I am not 100% sure of all the details but a few days ago I heard Bodog.com, the online gaming portal had been forced to operate under a new domain, newbodog.com.

According to CasinoWire.com

Bodog were ordered that all domains were to be defaulted and transferred to 1st Technology LLC, a leading technology licensing company headed by Dr Scott Lewis. The reason behind this ruling is an alleged patent infringement.

1st Technology LLC claim that the method used by Bodog to transmit and produce certain multi media is illegal as it violates their patents. The patent in question was filed by Mel Molnick with the U.S. Patent Office in 1995 and published in 1998. The company originally sued Bodog in Nevada in November last year.

A judge had ruled in this initial proceeding that the sum of $48,937,456 should be paid by Bodog, who failed to appear in court. The case then moved to Washington and Bodog again failed to appear. The ruling to surrender all domains leaves 1st Technology LLC with the option to liquidate or monetize the acquired domains.

I was quickly reading David Naylor blog and I know he knows some people who have inside information. According to Naylor, his inside guy said

“If you can use a judgment to force enom to turn off domains, you could do the same thing to ICANN, which means you could sue anyone in the world and get their site turned off.”

From the little I understand, Bodog is not even an US company, their headquartered in the Caribbean nation of Antigua. So is this a case where some no-name Seattle judge made a ruling which in effect potentially shutdown a non American business?

If that is the case, then this is highly screwed up!

As my readers may have noticed I have taken a few days off from Blogging. Actually apart from reading industry related information to Internet Marketing, I have taken the past week off from reading my normal subscription magazines and staying on top of the news (although as I am posting this, I am catching breaking news on North Korea’s missile testing but this blog post wont be about that).

Over the past four days I’ve done nothing but drink beer and eat meat. I do have some small things to talk about which I thought were interesting. I’ve had the past four days off to really do nothing apart from hitting the gym lifting weights and playing far too much poker on the internet.

I was luckily enough to be able to take a private tour of a company which manufactures baby and pet products. I can’t mention the name of the company but what I can say is that it is always a treat for me to tour other peoples companies and see how things work. You can get a real sense of how the founders think just by looking around each department and seeing how they have laid out their environment.

It has been over 100 degrees here during the days so I tried my best to stay indoors. I did manage to bang out a poker strategy book,
“The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker”.

The past few times I have gone to a casino I’ve spoken to a few good players and they have all mentioned this book to me. I really have been looking for a book which could help me fine-tune my game and help me see the game in multiple dimensions. This book does offer some cool scenarios and ideas on how to change your games around and discusses 4 common types of games to look out for.

1. Loose-Passive Games
2. Loose-Aggressive Games
3. Tight-Passive Games
4. Tight Aggressive Games

I’ll summarize these below. I have already put to test a few of their recommended strategies while playing online last night and I did really well. We will see how these hold up when I go to Vegas in three weeks. I am off now to watch some fireworks and see a concert in my local park.

Excerpts taken from “The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker”.

Loose-Passive Games

If you go to a casino cardroom on a weekend, at the lower betting limits you will find games that are close to fitting the loosepassive definition. Tourists, beginners, and people out to have a good time populate these games. Money is not the main issue-entertainment is the attraction. The stakes are small compared with the costs of most entertainment/social activities. Loose-passive games are actually the easiest ones to beat. To win money, you must become antisocial: that is, not play every hand through to the end.

Loose-Aggressive Games

Play-money poker is a good approximation of loose-aggressive games, because for loose aggressive players, money is something they play with. Part of the thrill is unnerving the other players with their lack of caution towards money. Often it only takes one or two loose-aggressive players to turn an entire table into loose-aggressive play. Everyone starts throwing money around to show that the aggressive player does not intimidate them. Soon the whole table is on a tilt.

Tight-Passive Games

Typically in tight-passive games, there is not much money on the table. An extreme tight-passive player buys-in for the table minimum and guards the chips, putting money in the pot only when they have a lock. You cannot win money that is not in play and you certainly can’t win more money than is on the table. If you see three or more players at a table behaving in this manner, consider finding another game. Your profit potential is limited and if you do fall behind, you have no hope of catching up.

Tight Aggressive Games

Not only must you rethink what it means to have a good flop, you must also rethink what it means to have a good hand. You may get away with stealing pots by betting marginal cards, and then lose with strong cards. The difference is that your opponents won’t challenge you unless they have strong cards. When your opponents are weak, they will back down. The attitude, “1′11 call to keep him honest,” that pervades loose games doesn’t exist in tight-aggressive games. If your opponents call or raise, don’t become confident just because your cards are good this hand, and in a prior hand that you won, your cards were weaker. Your strong hands may be losers if tight-aggressive players are not respecting your bets.

I just took part in the first SEO No Limit Texas Holdem Poker Tournament hosted by Quadszilla and it was very exciting for the few minutes I lasted.

There was a small group of us and the game took off fast. As reported on Quadszilla’s blog Dan from kloakit took the lead early and ended up winning the game against Jason Bailey.

It was my first time playing on Pacific Poker and I did not like the interface at all. I found it clunky and it took me a few minutes to figure out how to chat with the other players. I guess the developers thought most people don’t like chatting so they did not build a standard default chat module into the poker room.

In order to chat you had to first find the chat icon then click on it to execute a separate chat interface that floated over the other players. Lame!

Since we were all using handles for our names I was not sure whom I was competing against, but I believe it was Jason who took me out of the game early with a stunning full house, with kings over aces against my three of a kind, kings.

Congrats to Dan for winning and I look forward to playing again.

This is just a quick post. I just got back from spending a long weekend at the Pechanga Casino Resort located between Los Angeles and San Diego. Pechanga is a new four star hotel and casino built over an Indian Reservation in a one time sleepy vineyard town called Temecula.

This weekend I stepped up my game a bit. I finally built up the courage to sit down at a high stakes No Limit Hold’em game. For those of you who don’t play poker or usually just play the limit tables let me tell yea, sitting down at a No Limit high stakes table can really makes your heart pound.

As usual I sat down wearing my sun glasses but this time playing against some of the best players I’d ever come across. Poker is such as hard core game, there were a few times I had been holding pocket A’s, K’s and Q’s but to my demise the flops always seemed to hint to the possibility of a flush draw or straight.

There were a few hands I had to go All In on and did really well. Although I am sure my opponents were able to catch on to the fact I kept on having nervous leg seizers whenever the pot got extraordinarily high.

On this trip I had better luck playing Black Jack. I was lucky enough to find a few tables where I could play head to head against the dealers. I enjoy going Head On because the pace of the game is much faster and I don’t have to see other players making horrid mistakes like standing on 14 when the dealer is showing a face card.

We finished off the weekend celebrating mothers day with a Champaign brunch at Thornton Winery. All in all, it was a great trip. I am sure the casino will be sending me and my wife an invitation to come back soon.

Here are some pictures of us at the casino