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You are involved in the online poker business which occasionally operates in an extremely unethical fashion
Sure there are bad actors in the industry who will do unethical things motivated by greed. Kinda like, oh, every other industry in the world?
plus many poker sites run software that deliberately creates action hands
Sigh, so many ways to argue against this. Let's stick with the simple: I don't know of any site that has ever been shown to do it. The most common rant from people on this is "it increases rake". Well, that's ridiculous and let me show you why. Assume you are playing a 3-6 game. In a 3-6 game on most sites, rake is maxed out a $2 or $3. To reach this rake level, the pot only has to reach $40 or $60ish. So, if a site was dishonest, their goal in life would be for every pot to reach exactly $40 or $60. If you are setting up action hands, you will see pots reach $100+, which drops the rake from 10% or 5% down to 2% or less.
But I do agree that you yourself shouldn't be asked to support youth chess. Nobody asked you to.
Didn't the first post in this thread ask exactly that?
I would however welcome any news you have on what percentage of your companies profits are donated to worthy causes ( eg gambling rehabilitation programs ).
I'm sure you thought you'd nail me on this one. However, I'm proud that our company has charity committees in every office that donate well into the 6 figures every year in their local communities as well as getting involved in higher profile charities well into the 7 figures. These charities are not really focused on gaming rehab (though there is committment to responsible gaming, overseen by the UK: http://www.pokerstars.net/about/responsible-gaming/) but more traditional charities that involve people not dying. Feel free to read these links which represent only the most widely publicized efforts, and not the local examples:
You'll note as well that many of these events have basically said "Hi players, donate what you want, and we'll match it." The fact of the matter is that poker players are extremely generous charity-wise, and have raised millions more for charity than you can imagine, and certainly orders of magnitude more than chess has ever done. And of course, a search for "curling charity", I'm sorry to say, did not generate these kind of links.
which can be traced back to me playing blitz with curtains on FICS 15+ years ago.
Ok, enough commercials (sorry Larry). Frankly, Duncan, I usually don't comment on curling because I admittedly know nothing about it - you should consider the same policy relative to this subject. There's definitely an implication in your post that because of what I do, I am somehow more ruthless or uncaring or something, and I take it for it's worth considering the source.
To the main point - if we accept that the WYCC is not a special tournament in terms of strength, and that being the world under X champion is just a title that doesn't have any meaning, then there's no reason to fund other people's kids to go to it other than to give them a "special experience". I believe for my own son, I'm responsible (financially and otherwise) for doing that.
If there is a kid who is perceived to have exceptional gifts and talents, and the Canadian chess community wants to support it, there are many superior tournaments that cost far less that they can be sent to.
ps, I have never had a drink of Molson's in my life, not sure what that's about
Last edited by David Ottosen; Tuesday, 3rd August, 2010, 08:23 AM.
David, just to be clear I have played a fair degree of online poker myself including a substantial amount of time on your companies site. We'll have to disagree on "action hands" this is debated to death on poker blogs and I suspect very few people in the industry are even privy to the source code. I knew there were charity projects run by poker sites; I would say the revenues in the industry are massive and there are big social costs associated with allowing poker sites to operate. So, no, I was not surprised by your answer in this regard I just am unsure yet if it's enough in the bigger picture.
Back to the chess. Perhaps overstated but the whole idea is you possibly lack the background to understand the CYCC/WYCC/Chess Challenge programs. You have understated the strength of these events. This is clear however when we see many players doing exceptionally well in Canadian "top tier" open age events but not necessarily winning CYCC or placing well at WYCC. And does it matter well maybe not except if you openly discouraging funding of these programs before doing proper research.
The danger is when juniors start making decisions based not on the value of the events but more on the political views of those running chess in Canada. Meaning when the event gets super expensive and inconvenient, lacks good logistics, ..., the decision not to play becomes real. Sometimes youth events are crappy, but not for the obvious reasons.
As for my previous post, I admit you could possibly be a saint in a generally ruthless field.
I just don't see the point then in discouraging funding.
I can agree to disagree with the rest of your post, and won't rehash the many arguments I've made in the past about how junior chess funding does not translate long term into memberships. We obviously don't agree, and probably never will.
However, I cannot "agree to disagree" about the action hands. This is a basic math problem, and one that has been reviewed by people much smarter than either of us. You take a few million hands, and you see if the cards come out in the expected way. It has been done, and not just a couple of times; how secure some sites are may be another story, or how honest their operators are, but there is not one single shred of evidence that even the shadiest of sites has ever rigged their RNG to "generate action".
there are big social costs associated with allowing poker sites to operate
From the world of chess, I'd say the same thing is true of the CFC.
The action hand theory was supported by at least one study; I won't pretend to know how scientific this or your studies were. Releasing the source code would end the debate. Basically to me the more transparancy the more likely I'd be a regular customer of a poker service.
I think its important for the online poker industry to be way above board considering the proven cases of large scale fraud at two of your competitors sites. Insiders effectively fleeced their customers of a lot of money ( this was proven and eventually the sites admitted the fraud but not without a prolonged delay beforehand ). I agree that fraud affects many industries where there are large amounts of money involved.
ps I have mixed feelings about the WYCC as can be seen by my posts on this thread.
I believe in the right circumstances it can be a great event but with the CFC
involved its often not a great opportunity all things considered.
The action hand theory was supported by at least one study; I won't pretend to know how scientific this or your studies were. Releasing the source code would end the debate.
What study supported this? Link please?
I've heard this argument many times, and many people mention "releasing the source code". They are argued down "oh sure that source code is random, but when the site is on, the source code they *really* use isn't random". Luck exists in the game, and people who are on the bad side of the luck always try to think of some greater scheme explanation as to why, even when it doesn't exist.
As for the issue of greater transparency, every good faith operator in the industry agrees.
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