Sorry for the lack of udpates lately. Been extremely busy with work/life stuff. Hopefully I can be a better blogger in the future, though. It's been a really wild ride the past few months.

Let me start with the UB superuser investigation.

if you want more information about this, you can read this thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=99247

As some of you may or may not know, Mike (trambopoline) and I had suspicions last September that there might be a superuser on UB, playing under the screen name NioNio. The way this all came about was that Mike and I were chatting on IM, and he asked if I remembered a specific hand I had played a few months ago (this was in September). The hand was something to the effect of: Nionio raises, with 200bb, I reraise, he flats OOP. I have AhKx. Flop comes 7xx with a flush draw. I have no pair. He chk shoves for an overbet. I called him off and he won the pot when the flush came in on the river. I ave a pretty good recall for hands ,but this one obviously stood out in my memory because I am not usually calling off 200bb with no pair no draw. However, Nionio played such a seemingly "crazy" style, that I felt I had decentish equity against his range.

Mike and I commented that Nionio played a crazy style, but that he must have won huge. I said it was worth it to check out my database. Not only that, I wanted to analyze his stats (I really enjoy using statistics and data to analyze my opponents and my own game). Eventually, we complied 3k hands on Nionio, and in that short time frame he was up roughly 300k, winning at 75ptbb/100, which is insane. Literally 10 standard deviations above the mean. While 3k hands is not a large sample size by any means, it's not prohibitively inconclusive, either. We then further realized that he played a very statistically anomalous style.

His aggression factor per street, VPIP/PFR:

• PF: 1.27, Flop: 1.50, Turn: 3.08, River: 6.36
• VPIP/PFR (mainly 4-6 handed): 50/36

Obviously, NioNio was playing a very strange style, and absolutely crushing the best players on the site. Mike and I then looked at the actual "data" (the hand histories themselves). We paid particular attention to a heads-up session Mike had played against NioNio, where NioNio never put much, if any $ in the pot when Mike had a big hand, chk-called most draws when Mike had a made hand, and chk-raised when Mike was bluffing. However, he was not an idiot, like the AP superusers were. He did not have an aggression factor of infinity (meaning they would raise/fold every time on the river since they knew the cards). He called sometimes with the worst hands, and he semi-bluffed draws, and also made some bluffs.

We thought that NioNio might be a "smart" superuser (even more scary, if someone had the self-constraint to play very conservatively and cap their win rate at 5ptbb/100 they would probably never be caught). We made a post on 2p2, trying to portray NioNio as a potentially smart superuser (AP/UB are owned by the same company, and the AP superuser scandal had come out so we thought there might be a chance the same thing might have happened on UB). We prepared the post, using PT Statistics, and hh data, and got absolutely vilified. People thought Mike and I were idiots, and crying over split milk. While I can understand their skepticism, we thought we had presented an argument that was at least compelling enough to merit consideration. The thread we started literally almost got deleted, but thankfully, it was kept around long enough (mainly because of my and trambo's reputation) for others to chime in with their own hand histories, Josem made a graph, mypokerintel released their database to us, etc. Eventually it became clear that we were onto something.

However, UB, with their poor customer support, was not very helpful. I won't bore you with the details, but the bottom line is that over months of investigations, phone calls, etc. UB finally released a statement admitting that fraudulent activity had in fact occurred on UB, and multiple accounts, not just NioNio were using superuser capability to steal millions of dollars from high stakes player. A lot of my friends got huge refunds. I know multiple people who got low-six figure payments. I got a decent sum myself.

Overall, this entire experience was quite an amazing one. Trusting our initial intuition, having the guts to follow through with our analysis despite getting shredded by other members of the poker community, using data and statistical analysis to show that superusers were on the site, having the community come together (Josem, Omniheart, Cornell Fiji, etc. thank you guys!), and finally doing work which caused millions of dollars to get recirculated back into the poker community was an amazing feeling. Having friends IM me saying they'd buy me dinner or drinks (or lapdances J) when I got to Vegas was an awesome feeling. I can't imagine many situations in life where work you does directly contributes to your friends getting hundreds of thousands of dollars put into their bank account. Pretty sweet feeling.

Other than that, things have been going really well. I am really enjoying my job, and I'm learning tons of new things every day.

My birthday was this past weekend, and I rented out the RoseRoom (which is a private dining room) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I invited 12 friends and we had a wonderful time. The atmosphere of seeing the sun set over Central Park, through slanted windows, while we had an amazing dinner, in the Met, was really memorable. I think everyone else had a great time, too, which was also important.

Poker has been going well lately, too. I had a few really bad live sessions, but I've done well online, so that's helped. Here are some of the bigger pots I've played recently. I know right now I don't have what it takes to become one of the top players, I think less because of natural ability and more because I don't have the time necessary to devote to become as good as the Mjorg's, Samh's, Stinger's of the world. However, I still have it in me to be the best player I can be, so I am still studying the game when I have time. I have a video upcoming in mind which I think will be really good, so look out for that.

Here theguru11 (mjorgenson) gets me to commit 10k before the flop with no pair (I just held AK). Not surprisingly, he won the pot. http://www.pokerhand.org/?2796317

That's why he's a champion and I have to work a 9-5.

Here, another famous champion, Samh, fools me by this tricky flop raise. Once I check the turn to him, he has the opportunity to take a free card, but that's not how great players play, they are aggressive. Unfortunately, I could not hit and the best hand preflop won the pot. http://www.pokerhand.org/?2796349

Anyways, again sorry for the lack of updates, but expect more blogs in the future.

David

Here is a pic of me and my really good friend Dan from college. He gave a little toast at the dinner, and he described how I always had a million different ideas to make money. I'm glad I finally found one that worked out. Hopefully a few more ideas I have will work out, as well.