Are Full Tilt players going to get their money?

On a recent radio show poker player Mike Matusow said that he is certain that Full Tilt's U.S. players "will get paid" after over a month of hearing nothing post black Friday. 

"I am not Joe Sebok. I am completely sure," Matusow said. He further stated "legal reasons" prevented him from saying more.

Is Mike Matusow telling the truth?

Matusow went on Quadjacks.com's radio May 17, and used his appearance to say players' funds are safe with the site, despite rumors to the contrary.

 Matusow also claimed fellow Full Tilt pros were advised not to speak out on the case.

"If their lawyers have advised them not to speak out, then that's how it is. They know what they are doing," he said.

Matusow also used the occasion to blast Party Poker pro and PokerNews.com owner Tony G, who himself appeared on the QuadJacks show earlier this week.

Tony G asked why Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson were keeping quiet about the many rumors surrounding the Full Tilt Poker site, but according to Matusow this was an expression of Tony G's own industry interests rather than a genuine concern for American poker players.

"Tony G is only out for himself and to boost Party Poker. It's all for his own selfish reasons," Matusow blasted.

"Everything Tony G says is fucking bullshit,” he said. “And I'll be happy to tell it to his face. He came to me yesterday and pretended we were friends. I felt like knocking him out."

There are two very interesting sections of this transcript. The first is a statement of assurance and the second is a statement of feeling about another person. Are these statements true?

        Christopher Dillingham writes in Dissecting Pinocchio how to detect liars. Here’s  a relevant quote from the book.

     

            John E. Reid—a nationally known trainer of law enforcement investigators—teaches them to be immediately suspicious whenever someone says “No, I did not” rather than “No, I didn’t”.

His studies as well as others show that a reliable tell of deception is use of the expanded contraction.

Here is probably the most famous use of the expanded contraction.

“I did not have a sexual relationship with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”-Bill Clinton

When people speak normally they use contractions. When they lie, they don’t. I apply this same analysis to Mike’s statements. When Mike tells the truth he speaks normally using contractions. When he fabricates he extends the contraction.

Truth

"Tony G is only out for himself and to boost Party Poker. It's all for his own selfish reasons," Matusow blasted.

"Everything Tony G says is fucking bullshit,” he said. “And I'll be happy to tell it to his face. He came to me yesterday and pretended we were friends. I felt like knocking him out."

Fiction

"I am not Joe Sebok. I am completely sure."

If he was telling the truth he would have said, “I’m not Joe Sebok. I’m completely sure.”

If he would have simply spoken normally I would have felt very confident that Matusow was telling the truth.

Of course I know he truthfully isn’t Joe Sebok, but the use of extended contractions applies to brain mode and to the context of the statement. The two statements were conceived together.

Be immediately suspicious of anyone using an extended contraction when making an assurance or a denial. This doesn’t mean that Full tilt players aren't getting their money. What it does mean is that Matusow is being deceptive somehow and if I saw him I 'd let him know I know this to his face. It leads me to believe that Full tilt is operating to payback and leaves me questioning with whether their current costs plus legal fees and diminished player base are going to allow them to be able to payback. I suspect someone put Mike up to making the statement, perhaps because he owes them in some way.

Here are five questions I would ask Lederer and Ferguson if I had significant money in Full Tilt(which I don't).

1. What are the assets that you can sell while still operating?
2. What are the assets that you can sell if shutting down?
3. What are you doing to cut costs right now?
4. What percentage of your wagers(not players) came from the US before black friday?
5. What were your total costs before black Friday?

Technically if this is the situation they are in debt to the players.

May poker article published

Total Aggression Rank

Summary: Whether it's calorie counting food boxes or points per game in basketball, numbers consistently fool us. How often have you used or confronted a statistic only to find out later it isn't very reliable?   They are reported badly by newspapers and people doing data gathering. In online poker I had to detect how other people played purely from numbers and notes I took about them. I used computer programs to help me gather and store those numbers. I argue in Total Aggression Rank: How less can tell you more that a particular statistic that seems sophisticated is actually less reliable than a stat I came up with. It allows me to think more quickly and more accurately, which when you are playing 4-6 tables at a time is the difference between making the right decision and losing hundreds of dollars. 

Green

Green;
I pick you out in a big box of colors
Green;
draw a branch of burnt sienna make a tree
and then I see how much I need you
color Green;
to make the leaves
and woods around me
colored Green,
and in the stars a paradox confronted me
you're more than just the eyes of envy
you're temporary, extraordinary; it's evolutionary!
I know you more and now I see
a ratio of energy to me

Links for poker players

So if you haven't heard the news Pokerstars, Full Tilt, and Absolute Poker are being charged with fraud and money laundering and US players are currently locked out of playing and cashouts.

My philosophy as always is not to whine and complain but simply to adapt best to the present conditions.

Here's the Twoplustwo thread about the whole issue. 

Here to me are some good articles about the players of this social game. Meet the prosecutor Preet Bharara

http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2011/jan/27/preet-bharara-hard-charging-humble-prosecutor/

Meet the accused and supposed informant Daniel Tzvetkoff

http://www.businessinsider.com/boy-genius-online-poker-scandal-2011-4

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/web-kings-life-on-the-line/story-fn6ck45n-1226039907165

 My personal opinion cliff notes.

Boss says, "Hey Bharara find some fraudsters on wall street so we can make it seem like we're doing something to catch the people responsible for this recession."

Bharara tries to find anything and can't(detecting deception is hard) especially if you are dealing with the best in the world.

Bharara has Tzvetkoff fall into his lap and sees an opportunity to spin the prosecution into the type of story his boss wanted. There probably was some fraud that went on(not related in any way to the monumental collapse of the us economy) but there is some spin availability and perhaps some wrong doing as they were probably coding poker transactions(grey never been tested legal area) so that they wouldn't be treated like sports betting and slots(outlawed under UIGEA). In any case Bharara throws the idea up to boss(imagine a guy in gucci suit and shades meeting Bharara in a black limousine) where boss hears the idea.

Boss then passes word to political boss(imagine overweight mid 50's semi grey haired senator up for re-election). Political boss likes idea because he can turn such action into big donations from the big gaming companies in Nevada. Casino Jack part II(not actually featuring Jack) now playing on computers throughout the US, check local listings for times(wait it's always on) because you can't log onto your computer and play some games because old people that can't detect deception think it will look like they are catching people responsible for the collapse of the US economy.

Principles of color perception

Have you ever tasted tea made by by the British? It's delicious full bodied and adds that dose of comfort one might need at times.

I had a Eureka moment a few weeks ago as my wife was walking back to kitchen to add more milk to the coffee I had just made. One of the things that has always fascinated me was how she is able to produce tea and coffee that tastes the same every time. Then it hit me that the problem I  have is changes in the size of the  container. I used lingual heuristics like fill the coffee cup 3/4 with boiling water and add 1 teaspoon of instant coffee, finish with 1/4 of milk. This works until you face coffee cups of different sizes where the ratio of milk to coffee changes due to the change in absolute size of the container.

 


So I realized that there is another way. My wife's mind remembers the color that she likes it and comes up with the correct ratio both for tea/water and stewing time or coffee/water and then from those two substances in ratio to milk. Color is ratio! That's all you have to know to create consistency.

Additionally imagine a coffee cup as being a little like a cell in any living organism. They come in different sizes and are filled with nutrients taken in, but they all very in size and nutrients they may contain at any given time.   The goal of every body  is to convert those materials into energy, but variations in nutrient density, cell resources and energy varies. So as a gatherer of cells you want to pick the ones with the best efficiency in order to get the most from the size of the materials you are taking in. Color is a way of viewing the ratio of any size of cell with consistency. Meanwhile numeric ratios must always be re-adapted to the variability of cell size.

This is not a new finding. Benoit Mandelbrot in his paper "the Coastline of Britain" wrote about how the measured distance of the coastline changes based on size of the tool that does the measuring. The same thing happens when my mind gathers numeric data about how much of something to put into container, or tries to perceive with numbers how much of something is in a container. 

Using color adapts to the underlying fractal geometry of nature and is an ingenious way of producing consisting in the face of variability with a simple rule.

However the body never had to confront the use of artificial or manufactured color. Color of this type produces the signal of the yellow, blue and green but doesn't carry with it the long memory of placing that prospect upon a color scale that fits the evolved association pattern(in other words our memory association can become faulty in the face of novel introductions).