[any sng specialists out there?]

Dank:I've recently been conducting a very unscientific SnG experiment at Party Poker - comparing their STEP trnys to see if they are better than just simply entering the same buy in regular SnG's.At the start I thought the regular SnG's would be better value as you get paid more for 2nd and 3rd than in the Steps (Mini Step 1) But on the other hand its very very hard to lose your buy in in Mini Step 1 and thus its basically a freeroll at the $22 Step 2. And I have had more 4th place finishes than anything else at the SnG's.So far after 9 tries I have three Step 2's, 4 Step 1's and a $4 for 6th. (Out in 10th in one try, I said it was hard to lose your buy in not impossible !!! ) For a "profit" of $40. Of course I have not one cent of spendable money as profit but am in fact $54 real spending $ in the hole. It all depends on how I do when I replay the Step 1 freerolls and eventually play the steps 2's.In the SnG's I am $10 ahead. Not as much as in the steps but they are all spendable dollars.My plan is to spend $100 on the steps. I will keep paying for the buy ins in cash until I have spent $100. Then I will play out all the Step 1 freerolls until I have only Step 2's. Then after I have used all the Step 2's I will go back to use up all the Step 1s I was paid ayt level 2 until I have only Steps 2's and 3's left. Then I use all the Step 2's again and so on I go using all the lowest steps until I have only the higher steps left. And every time I enter a step SnG at any level I will play a $5 SnG to "match" it. I don't plan on this experiment being over any time soon. Lol. But Its kinda a sideline for me at the moment to see if the Original Steps or Steps Higher would be worth taking a serious run at.

I was going to ask if anyone else had tried the steps. I think this is a great and relatively inexpensive way if you don't get stupid to have the potential to win some pretty decent money without going broke in the process.I played a couple of weeks ago on the original steps and got all the way to step 5 in one sitting from my orginal $11.00 playing carefully. Once you get to step 5 it pays 4 places out of ten with 4th paying $1,200. I misplayed one hand and got sucked out and it was bye, bye for me. I will definitely try it again though because if you are any good at all at SnG's and play a decent game 2 people advance out of 10 each step so your odds are decent at getting to the final step cheap. To get to a $1,000 buy in SnG for an $11.00 investment I thought was a hell of a value.

[how you know you've been playing to much poker]

Sleeping with my g/f last night ....By the way, this story is 100% true and happened about 3 nights ago.

there seems to be a tiny flaw in your 100% true story.

No wait it was like 6 months ago, one year ago that it happened. Yeah, yeah that's the ticket!!

[party poker rant]

Yeah, it pretty much sums up the whole damn argument, regarding sites being rigged!How true the saying of a "picture being worth a thousand words" is. The whole thread could have ended with that one picture, but it has been fun anyway!Along similar lines I love it when you have someone lay down a hand and then assume that he had you beat and then cry about it. I love those types of players because they are sooooo easy to exploit since they have very fragile psyches. I was playing NL small stakes .50/1.00 yesterday and had A,K. Long story short, I raise, the I had you and folded guy re-raises, one another person between us calls and I re-raise. We go to the flop and it's King, Jack, and some rag. I know I am ahead here so I bet 5.00 into a 19.00 pot and he folds as does the other guy. Now in most cases this would be the end of it but he can't help but comment that's BS. Usually I just leave it but I figured I could have some fun with this guy so I come back with BS why, because you called and didn't have anything? So he says he had middle pair and shouldn't have folded. Here was my cue to really screw with his mind, so I tell him you are right you should have called. He says he will next time, so I lather on some more and tell him, yeah you would have won a nice pot!He unfortunately left quickly after that but I wrote his name down and can't wait for the opportunity to "bluff" him again, because I just know he will call.I love this game!!I also love the guy that insists on showing a table full of people that he just bluffed them out of the pot. They don't get the fact that not only will they become a target, but they will get no respect and someone will call them with crap and suck out on them so they can cry the game is rigged. A guy yesterday does exactly that in a 100.00 rebuy on PS and I commented "Wow is that what a Bluff looks like, I have never seen one of those before" and sure enough a couple of hands later he is holding pocket Aces and has someone with Queen, Jack call his all in bet, and he loses to the straight while making trip Aces. He leaves crying BS and I comment how funny that is coming from the bluff man.I say again I love this game!!!

[party poker rant]

I just found this pic from another forum and just had to post it in this thread!Hey I don't recall you asking for permission before posting my picture wearing that stylish hat!For a nominal price I can send a signed and framed copy to you!

[hey ny/nj/pa fcpers]

Anybody live in the Allentown, PA area that hosts a game? I would love to get in a regular game near home. Hosting it is not an option for me unfortunately as my wife likes poker about as much as having red hot needles poked in her eyes! Basically she hates it, except on the odd times when I win a tourney and give her some money, then she likes it just fine!

[busted my buddy cheating in my home game]

I hate to be harsh, but in most cases once a cheater always a cheater. I would ban him permanently.It is easy to say I am sorry, once you are caught. The impression I get especially since he argued so much initially is that he only apologized because he knew the jig was up and he knew he had no chance of ever playing with you guys unless he copped to cheating AFTER he was caught in the act.Just my 2 cents worth. I work in Bridgewater, NJ, I think Hamilton isn't too terribly far. If it is a reasonable distance I would be interested in the game.I live in eastern PA and have been looking for a decent game either close to work or close to home, perferably home but either way would work.Good luck in whatever you decide.

[party poker rant]

So, it's guilty until proven innocent now, huh? I suppose all of that money I've made in the last 6 months is just because they forgot to switch my account to "lose"?Seriously, stop with the conspiracy theories. This is ridiculous.

PARTY POKER SHOT JFK

Geeze at least get it right would ya? Party Poker shot Robert Kennedy NOT JFK.

[party poker rant]

yes i know- online being rigged is impossible, you just suck, etc. etc.forget the standard responses. what i want to know is if anyone can answer these specific questions. ive seen a few discussions and no one has come close to answering them.why would it not be profitable for a site to rig things so that bad players were better and good players worse?(one simple way is to rig longshot river draws)can anyone post any hand histories from poker tracker or anywhere else showing that this is not the case?if it were rigged who would catch them? do the auditors audit the software(useless because you can switch software), or track actual hand histories. if they do hh, is anyone allowed to verify? after all they have a large financial incentive not to check too carefully. if a scam does come out, just say they were mislead like everyone else, and in the meantime take the money from insufficient audits.what i am getting at is that it would be very profitable for them to rig things, the official auditors easily might not catch them and have an incentive not to, and it would be very hard to prove they are rigging things.the only way you could prove it is by going back through all of your hand histories where you knew the hole cards by the turn, and checking for the proper percentage of hits on the river.last question. short of doing this by hand, does anyone know of any software that allows you to do this?one last thing- if you are not going to respond to the questions in here, dont bother, because you being "sure its not rigged, even though i have no evidence" is a worthless response. also, i tried not to be too rude in this post, but it amazes me how rude the "its not rigged" people are when they almost invariably produce no evidence to support their position.

Anything is possible, however I believe that too many people involved with online poker have too much to lose to make rigging a site profitable long term.In the case of PP, you have Mike Sexton who regardless of whether you think he does a good or bad job on the WPT, is a respected player and author and has a contract with the WPT. Does it make sense for him to risk all of that by endorsing a site that is rigging their games? Eventually if they were rigging the game they would get caught. What would that do to Mike's credibility and career? How many people would buy his books and watch him on TV?Now take a look at Poker Stars. Moneymaker, Raymer etc. have contracts for commercials, are on billboards and do appearances etc. How much sense would it make for them to risk all that by endorsing a rigged site? Also many of the reputable sites are audited by accounting firms that also have reputations to uphold.Lastly anyone that has played Poker in a B&M casino as well as online will tell you that they will see the same strange seemingly rigged stuff happen in a live game. I am not the odds expert but maybe someone can tell me the odds of this next scenario which happened to me a few weeks ago happening. I believe that you get pocket aces something like once every 180 hands, not sure if that is accurate exactly but it isn't often. I was at the Bike in LA a few weeks ago and I received pocket rockets 3 times in less than one hour and 2 other people and my table also received them within the same time. Now what are the odds of pocket rockets appearing 5 times in less than one hour at one table? I don't know but they must be astronomical! Now had that happened online someone for sure would be screaming, it's rigged, look the guy got rockets 3 times!! The strange stuff online looks rigged because you see many, many more hands online than in a B&M casino.While anything is possible, if you sit back and think logically you will come to the conclusion that at least for the well known online casino's it makes very little sense for them to rig anything and highly unlikely that it is happening.Good Luck

[and a new poker star is born!!]

Wow congrats on the new baby boy! Man you guys/gals are making me feel ancient talking about infants and toddlers! Our daughter will be 15 this month and our son is 9!! Enjoy this time, because you will be excited to hear them talk then you can't get them to shut up!My kids both play Hold Em' with me at home, and my son is the best constantly going Dad your going all in with that?Congratulations again, parenthood really is the best, kids are great!

[regular schedule with daniel]

I agree that it should not be rigid but if there was a loose schedule it would attract people, that's all I am saying.Where as if it is completely random then it is no different then putting his face on a lottery ticket and if you get the right one you get to play.There must be some kind of happy medium here. I certainly would not want to be tied down to the computer nor am I looking for him to do so. Carpe Diem

[where is dn headed after pokermountain?]

Well you can tell I am a first time poster here, now technically second time. I meant to post this here to keep this thread going and instead created a totally new topic! So I thought I would also post it here. Practice makes perfect I guess, sorry.Whatever he does, if he has a site where there is a reliable schedule that you can count on him being available to play at affordable buy in's it would be huge. I ended up at the same table as Tom McEvoy on PS which I thought was cool, but when I emailed their support asking if there was any kind of schedule that Tom played on the response was basically "he is free to play whenever he wants". Well that was a helpful response! I am sure everyone on this board would appreciate the opportunity to test their skills against Daniel and other pro's without the prospect of going broke in the process. The schedule could be tentative and updated regularly dependent upon Daniel's travel schedule and many, many obligations. I have not read every single entry so, I appologize in advance if this has already been said. Carpe Diem

[regular schedule with daniel]

Whatever he does, if he has a site where there is a reliable schedule that you can count on him being available to play at affordable buy in's it would be huge.I ended up at the same table as Tom McEvoy on PS which I thought was cool, but when I emailed their support asking if there was any kind of schedule that Tom played on the response was basically "he is free to play whenever he wants". Well that was a helpful response! I am sure everyone on this board would appreciate the opportunity to test their skills against Daniel and other pro's without the prospect of going broke in the process.The schedule could be tentative and updated regularly dependent upon Daniel's travel schedule and many, many obligations.I have not read every single entry so, I appologize in advance if this has already been said.Carpe Diem