I will be blogging soon about my personal take on this whole thing. I just haven’t had the time to really sit down and write something up as I’m busy regrouping and planning.

Don’t worry. I’m not leaving poker. I love it too much.

That being said, for those of you who are looking for information.

Q. So WTF just happened?
A. The US Attorney for the Souther District of New York and the New York field office of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have indicted PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker and Absoute Poker with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses.

Q. WAT? WTF?
A. No lie. See the Department of Justice news release summary CLICK HERE.

Q. Wait WAT did you say?
A. Seriously, read the entire indictment: CLICK HERE and there is a Civil suit: CLICK HERE.

tl;dr? Check out the Poker News Timeline.

Q. OK there are a lot of smart people in poker, some are lawyers, what are they saying?
A. Yes, this is true. There are a lot of smart people in poker, and for most’s people job security, you want to keep them in poker. That being said, there are some things you should read:

My Thoughts on the Online Poker Indictments – Black Widow of Poker (lawyer, poker player)

Here’s a Cliff’s of the full DOJ indictment – 2p2er teddyFBI (lawyer, poker player)

Federal Poker Indictments: Revisiting Prohibition – Gambling and the Law blog.

A Former Lawyer’s take (consolidation)- Mash up on 2p2.

The Intersection of Law & Online Poker – Craakker blog, Poker playing lawyers I believe.

Q. OK wtf, this is insane, who do I complain to?
A. There are a couple of easy channels for you to voice your opinion. NOW is the time to do so. Online poker is all over the news, eyes are on this industry, speak now, speak loud, speak smart, speak again and again. Here are some easy links for you to speak out:

President Obama’s facebook townhall – April 20 @ 1:45pm PDT / 4:45pm EDT

Department of Justice Facebook page. – You will have to “like” the page so you can comment, might be a nice time for Facebook to implement an “unlike” button.

Poker Players Alliance take action page – while I’m not 100% on the PPA (more on that when I get my personal thoughts up), they do make it easy for you to email your representatives, follow through, it’s just a few clicks.

The PPA Wants to Know How This Impacts You. – Tell them how it impacts you, it cannot hurt, imo.

BOOM documentary: Make your voices heard! – My partner, Krantz, is getting personal takes documented for this troublesome time.

Q. Wait Joe, you are an affiliate, I’m an affilate too. What does this mean for me?
A. While I will make another post with my personal thoughts there are two good posts by some friends of mine you should read.

My Thoughts On Today – by Jeremy, owner of Pokeraffiliatelistings

The Fallout From The Full Tilt / PokerStars Pullout – Bill Rini’s blog.

Q. What are the other politicians saying?
A. Good question, I’m sure more will be said but Rep. Barney Frank as spoken out.

Rep. Frank: Administration ‘wasting time’ with online poker crackdown. - The Hill blog.

Q. OK Joe, I read all that stuff already, anything I missed?
A. There are a few lighter takes on this situation.

Hey Smile! podcast – a take off of Hey Ball – a positive look on the poker world.

The New Poker World Order – Wicked Chops Poker blog.

U.S. Is Cracking Down on Online Poker – Tosh.O blog.

daily gssp – quite a smilar mash up to this one by PKRGSSP!

Q. Now that I have all day, no poker, what can I watch that has instant updates?
A. All of us in this business are wondering what to do with our time, here you go:

Follow KevMath on twitter.

Listen to the QuadJacks Podcast.

and as long as you can stand some Boston sports rants, follow me on twitter as well:

Twitter.com/joetall

Thanks for reading,
Joe

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It’s been a busy time for me. My wife and child were in Japan up until 2 days before the disaster. The next week we hosted a family from Japan, my wife’s long time friend and her two little girls. One of the little girls became very ill, she’s OK now and all of my wife’s family and friends are not directly effected by the tsunami and earthquake but you can imagine what a stressful time it has been. The kids did get a day at Disneyland before any sicknesses took over my household, so I hope that helps them.

What does this have to do with baseball?

I was quite unprepared for the season.

For the last nine years that I have been posting on online forums (and over 20,000 posts) I have had a Red Sox avatar on April 1st. I missed the change this year. I forgot.

I just changed my avatar to the Red Sox logo. 0-6 be gone, bring on the Yankees.

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This is the sixth post a multi-post series of my story how I became a poker pro.

Late October 2004
There I was. Three months without a job. Three months living without a care in the world. Three months following a team on the most epic rush to a championship in history. It was over. The Red Sox had won.

And I had no idea what the fuck I was going to do with my life.

It was time I got to doing something to pay the bills. So I sat down to re-new my resume.

And then I tried to do it again.

And again

And again, you get the pattern here

And each time I hated the fact that I was about to write a bunch of elaborated bull shit about my work experiences so I could foster myself into some cube, in some office, in some building, on some street, in some city. Only to walk past the same people doing the same thing, making the same wage, in the same life.

I could not do it.

And each time I would find myself posting on twoplustwo, talking poker, and playing poker online instead of writing the resume. I was starting to make friends that played. I was making plans to meet those friends and they liked talking poker like I did. They were as passionate about poker as I was and I realized I like it. I liked it a lot.

So a poker pro I was.

I bought more books. I posted on twoplustwo dozens of times a day. (I have over 12,000 posts there now.) I starting building contacts and building my identity online. I was playing 5/10 to 15/30 Limit Holdem (biggest game online at the time) and winning. I would play two tables, no software, no heads-up display, nothing. (Well, there wasn’t any software! I believe Poker Office and PokerTracker came out early 2005, will try to get clarification.)

I played whenever I wanted to. I scouted games and picked good seats. It was approaching Thanksgiving and that meant one thing:

Time to tell my parents.

So I immediately called my brother and flew out to California. Spending Thanksgiving in the desert of Ocotillo Wells, California. (Sorry mom, I was scared!)

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I had a blast riding quads in desert. We fried a turkey and had a huge meal on Thanksgiving.

One of the nights we were out there a wicked sand storm kicked up. I spent the evening in the RV watching a movie as others bared the winds and sand. I had some time to reflect on things and that is when I decided I was doing the right thing as I was very happy, the happiest I’ve been in my life.

Back home and off to tell the folks why I’ve had “so much time off” as my mother asked. We’ve all had those moments where we feared telling someone something. And just like those moments always are, it was a great relief when I did.

I told them what I had been doing and that I had no plan on getting a ‘job.’

My mom asked, “Are you happy?”, I replied, “Never been happier in my life.” She then said, “Are you healthy?”, I said, “Oh yes quite so.” Then she asked, “Are you self sustaining?”

I said firmly, “More then ever.”

Next time: I run bad. I get a coach. I fly out to meet Tommy.

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Note: all the Google maps are interactive, feel free to click on them, zoom in/out etc.

1972- Sept 1990, Jan 1992-Sept 1992, Jan 2002-Sept 2002

Home sweet home, Millbury, Massachusetts. Sadly, the house up for sale this month.
(2002 note: yeah yeah I lived in the down stairs apartment of my folks house for a year when I was 29 after moving out of Boston, read on to get the full story.)

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Sept 1990-Dec 1991
Coolidge Tower – University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Millbury High School had less than 500 students (8 thru 12). Coolidge tower greater than 700 students and it is one of five, 21 story towers in Southwest Dorms that are surrounded by 14, four-story buildings. Yeah, this will work…

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Sept 1992-Dec 1993
Worcester State College, Worcester, MA

I lived on campus even though it was close to home. I had this roommate that was a transfer from MIT. I would stumble into our room shit-faced at 3AM and he would be awake, in the dark, typing his computer. Mind you, at this time, I had email and that was extent of the internet from me.

After about 2 weeks of this, one night, I was really stoned and came into the room to ask him, “WTF ARE YOU DOING?”

And he just says,”talking to people.”

“No seriously, WTF are you doing?”

“still talking to people.”

“Where are they?”

“ummm, one is in Boston, one is in Australia, one is England.”

“WHAT?”

What he was doing was telnetting into Ohio State’s central computer to play text based MUSH (Multi User Shared Hack.)

Within a month, I was putting more time in on the game then he was. I was late for basketball practice as I was building my characters up and dominating the game. I was hooked.

I recently found my old roommate on LinedIn. He’s a game tester, believe it.

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Dowden Hall, Worcester State College Campus

Jan 1994-May 1996
University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, N. Dartmouth, MA

Worcester State had a transfer program to UMassD for engineering. Off I went having never seen the campus or knowing a soul. I moved straight into the upper classmen housing, it was perfect. I met great friends, and it was perfect for me.

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Cedar Dell Village, UMass at Dartmouth Campus

May 1996-Sept 1997
Fremont Street, Providence, RI

UMassD was only 45 mins from Providence, and Providence rocks. Within a year there, I saw, The Toadies, Bush, Belly, Cake, Matchbox 20, Candlebox, Guster, The Verve, Thrid Eye Blind, Built to Spill, Ben Folds Five, Pavement, Weezer, Eels, The Wallflowers, Wilco and likely more that I am forgetting. All of these bands were less than $12, as they’d stop in Providence to do a mid-week show on the way up to Boston from New York. I had such a great time there.

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Sept 1997-May 1998
Glenville Ave, Allston, MA

Lived in the “student slums” of BU with a girlfriend that was going to BU at the time. I got hooked on Boston at this time.

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May 1998-Sept 2000
Boylston Street, Brookline, MA

Move out on the girl, and into this apartment with a friend I grew up with, we had a blast. This is time I picked up my Red Sox season tickets which I still have to this day.

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Sept 2000-Sept 2001
Kennedy Terrace, Centerville, MA

Moved out of Boston as I was laid off from work. Became a house-sitter for my Uncle. Live alone and enjoyed it very much. I used to drive down to Craigville beach at night and sit alone in a life guard stand and play guitar. Was a soul searching time for me, it was perfect.

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Sept 2001-Dec 2001
Claflin Rd, Brookline, MA

I was ready to get back into the action and my friend has this absolutely beautiful brown stone apartment, all hardwood interior, pool table in one of the octagon rooms. 11 days after I moved in, the guy who lived in my room died in the World Trade Center towers. I did not live there long after and moved back home for a bit to gather myself mentally and financially. Rest in peace, Steve.

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Sept 2002-Sept 2006
Abbott Street School House, Worcester, MA

The Abbott was awesome. Classrooms were turned into apartments, 20 foot ceilings and they left the green chalkboards in some of them. 30 foot long chalk board running down the hallway in our apartment. I spent a little too much time in the Big Woo but I did manage to GTFOOW.

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Sept 2006-Sept 2007

I moved to California! You can read about some of the trip in the archives here of this blog. Click here.
Calle Borrego, San Juan Capistrano, CA

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I had an ocean view from my deck off the master bedroom.

Sept 2007-present.
Irvine, CA

After I got married we moved to a large gated community in Irvine, CA. This is where the crazy train ends and my new life with my family has begun. We have since moved across town into a house for the last few years but still in the lala land of Irvine!

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Want to know how the economy got f’ked up? (sorry Mom, but the f-word is the only one to describe what you are about to hear.)

Take 45 mins and listen to this:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

All credit to This American Life : Inside Job for an outstanding program.

Find more about Magnetar and the failure of our economic system that caused the current crisis: ProPublica.org

Bet Against the American Dream from Alexander Hotz on Vimeo.

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Having a great time, working, playing, getting around Melbourne.

Got to play golf twice already. Two local course, nothing that special except we had visitors:

Flying Foxes - click picture for Wikipedia

Flying Foxess in Trees

Close up of Flying Foxes

Melbourne is a beautiful city - Click the picture to see the location of this photo.

We went to the Australian Open yesterday. We saw three matches:

Kim Clijsters, BEL (15) vs Tamarine Tanasugarn, THA

Nadal, ESP vs Lacko, SVK

and finally James Blake, USA vs Del Potro, ARG which was one of the greatest live sporting events I have ever been to in my life. The match was 5 sets, 4h 20 mins, and two of the sets went to tie-break.

Tomorrow we are playing more golf and I hope it goes on as planned as I should have more photos from a real camera. These photo were taken with my Blackberry.

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Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology.

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Talks Bjarke Ingels: 3 warp-speed architecture tales.

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My good friend Steven from 2p2, aka *TT* 40th b-day was this week and my wife sent him this:

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So Michelle sent me some pics of a TV show that Okajima was on. It’s a popular comedy show, similar to the way the Dave Chappelle show was. I guess Okajima called up the comedians on the show and told them, “hey I forgot my camera when I left for spring training, can you get it for me?” and they did! I’ll try to get more deatails but my wife says Oki is a real funny guy.

Who knew?

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