blonde poker forum

Neil Channings general chit chat on this & that in poker in his latest Bluff Europe column.


http://bit.ly/1xCeIh3

Do Bluff ever link to Blonde Tikay?

Neil might be great with the sportsbetting stuff, but understanding the monopolistic nature of the online poker market isn't one of his strong points (or anyone in the poker media). I've said it once and I'm sure I'll have to say it again but there is no where else for poker players to go other than Stars, especially sit and go players. Tourney guys can move some volume elsewhere, and the cash guys shouldn't be playing there anyway, but the sng guys have no options. Furthermore, no one seems to write about the ddosing going on at the moment. Did you know an American facing site was running a $1 million guarantee event? Well they were until there servers got ddosed. I wonder if we will ever find out who the guilty party/parties are.

Hi Adam.

It'd rather curious how, quite accidentally it seems, we so often end up with opposing views!

No, Bluff Europe never "link" to blonde.

The point of the link was not to promote Bluff Europe, it was to promote Neil's article, which contains some interesting views on poker generally.

It also, more pertinently, gives good mention of Sky Poker in 2 of his 5 pieces, including UKPC noise.

That was the reason I mentioned it. Neil is paid to help spread the word, & to a lesser degree, so am I. I assumed everyone knew that, to be honest.

I do have Rob's permission to "spam" this stuff, especially as Rob, via DTD, also wants as much UKPC noise as possible. The Main has a stiff Guarantee @ £1 million, which will take some achieving, & it can't be bad for poker, imo, so I don't really feel bad about banging that drum.   

I'm not going to try to defend Neils knowledge of Online Poker, except to say I'd be quite surprised if he was not as clued up as anyone, given his duration in poker, & the fact he owned his own Room for many years. It's inevitable, of course, that not everyone will agree with his views & opinions.

Yes, I was fully aware of that recent DDOS you refer to, everyone even remotely connected with the Industry does.

No one writes about all the recent DDOS stuff? Well no, they don't, & I'd be very surprised if they ever do. It's not the sort of information which is best served by being out in the open, so I doubt you'll see too many Execs from the Industry discussing the ins & outs of it in public.

I hope you have a storming 2015, and you make another UKPC Final Table. Win that Main Event, & you are sorted for 2015. Easy game....

What is a DDOS?

basically overloading servers by sending a lot of traffic/requests at once which they can't deal with, rendering a site offline. Often done by botnets (computers all over the world infected with malware etc) Distributed denial of service attack

It's the internet equivalent of a picket line.

Either one person or a group of people finding a way of stopping people using a website. Can be something like using up the bandwidth and causing the site to crash, firing lots of malware at it and ruining the site for a period or stopping the site communicating with users.

Not sure what it is in this context.

I enjoyed the article. Always an enjoyable read. More rants about miserable twentysomethings and stories about Irish gamblers though, please.

Hi Stu,

I think Wiki might explain it better then I ever could....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

It's important to differeniate between "DOS" & "DDOS" though. See....

http://www.incapsula.com/ddos/ddos-attacks/denial-of-service.html


The Gaming Industry has had a spate of these recently. Generally speaking, sites don't discuss them openly, as it's a bit sensitive, for obvious reasons. Industry Sites do carry regular news on them though.

That's about the sum of it. Persistent & repeated requests gradually overload the servers. The site does not  "instantly" fail, it just sort of gets strangled slowly, as the available bandwidth is used up.

The article? I always enjoy his stuff, as it happens. I was feeling pretty pleased about mentioning it, too, as I've had a lot of clicks on that link today, more than I usually get. I can "measure" my clicks, what time they take place, from where (geographically) & from what sort of platform (a Forum, Social-Media, da de da). I get a little graphy thing, & everything.

D-Dos'ing (distributed denial of service) has been used around online poker since the start, mainly used in HU cash games, people who were doing it went through very easy ways of obtaining people's IP address such as obtaining their Skype ID. for those that don't know, for poker it's a way of disconnecting you at any time by overwhelming your IPaddress with HTTP traffic, it's like telling someone to do billions of things at once,  incapable of doing so you lose connection, then memory, CPU time and villain will therefore win the pot by default during your disconnection.
I wasnt surprised at all by the $1M gtd US becoming a flop, or blaming D-Dos because its basically impossible to track.

@tikay, 'sites' will take longer because they will have much larger servers and memory than a usual home computer. There's a way to counter it but only if you really know what you're doing and you have tons a tons of memory and you are pre empting it to happen

Yes, that's why I said its important to distinguish between DOS & DDOS, they are different things with different motives.

"Tons of memory" is less important than (trying to) pre-empt them.  

By & large, the sites are aware of the problem, & how to try to counter it, but it's not that easy, & some of the biggest sites in the world (not just Gaming Sites) can be & often are attacked to the point of temporary failure. Several major (non-Gaming) sites have been attacked recently.

Or you could do summat like arrange a freeroll on your poker site that allowed  a max of 10,000 players to play in it and then get 10,000 poker players all trying to log on at the exact time that registration opened. The firms systems then  see it as the start of a DDOS attack and the firms Sportsbook and casino site go down too....and its  Champions league final night......and you are out of the country   ;whistle; ;surrender;

I'm sure you know aswell as I do, there is no way to prevent an attack ):

From reading a 2+2 thread a few weeks ago it seems an individual was able to bring down the entire iPoker network (among other networks) using a DDoS attack when he moved all in, therefore winning key pots deep in tourneys. Can't find the thread now but I was pretty surprised it was so easy. The evidence seemed compelling at the time as someone in the thread posted that he was about to do it in a key pot by min-raise 4 or 5 betting in a weird spot and sure enough the entire network disconnected. Think it was said he tried it on Pokerstars too but they managed to stop it and ban him.

Ha!

There's a man who has been there, seen it, & got the t-shirt.

Its very frustrating for everyone. Poker players get very upset, of course they do, it's jolly inconvenient. 

The Sites, however, find it equally irritating, to put it mildly. Generally, on a multi-media Gaming site, such as the very fine one I think you allude to, (if we talking 7 or 8 years ago?) have far far bigger volumes through their Sports Betting & Casino Sites, by a ratio of 40 or 50 times greater, so it's a tad inconvenient for them, too. To a poker player, nothing else matters, they temporarily lose their game, & get rather cross. Can't blame them one bit. But poker is a very small part of a much much greater whole.

As you note, on a Champions League night, or before Monday Night Football, it does exercise the sites somewhat.....     

PS - I owe Adam a thank you, my "clicks" have increased noticeable since this thread burst into life. Always a silver lining, eh?

I know something similar at a tenner game I play at the local legion sometimes with our pool team. There's a guy who seems able to release a smell on demand in a big hand once he's a few beers in that clears the room and sends the hardest blokes to the toilets in coughing fits. No one can play when Pete has one of his "episodes". He could wilt a flower at a dozen paces that bloke.

;)

I was trying to be a touch discrete.......

Attacks (DDOS) cannot be prevented, they happen all the time. Defences can & do attempt to thwart them though. Not always succesfully. For every successful one, there are many unsuccessful ones. You don't get to hear about those, though.

Do you get any extra cash the more clicks you get?

The crux of the final abusive voicemail I had was ' You have taken down the whole site for a fucking poker tournament that nobody has even paid to play in you *******  ******'

Going forward they had to find a way to allow a lot of people to sign in to the freerolls at once and differentiating between a suspected threat. I'm guessing it is still the same today in that once the reg opens for those comps they get full within seconds?

If only. It helps me to keep my job though, I suppose.

It's standard stuff, no different to what the likes of Little Danny, Lovely Liv, Big Neil or anyone else repping a site does. Clicks are very very important, x% of them (there is a default standard ratio) carry through to acquisition, & acquisition is king.

Feel free to keep clicking, ty ty ty.

I think the same fella must have signed up Next Door, I recognize that style.......I've had a few of those in my time, I can tell you.

Same today, as to lots of people suddenly regging?

I don't think so, no, certainly not in my experience, though it may be so on the "Big Site".

Freerolls run so often now, several every day, & when there is the occasional "Biggie", Registration opens a long time in advance, which eases the load.

It was the case not so long ago though, certainly.

Really, on Multi-Media platforms, the real test is not a poker Tourney with x hundred or thousand runners, it's the peak times for Sports Betting that really tests the integrity of the site software. And that software is the WHOLE site, Sports Betting, Casino, Poker, everything, not just one "arm".

At around 2.55 on a Saturday afternoon, the Online Bookies are taking, literally, hundreds of bets per second. That is some serious load. The load then "spikes" again after full time, when most people want to withdraw their winnings.

It's even more dramatic on days like Grand National Day, & many months of planning goes into ensuring the site can take the added strain. Grand National Day is worse in some ways, as many of those with winnings to come tend to want to withdraw immediately.  It's the greatest "acquisition" opportunity of the whole year, too, so one way & another, its a very challenging & exciting day for those sort of sites. I believe at least 2 major online bookies had serious load issues on Grand National day last year.   

Fascinating discussion, or it is to me, it's rare we get chance to natter about this sort of stuff. 

I nearly deleted it Tikay, as I know you say you don't mind too much but I do feel guilty for as we seem to be butting horns so often. Part of my annoyance came from you posting about blonde having extremely low traffic last month, and then the first topic I opened was this! I'm not sure why blonde struggles so much, I know of clan forums on games that run at a profit, so how blonde seems to struggle does blow my mind a bit.

You made some interesting points Oxford, but I do believe they were ddosed that day, I was playing and it was all extraordinarily slow, it seems unlikely it was just the extra volume seeing as they had been planning it for months. I'd offer you a good price if we could have a bet, but who really knows I guess.

It might be better if people did write about it. If 888 had told me they were being ddosed instead of myself presuming they had terrible servers, I would have been much more sympathetic. I can understand why it wouldn't be wrote about though, no one wants people with botnets holding these sites to ransom, or some other nefarious scheme!

I largely have a DDos attack to thank for my relationship with my wife.  13 years ago I was working for what was then a fairly big sportsbook in the Caribbean and my (now) wife had just started working there as a customer service manager when we got took down by a DDos on an NFL Sunday early in the season.  My wife then got an email in the generic CS email with a ransom demand to stop it.  I am sure no gaming firms do this now but at the time we decided it was probably easier for us to pay and my wife and I were tasked with taking a trip around the island and visiting various Western Unions to pay the ransom in small enough batches to evade the money laundering authorities.  We got on pretty well during that morning and by the end of it she was blown away by my wit and repartee and had agreed to have dinner with me (or something like that).

Awesome story!

Fair to say the DDOS problem has been around for a very long time. The nature of the attacks change, & so do the defences against them. It's a never ending game.

First up, having a different opinion is never a problem, providing we can debate it sensibly, & not get all shouty-wouty. I think you & I are a bit like Jack Spratt & his missus. Proper awkward pair of buggers both of them, but they generally sorted it out.

I had to re-read the next part  5 or 6 times, & I'm afraid you've completely lost me there.   

"....Part of my annoyance came from you posting about blonde having extremely low traffic last month, and then the first topic I opened was this..."

Why would that annoy you, & what is the connection & correlation between me posting that link, & low traffic numbers?

The effect of posting such a link - or ANY interesting link - is to INCREASE traffic & interaction.

This thread generated 8% of all Posts on blonde yesterday, & was the 2nd "most posted on" thread all day.

If I had the time, I'd post a lot more such links. If I could post 10 links a day & they all generated the same interest & interaction, we'd not have a traffic problem, or not to such a degree.   

It's really very interesting how we seem to see things in such polar opposite ways so often, but I have a feeling that one day we will marry, & have kids & everything.

By posting the link people then click on it and leave blonde, some for 5 minutes others for the rest of day thus reducing traffic.

Yes it can produce posts but links off sites will reduce page eyeballs and is normally a negative on sites that require eyeballs for sponsors.

It's like sky sports pundit saying hey look at the game  btsport is putting on tonight go have a look

It doesn't happen

That's common sense and true for a lot of sites, but not for communities like Blonde. Blonde don't rely on page views etc to keep their sponsorship deal with DTD, and the majority of Blonde's traffic is repeat visitors. Posting links as Tikay did will get people off the site.......and then back on again to discuss it. Look at Tikay's diary, tons and tons of links out etc, but we all come back to talk about it.  

As a user I'd prefer it if Teeks linked directly to the Sky Poker threads he references, then I can hop over there, see the thread, close the browser and come back. Instead if I want to see said threads, I have to spend more time on Sky trying to find them. Direct links out are fine for Blonde.

Now if a site like PokerNews constantly linked out, that's a different matter, they need you to stay on their site and sign up to 888 or whatever.

No, that's plain wrong.

Also, by posting a link to the thread on Twitter, it attracts MORE viewers (& new ones) to blonde, not less.

Our survival is not linked with page views, it's linked with interaction.

We are not run for profit, so we just need to keep people interested, & engage with them.

Yeah I know that I am just saying why someone would see it as wrong

as blonde doesn't have eyeball banners and click through deals it doesn't effect us when people click away

Ahh, gotcha, my apols.

There is 4-5 linky topics in The Rail and they seem to average 3-5 posts. And Neil's article was posted 10th December 2014! Last year for Pete's sake. We tend to need some controversy, Scottish Independence or The Queen to get us going.

Think that's just the nature of smaller forums...

I'm a member of another forum, which is much smaller than Blonde, and it's gradually gotten quieter over the years.

That said, when someone has done the off with a few quid, it livens up pretty quickly :D

I'd say much of this is down to social media as well.  I used to participate on a few forums but gradually everything has moved to Social Media. 

Sign of the times.

I think it's more a sign of decline in poker in general. I analyse traffic as it relates to social media and poker forums as part of my job, and poker is one of the few industries where online forums are still more influential and active than twitter & facebook. I think because it's quite hard to discuss poker (hand analysis and such) on facebook and twitter.

That said social media will have contributed to part of the decline for sure.

Not really the case for the forum I'm talking about, because it was always small anyway.

More a case of less members playing poker nowadays, and therefore they login less to see what's going on.

Very few of the members play much online poker anymore, and it generally only comes to life for a scandal, or when a group of us go to an event.

We should fake Blatchgate part 2 and get a shitload of traffic to Blonde.

Tikay grims Channing to fund his five train rides a day habit?

:D

Not sure who this Blatch was but I see lots of references to him so I guess he's grimmed someone in a bad way. 

For shits and giggles can't we just put him in charge of TfT.

a lot of people for 6 figures don't think sky pay tokay enough to put him in charge of tft

I would love to be a pound behind Tikay.

Gl finding people to put bets on for him.

pfffft DDos isn't a problem  ;whistle;

I feel for whoever runs the hub in st louis.


http://map.ipviking.com/ (http://map.ipviking.com/)

wouldnt 99% of blonde

Can you explain what this is in 140 characters or less please?

Yes.

Live map of attacks that security companies are observing.

Thanks. Seems like a ridiculously high number. Scary how much goes on under the bonnet with the intertubes that I have no idea about.

Im under the impression that a bunch of those highly targeted boxes are intentionally 'asking for it' so they can analyse the attack vectors and whos doing what, pretty sure the bulk are run by security companies/governments.


not sure who set up the boxes on the uninhabited island in the antarctic sea area but yeh it's pretty interesting to watch.  imagine all those we dont know about...........