can't help thinking if they had stayed with "Bugsys Club" then this would have never happened. Then again having played the god awful software they are well shot of them.
Come on, this is hardly what happened. Someone else wrote a post that was basically racist and used the initials 'DY'. I came on to say that it wasn't me and stated that I was annoyed that some had used my initials. Some people did assume I had written it.
DY
David,
I was gently teasing. While imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, obviously whoever is posting as you is bang out of order. That doesn't stop the the thread on pokerbastard being very funny.
There is, of course, an easy way to stamp out any deception. Open a blogger account and we will all know exactly when it's you making the comment!
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