I've been fairly involved in the crypto-currency and Bitcoin space ever since the discussion of a decentralized online poker room that was held here years ago (still think it's a great idea).
I've also done some mining on and off over the years. With a $3k investment in May I've been doing casual GPU mining on altcoins and have managed to make about $16k profit. I actually lost out on well over $10k in value because I didn't maintain the miner, let it get too hot and then didn't repair for 1.5 months when the fans warped. After undervolting, applying arctic silver, and replacing the fans it was running cooler and faster than ever before while using less electricity.
Thinking out about summer coming and how much higher the electricity costs become with cooling and energy bills I've considered managed colocation so I don't have the same issues that I suffered last summer. I've also just recently built an additional miner. I have friends with miners that face the same issues.
So one of these friends is now actually going to offer some of these colocation services since it's so difficult to find a datacenter that will take miners. He'll offer the services of uptime, redundant internet, cooling, expertise on optimizing hash rate, pool selection, upgrading miners, building miners, etc. He's starting off with an 8,000 sq ft industrial facility that can handle the cooling, electricity needs, and security requirements. It's on the same grid as hospital and fire station next door and located in Las Vegas (a safe-zone from natural disasters in the US) and redundant internet providers.
It'll start off with hosting miners from our immediate circle of friends, but should publicly be offering its services starting in Spring when everyone starts getting nervous about what they're going to do by summer. I'm posting this here because I know there are many who already mine or have an interest in mining.
If any of the above services that I have mentioned interest you and you would to sign up early then send me the following information to be put on the list and have early pricing estimates sent over:
-Email address
-ASIC, FGPA, or GPU?
-How many units of what model? (ASIC or Video card model and how many of them)
-Power supply used? (Goal is to find out wattage and efficiency of PSU)
-Dimensions? (Is it in a computer case, a milk crate, custom design)
-Difficulty to package and ship to the facility?
Value from 1-5 in the following services:
-SLA for uptime (Electricity and internet).
-On-site techs that can offer quick repair and maintenance when needed.
-On-site backup hardware for quickly getting back to hashing when something goes wrong (power supplies, processors, motherboards, risers, fans)
-Year round stable cooling.
-Hash rate optimization services (cgminer/sgminer custom configuration)
-Hardware optimization services (upgraded thermal paste, fans, undervolting, cooling)
-Build a miner services
Any questions/concerns you would first like to be addressed.
finally making some progress at nl2 low stakesby punix, February 02
Sup guys,
After creating this thread how much tactic do you need in nl2? u know that I already burned 3 bankrolls for nl2. I was very frustrated and like some ppl stated in this thread if I can not make profit at nl2, I definetly should consider quitting poker. So I evacuated the rest of my roll (which was something like $20 from my intitial $40 roll) and thought about quitting poker and leaving it behind (as I stated in the thread).
But there were several things that kept me hanging on and thinking about:
First off, I really like and enjoy poker (but of course i dont like burning away money for nothing). I like the competition and what I like even more is the fact that Poker is soo much more about you against yourself and its such a nice, balanced "solo" game. In fact poker trains you also some very useful skills like patience, endurance, willingness and dedication. As Iam lacking patience in "rl", I thought that playing poker is also a nice challenge for myself to gain more skills in patience and keeping calm. Therefore, I could not just leave Poker behind but obviously I needed help and could not go on like I did before (eventhough my VPIP/PFR/3b were kinda okay I was loosing way too fast).
I searched around on 2p2 and found a thread about "Crushing the Microstakes" from blackrain and purchased his "book" which also gives you access to his "private forum". I read the book in 1day: It was nothing special tactic wise but it opened my eyes a little that I have to keep more track of my opponent type, intiative and things like this. I really liked the book and it highly motivated me and Iam definetly recommending it to any new player that wants to play nl2. Also blackrain seems to be quite a nice guy that trys to help out alot with his huge microstake xp in his forums. So once again I reloaded a $40 roll to my PS acc and tryed to beat NL2.
Through Crushing the Microstakes, I switched from 6max to FR. Of course I can not go from busto to robusto in 1day by just reading 1book that did not even teach me soo many new things but I kept improving and reread the book several times and added more microstake books.
It started off quite well but I had some tilt issues where i kept burning away all the buyins that I won over 3-5k hands in just 100hands. I also noticed that my WTSD value is way too high and therefore my W$aSD was too low. I worked hard on fixing tilts and nitting up more PF that I don't get too often into too marginal situation and folded more and more on flop, turn. Iam still not quite there but my very last sessions had the WTSD and W$aSD values that I wanted to achieve.
My winnings improved and Iam getting more confident. I want to work on my game to improve it everyday. I guess I should also start posting hands here!
I played mostly zoom FR which seems to fit me much more than 6max games, eventhough I definetly want to work on my 6max game aswell. I noticed that I feel a little bit overrun in 6max since there is just more action going on with 3b/4b, cb.
Why am I writing now a blog about this (since it mostly will not really interest anyone of the mid-high stakes players)? The answer is simple. Every now and then some new players arrive here as well that want to start at 2nl and are struggling like I did before and then you also just hear everybody saying "uhh todays game got tough so you have to dedicate a lot to it". New players can easily get frustrated and get the feeling that they can not make it. But of course at 2NL there are soo many dumb players pretty much anyone can win at this stake but even at 2nl you have to work on your game and attitude towards the game. But it can pay off! Crushing the Microstakes really helped me out getting into the right mindset and watching out for the right stuff, so if there are people out there struggling at these lolomicrostakes you should read this book!
I hope in the longrun I can move up and improve and post some hands here! So I hope you will still hear something from me every now and then.
Won tcoop 36 made a deal 3 handed when I had least chips of course regret now. I only learnt the game yesterday watched a vid on cardrunners epic run good I assume. Pretty fun game overall now I guess I have to play high roller since I said that to myself if I get a final table but was hoping for a bigger tourney.. not sure I will.
Not poker related at all, but the Knox guilty verdict is of interest to me, and maybe you. Didn't think it was worth it's own thread.
I've been following this case casually since the beginning pretty much, and I think it's a lot more interesting than many people may realize at first. I won't be talking as much about the case specifically here, but if you are interested at all (warning: huge time sink potential) then there's a guy on 2p2 who's pretty well known that lays out a lot of the case from a pro-guilt perspective in this thread. He gets into a pretty long winded debate with a guy named "239", and although he generally sticks to discussing case specifics, at one point Henry and a few other people sort of snapped and accused him of astroturfing.
From there, I came across blogs/posts/etc. where people claim to have been paid by the PR firm to turn over their social media accounts on most of the top 100 visited online forums (boybuilding.com, 2p2, reddit, etc. etc). It appears to be a new tactic where people try to buy relatively (1 year+) old social media accounts solely for the purpose of expressing biased opinions, or in the case of sites like Reddit perhaps to manipulate the voting system so certain things don't appear on the front pages.
After the guilty verdict, this thread on reddit seems to have took off. I couldn't help thinking there may be heavy astroturfing going on simply based on the numerous ludicrous opinions being shared that extraditing Knox would be a violation of the constitution, and constant references to Double Jeopardy when there was never a 2nd trial - not to mention that Knox was found guilty initially before the judge forced what is effectively a retrial. (I don't want to get into the specifics of the Italian justice system here, but essentially a guilty verdict isn't 100% final, and although Knox was found guilty, a judge ruled that the jury came to that conclusion incorrectly and so there was more or less a forced retrial)
Anyways, I must admit my own bias in that I initially was of the opinion Knox was likely innocent, however as I read more and more non-U.S. sources my opinion began to sway. In the end I think she did play some hand in the murder but should not be found guilty due to a lack of real evidence.
All that being said, I think there is clear evidence of an organized PR campaign being run through social media and internet forums attempting to sway the general U.S. public into feeling as though Knox being extradited or imprisoned would be a gross miscarriage of justice, probably in hopes that the U.S. gov't will be swayed in the same direction. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that the current general perception of the case would make the U.S. extraditing Knox a PR failure on their end, and probably something that is met with huge backlash stateside.
The whole concept of Astroturfing and social media manipulation as it is alleged to have occurred here is pretty wild. The practice is a little unsettling but if there is an astroturfing campaign among major media outlets, it appears to be a success.
Pretty rambly here, but I had nowhere else to put any of my thoughts on this. As I said I've really only done casual research into the whole thing but I'm always open to other peoples opinions or thoughts on social media manipulation in high profile criminal cases.
This morning I went on a long twitter rant about how party poker had screwed its customers over in 2013 (shameless plug to my twitter https://twitter.com/rcdaut ) 140 characters at a time isnt enough to describe what party poker has done to its customers in the past 12 months. I've made short rants about them before, but I wanted to go into more detail here so people could get a better idea of what has happened.
CLIFFS:
imagine if stars got rid of supernova elite on short notice, removed every bonus above the 100k VPP level, changed the $1600 for 100k fpp bonus to $8k for 500k FPP and gave it a long play through requirement, segregated their player base and started charging a 3% flat fee on cashouts using the most popular cashout method. That is what party did in an 8 month period.
Decreased bonuses and made them harder to clear with very little notice
I started grinding party in December 2012. I was having a pretty rough month on stars and decided to try party out looking for better games. The first thing I did after depositing was study the VIP system party had. It was all based on their version of frequent player points. Every dollar paid in rake gets you 2 party points. Accumulating a certain number of party points in either a month or 3 month period put you into VIP levels. In order to reach the highest level of Palladium Elite, a player would have to earn 20,000 points in a 3 month period which equates to $10,000 paid in rake. The second highest level was Palladium which could be reached with 9,000 points in a 3 month period ($4500 rake).
Being in the higher VIP levels had advantages, particularly being able to purchase bonuses that returned a higher percentage of rake. Their top bonus was a 300,000 point bonus worth $75k. This equates to 50% rakeback since it takes $150k rake paid to accumulate 300k points. I dont remember the exact details on how long it took to clear old bonuses, but I believe they were released in 5 installments of $X for X points. i.e. for each $15k installment of the $75k bonus, a player would have to accumulate 15k points ($7500 rake paid). This bonus takes a long time to reach: about 83.33% of the volume of reaching Supernova Elite on stars to buy the bonus, and another $37500 in rake paid to fully clear the bonus.
If you didnt want to wait that long to clear a bonus, they had smaller bonus options that you could clear more often at a lower rate. You could also buy bonuses that didnt require any points to clear at a lower rate. I used the way back machine to find their old bonuses:
As you can see, there were lots of options to receive 30%+ rakeback, and the 30% option took $10k rake paid to buy and (i believe) another $1500 rake paid to clear.
Early in 2013, with very little notice, Party announced it was doing away with all bonuses that gave greater than 30% rakeback out. As a new customer this didnt affect me as I had very points accumulated at that time, but there were players who were working towards the larger bonuses and were sufficiently far away that they would not be able to reach it before the bonus was removed from the point store.
Really gotta feel for the party grinders who were halfway to reaching those big bonuses and had to settle for 10-20% less rakeback than they were working towards.
Fast forward to today, the bonuses are significantly worse. To buy a 30% bonus now you have to pay 100k points for a $15k bonus which takes 90k points to fully clear in 2 installments. So lets compare the old 30% rakeback bonuses to today's side by side:
old bonus: 20k points to purchase 3k bonus, five installments of $600 cleared after $300 rake paid for each installment. Under this system it takes $10300 rake paid to start seeing money back. current bonus: 100k points to purchase 15k bonus, two installments of $7500 after $22500 rake paid for each installment. So it takes $72500 rake paid to see any money with this new system. Under the old system you could have purchased a 40% rakeback bonus and received YOUR ENTIRE $20k BONUS quicker than you would receive your first $7500 under the new system for a 30% rakeback bonus.
Removed Monthy Promotions
This part isnt really a shady management decision, its their prerogative on what promotions they will offer their customers, but its definitely made it much less enticing to put volume in on party. The first month I was on party, they were running a promotion called Advent Calender.
I dont remember the exact details of it, but basically you would receive little gifts after a certain number of points accumulated. So if you were the lowest VIP level, you would receive a very small gift every say 25 points cleared. These gifts would be something like entry to a freeroll or a $1 bonus. If you were the next VIP level you would receive those gifts AND a slightly better gift (sometimes $3 bonuses or 5 free points) every 50 points for your level. This went up all the levels, so if you were palladium elite you were receiving all these gifts all month long. I only reached the 3rd highest VIP level that month, but I think I ended up receiving over $250 extra back in points and bonuses for maybe $3k paid in rake that month. An extra 10% rakeback was really nice.
The following months they ran a few other really nice promotions.
World domination: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/partypo...ves-world-domination-promotion-23226/
This one was really great. Sure it was pretty much impossible to get certain cities, but even clearing a country or continent gave nice extra bonuses. I paid >$250 in rake almost every day i was able to play that month trying to get new cities.
Fast Forward Promotion:
fast forward is party's version of zoom/rush poker. They didnt run PLO or bigger than .25/.5 NL, but you could earn up to $100 extra a week in this promotion.
Since WSOP I dont remember party running any worthwhile promotions. They give away tickets to freerolls, but thats about it.
Player Segregation
Not gonna go too into detail on this because apparently it was eventually reversed in November, but basically if you were a high winrate player they made certain games with fish invisible to you. Proof of it happening:
Instituted 3% flat cashout fee to skrill/neteller and other e-wallet sites WITHOUT NOTICE
This was a big one. One day party just started charging 3% on all cashouts to skrill and other sites like neteller and webmoney. I had no other withdrawal options. I dont have player transfers on party, RBC closed my canadian bank account for being a poker player, and the same happened in other banks to other players, and I no longer have an apartment in Canada. After initially moving there for 6 months to get set up on sites, I just travel to Canada to grind online and rent places on airbnb. Skrill was my only option, and instituting this effectively stole 3% of the money I had on the site.
All in all Party is no longer a place I wish to grind due to all of these changes which is sad because for the first few months last year it was my favorite site to play on. The first few months on the site I was probably averaging about 50k hands, 6k profit, 6k rake paid. Basically I was making 6k + 2k rakeback = 8k a month + an extra $250-500 in their nice promotions. Assuming the same winrate, that would now decrease to 6k profit + 1200 rakeback (i bought the 20% bonus to clear my points and get off the site) = 7200*.97 = 6984, a decrease of ~1250-1500 for the same amount of volume. For higher limit players that made more money or guys that put in significantly more volume than me, this was definitely much much worse.
Releasing new software and in exchange wrecking the bonus system, no longer offering good promotions and taking 3% of every cashout is not a fair trade. I realize party will never offer the bonuses they used to, but in order to make right with customers they should cease charging the 3% cashout fee, start offering better monthly promotions than virtually worthless freerolls and to give reward bonuses to customers who put in lots of volume last year while they were busy screwing everyone over.
Note: This has nothing to do with party poker NJ. All of these changes were put into place before party was even up and running in NJ.
weird things happening
jan 22 I was going crazy from my badrun so I decided to travel with my gf to unwind and chill a little, maybe when I return my badrun is gone
so I came back yesterday, and when I enter my apartment there's a letter from the management company of the building, they are threatening to fine me if I continue to disturb other people from my building, they said I keep dragging furniture overnight and making noises, disturbing the other residents
WTF ? I WASN'T EVEN AT HOME
and also, there was handwritten paper from the building manager saying something like this:
"I went to your apartment as we agreed, and you weren't at home
manager "
LOL, wtf ? with who that bitch spoke to ???
also, still getting stolen at the tables playing retards, sickest bad run ever
another thing:
some dude offered me a stake to play higher limits,
I still have bankroll to play nl200 ( not confortably ) but I think the good thing is that I wouldn't feel all this pressure of going busto and not having money to pay the rent, and I probably will be able to learn /move up much faster
tbh don't know anything about staking, the guy said it would last until I make 50 or 100k of profit, and initially it would be 50/50 because of the risk and then it would be something like 70/30 for me, this is a fair deal or what ?
anyway, I went to Rio de Janeiro, the women there are ugly as fuck compared to where I live, and the whole city smells like piss, follow my advice and don't go there
going to post some pics because people don't like to read whine blogs without pics:
I'm going to try to make a little blog entry every Wednesday since it is the biggest NBA fantasy day of the week. I get off work at 4 and rosters lock at 7, so I spend most of that time researching and making lineups, so I'll try to keep this breif.
The first question today is whether to take LeBron/Durant tonight or not. I honestly don't think it's much of a question at all. They both have terrible matchups. OKC is a -15% defensive matchup vs SF's and MIA is a -11% matchup. That is an extremely severe decrease. Unless you're putting your money on the stars coming to play in the big game, the math doesn't add up for taking either of these guys.
PG:
MCW (8300) - Slightly negative matchup (-3.5%) but that number was generated with Avery Bradley in the Lineup. I think this is a +% matchup without Rondo and Bradley. Close spread is a plus as well.
Lowry (8100) - Slightly positive matchup. Spread is large, probably only playing him if DeRozan is out.
Knight (6500) - Positive matchup, but spread is high and minutes are questionable. Not a bad play though.
Augustin (6500) - Good matchup (+5%). If Hinreich misses Augustin will probably be in my lineup.
SG:
Ellis (7200) - Positive matchup (+3.5%), close spread, worried Beverly might guard him a good amount. Will be in my lineup in all liklihood.
Henderson (5700) - Positive matchup (+2.5%), should be getting more shots with Kemba out. Not many people will have him and he has a nice floor.
SF:
Green (5900) - You have to force a few Celtics into your lineup and Green seems to have the most stable role. Huge positive matchup (+17%) and a close spread.
Marion (5100) - His season average(24.3) is almost at his price value, close spread and a slightly positive matchup.
PF:
Davis (9700) - Averaging 2 more FP's than Love over the last 10 games and has a nuetral matchup. I like him over love for 1k less.
Nowitzki (8000) - Good plus matchup (+9%), and a close spread.
C:
Jordan (7500) - He's averaging his price value over the last 10 (37.1), but the matchup is slightly negative and the spread is big.
Turiaf (3500) - Plug him in. Minimum salary, great matchup, proved that he will get good numbers last game when Pekovic got hurt.
A lot can change in the next 2 hours, these are my picks as of now. I registered for some golf this weekend. Let me know if you guys have any picks for that. I plan on doing a little research tonight.
EDIT:
*****Lot's of crazy inactives today. Here's my lineups
FD
MCW
Lowry
Ellis
Gordon
Marion
J Green
Love
A Johnson
Steimsma
DK
MCW
Ellis
Marion
Turiaf
Steimsma
Lowry
Love
Ajinca
How to follow your LP posts and HH commentsby Joeingram1, January 29
Wanted to write a little liquid poker psa that it took me about 6 years to figure out. I never knew how to do this for the longest time and I would end up commenting on something and forgetting what I commented on and then never reply or engage in any sort of conversation. Last week I discovered if you go to My Blog and then My Posts, the posts you commented on all come up and it tells you who had the last response and takes you right there. Really wish I knew about this a long time ago.
Also for PLO Hand Histories being posted on here. I've been posting on some HH's lately but the guy who posts the hand never comes back to it, which is a problem I used to have because I never knew how to track if something got commented on or if a new comment was posted. I'm more than happy to comment on PLO HH's that are posted but pleaseeeeee reply back lol, my last comments on hands were 3 questions just to see if anyone ever came back to check what they posted
my roommate i keeps eating these chips making maximum noise, i can hear them not just crunching but swishing and swirling inside his mouth as he loudly prepares to swallow them, then he smacks his lips, and it never stops because the second he's done lip-smacking he starts crunching, and it's so fucking loud i am going to suffocate him in h is sleep
nsa - snowden - interview jan 27 2014by Highcard, January 28
Interview bullets points from this week. Full video at bottom Apparently in the USA this is being censored or blacked out - unknown source
Here are some of the other interesting points he made in the interview:
"There have been thousands of violations of the National Security Agency and other agencies and authorities every single year."
Every time you pick up the phone, dial a number, write an email, make a purchase, travel on the bus carrying a cell phone, swipe a card somewhere, you leave a trace and the government has decided that it’s a good idea to collect it all, everything, even if you’ve never been suspected of any crime. Traditionally the government would identify a suspect, they would go to a judge, they would say we suspect he’s committed this crime, they would get a warrant and then they would be able to use the totality of their powers in pursuit of the investigation. Nowadays what we see is they want to apply the totality of their powers in advance - prior to an investigation.
"When you are on the inside and you go into work everyday and you sit down at the desk and you realise the power you have - you can wire tap the President of the United States, you can wire tap a Federal Judge and if you do it carefully no one will ever know"
"But what (the review boards investigating the illegal NSA programs) found was that these programs have no value, they’ve never stopped a terrorist attack in the United States and they have marginal utility at best for other things...The National Security agency operates under the President’s executive authority alone. He can end of modify or direct a change of their policies at any time."
I can track your username on a website on a form somewhere, I can track your real name, I can track associations with your friends and I can build what’s called a fingerprint which is network activity unique to you which means anywhere you go in the world anywhere you try to sort of hide your online presence hide your identity, the NSA can find you
However, it’s no secret that every country in the world has the data of their citizens in the NSA. Millions and millions and millions of data connections from Germans going about their daily lives, talking on their cell phones, sending SMS messages, visiting websites, buying things online, all of this ends up at the NSA and it’s reasonable to suspect that the BND may be aware of it in some capacity.
So realistically what’s happening is when they say there’s no spying on Germans, they don’t mean that German data isn’t being gathered, they don’t mean that records aren’t being taken or stolen, what they mean is that they’re not intentionally searching for German citizens. And that’s sort of a fingers crossed behind the back promise, it’s not reliable.
The problem there is you end up in a situation where government policies are being influenced by private corporations who have interests that are completely divorced from the public good in mind. The result of that is what we saw at Booze Allen Hamilton where you have private individuals who have access to what the government alleges were millions and millions of records that they could walk out the door with at any time with no accountability, no oversight, no auditing, the government didn’t even know they were gone.
If I am a traitor who did I betray? I gave all of my information to the American public, to American journalists who are reporting on American issues. If they see that as treason I think people really need to consider who do they think they’re working for. The public is supposed to be their boss not their enemy.
What he doesn’t say is that the crimes that he has charged me with are crimes that don’t allow me to make my case. They don’t allow me to defend myself in an open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to their benefit. The espionage act was never intended, it’s from 1918, it was never intended to prosecute journalistic sources, people who are informing the newspapers about information that’s of public interest. It was intended for people who are selling documents in secret to foreign governments who are bombing bridges who are sabotaging communications not people who are serving the public good. So it’s I would say illustrative that the president would choose to say someone should face the music when he knows the music is a show trial.
So I started out the month very well, mostly running good, and then I found out the hard way that playing 4zoom tables + 8 normal ones and running bad is a very bad combinations. Thus about 20k or something like that went up in smoke. Although, I've already made well over 100k VIP-points this year so that's something.
Gonna make sure to get some confidence back by playing 1/2 for 100k hands (ie, a month or so) and cut down on tables a lot. I think it'd be somewhat hard to lose on 1/2 if I actually play few enough tables so that I can pay a little bit of attention. Going to try and get hold of a really braggy 1/2 graph
On a more positive note the gold price and the miners (measured as the HUI) shows some signs of life. As I understand it gold actually broke out of a tightish trading range by closing at 1270 last Friday and the HUI has gained some 10% this year. This almost makes up for my crappy multi-tabling skills.
I'm still not convinced that this is the point when gold breaks up again, I'd rather venture to guess that it'll still be range bound between ~1180 and maybe 1350 or so for another few months but after that I feel there's a decent chance it'll break up again.
Starting to get the itch to play some donkaments too. A bunch of good ones tonight, maybe I'll try to ship on.
Oh, and the knives I bought. Apparently it's the ones they use on Masterchef: Australia, on of my favourite TV-shows. They're dope.
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One of my favorite actors
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