blonde poker forum

A quote from Joe Beevers on THM

Play for the $2000 NLH shootout started a little after noon today. The shootout is supposed to be tables of 10 with the winner of each table progressing. On nearly every table I could see around me there were empty seats. On each table they were in the same place, the 3 5 7 and 9 seats had stacks but no players.

After several hands there was an announcement that the dealers should take the chips from those seats, the 3 5 7 and 9, and put them in their wells and out of play. So effectively we were all now playing a short handed shootout with 6 to a table.

Harry D objected. He said that this wasn't the advertised event and he wanted a refund, and he had a point. A six handed freezeout is not the same as a ten handed one. The strategy is different and you have to win more tables to make the final.

Harry suggested that they amalgamated the tables but they didn't want to know.

Harry, shouting, said that he wanted Jeffrey Pollack to come down.

Security was called and Harry was escorted away

Crikey, hope he is ok and that they have only taken him away to calm down..

Lesson one, don't f muck about with Harry D

He's got a point though - if you pay $2k to play a no limit hold'em tourney and then you sit down and they tell you your playing 7-card stud you'd demand your money back.

Same difference - they have to play exactly what they say on the tin.............

i agree Matt, and I take my hat off to Harry for making a stand  :)up

Fantastic!

Harrah's may have bitten off more than they can chew here. Harry is a respected player and people will start to pick at the flaws within the WSOP.

Had he already donked half his chips off or summit?

Ok that's irrelevant, but.......

I'm not really sure Harry has a valid criticism in this case.

It's a shootout. The rules state that 100 players will start day 2. Therefore the number of players at each table on day 1 will approximately be the number of entrants/100. If there are 600 entrants, then that's 6 per table.

Unless there was a decision taken before the start of the tournament to restrict the entrants to 600, and the players were not told about this (unlikely as each table had ten stacks set out), what exactly is Harry complaining about?

so 6 handed 1 day and 10 handed the next day?

how do you register on card player forums so you can compliment them on the quality of their reporting?

I think Harry D is breath of fresh air in the poker community, If the event is advertised as ten handed it is surely a totally different tourney to a 6 handed shootout. Even if you disagree with that the fact remains it IS different to the advertised tourney, good to see the organisation of the event is going well..........

I assume Harry's viewpoint is that it was not advertised as short-handed, so he expected ten to a table. Though a shootout does need to have a set number of starting tables, otherwise the maths doesn't work.

You have to appreciate the irony that, all the way through the WSOP, the players have been complaining about there being too many players at each table (11 instead of 10). Now there are complaints about there being too few.

Maybe they should run a Goldilocks event next year. :)

Also, the shoddiness of the Cardplayer updates continues - it seems the report of Harry's ejection was censored and taken off the site.

I think Harry is a 100% right, I only hope he gets the backing of many the players though.

If you turn up for an event and pay 2 grand to play you expect them to stick to the schedule.  Going by that report the organisers  had decided to change the structure as the chips where taken from all the same seats it is appalling that the players where not told of this.  Even more dissapointing is the fact that it seems Harry was the only one to make a stand.

Very interesting, there were 600 entrants in this Event so I would have expected them therefore to play 100 6-handed tables in the first phase, which is what happened. I'm not sure what exactly was advertised though, we should wait for Harry to come on here and give his side of Events as there is probably more to it than meets the eye.

Just had a quick browse of the Cardplayer coverage, chuckled when I saw this  "Before the second hand was dealt, David "Devilfish" Ulliot received a penalty for cursing." I wonder if he was cursing at the fact the Event started out six-handed aswell.

Harry has posted comments on THM's forum. He points out he was ahead in chips and got refunded.

Cheers.

Wish i had got a refund played like an absolute novice! Fair play to Harry for taking a stand.

Just hope that is not the end of Harrys WSOP by Harrahs refusing him entry to the RIO.
Would be a shame to happen for just voicing your opinions .

According to some reports a lot of the "better" players decided not to show up at the start but have a lie in (Hellmuth is famous for this).
Many players have been blinded out because the format is so much quicker, Daniel Negranu apparently one of them. There was one table with only 1 player showing up!!!!!!!!
Needless to say he advanced to the next round in 40 mins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is crazy stuff and i think there will be some repercussions.

lol classic.




It would be a shame but it might draw some attention.

Daniel Negreanu gives his thoughts on the mess on his video diary - http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/video_diary/ (http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/video_diary/)

He confirms that he was blinded out at a table - he managed to get headsup without even turning up.

class vide diary, lol.

Another quote from same website, don't know how true it is, but could this happen on Blonde?

Harrahs deleting negative threads on fullcontact forum by hacking into the servers - including Harrys which had 50+reponses....?!?

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-forum/index.php?showtopic=67373

Are you sure they hacked... and didnt just threaten lawsuits?

Superb video diary, the power of the net to be able to get his point across.
Has there been any response from harrah's yet?

Nope, they where indeed hacked... looks like Negreaus site uses phpBB which used to be notoriously easy to hack... I'm going to do some research into blondes.

Then again, the forum itself becomes a trivial hack if you can get into the server itself. And I know the blonde server is running on a Microsoft box, so scratch one up for the "easy to hack" column.

Sounds pretty conclusive to me.

Maybe not "hacked" but definately some form of unauthorised access.

A board I visit got "hacked" a few years ago as one of the moderators used the same password on another board, which happened to store the passwords in an unencrypted format. The "hacker" had (authorised) access to the password store of the other forum so simply got the pw from that and logged in.

Theres various methods of entry. Firstly if the FTP or MySQL DB usernames and passwords are easy to guess, then you totally bypass any security the BBS software might have built in.

Then theres various vulnerbilities that could be exploited within the server in order to gain entry.

Finally the BBS software itself my contain some vulnerbilities.

I think blonde is safe because Iron is on the ball... ;scarymoment;

You'd imagine they'd restrict connections to the db to known IPs that have a need to access it.

Difficulty with that is that dynamic IPs can't be guessed, plus if you are always on the road (as is daniels case) you are getting waht ever access to the net you can get your hands on.

And when would he ever need direct access to the database?

True enough... lol

Yet more Harrah's stupidity.

At the last minute they have changed the $1500 Omaha from freezout to rebuy - possibly because the field wasn't going to be as gargantuan as some of the other events.

I'd be really annoyed if I'd turned up on a limited budget and discovered that!

That is a brilliant video diary from Negreanu; I hope it all works out for Harry D. as well.

Certainly the players should club together on this one; sort out all of this nonsense before next year. (I'm guessing it's a little too late for this year!)

Just to update my previous comment. It appears the $1500 Omaha freezout is now going ahead after all, but a NEW EVENT seems to have appeared.

A $1500 rebuy Omaha game that is running on the same day as the freezout. What the heck is going on!?

Maybe they will decide to play one of them as 6-card Omaha, or make the Main Event dealers choice.

that'd make it a blood bath  :D

It might just come to that, from the sound of things! :)

There are people who flew here specifically to play the Freezout. Also, how unfair is it on satellite players to be suddenly informed that their seat is now a rebuy?

Its unclear from the various coverage but it appears that there will be a PLO no rebuy and then later a PLO with rebuys on the same day. !!!!!!!

My guess it that Harrah's just do whatever the high rollers ask, and, as they prefer the rebuy structure due to having deeper pockets and being able to run over those equipped with just the one refill, it's no surprise that this Event was suddenly changed/added.