Way to go Minted!

Those of you who are reading my blog on a regular bases, hehehe all 10 of you, probably remember that I had a meltdown the other day, about busting out of a tournament due to collusion between some of the other players. If you haven't read that post, or if you just want to refresh your memory, you can go here:
#One Rotten apple will spoil the whole barrel

Well I'm happy to tell you that Minted Poker did their job, and they agreed with my observation, so they moved me up to third place. Which is great, since it means that I'll still have a place to play poker. It would suck to have to quit playing there when that's the only network where they care about
Accessible Poker

I love you Minted!Hehehehe

From: MintedPoker Operations
To: sleepless
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2010 3:34 PM
Subject: Risk and Fraud

Dear Sleepless,


Thank you for your email.

The security and integrity of our Network is of up most importance to us and any allegation of foul play is taken extremely seriously.

Please be advised that after an extensive investigation, it has been deemed that collusion in tournament 1366637 did occur and because of this the rankings of this tournament have been adjusted.

Your account has been credited with the prize for your newly ranked position of 3rd.

Should you require any further assistance please feel free to contact me at anytime.

Thank you for helping keep our Network a fun and honest place to play.



Kind regards,

Jemma
Risk&Fraud Analyst
operations@mintedpoker.com

a ray of hope for accessibility

I still haven't been able to solve my issue with the audio option for the word verification on here, which means that I still can't post comments on most of your blogs. Personally I deactivated that option, since I figure that as long as I have comment moderation, no spam is gonna get through anyway. Besides, if a visually impaired person by any chance should find my blog, it would be rediculous for me to have it activated when I'm aware of that it rarely works. I don't understand how blogger can be so negligent when it comes to accessibility! They obviously haven't heard that 2010 is the year of accessibility. Though that could actually be something that is unique for Sweden. I'm not sure to tell you the truth. But if it is; it's definitely time for the rest of the world to catch up!
Anyway, I didn't name the post "a ray of hope for accessibility" to keep complaining. But actually to let you know that there's a site called:
Webvisum.com, which is suppose to have a software that can help the visually impaired to solve the problem with capchas. It only works with firefox, so I guess I'll have to change my browser as well, but it'll be worth it a million times over, if I can get rid of this dayly frustration with neither being able to post comments nor follow blogs. Or at least not unless my son is in the mood to read the visual capcha. He is actually really nice about it, but I don't wanna ask him too often. How many 13-year-olds do you know who wants to sit around and read stupid word verifications all day long, so that their moms can post comments on a bunch of blogs that is of no relevance when you're 13? We have yet to see how good it'll work, since I need an invitation code to be able to download the software, but I'm hopeful at least, and that's a good feeling.
Oh and there's another thing on the bright side of accessibility as well. I almost forgot about that. But Bodog finally wrote us back, and they'll be looking into the matter with making their site accessible. I know we're not even half way there, but at least now there's a ray of hope for our:
Accessible Poker Project

One rotten apple will spoil the whole barrel.

I just busted out of a tournament in fifth place. It was top four payed, so I didn't make the money. I'm mad as hell! I hate to lose. I think all competitive people do. But when I'm done being pissed about it, it always motivates me to work on my game to become even better at what I'm doing, whether it be Poker or Showdown, or anything where practice and avaluation makes a difference. When I lose due to cheating how ever, I don't really know what to do with myself... I know there's nothing i could have done differently, except not to play at all, but hindsight is always 20 -20. This particular tournament almost never runs. That's one of the disadvantages of playing at a smaller poker network. Another disadvantage is that it's very easy for people to collude to cheat players out of their money. The advantage to playing at Minted Poker however, is that they're more willing to listen to their players individual needs, and thus far the Everleaf Network is the only place where they've been willing to help the Accessible Poker cause, and make their software accessible to screenreaders.
Anyway, back to the tournament...I was delighted to see that there finally were enough players registered to start the damn thing. I'll admit that an alarm did go off in my head when there were 10 players registered for it 2 hours before it was suppose to start, but when it had been running for almost an hour, and a lot more people had joined, I decided to give it a shot after all.
Big mistake of course. People were helping each other all over the place. I hate that! Why do people always have to be so God damn greedy that they can't play an honest game? Poker is a game of skill. Players who knows what's going on will always win long term, even if everybody will experience losing streeks. If you don't have the skills, and the drive to work on your game, there's nothing wrong with just playing it for fun, and get a job to support your poker habit. But never, ever, collude with other players! Honesty is even more important now than before, considering the situation for online gambling in the US right now.
I'm of course talking about the HR 2267. What the hell is that?
Well, to explain that we have to start with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, UIGEA. It was made a law in the US in 2006, and began being enforced on the first of June 2010. The UIGEA basically states, that it is illegal to place a wager or bet, or recieve a wager or bet online , where it is unlawful under any law to do so. This means that the US players are no longer able to make deposits to a poker site. The reason is the blocking of there transactions by banks or other financial institutions. There are many groups, such as the Poker Players Alliance, that are atempting to get poker legalized and regulated in the US. There are even a few states that are trying to get it passed in there own laws as well. Since the passage of UIGEA, several members of the United States Congress have introduced bills to overturn or revise it, and that's what this hr2is about. Recently there was a vote about a mark up, which as I understand it means that members of a cirtain committee decide whether to pass a particular bill or not, but they also decide on which key amendments the bill should include. It'll then go on the the House, and then to the Senat, before it can become a new law, so it's still very early in the process, but at the same time it's further than it's ever been.
A recent New York Times report indicates that over the next 10 years the U.S. federal government could yield as much as US$42 billion from Internet gambling taxes. Given the tough economic times, it is difficult to ignore such large tax revenues.
You can read more about it here:
#US online gambling law makes it the biggest loser
However, if there's gonna be any hope of getting there, The last thing we need is another scandal like the one with Ultimate Bet, where tons of players were cheated out of their winnings. I'm hoping Minted Poker can get this sorted out quicly, or I'm gonna have to find another place to play.