blonde poker forum

covering internet gambling/online poker.

10.15 Sunday night  BBC1.

I saw the trailer for this, it looks like it might be another one of those poker is bad for society and all type programmes.

Panorama used to be a half decent program a couple of years ago..these days it's an hour of scare mongering. I stopped watching it..then again i stopped paying my license fee because of shows like this (and Graham Norton, davina McCall etc)

heard a report on this on Five live this morning. Looks like it's gonna be the same old arguments tossed out .

For an example, the difference between online poker,and internet gambling on anything else is not easily identified,and treated as the same.

There will be an online poker expert,didn't get his name,so can't comment on his bona fides,lest to say he seemed to be a student,who's given up work/study to live as an online "gambler"

But this is interspersed with, the pregnant single mother, who "wakes up everyday crying cos of her online losses"

Then we follow the exploits of "Dermot" the journalist......who of course "dosn't even bet on the grand national"
As he trys online poker, tutored by the pro.

He follows the usual pattern of, increasing his stack..........then,donking it all off(against the pros advise)by upping his level and playing above HIS BANKROLL.

There seems to be no mention of studying the game, money management,pot odds, the live circuit,sense of shared ideals etc..

Get ready for the flak.................and bet theres no mention of those ridiculous phone in quizzes, the lottery, online keno,
and other variants.

 ;iagree; :goodpost:

Here's a taster of what is in store for us on Sunday. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6165948.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/6165948.stm)

Panorama have sunk to the lowest levels of journalism for a long time, the hatchet job they did on England fans during the World Cup was a disgrace to the BBC.  You can let them know what you think after watching the programme here.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/discuss_panorama/default.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/panorama/discuss_panorama/default.stm)

Ok, we all know we are addicts, we are vulnerable people who can't make decisions in our lives what is good for us and bad. 

I predict they will show some people who has lost their houses and family due to gambling but will ommit all those who make nice juicy profit from poker or treat the game as a hobby and maintain healthy lifestyles.

And they will show some 'experts' who will voice their opinions, but none of those experts will be known by poker players.  The word expert pisses me off more and more, when i hear; 'he is an expert in' i want to ask says who?

Betting on horses though does not make pple addicted, and BBC endorses such activites by showing the races almost every week.

I think programmes on gambling and poker in a mainstream tv need to go to room 101.  I will spend an hour to watch this programme in order to bombard BBC with complains.  oh maybe not, I have other things to do on sunday.

It certainly sounds like tabloid journalism.


I think people are 'scared' of what they don't understand.  It's easier for people to categorise poker with other forms of online gambling, rather than spend the time and effort to understand the differences.

I've yet to see a programme about people being addicted to golf or fishing - two sports that I jsut don't understand and have no interest in whatsoever.  I had people who spend hundreds of pounds a month playing golf who criticised me and a friend for playing poker.  He was more critical of my friend who doesn't have a bankroll as such and just deposits another £50 every now and again when he fancies a game or two (he's not a very good player, but he enjoys it and he can afford to spend what he does).  The golfer spent far much more playing golf, but for some reason that's acceptable and 'different'.

I'm asking myself if I should watch this documentary.  It might make me angry.  I guess I will watch it, whilst playing online of course...

I can't watch shows like this anymore. I have turned into a very old man who gets mad and almost shouts at the telly...

'In a moment on BBC1, Panorama, which explores how internet gambling is evil and hooks people into its dastardly clutches by enticing them to run up huge debts because its evil. But first, here are tonight's lottery numbers....'

It does seem that the program makers behind these sort of shows make them by, before doing any research, pitching the idea - internet gambling is bad, let's make a documentary to show how bad it is.

The journalist involved, Dermot, was on Breakfast news and I think it shows the problem there is in presenting an objective investigation even if you want to. The trail for this news feature had the news readers saying, "Can you make a living playing poker on the internet. We meet a journalist who lost thousands seeing if you could". All very negative.

But, when you actually got to it, Dermot gave some poker pro $2000 to play with and 48 hours later the pro had more than doubled it. Dermot than took over and blew it all. With the 2 of them in the news studio his point seemed to be that you can make a living on the internet playing poker if you know what you are doing, but the whole poker economy is based on people like this pro taking money off of people like him.

This is a lot more objective than a lot of the scaremongering journalists like to make it out, the common view presented is everybody (somehow) loses and there's nothing you can do about it. But it didn't stop the trail being negative, and, the newsreader at the end asking Dermot if the pro was good or just lucky!

from reading the related bumf on the BBC website, it looks like the pro helped the journo get his money up from $2000 to $5000 playing $50 and $100 games.  Journo then said 'why don't we move up to higher stakes and make money quicker?'.  Pro said no, we don't have bankroll - we will go broke, journo ignored advice.  It will be interesting to see if the advice given about bankroll management is broadcast.

do we know who the pro was?

a poll possibly?

Matthew Hopkins - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6177046.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6177046.stm)

yes nothing mentioned about what he felt about the experiment...a shame really

panaroma has become the Sun with moving pictures...

yeah i read that and thought...funny I have never heard anyone ,mention anything like this on blonde, where i would have thought blonde was a big enough forum to say "hey, guys I'm a reporter with panorama, coudl you tell em how many of you are rpo's these days? and what do you think?

i guess as we found out on the APAT threads it's pretty hard to define a pro these days.

Interesting post on THM forum saying if you've won $12K this year you're in the top 0.1% of poker players. Seems too low a percentage to me.

I saw that aswell, I thought it was total rubbish. I've made way more than that this year and I'd be suprised if I'd be in the top 5% let alone 0.1%

From the BBC article:

"An addiction expert predicted up to one million a year could become hooked."

ooh yummy - I certainly hope so.....

It seems too low to me too, but it isn't too hard statistically to show that it would be true if you used the right sort of data - eg tournament winnings only and every poker player - you could probably get it even higher.

Bear in mind that someone who opens an account at a site, deposits $20 to try it out, loses the $20 and is never seen again would be counted as a losing player. If you've got accounts at lots of rooms like this, even if you're overall a winning player, you would count as lots of losing players in the statistics.

My brother was a bit sceptical about me playing poker, but he is into archery and despite being fairly highly ranked is almost certain to never to win any money from it.

He did at least manage to work out for himself that the £1000 odd he paid for a bow represents much less value then the minus a little bit it costs me to play poker - and that's before taking into account that he still has to pay to register in tournaments.

At least he's getting fresh air. :)

The mainstream media is a curious beast, if the government lets us decide how to spend our own money they are  '"naive" and "playing dice" with people's health by liberalising gambling laws. But if they introduced new restrictive laws they would be labeled as nannying.

How many people play poker online?  Is that stat for the UK or worldwide?  To say that only 1 in a 1,000 earn more than $12K a year seems to make sense to me.  There are lots of people who play low or medium stakes, and play infrequently in tourneys or cash games.  Very few of them are going to earn anywhere near that amount.

The people on here probably play more hours than the majority of online players.  That's going to seriously limit the amount they can win.

Be interesting to see where that stat came from.  72.4% of stats on the web are made up anyway...

I think you'll find it 's actually 84.8%

Ah!!!  But are you talking UK or worldwide?

 ;)

good point...I think it was a poll by "buckfast drinker" magazine. so I'm guessing Glasgow only.

Even ive made more than that this year!!(just about) ::)

I dont think you can take ANYTHING too seriously on that particular THM thread!!!

someone should take mark up on his offer, record it and put it up on youtube

what is his offer

a free copy of a best selling perfectly edited poker book crammed full of good advice is the usual offer.

If he remembers where the key to his lock up is, to find the boxes they are stored in

ok, I just sucked it up and went to that forum to take a loook

I actually bought a copy of his book ages ago, its one of the most ill educated simplistic bibles of nonsense I have ever had the misfortune to read. If his coaching is anything along those lines then you mite as well set your CD player to random, stick on a meditation CD, and listen to the ululations of the whales for guidance.

On that topic I cant really understand why anyone would pay for tutorage, espcially given the price you have to pay.. but fair play to him, if theres a mug willing to pay, am sure he is happy to provide.

there's a mug willing to pay you Mr T if you ever feel like taking some money off me. (seeing as how you can't do it playing me heads up  ;) )

Well it might help you with the leeks in your game.

Oh, whales

You've gotta give Mark credit,as another poster on THm says.

He's taken all the ridicule possible over many years,yet still comes back with more ideas, Whare he'll get more torching.

He must have rhino skin by now..

yah, one donk strike with A6 and you think you are the worlds fair!

I wouldn't even begin to think about charging for lessons etc until I was a regular winner at 25/50 minimum, I think anything less is an insult to the people you are trying to teach (and charge an arm and a leg for) and its why I find posts like Mark S so annoying. Anyone and everyone is trying to cash in and exploit things when they dont have the requisite knowledge to justify it.

0/10 tighty... first "holla" and then this...



Anyways, back to the topic at hand, I cant wait to see the program.. it should be interesting to see how bad a light they try and portray the intelligent gambler this time!

Why would you need to be able to beat 25/50 to teach 2/4 or 5/10? I could teach someone to beat .50/1 I think.

Talking about you not Mark S.

no idea really. I dont think your average persons theoretical understanding of the game in general is good enough until you can beat the 25/50 game to justify becoming someone who is going to teach others how to play poker , and you need to apply theory as much as experience to students otherwise you might just end up trying to teach them what works in the 20 game when it might not work in the 0.50/$1 games... and if you do try and lucidate theory, you might have it wrong. Thats just my opinion anyways, you can beat the 5/10 and 10/20 games even if you make some theoretical mistakes quite frequently, but when you play 25/50 and above, you aren't gonna get away with it often enough to really beat the game.

your absence in the blonde heads up event speaks volumes  :P

I don't think the problem is so much how these programmes generally portray the intelligent gambler, it's more that they don't acknowledge them at all.

There was a programme some time ago - also on BBC - and it's case studies were a couple of people. One of them was a bloke who had moved to North Wales because there were no casinos there, but he bet and lost most of his wages at the bookies and then when that closed he went to the pub and lost the rest betting on himself in a, "pool tournament he set up", (i.e. him playing against some bloke there that he'd just met), with which he lost the rest of his wages - and he did this every month, and had done something like it for years. The other one was someone who took her months wages every month every year and poured them into a fruit machine, and lost it all.

In other words they were like most GA members - complete morons. After a few months (let alone years) most people would work out that they were a bit rubbish at picking horses/playing pool/playing fruit machines, and stop. This program looks like it could be a little more balanced, it might be that the trailers for it are like the news headline trail for it on the BBC this morning - a bit negative, but the actual show is more like the feature when it actually arrived on Breakfast news - a balanced view. I'm not holding my breath though, negativity makes better viewing than objectivity.

There but for the grace of God

I had the same debate with Andrew T a long while back Jon. My view was that for some people gambling was a manifestation of psychological and emotional problems..an illness if you will..like alcoholism for example

To call mostl GA members complete morons is harsh if you ask me. However you didn't, so I'll shut up!

I'm pretty sure I'm addicted to playing internet poker.

I think you have to be a complete moron to call GA members complete morons.

Jon, I wrote this a while back

I have some prior!

http://www.blondepoker.com/index.php?q=node/2264

i dont think alcoholism is an illness. its a narrow view of why people are dependant on alcohol and does not take account of social issues or other factors.

ok mad, I phrased it incorrectly..it can be an illness, it also can be as a result of many factors

Funnily enough, this progamme did have some good science in looking at what does cause some people to become compulsive gamblers. At first glance it seems slightly counter intuitive, but giving people MRSA (think that's the right initials) scans whilst they do a simple gambling game they found that when a normal person wins, the areas of the brain connected with happiness/pleasure/euphoria etc lit up like a christmas tree. On the compulsive gamblers, it barely registered. The conclusion being that they don't gamble because it makes them so happy they can't live without, they gamble because they need that much more of an extra thrill to get to the same level as everybody else.

My view is that it's likely to be a problem that has many causes, but as well as the psychological and emotional causes which can also be behind other addictions, this suggests that their might be a biological reason behind compulsive gambling.

Am I being overly aggressive? I may be a little tipsy?

I didn't like the use of the word "morons".


Never mind though, I am sure we are all capable of having an intelligent debate, whether tipsy or spunking it all off on online blackjack or whatever!

Also -



(And originally I was going to use the word, "idiots", any better?)

Anything toned down from morons is fine!

Did you see the quick flash of the name yoyo when he was playing crypto 2/5.

Hopefully people will stop playing stupid -EV casino games and take up poker now instead!

I'm just upset the tosser journalist wasn't playing at one of my tables.  As his demise approached he was sticking it all-in with 78o with 2-pair on a highly co-ordinated board (his expert adviser desperately asking for 4 outer to land) and better still managed to somehow get stacked by a set of threes with pocket tens on a queen high flop..

He had the ending of the show in mind before he started it, that's why he just carried on until he lost everything.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8170813&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1 (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8170813&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1)

we knew it was going to be rubbish and it was!

.....Why oh why, do they have to mix up Poker with some girl who nicks half million quid and looses it on the gee gees ???.....

Production was pathetic eg....the cowboy scenes ...... sooooooooo embarassing....This was meant to be Panorama FFS!!

waste of time- I watched it because I knew that a lot of my friends/work colleagues were going too- as they had already alluded to it " theres a programme about you on TV tonight". unforfunately poker will always be thrown in the general gambling arguement. oh well- am all ready for the " we are just checking the accounts/ tea money to if you have nicked it all to feed your habit" jibes.

yeah but be to be fair on them..that drug habit you have is getting out of control a bit ;)

Just watched it on the BBC feed - anyone who missed it can stream it direct from their site.

Pretty much standard stuff compared to expectations.  No surprises really!  The presenter was a classic candidate for GA!

I felt the presenter was putting it on to be honest at times, he definitley had an agenda for the programme. Though has to be said that poker is very addictive, not everyone is trying to lose their money to make a tv programme have a morale to it.