No details other than what I'm reading on 2+2, but I thought I'd pass it on. It looks like they're still processing withdrawals if you have money actually in the e-wallet, but are pulling out of the poker deposit/withdrawal business.

Looking at PS, FTP and Cake, it seems they all have alternate ewallets and bank account transfers set up (for anyone that cares, after about a six month gap, Cake has finally had check service for the last couple of weeks), so the effects, if any, should be minimal. Nevertheless, it sure would be nice to get a friendlier, non-Republican controlled DOJ right about now.

Stuff that everyone reading this should do if they haven't already:

-Get an extension. Anybody know a gambling CPA in the NYC area? :(

In case that doesn't work, though...

-Do your taxes. That is, don't not do your taxes. A surprising amount of people I know are in this category :p

-Finalize your records. I keep good ones to start with, but even if you don't, the least you should do is take all those random withdrawal slips and make an Excel file that you can point at a couple of years from now when you've long since forgotten everything.

-Fill out a Treasury form and get it in before 6/30 if you've got 10K in overseas accounts. Poker sites are a gray area.

-If you're a pro, include a check for Q1 estimated taxes when you do your return.

-Make a resolution to actually get receipts for everything you do this year and not just rely on credit card statements...oops.

-Prepare for the inevitable audit (as a pro, I'm pretty sure the chances of an audit in the next five years are roughly 100%. Sigh.)

---

Talked to a reporter today for about 2 hours. 60 Minutes etc. is very likely to happen, but the show probably won't air until the fall when their season starts up.

I wonder if somebody'll ask a question on that during the campaign?

In no particular order, but maybe I'll make a top 10 list out of this someday!

1)"AK is a drawing hand". I've never met anyone that took this phrase seriously who has won any money at poker and I'm pretty sure I never will.

2)"I raise to find out where I am". Could you possibly find out where you are without (usually) lighting a PSB on fire? Probably. Are you guaranteed to use that information properly once you get it? Nope. Can you strategically use this phrase in a liveament to greatly alter your image as seen by the guy to your left? Definitely!

3)"I put him on AK."
3a)"I put him on two overs."
3b)"I put him on AA."

Fortunately, I found a great way to always put myself on AA, too. All I had to do was go to the PokerStars directory on my hard drive and replace every card graphic with an ace. Now I get aces every hand!

4)"[Insert site here] is rigged/has action flops/something something random number generator something"

I helped uncover a cheating scandal, but rest assured, I'm still laughing at you. However, all is not lost: buy this book and read it cover to cover three or four times. If you still believe it after this, your personality type is probably wrong for poker*.

*this does not prevent me from ironically whining about my terrible run on AIM*
**also, equally ironically, the rumor is the guy that wrote it is now busto, too

5)"I fold and wait for a better spot"

This tournament-exclusive term is one of the main reasons why cash game players laugh at us. It's not technically wrong on its own, but since it's usually used as a justification to not see a showdown after putting in 1/3 of your chips as a nice favorite vs. his range, odds are that you're doing it wrong.

Feel free to toss in more submissions in the comments :)

The good thing about April from my POV is that it's not March. I think last month was my worst month ever tournament-wise, largely due to being down something like 15K to 20K in EV (which is itself related to a whole lot of "final 2 tabling".) The less said about it, the better, which brings us to my April goal: either stop running bad or put in some hands of HU cash and join the rest of my friends at putting up psychotically high winrates. HU is the last untapped frontier about which nothing is written down, and the PT graphs show it...but I've always liked tournaments, to the point where I've probably given up some EV by playing them. I'm sure I'll resolve that conflict eventually; thus far, whenever I'm almost fed up enough to go play cash for a couple of months, I wind up winning something big and stop caring, but I guess I'm due for a really extended downswing eventually.

60 Minutes = probably happening (at least, my segment is definitely getting shot). Whether it actually does air depends on a couple of things outside my control and I have no idea when it'll be if it does - hopefully before June, since at that point everyone will be in Vegas and way too busy going into makeup to watch TV.

Finally, I recognize I haven't been updating as much as usual - this has to do with there simply not being much worth reporting. As final 2 tabling something for me these days is basically a frustrating event (I remember the days when that used to be awesome...on the other hand, my BR was roughly 100x smaller then, so it evens out), I basically have to shrug it off, which I do by playing random video games and chilling out. That, in turn, leads to a lot of boring things (not) being put on this blog, unless you want detailed coverage of my Hearts of Iron 2 campaign or, as a change of pace, how my cat decided to sing me the entire Meow Mix song at 8 AM.

With that said, I do expect to put in more entries when I find something worth updating about (such as the PPA not sucking (who am I kidding) or possibly me winning a Sundayment (meh, I average two of these a year so I've got 3 months left amIrite?).

Poker content here

The lack of entries in the blog this week is largely because, for the first time all year, I'm playing a ton, including a very belated attempt at learning to 8 table MTT's. It's been a mixed bag - I think I'm still running bad when it comes to important pots - but although I don't have much to show for it, I've gone deep a few times and have a bunch of lost late flips for chipleads to point to, in addition to improved hand reading over more tables. I also have hands worth posting on 2+2 for the first time in a very long time; usually, I put in little enough volume that I very rarely have a hand with more than 1 tough choice in it, but lately, there've been some fun ones.

Actual important stuff here

But hey, none of you guys care. The major thing: 60 Minutes looks like it's happening, pending one or two snags that will likely work themselves out in a day or two (can't really talk about it, but there's nothing unsolvable). With Gary Wise (who originally wrote an unreleased article that started the whole thing) on board as a consultant and an executive producer that understands poker, this is gonna be our best chance to put a positive face on this profession that doesn't involve the usual bedraggled suspects. I have to admit I'm not sure how I got to be one of the impromptu industry spokespeople given the fact that, well, nobody's paying me and I'm not exactly the olivert of poker pros, but given most of the other options have already had gigantic picture-filled threads over on Neverwin's (To my upcoming 60 Minutes audience: Trust me, you don't want to know), I guess I'll take it.

Sooner or later, assuming this piece isn't terrible for poker (if it is, please don't kill me) I'm gonna have to sit down and look at where to go with this from there. We still have a legalization effort to sustain in Congress in '09 (hint: vote "not McCain")(To roughly half of my 60 Minutes audience: Sorry, I'm typically better than that, it's simply that he's anti-gambling)(To the other half: I did vote for Obama in the primary, though!), and at some point, I'm going to have to figure out whether the PPA, which has managed to ignore this entire affair in truly impressive fashion, is worth bothering with. Full disclosure: A few months back, I asked them to hire me and/or somebody else as a PR guy because I hated everything about how they were handling things. Further full disclosure: I wasn't really serious, and/but/because I still hate it. Way to drum up all that extra Ron Paul support, folks! Argh...the poker community badly, *badly* needs a voice that doesn't suck, and to get back to the actual point I was trying to make, if you're wondering why I feel the need to be on 60 Minutes admitting that a site was actually rigged, blame the fact that we've got nobody speaking for us.

Hint to certain quarters: This would be a *really good* time to start.