Did You Know ?

[FCP Bob 1,323]

In this thread I'm going to post little bits of mostly poker related information that I've accumulated over the years and I'll try and post something new every few days.I hope you find some of them interesting and people should feel free to post their own tidbits that they want to share.Did you know that Planet Poker was the first real money poker site and that they started playing for real money in 1998. I played my first online poker there in Dec of 1998 when I made a credit card deposit of $400 and started playing 3/6 and 5/10 limit. In total there were 6 games. Two each of 3/6, 5/10 and 10/20 and only limit was played. There were no waiting lists so when a seat came open you would rush to click on it to get that spot. All the games were played 10 handed and the rake was $1 at $20 in the pot, $2 at $40 and $3 at $60.There were a couple other smaller sites than this that started around the same time and used the same software but they rarely got more than 1 game going at a time.

[serge 904]

I also played there...Is Mike Caro kicking himself that he didnt become a billionaire??I am assuming he had a piece of that place..

[looshle 6]

I also played there...Is Mike Caro kicking himself that he didnt become a billionaire??I am assuming he had a piece of that place..

I think he's too busy kicking himself for being Mike Caro.

[wsox8 10]

In this thread I'm going to post little bits of mostly poker related information that I've accumulated over the years and I'll try and post something new every few days.I hope you find some of them interesting and people should feel free to post their own tidbits that they want to share.Did you know that Planet Poker was the first real money poker site and that they started playing for real money in 1998. I played my first online poker there in Dec of 1998 when I made a credit card deposit of $400 and started playing 3/6 and 5/10 limit. In total there were 6 games. Two each of 3/6, 5/10 and 10/20 and only limit was played. There were no waiting lists so when a seat came open you would rush to click on it to get that spot. All the games were played 10 handed and the rake was $1 at $20 in the pot, $2 at $40 and $3 at $60.There were a couple other smaller sites than this that started around the same time and used the same software but they rarely got more than 1 game going at a time.

How'd you do?

[FCP Bob 1,323]

I also played there...Is Mike Caro kicking himself that he didnt become a billionaire??I am assuming he had a piece of that place..

I'm going to talk more about Planet Poker in this thread later.

How'd you do?

I lost that initial $400 in about 2 weeks and I figured online poker wasn't for me so I didn't redeposit.On June 21st ( yes I know the date because I kept records ) I was about to head out to the casino in Port Perry to play some poker and I broke my toe when I dropped something heavy on it. My friend Glen had been playing at Planet and had been doing okay so since I couldn't walk and go to play live poker I had him transfer me $500 and I started playing there again. I went on a major heater and was up $6K by the end of July and I've never made another online deposit for poker again that wasn't a transfer from other online poker money that I already had.The only way to withdraw at that time was by Bank Draft from a Panamanian Bank and Planet allowed you to request one per week and then they would mail it to you. It took about 7-10 days from withdrawal request to Bank Draft in the mailbox. Since everything was new I didn't totally trust leaving a large amount of money there so at the beginning of every week if I had more than $3K in my account I would withdraw down to $2K and if I had less than $3K I would wait to make a withdrawal. 10/20 was the biggest limit and when they added 20/40 I started to withdraw down to $4K when I would have $5K or more in my account at the start of a week.

[youkn3w 0]

Keep it coming Bob It's interesting to read about the very first days of online poker, I guess it was heaven for good players back then

[FCP Bob 1,323]

The recent problem at Cake Poker has reminded me of the first security breach in online poker.Planet Poker and a few other online sites used software from a company called ASF Software and they published how their random number generator worked on their website. The problem was that it was a really poorly designed rng and could be exploited so that the turn and river cards could be known once you knew your own cards, your position at the table, how many players were dealt in the hand and what the 3 flop cards were. You couldn't know any other player's cards but just think what you could do knowing what the turn and river would be even without knowing what everybody else has.Some White Hat software security experts found the exploit and proved that they could have cheated if they wanted to but instead told Planet Poker about the weakness in August 1999 and published a report after Planet had fixed the problem that received a lot of publicity. Here's a link to an article from those software security experts about the problem and what they did.http://www.cigital.com/papers/download/dev...er_gambling.phpThe problem was that they weren't the only ones who figured out the weakness and some cheaters were playing in the games before Planet knew about the problem. Planet claimed that they had only been playing in the games for a short period of time and that they hadn't withdrawn any of the money so that they were able to take the money from the cheaters and reimburse the players they cheated. I received around $200 or so I think which I have no way of knowing was correct or not. I was winning at a pretty good rate at that time so I just accepted what Planet said and actually felt like that money was almost like a bonus since I wasn't expecting it.

[Gallo 1]

Internet existed?

[aucu 3]

Bob, did you ever try Poker Spot?

[FCP Bob 1,323]

Bob, did you ever try Poker Spot?

I don't know if I even created an account there but for sure I never played for real money.For those who don't know Poker Spot was Russ "Dutch" Boyd's online poker site that went under with all the player's deposits being lost.Back in 2000 when Poker Spot launched there were new sites popping up but I was happy playing at Planet and sometimes at Paradise Poker. The thing that Poker Spot had going for it was that it was the first site to offer Multi Table Tournaments which wasn't a big deal for me.If I was ever tempted to make a deposit an e-mail that Dutch Boyd sent to a friend of mine would have kept me from doing that. At that time Dutch Boyd was an unknown person to the poker community and in fact was only about 20 years old or so. My friend sent a question to support about something questioning how they were doing something but I don't recall the details. What I do remember was that Boyd responded back to him in a really aggressive manner that was shocking coming from somebody managing an online poker site. Knowing that they had no money and also that he has mental health issues it makes a lot more sense now that he lashed out like a crazy person in the e-mail.Here's what I believe happened to Poker Spot based on things that I've read over the years and knowing a bit about the online gaming industry.When Boyd claims that his credit card processor stole the bulk of the player's deposits I believe him. Online sites have had to team up with a lot of shady processors and have taken a lot of losses over the years when they have stolen from them. The difference is that Poker Spot didn't have enough capital to survive and in the early days of start up wouldn't have made any money yet.I also think that Boyd lied to a lot of people and continued to accept deposits at the site knowing that they didn't have the money to pay people back which was really scummy. I also think that Boyd could have sold the software for enough money to pay the players back but didn't do it since there might have been conditions with the sale beyond the money that would have restricted Boyd that he didn't want to agree to.I don't think that people who lost money at Poker Spot will ever see a penny from Boyd.

[custom36 5]

I don't think that people who lost money at Poker Spot will ever see a penny from Boyd.

Are they still trying to get it back? I would've given up by now...

[FCP Bob 1,323]

Are they still trying to get it back? I would've given up by now...

He's made statements that if he won the WSOP Main Event he would pay people back and he would do his best to pay people back otherwise.Whenever he goes deep in a tourney over on 2+2 it's brought up. One player who I think went by the name MS Sunshine was stiffed for over $50K which was an awful lot considering that 10/20 limit was the big game.

[Scriptpro727 0]

He's made statements that if he won the WSOP Main Event he would pay people back and he would do his best to pay people back otherwise.Whenever he goes deep in a tourney over on 2+2 it's brought up. One player who I think went by the name MS Sunshine was stiffed for over $50K which was an awful lot considering that 10/20 limit was the big game.

Is Boyd still around?

[FARGOpokerND 22]

[aucu 3]

Is Boyd still around?

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/poker/news/story?id=5285765

[I_fold08 1]

http://www.donkdown.com/radio/170:donkdown-radio-05272009Radio interview he did on what was nwpradio at the time. Pretty good interview. It has been over a year since I have heard it, but if I remember correctly most of what Bob says is "confirmed"definitely worth a listen imo

[Mercury69 3]

Dutchalicious is one of the stupidest nicknames I ever heards/b Douchalicious

[rcgs59 15]

awesome thread Bob, go into the history of Daniels's site when they were playing please, up to when he sold it. Also when did Daniel start playing on line.

[ajs510 122]

He's made statements that if he won the WSOP Main Event he would pay people back and he would do his best to pay people back otherwise.

There's something to really hold your breath waiting on...

[Balloon guy 158]

awesome thread Bob, go into the history of Daniels's site when they were playing please, up to when he sold it. Also when did Daniel start playing on line.

Leave out the part where Troyo, me and Seac were tearing up the site and were constantly being accused of being bots because we played so perfect.But you can mention how Troyo flipped me for a hundred then split faster than an Obama supporter.

[rcgs59 15]

Leave out the part where Troyo, me and Seac were tearing up the site and were constantly being accused of being bots because we played so perfect.But you can mention how Troyo flipped me for a hundred then split faster than an Obama supporter.

hey you old man you don't pick on my Troyo lol

[Balloon guy 158]

hey you old man you don't pick on my Troyo lol

No...he's all yours

[rcgs59 15]

No...he's all yours

it's okay I moved on to better lol

[wsox8 10]

bump for more Bob stories

[FCP Bob 1,323]

bump for more Bob stories

Really sorry that I neglected this thread, I'll try to keep active in it.Planet Poker launced in 1998 and was the first site of any size although compared to today's sites you would laugh at it being called that.The next site to hit the market was Paradise Poker, they launched in 1999 and quickly overtook Planet as the largest site. I won't get into why they became the largest in this post but a very interesting thing happened the first week that Paradise launched for real money. Just as Paradise started to accept real money play Planet Poker had a lot of technical problems and for about a week it was basically unplayable while during that week Paradise worked fine. The interesting thing about this though was that both Planet and Paradise were hosted in the same location in Costa Rica and used the same ISP. I always had a suspicion that Planet having technical problems on a scale they'd never had before and Paradise launching for real money at the same time were connected. Online gaming sites have had some pretty shady people involved with them so nothing would surprise me and I know in my case it got me to try Paradise while I couldn't access Planet.