Channing's Bluff

[tikay]

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


http://bit.ly/1xCeIh3

[rfgqqabc]

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.

[tikay]

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....

[Honeybadger]

What is a DDOS?

[dakky]

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

[Tal]

What is a DDOS?

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.

[tikay]

What is a DDOS?

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.

[tikay]

What is a DDOS?

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.

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.

[Oxford_HRV]

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.

[Oxford_HRV]

@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

[tikay]

@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.

[bobby1]

What is a DDOS?

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.

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  

[Oxford_HRV]

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

[Redbull]

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.

[tikay]

What is a DDOS?

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.

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  

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?