Ah yes, the best day of the week has finally arrived. This is one of the only days of the week that I actually look forward to waking up early before the rest of the house. Nothing is better than than a watching a little ESPN, drinking my coffee, and putting together my lineup for fantasy. Not too mention a few buddies and I go in each week on an 8 game parlay bet. <———Dead Money.

Here’s the starting lineup for the week.

The proposition bets have not all been placed yet, but really there’s no point in posting as we are a 99% chance to each lose $20 anyways.

If you can remember way back to the opening paragraph of this blog post, that has all ended. As I write this, a cartoon is now on my plasma, and the kids have me running around like a waiter. I typically like to let my wife sleep in on Sundays however for the simple reason that it’s a 50/50 chance I will do something stupid today. This could include but is not limited to getting drunk, spending the day at the neighbors watching football, or getting into an online poker tournament that will limit me from helping put the kids down tonight.

Although speaking of which, my debit card has always worked at FullTilt. Normally I do the degenerate thing and keep some money in my account. Unfortunately I cashed most of it out this month with my last affiliate payment. And the money I left in there somehow disappeared at a 2-4 NL table the other night. Anyways, this morning I decided I might play in the $1,000,000 guarantee while watching the afternoon games, and I was greeted by this bitch. So then I decide I’ll just play in the $2,000,000 GTD at Stars.

Well, I go there and all of the sudden their instant check service is unavailable. I suppose I could always load my paytru card, but this sounds like too much work. Apparently the poker gods have informed me that today is not my day. I would play at Absolute or UB but I here online poker is rigged.

But here is the highlight of my last 24 hours. It is starting to get cold in the midwest and I need to seriously go do some shopping for some winter clothes. My wife is giving me a hard time because all I wear in the winter is jeans and fleeces. I think I have a fleece from about every online poker site on the net. So AM’s reading this, send me a fleece and I’ll give you a banner on the blog. Well anyhow I pulled a play out of my buddy Bryan Micon’s book and ordered a sweat suedo.

I will get some pictures when it comes in, but when I think of a 5′9″ white guy in a baby blue velour sweat suedo, the only word that comes to mind is PLAYA. I’m sure my wife will like this more than the poker fleeces.

In business news, this week should be a much better week. Last week got messed up with the Turkish hackers. I am conferencing with our developer tomorrow morning in regards to the sub-affiliate program. I expect to fully roll this out during the week. Even just in beta since Wednesday we have already seen 15 new affiliates come through referral codes.

Also this week I intend to finish up the Ebook for the subs to promote to their potential prospects. Speaking of Ebooks I may be partnering up with a friend and large internet marketer to do a whole series of Ebooks focused towards the poker affiliate market niche. This is still in negotiations though.

Nothing else too exciting except I got an email from Damon the PokerNews CEO this morning regarding my dividends in the company. We had a solid couple months. I think I am going to take a portion of these and treat my family to a vacation this December in the St. Petersburg / Clearwater area. If anyone has anyone suggesstions on resorts in that area that are good for kids, please post in the comments or shoot me an email.

Have a great Sunday, eat alot, drink alot, and be merry. It’s back to the grind tomorrow morning.

Oh my, what a long 36 hours I have had. I feel like going to the store and buying a couple 40 ounces, then after swallowing those down perhaps I could smoke a fat blunt. That would be very fitting, unfortunately that would probably even get fucked up somehow.. It all started yesterday when I hit reply to a thread at PAW and BOOM, up pops the Turkish Hack. Well actually it’s not really even a hack, it’s just a redirect. More about that in a second though. Just to get you in the mood to discuss Turkish Hacking, you should play this song, minimize, and continue reading. Apologies for the upcoming foul language in this post in advance too…..

Turkish Hackers Using A Vbulletin Redirect

Okay, now that the mood is proper let’s continue. The first thing that puzzles me about these assholes is that there is really no purpose or point of doing this. Likewise there is no motive, although on their kiddie hacking log it did say “political reason” in Turkish. For fuck sake guys, at least try to extort me for some of this filthy U.S. money. Like I said this is kiddie work, and it wasn’t really a true hack. No help to the fucktards that work in HostGator support (more on that in a bit) I was able to research the actual exploit and find this out on my own.

I believe the redirect was allowed to be inserted into either a thread title or username on new user registration. Normally VB will not allow html to be placed in titles, usernames, or anywhere else on the board by default. However when you have 3rd party plugins or mods installed, these can sometimes be opened up to exploitation. The only plugins I have installed are VBSEO, NoSpam, and VBSociable. So it actually could have been another setting in the admincp. Nonetheless here is the easy fix. Again this is nothing but a simple html redirect being inserted somewhere.

There are two ways to fix this or avoid this. First, make sure that html is disabled in all posts. Then you need to add these words and characters to your “Censored Words List” in the Vbulletin admin panel.

{meta} http-equiv content=”0 content=0 content=<

If the hack is being caused by a plugin of some sort you can also immediately stop the redirect by disabling the Plugin/Hooks globally via the admncp. That is my final conclusion on what happened both this time and last time the forum was hacked. I have disabled a few of the plugins as well as added the proper words to the censored words list. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Hostgator Sucks For Large Websites and Dedicated Servers

I have been with hostgator for several years but will be leaving soon. Well as soon as the Lithuanians get PAW off this box (which was supposed to be completed weeks ago)…..that’s whole other rant. Anyways, I have a dedicated server with them that houses around 10 sites at a cost of aprox. $350 a month. I also have a reseller account with them that houses aprox. 30-40 smaller less trafficked sites.

I have never had a single issue with my reseller account. However in less than 12 months, I have had to open over 24 support tickets for my “managed” dedicated server. Let me list the reasons of why you should never ever under any circumstance get a dedicated server with hostgator.

Reason #1 - When I first signed up for the dedicated server, they were more than happy to facilitate the move of PAW from the reseller account. Many of you that have been around for a while may remember the following. When they moved the site, they somehow fucked up the SQL database and lost a months worth of postings. The only backup they had was a month old. Dohhhhh, wouldn’t a competent server admin make a backup of the site before attempting to move critical pieces of it. Apparently not these guys.

Reason #2 - When I signed up for this $350 dedicated server I was told, and it is published on their sales page that Urchin Stats are included. Well guess what, although nobody made it known to me, my server was actually outsourced and to this day is still a server from a company called Layered Technologies! These LT servers don’t come with Urchin like advertised by Hostgator. Likewise when I have support issues where someone actually has to work on the box, it first goes to hostgator, and then to some random tech at Layered Technologies. This is a joke, and I never would have known this had I not asked for Urchin. If I buy a fucking server from Hostagtor, I expect it to be housed at The Planet with every other Hostgator server.

Reason #3 - The people in their support department have no fucking clue what they are doing. All they know how to do is escalate tickets. Then heaven forbid your support ticket gets escalated to Level 3 or critical. Now it’s in the hands of some system admin that is offshore and not even in a hostgator office. Good Luck if he leaves for the day, you’re fucked for 16 hours while you call and they escalate your ticket to some other dipshit. Like I said earlier, if you just need a reseller account or to host small sites, hostgator is adequate. But for a dedicated managed server, forget it.

Reason #4 - Let’s look at this incident. I saw the forums were hacked and immediately opened up a ticket. From the beginning I knew this was going to be a cluster fuck between Chicago, Lithuiania, Australia, Texas, and some hut in Pakistan. So I asked them to just restore the site from the most recent backup. It fell on deaf ears and some server admin started picking apart the SQL database as he was convinced the hack was an SQL Injection that “has done severe damage” to the entire site. So 12 hours later, PAW comes back up without the re-direct……ummmm but wait, there are no forums or content……. I reply to the ticket and when I see the server admin reply I almost have a heart attack. He tells me that there are no backups and the information is damaged.

Rewind 3 months, I have email documentation from Hostgator telling me that my “managed” and dedicated server is backed up every day.  After all the B.S. I have dealt with this was extremely important.  When I reply with the email documentation and a few other choice words, they magically find the daily backup. So they backed it up to yesterday before the hack. As you may have seen this morning the forums were still a mess. After fucking everything up for almost 24 hours and screwing with SQL databases that didn’t need to be messed with, Hostgator replies and says I will need to rebuild it from here and that the hack did quite a bit of damage.

Hey Dipshits, Isn’t the backup from before the hack? Regardless, my man Bobi from TopQ saved the day as always and got the right files where they needed to be. Bottom line is that Hostgator has been nothing but a disappointment from day 1 with my dedicated server.

Speeding Ticket

So finally today when everything seems to be under control with PAW, I go to the bank to see if a large affiliate payment that is owed to me was received. Imagine that……No Money!. That’s about par for course………….but wait it gets better. On the way home a pleasant Illinois State Trooper pulled me over and wrote me a ticket for 12 mph over the limit. I’m so thankful he slowed me down before I lost control and caused chaos on the expressway. Although I was going with the flow of traffic, I am convinced I was pulled over because I am white, drive a Lexus, and was drinking Starbucks. These kind of racial profiling excuses work for everyone else in the U.S….. why not me?

This blog seems to be all business lately. So let’s have some fun. Before you go any further, check out this crazy bitch. It just seemed like the right thing to post since I also have a gay flag on this page.

Anywho, on to more important stuff. As many of you know I love to gamble. Although gambling on poker, sports, or casino games can be fun, I personally get a lot more satisfaction doing proposition bets. In fact I’ll share my latest prop bet.

My good friend and neighbor John (the big dude in the middle) is such a die hard Green Bay Packer fan that this dumb ass made the following bet. If Green Bay has a better overall record than the reigning NFC Champion Chicago Bears, then he will have the pleasure of shaving my head with a dull razor. Damn, that could be cold this winter!

But here is the best part, If when the Bears finish up the season with a better record he will have to fly a gay flag outside his home for 1 week. Note to fellow gamblers……..Bet with your head and not your heart.

Okay, as you can see I have a lot of fun messing with friends and doing crazy proposition bets. Below however are my favorite proposition bets. These are great bets to make at bars with drunk buddies for either free drinks or cold hard cash.

If you use any of these in coming weeks and make a profit, please ship the customary 10% to me via paypal. Alright, here goes in order of my favorite:

1. The Circumference of a Beer Glass - This is a classic and you will win this all day long. (Don’t lie, you know you just went into your kitchen to grab a glass and try it out.)

2. 6 Saltines in a Minute Challenge - Okay this one is good. Eating 6 saltine crackers in a minute doesn’t sound that difficult, but believe me it is. I have only seen one person do this successfully. The problem is that saltines literally dry up all the saliva in your mouth and you are unable to swallow. When making this bet, you cannot allow the suspect to drink any water or liquids during the 60 second period. (Gay Video, but I didn’t have time to scour Youtube for a better one)

3. Break a Beer Bottle With Your Bare Hands - This is also a good one but can be quite messy. It really only works well at house parties or if you have a sink to do it over. Definitely not the most profitable prop bet, but it does work.

4. Open a Beer Bottle With A Piece of Paper - Again, not as great as #’s 1 & 2, but it will trick most people. Good luck finding a sheet of 8×10 paper at the bar.

I actually have many more, but these are my favorites. If you have some good ones, please post in the comments. The first one I have actually found to work the best. Happy Gambling!

With the upcoming launch of the PAW Network sub-affiliate program, I wanted to write a quick post about my experience with sub-afiliates, as well as what you can expect when building your sub-affiliate empire.

I have had great successes as a poker affiliate in my career, there is no question about this. In terms of actual players I personally send each month, I probably fall into the category of a medium sized affiliate now days. The old days was a different story though.

With that said however, I would challenge anyone to find me a bigger sub-affiliate on the planet. Over the years I have profited from thousands upon thousands of players being sent to rooms via my sub-affiliates. It was sometime around 2003 that I saw the huge potential in recruiting sub-affiliates, and subsequently this gave birth to PartyRiches, now known as PAW.

I’ll use an analogy about why I love recruiting sub-affiliates.

Gold = Affiliate Revenue

Miners = Poker Affiliates

Back in the late 1800’s the gold rush was on in California. Thousands of miners were coming from everywhere to get in on the action. Some miners would literally strike it rich by having superior mining skills or being in the right spot at the right time. However most miners came to California and found a fair amount of gold, but not enough to be considered rich. Nonetheless, every day thousands of miners were out there finding gold.

So who made the most money here and probably never found a piece of gold throughout the whole gold rush? That’s easy, the guys that manufactured the shovels and mining equipment!

That’s kind of how I see sub-affiliate programs and especially the PAW Network. There are several emerging areas of the world where poker affiliate marketing is just now becoming popular. This is an opportunity for affiliates to capture all of these new affiliates. Or even better for affiliates to recruit existing successful affiliates in their respective countries.

I have never been so excited about launching anything on PAW as I am about the sub-affiliate program. Of course as the director and person responsible for PAW I am excited about growing our business and revenue. But even more exciting is that I can get back to what I absolutely love doing. And that is helping affiliates build their incomes and realize what a great and lucrative industry this is.

You can build a tremendous residual income each month from doing nothing having sub-affiliates promoting under you. The important thing to remember though is that recruiting sub-affiliates is a numbers game. Your affiliate % is much lower per player than it would be had you sent the player directly. But the beauty is that you can send loads more players by having subs than you could on your own in most cases.

Imagine if you had 250 affiliates under you and on “average” each affiliate only sent 5 players per month. Let’s also imagine that the average CPA of your subs is $125 of which you get 5%. That’s 1250 players a month times your 5%. You would earn roughly $7812.50 a month for essentially not sending a single player yourself. This is more than most American’s make grinding it out through 40 hours of hell each week sitting in an office.

Of course this is a big example, but it’s my job to get you excited and motivated! Also keep in mind that many affiliates can send 20 times this amount. Unfortunately there are also a lot of duds that won’t send any players. So again, it’s all a numbers game. Just start small and watch it grow. Having numbers like this through sub-affiliates is not difficult though if you are a hustler.

Although you may be able find poker sub-affiliate programs with a larger sub-affiliate %, you will not find one sub-affiliate program that gives your referrals over 20 rooms to promote, including most of the top rooms in the industry at premium rates.

I am so excited to offer the same type of business model to our affiliates that has helped me build my business throughout the years. Especially since we have a large international base of affiliates where their markets are on the brink of exploding. This post is getting long so I’ll sign off, but I am also planning some really cool things to help those in our sub-affiliate program convert more new affiliates. You can read all the details over at PAW about what is on the horizon for this poker sub-affiliate program.