DoylesRoom discrimination
I was going to title this blog “DoylesRoom deposit problems,” but “DoylesRoom discrimination” made much more of a headline. See, I’ve been effectively banned from DoylesRoom, but not really. Read on.
About a year ago I played the site’s weekly bounty tournament, back when DoylesRoom was not yet on the Cake network. I ended up winning the tournament, but en route to the final table had some sort of disagreement with a DoylesRoom representative named Trish in the chat room. As it has been a year, I don’t even remember what it was about.
Anyway, fast forward to a few months ago when I tried to redeposit on my credit card to play more of the bounty tournaments. My card didn’t work, and when I contected support, I was told my ability to deposit via credit card had been suspended due to a manager’s decision. Upon further emails, they said it dated back to an incident that matched up with the time I had a disagreement with Trish. I was even told my credit card deposit banning was due to me being “very reckless on the forums.” Nobody in support was able to lift this ban, even though I’ve served my time. Further, it is completely ridiculous that the site is punishing me by not allowing me to put more money on their site.
I found Trish’s email address and sent her a note explaining the situation, and pleading my case that I have served my time and whatever was said could not have been bad enough to warrant a permanent credit card deposit ban. She checked with “management” and came back and told me that this decision would stand.
Really, DoylesRoom? This is how you want to handle things? I said something to offend someone in your “forum” (which I still haven’t confirmed means the chat rooms at the poker table) and your penalty is to remove my ability to bring business to your site? I can still chat on the site, I can still deposit to their site using other deposit methods (in fact, they gave me access to an exclusive deposit method last year), and I can still send and receive money to other DoylesRoom customers. But I can’t deposit via credit card.
Now that the site is on the Cake network, I really have no reason to play there, other than the bounty tournaments. I still have a balance high enough to play these, so at this point it’s just the prinicipal of the matter. I am hoping that this blog post will get some attention and someone will wake up and realize how dumb this ban is. Doyle? Todd? Pam? HELP!
Teaching Cake Poker about security
An interesting conversation came up between myself and a representative named “Steve” from Cake Poker. I had been emailing them from my gmail account, which is configured to send emails from my veerob.com domain name. However, gmail adds a Sender header or a Return-Path header (possibly both) that shows the actual gmail account name. When Cake replied to my emails, they were coming back in with my gmail address. I had seen this problem before with Outlook, I believe, and it is very annoying as my gmail account isn’t really supposed to be used.
Steve had explained that they couldn’t respond to certain requests when the emails were coming from my gmail account since my veerob.com email address was the one that was on file with Cake. I explained that they were both the same thing. Upon further emails, I discovered that someone at Cake Poker had declared that the Sender or Return-Path could not be forged, and so their reps were instructed to follow this law.
Unfortunately, this isn’t true. My past as a computer programmer allowed me to go into my web server’s Unix prompt and fire off an email to Steve (CC’ing myself in the process). In that email, I set both the From header as well as the Sender and Return-Path headers to be “barack@whitehouse.gov” to illustrate my point. A few minutes later, Steve replied and thanked me for the example, and he said he’d discuss this with his IT people.
Perhaps nothing will come of all of this, but I get very annoyed when companies are completely misinformed. Email is a totally insecure medium, yet Cake just today requested I send scans of my passport and credit card. I do appreciate that Cake is trying to take security seriously, but they’re missing some of the technical details of the Internet. Perhaps they will decide to hire me on as a consultant. Lee Jones, I’m available.
Bad experience @ Hertz LAX
So this is an email about an experience I had at Hertz back in October. I’ve told the story to friends twice now, so I figured I’d just post the email I sent for everyone’s enjoyment.
I arrived at around 10:30pm and was disappointed to see a line at the rental counter — I am a Hertz Gold Club member, but since my car was booked directly by my company, I could not get my Gold # attached to my reservation, or so said the 800 # representative. After having a delayed flight and a long day, I just wanted to get my car and get out of there. When I reached the front of the line, all of the agents were busy for what seemed like forever, and the ones that freed up seem to go on breaks. Finally your representative Treneice was available to help me.
I walked up to the counter and presented my ID, as I do every week when I pick up my rental car. She started typing in my information, and I asked her what car choices I have available to me (on a prior trip, I was given a Prius hybrid and couldn’t figure out how to start the car, so I always ask now to avoid this car). Treneice was immediately snippy and stated that she had just started looking up my reservation. I told her I realized this and just wanted to make sure I was given options before she went and reserved a car I didn’t want. She then muttered something under her breath, which was clearly directed at me. I said, “Excuse me?” Treneice replied that she was talking to herself.
She asked me for my credit card, and I told her the car was already paid for. She immediately said, “No, it’s not.” I said, “Yes, it is.” Again she said, “No, it’s not.” I said, “Look, I rent a car every other week from Hertz and I’ve never had a problem. The car is paid for, please look again in your system.” She went back to the computer, and after a few seconds clearly found her error. Rather than apologize for the confusion, she put the blame on me and said, “Next time you approach the desk you should tell them it’s ‘direct bill’.” At this point I had had enough of Treneice’s attitude and simply ignored her comment and let her finish her computer work.
She then got on the phone with another Hertz employee, I assume, and explained that she needed a standard car. Then she proceeded to have a minute-long conversation with the other employee, laughing about something I couldn’t hear about, making me wait longer for my car and making the other customers in line wait longer as well. When she got off the phone, she printed out my information and handed it to me as if I was to sign it. I did so, and she THEN informed me that this was my copy.
She then got the rental agreement jacket and started writing the space number on it, which clearly meant the car had already been selected in the system, even though I made it clear when I first approached the counter that I wanted to hear my options. I tried to interrupt her writing the space number and asked, “What kind of car is it?” She responded curtly, “It’s a full size car.” This was beginning to get a little ridiculous, and I was getting very frustrated with your employee. “That’s not the question I asked. What kind of car is it?” Treneice replied, “Sir, you reserved a full size car, so we’re giving you a full size car.” After a pause, she told me the make and model of the car. I replied, “Thank you, was that really that hard?”
Berneice clearly had a problem with this phrasing and said, “Excuse me? Who do you think you’re talking to?” I told her I was done playing games and to just give me my rental agreement. She purposely held it back and said, “Give me my rental agreement PLEASE?” This had gone too far, and I said, “No, just give me my rental agreement.” She said, “Take it easy, little man.” I told her I didn’t think her boss would appreciate hearing her employees spoke like this to a customer. I demanded a 3rd time for her to hand me my rental agreement and she finally did, mouthing off as I walked away.
I have traditionally been very happy with your company, but this experience has really soured me. When my company rents dozens of cars from you every week, it seems very silly for me to be treated this way, and it really put me in a bad mood for the night. I hope you look into this incident and see it does not happen again. Further, I encourage you to figure out a way that I can use my gold status to check in for a direct bill so I won’t have to be kept waiting in the future. Thank you for your time.
Upcoming travel
I love to travel, so I am happy to have just booked two trips. Next month, I’ll be heading to San Diego to see a few bands (No Knife, White Rabbits, The Gift/Curse), a few friends, and hit up the San Diego Fair. Then in August, I’ll be heading to Minnesota to meet my girlfriend’s family and hopefully do some touristy stuff in a town that’s pretty unfamiliar to me. Other than that, I plan to spend my summer right here in Las Vegas playing at the World Series of Poker and accompanying tournaments at the Venetian and Caesars.
More poker frustration
If you don’t want to hear about bad beats, this blog post is not for you.
This week has been pretty frustrating in the world of poker. After getting back from a semi-unsuccessful weekend of poker in LA, I decided to spend the week playing online at home. On Tuesday, I played a $24+2 “Bracelet Race” on Full Tilt that awarded a $1500 WSOP seat. I made the final table pretty easily, and ended up heads up 60k in chips to the chip leader’s 120k. I tried to play small ball, but the guy kept shoving on me, so I was forced to play his game of 2 card poker. I ended up shoved with 22 and he amazingly called with K4s. I won the flip and now found myself in great position to win the seat.
A few hands later he pushed in with his 55k, and I called with 66. He showed T6o and rivered a straight to reclaim the lead. He kept trying to bully me, and I ended up calling his all in with Ac 3c. He had Jh Th and didn’t hit, and now I had about 80% of the chips in play. He got the rest of his chips in when I had A4o, and he had a dominated 74o. Of course he turned a 7, and got himself back to 35% of the chips in play. He kept pushing, and I made a marginal call with Qh Jh. He had A9o, the first time having the best hand, and of course it held up.
We had a break at around this point, and I took a walk to calm myself. I mean, how could I get it in so good so many times and still not have the seat. I shook it off and came back and kept playing. As I hoped for, I finally picked up aces, on the button. Nobody was doing anything other than pushing all in or folding, but I limped in, almost 100% sure that he wouldn’t see what I was doing and would shove in on me. Sure enough he did. In his defense, he did have jacks, but damn if the entire rail didn’t know I had aces. I even had him suit dominated. Of course, that all didn’t matter when a jack hit the river to give him the W.
So sick. If I didn’t have so many hands where I had the way best of it, I wouldn’t be so upset, but it was a sick string of bad luck for me to not win the seat. After the tournament, I ran the numbers and came up with him having a 0.75% chance of winning all of those hands combined. Fake math, I guess, but it’s still a sick number.
The rest of the week hasn’t been much better. I did win a small tournament the next day for $1000, but spent all of that in buyins the next few days. Sigh, just needed to vent. Thank you, blog.
I invented Twitter.
It’s the summer of 2007. We’re in Vegas, and we’re poker players, so all my friends and I were all over town playing poker tournaments at various venues. How were we to keep track of each other’s progress in the tournaments? Simple, I spent a day programming and cobbled together a Perl script. I registered everyone’s cell phone numbers, so everyone could send a text-to-email and the contents of the text would go into a database that could be viewed on the web, on your cell phone, or sent back to everyone else’s phones via text message if they chose to have the option on. Sure, it didn’t have the login and sophistication that Twitter has, but the underlying concept was the same. Just think, I could have tens of millions of nothing just like the founders of Twitter!
Pechanga luckament or donkament?
I played a Pechanga tournament on Wednesday for the first time since 2005. My how things have changed. When I used to play there, the buy-ins were typically $25. This one was the smallest of their string of monthly tournaments, a $100+25 tournament with 404 entrants. The play was quick… 3000 chips to start with 30 minute levels, starting at 25/50.
I got off to a good start, doubling up my stack (after losing a little bit) with KJ vs AK on a KJx flop. A little bit later I busted Angry Old Man with my QQ vs his KT that he insta-called my all in on the turn on a ten high board with. I had my stack up to 11k when I lost a big coin flip, TT vs AK. Then, after only 5 levels of play (2 1/2 hours), they put us on a 40 minute dinner break. What? The tournament started at 7pm anyway; why was there a dinner break? Oh well, I went and ate since I never got dinner anyway. Always good to go to dinner break with <10 BB’s.
After dinner, I was in push mode and took down a couple hands preflop. Then I had 99 > 33 to get back to 10k, which was still short-ish. Then I lost JJ < KQ to get me right back to 10 BB’s. Then a guy pushed in EP and I called all in with QQ. He had A9s, and I flopped a set but lost to his turned flush. I was down to 600 in chips at 400/800, but amazingly won the next hand with my Q9 against the same guy’s 99. I then went on a tear, and had my stack back up to 10k in no time. A guy at my table said, “You’re my hero.”
I’d say it was smooth sailing from there on to the money, but it wasn’t. The Pechanga structure was so poor that nobody was in the clear. Even the big stacks only had about 20 BB’s, and average was around 10 BB’s. Luckily I have some experience with this structure, so I was able to hold my position. When we got down to the final few tables, I lost another big coin flip, leaving myself with only a few BB’s. A guy UTG shoved and I called all in with KQs, and a guy woke up behind us with queens. I spiked a king on the river to get back to good ol’ 10 BB average. Ended up busting in 15th place when I shoved the button for 8 BB’s with 99 and the big blind called with AK and won.
I debated playing Pechanga’s big buy-in tournament today at 2pm… a $360+40 that awarded a WSOP $10k seat. Even though they start you with double the chips of the tournament I played, I believe the structure is the same. It’s a total luckament. I was all in with the worst hand a couple times after losing big coin flips and had to be lucky to continue on in the tournament. Thanks, but I’ll stick to slightly more skill-based poker.
On a side note, Pechanga’s players are the worst players I have seen in a poker tournament in some time. It’s like I stepped into a time machine and went back 3 years. Players at my first table were saying “Raise” when they meant “Bet” and made other mistakes such as trying to raise with a single chip and having it be a call. While this does happen occasionally in Vegas tournaments and at other circuit stops, I have not seen an epidemic of so many players doing this as I have at Pechanga. I wish their structure was a bit better, and then I’d consider coming back.
