Online poker nicknames – should they be allowed to be changed?

Online poker nicknames are currently like a fingerprint for each online poker player. Once you choose one, you’ll be stuck with it for good. Given that you are not allowed to open several poker accounts at the same poker room, your once chosen nickname will theoretically stick with you for life. This is the reason why most online poker rooms warn players when they create their accounts and they’re about to choose a nickname: pick one that you won’t be ashamed of later, because we will not let you change it. Online poker rooms adopted this inflexible policy for a reason: this way they could keep track of their players’ movements, statistics and rake production in a simple, straightforward manner. Players embraced the idea too. By sticking to one nickname, one could literally build a name for himself in the online poker world, without ever giving out his real identity. Others could browse through his accomplishments which he’d brandish proudly. If you need an example of a person whose nickname made it to the headlines of each and every online poker news site out there, look no further than Isildur1. Part of the appeal of the Swede was the fact that he was a mystery man. No one knew his true identity and speculating on it turned into an entertaining pastime for many. Isildur1’s name proved to be his downfall too though. After they’d analyzed his hand histories and after they’d concocted strategies to combat his playing style, three Cardrunners members (South, Townsend and Hastings) felted him and sent him on a break from the tables, using that advantage.

The incident stirred up a whirlwind of debate in the industry, as a result of which measures were taken by some poker rooms to thwart “data mining”. Cake Poker decided to allow its players to change their nicknames once every week. This carries much further reaching implications than just stopping “data mining” though.

According to many experts, poker is a game in which it is essential to know who you’re playing against. Knowing your opponent will directly affect your decisions, thus allowing players to change their nicknames will rob their adversaries of a valuable edge. I’d have to disagree with this to a certain degree at least. A poker game begins the second you sit down to the table. It’s the same in live poker. Unless you’re one of the 50-100 (insert any number you see fit here) players known world over, nobody will know you until you start playing. Basically the same happens in the online poker room. You sit down and the guy who’s better at reading his opponent while selling his table image, is the more skilled player and he’ll probably enjoy a (fair) advantage because of that. Anything that happens off that table is not the poker room’s responsibility, and as such, whether it’s fair or not shouldn’t even come up – it should never be allowed to influence the game in any way to begin with.

It’s also been said that the option to change nicknames will allow skilled players to descend to lower levels and to take advantage of beginners. I don’t really see a problem with this…It shouldn’t matter who you are. If you’re a better player than your opponent than you should probably take his stack, it’d be the right thing to do. In addition to this, the guys playing at the nosebleed tables do not play there because they’re forced to do it. They play there because that’s where they reckon they can make the biggest profits and the most money, so the fact that they’re anonymous wouldn’t prevent them from staying at those tables. Sometimes, “name” pros who are hit badly do descend to the lower limits to rebuild their bankrolls, but as soon as they do, they dart right back to the nosebleed tables. I don’t think this would change one bit if nickname change was to be allowed.
One point I do have to fully agree with though, is that cheaters would be more difficult to identify and to eventually apprehend if they were allowed to switch their nicknames around. Russ Hamilton would probably still be frolicking around and enjoying the dough made off his unsuspecting victims, though we shouldn’t forget that he could probably have been tracked through the accounts he used.

Besides the naysayers, there are also experts who welcome the changes proposed (and already implemented) by Cake Poker. According to their reasoning, online poker has been slowly but surely turning into a huge data mining operation, in which the player doing more data mining research would have the advantage over an otherwise more skilled opponent. By allowing internet poker players to sink back into anonymity, the game would be purified of data mining and the focus would shift back from hand history analysis to actual game skills. Reading players and exploiting your table image are actual poker skills, but what good does it do to you that you’re much better at these things, if player X pulls a data sheet on you and knows exactly what percentage of your top hands you raise preflop?

What about the safe haven that this policy of nickname changing would offer cheaters like Hamilton? If we’re going down this road, I think it would be fair to note that Hamilton and his partners changed their accounts as well as their nicknames during their escapades. With the policy currently adopted by Cake Poker, player accounts would remain untouched and only the nicknames would change. Possible cheaters could be tracked down based on their accounts.

Online poker ruled a game of skill by a US judge

The battle for the legalization of online poker has been given a tug in the right direction last Friday, when a Pennsylvania judge ruled that poker was a game of skill rather than one of chance and that defendants Walter Watkins and Diane Cent, who were under investigation on 20 charges for running a game of NL Texas Holdem in their garage, were to be cleared on all accounts.

The judged analyzed the issue and came to the conclusion that even though there was an element of chance involved in online poker, that of skill was prevalent and because of that, the game itself couldn’t be considered one of chance. The judge quoted several sources on which he based his decision. Mike Caro’s ‘Secrets of Winning Poker’ and ‘Explaining Poker: a Data Mining Approach’ were among the offline sources he mentioned. The judge even quoted an excerpt from Caro’s book in which the flow of money from the bad players towards the strong players was suggestively described.

The defendants said they found it extremely distressing to be forced to go through the ordeals they had to deal with for the simple fact that they hosted a game of poker in which no rake had even been taken.

Although the case wasn’t exactly a high-profile court battle, the decision may prove extremely important in the future as it set a precedent in the ever raging debate on whether or not poker is a game of skill and thus exempt from under the restrictions and regulations put forth in the UIGEA. It also raises another question which – for some reason – is never really brought up by anti-UIGEA partisans: isn’t breaking the link to online gambling the most straightforward way to have online poker legalized in the USA? If poker does gain nation-wide acceptance as a game of skill (based on judge Thomas A James Jr’s ruling too), does that mean that online gambling tags along for a ride? I hardly think so. Because of the house edge they feature, online and offline gambling games will never pass as games of skill and therefore they may not be able to follow poker on the road to legality.

Online poker’s fight for a legal foothold in the US has gained yet another shove forward last week when a 3-judge panel of the Kentucky Court of appeals dismissed Judge Thomas D. Wingate’s ruling for the seizure of 141 internet domains belonging to some of the biggest online poker and gambling operators. The ruling – a natural one according to most experts – denied the Commonwealth of Kentucky to go through with a move that would’ve set an extremely dangerous and confusing precedent concerning internet freedom and the right to conduct business online anywhere in the word.

Judge Michelle M Keller has declared that an internet domain name cannot possibly be categorized as a ‘gambling device’ under any circumstances because it doesn’t really have anything in common with a mechanical or otherwise device primarily designed and manufactured for gaming and gambling purposes.

According to the judge, internet domain names do not fall under the ‘gambling devices’ category in the Kentucky state law, and even though the law could’ve been amended to include them, lawmakers hadn’t considered it necessary.

The PPA hailed the ruling as a major victory not just for online poker but for internet freedom and basic human rights as well. The judge who disagreed with the ruling stated that the domain names were in fact parts of a larger gambling device, one that included internet access and computers as well.

I wonder whether they’ll try to outlaw computers or internet access for Kentucky residents as well. After all, under this definition, they too qualify as gambling devices under the law.

A closer look at the Anurag Dikshit deal

About a week ago I wrote my little news-piece about the settlement that Party Poker co-founder, Anurag Dikshit has struck with the US Department of Justice, a move which cost the Indian billionaire more than $300 million. At the time, buried in the intricacies and chores of everyday life I couldn’t afford the luxury to ponder on about the subject, but a thought did cross my mind: what exactly did this man do to deserve such a positively obscene punishment. As far as I knew he was one of the owners of Party Gaming, and he had conducted a perfectly legal business which happened to attract thousands of American players at the time. What’s more, the company on behalf of which he took the blow has retreated from the US market following the 2006 UIGEA, so quite frankly, I didn’t understand how the whole thing made any kind of sense at all. I just figured they tied Dikshit to some sort of criminal activity, something I didn’t know about and moved on.

The curiosity of what this guy had done to deserve such a horribly steep fine gave me no peace though, so I decided to take a closer look at the issue and read up on Anurag Dikshit’s past. Turns out, the guy is no criminal and he hasn’t channeled funds to terrorists either. He just happens to have been the co-founder of probably the most successful online poker operation in the world, and as such one of the biggest success stories of internet-based gaming. Being one of the very few such companies in the world at the time of its inception, Party Poker acted as a natural magnet for US based players who showed interest in this sort of activity. The guy isn’t even a US citizen…On what grounds did the DoJ go after him then, most importantly, why did he yield to this obviously abusive pressure and why did he agree to have the “issue” settled this way?

They say he violated one count of the 1961 Wire Act. Come again? How could he have violated through his internet based enterprise an Act adopted way back when the notion of the entity that the internet is didn’t even exist. On top of it all, it is not 100% clear to this day whether poker is indeed a game of skill rather than a game of chance, so it isn’t clear either whether the Wire Act forbids it or not to begin with.
It would appear the Mr. Dikshit decided to go for the settlement instead of pursuing legal action against the abusive and unilateral measures set forth in the UIGEA, in order to aid some unknown interest of his own. According to experts, the case would’ve been winnable, and it would’ve cost far less than the sum Dikshit agreed to pay out.

Following the ominous settlement, Party Gaming released a statement in which it specified that the settlement was in fact Dikshit’s own initiative and thus his sole responsibility.

Accused of lack of integrity and cowardice by the industry’s experts and leading voices, Dikshit has in fact made a fortune on the backs of poker players whom he seems to have promptly turned his back on now that he accepted the proposed deal and set a dangerous precedent in the matter.