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AT&T Donk-Verse, A Tale of Woe

Hello Manifestites!  You thought I forgot about you, didn’t you?  I wouldn’t say I flat out forgot about you, it’s more like I purposely made you wait just so the next blog entry would be that much more enjoyable.  Or something.  In this episode we encounter what it’s like to have the biggest telecom company in the world try to fix what should be a routine issue.  Hold on and enjoy the ride!

I’ve been an AT&T U-Verse customer for a long time now.  5 years maybe?  I honestly don’t remember and can’t be bothered to research it.  Milwaukee was a pilot city for U-verse and overall I’ve been really happy with the TV and Internet service they provide.  I’ve had a few minor issues, and only one that I’d consider a major one.  Almost exactly one year ago there was a problem where the router/gateway/modem (known as gateway from this point forward) would fill up with errors and reboot itself, which cut off TV and Internet for a good 5 minutes.  It took a few inside techs and a few outside techs about 2 weeks to fix that one, but after a good bit of outside work and replacing the gateway, the problem went away completely.

This new problem started in early December, but because it wasn’t quite annoying enough and because I was sick for the entire month of December I didn’t bother calling it in for a while.  The problem is an intermittent disconnection problem.  Internet and TV drops for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes.  Just long enough to disconnect remote work session, online games for the kids, screws up DVR recordings, and hangs up phone calls since we have Vonage which is VOIP. And of course long enough to be really annoying.

Before I really get started I’ll write a bit about what I know about AT&T’s support.  When you use their online chat you get a tier 1 person.  If tier 1 is unable to solve the problem they can transfer you to tier 2.  If you call on the phone you immediately get a tier 2 person, but you usually have to wait a good 10 minutes to talk to them.  There’s typically no wait for a tier 1 chat person, and all of their names are foreign.  Thing is, there’s no difference at all between what a tier 1 and tier 2 person can do.  They can go through the typical reboot the router, reboot your computer troubleshooting, view the line status, and send out an inside tech (tech that comes to your house and deals with everything from the phone jack outside to the gateway inside).  They can’t dispatch an outside tech.  In fact, only an inside tech can dispatch an outside tech.  It makes sense in the fact that they don’t want to send someone up a telephone pole when a gateway reboot could fix it, but it doesn’t make sense when something happens like my situation, which you’ll see in a bit.  So as far as time goes, the online chat is the easiest and fastest way to get a technician dispatched.

Here’s where we begin.  It’s sometime in early January.  I used AT&T’s online chat and they created a ticket for me for an inside tech to come out to the house.  I ask for a 8am-12pm time frame, he gets here about 11:45am on the appointment day.  He says he can’t bring up all of a diagnostics on his fancy laptop, so he unplugs the gateway, plugs it back in and we wait for a few minutes.  His eyes light up, says he can see the diagnostics now, and that this will “definitely fix the problem”.  Uhh, you just rebooted the gateway you putz, you didn’t actually do anything.  He leaves and says he’ll check things out back just to make sure they are ok.  Uhh yeah sure.  Great.  Problem goes away for almost a full day.

After a few days of dealing with it I get back on the online chat get another inside tech dispatched for the next week.  This time I choose the time window of 12pm-4pm so they don’t screw up my lunch.  At 3:35pm I get a call from AT&T that’s an automated message.  The message starts saying something about my appointment, only the fucking connection goes down and the call drops so I have no clue what the hell it said.  I wait a while since I was busy with something at work, then dig up the URL they gave to check the appointment status.  The site says I need to call the 800 number.  Well ffs.  By now it’s 4:15pm.  I get on the phone and by the time I get someone it’s 4:30pm.  I tell her that I was supposed to have a 12-4 appointment but I got a call a while back and because it got disconnected I didn’t know what was going on.  She says “ok well let me call the dispatch center and see if the technician is going to be late.”  I tell her that they’re already 30 minutes late and she just giggles and puts me on hold.  WTF?  She comes back to say that they are running 1 to 2 hours late.  Awesome.  At 5:15pm I get a call and they say they’ll be here in 30-45 minutes because of traffic.  They finally get here at 6:20pm.

This guy seemed to be on top of things, and he had a trainee with him that seems more competent than most regular techs.  They ran all sorts of tests, plugging devices into the gateway, running tests from their fancy AT&T branded iPads, etc.  They confirmed that the gateway was fine, and the wiring from the gateway to outside of the house was fine.  Of course since the problem is intermittent they didn’t see anything wrong.  I showed them the logs on their own gateway that showed millions of errors, and they gave me the old tech bullshit that translates to “blah blah blah we don’t know what the fuck that means but we hope you don’t either”.  They went outside to the interface box on the house and said that someone previously didn’t have enough slack on the cable so he put essentially a splicer on a piece of cat 5 cable.  I don’t know how many times someone would have to be dropped on their head to think that was a valid solution to a problem, or when it was even done, but I just shook my head.  He pulled more slack through, connected it the right way and said that might fix it.  He did say that if the problem still happens that the inside wiring and gateway were all fine and the problem had to be on the outside, so I should call and have an outside tech come out if the problem happened again.  I said wait a minute, I can’t call an outside tech, only you inside techs can.  He said no, he didn’t have access to call an outside tech, and only the people on the phone could.  By this time it was almost 7:30pm and I hadn’t eaten dinner yet so I just hoped the problem would go away and I let them go.

This time the problem went away for 2 full days.  I had several days away from home in a row so I wasn’t able to call in a new issue until the next week, so I got online chat on and this time scheduled an appointment for the 8am-12pm window.  In fact, when the guy asked me what time I wanted I said “let’s choose 8am-12pm, that way when he’s 2 hours late he’ll really screw up my day.”  I did ask for an outside tech but of course the person on the chat said the only people who could call outside techs were the inside techs, and that it was not possible for someone on the chat or phone support to dispatch an outside tech.  Fantastic.

Appointment day comes around and at 11:55am I get a call from the tech who arrived 15 minutes later.  He remembers me because he’s the guy who showed up last year to replace the gateway which fixed last year’s problem.  He again verified that the inside wiring and everything was fine, and that the only thing he could do was replace the gateway.  I asked about an outside tech and he said that that would be the next step, that if replacing the gateway didn’t do it that an outside tech is the next step.  Ok cool, maybe this will do it.

Or not. The disconnects started up again the very next day.  I dealt with it (read: ignored it) until the weekend when I couldn’t take it anymore, so I brought up the old online chat again.  Sometime early on the guy gave me a URL to use in case we got disconnected.  I didn’t bother copying it figuring the window would stay up if we did and I could just click it again.  He took literally 5 minutes to pull up my account information.  While I was waiting I clicked on a youtube link sent over by a friend of mine.  I don’t remember what it was but it I’m sure it was either some dumb animal or a skateboarder taking a nut shot, cause that’s what makes up 99% of youtube.  It promptly locked up Chrome and I had to kill the window, losing the URL.  Awesome.  I get back in and get a different guy.  I didn’t put any information in the chat form except “same issue.”  I did choose “intermittent issue” from the drop down of tech support choices, so he asked me if I was still having, and I quote “problem with intermittent issue.”  I said yes and told him to read my previous notes.  He then asks me if we can do some “remediary” troubleshooting, whatever the fuck that is.  I ask him what he wants to do, and he says he wants to reboot the gateway.  I type “did you read the case notes?!?!?!?  The router was just replaced 4 days ago!”  He immediately says “ok let me transfer you to tier 2 so they can help.”  I wait for maybe 2 minutes and literally say out loud “fuck this”, closed the chat window down and picked up the phone.

I call up, have to verify to the automated voice system that my phone number they read off to me is indeed my phone number, then get put on hold for 10 minutes.  I’m greeted by a fairly nice sounding individual who told me his name is either Kali, Khan, Molaram, or Bill.  It was hard to tell.  First question he asks me is what my phone number is.  Sigh.  Now here’s the real kicker.  The guy reviews the case notes and just as I’m getting ready to flinch as he tells me he has to send out inside tech #4 he says “ok sir I’m putting in a case for an outside tech to come out.  You won’t need to be home and he will hopefully find and fix the problem.”  Wait, what?  I ask him if he’s serious, and he says yes, then promptly puts me on hold, saying he wants to confer with a senior team member to make sure this is what he should do.  Ok, that sounds about right.  Sure enough he comes back and says that his team member agrees, an outside tech is the right thing to do now.  Err, but uhh, I thought that only the, err, yeah fuck it, nevermind, send the fucker out!  I give him my cell number to call when he’s done so I can verify he didn’t fuck everything up, and quickly get off the phone before Bill Molaram changed his mind and/or I woke up from my dream where he tries to rip my heart out but instead I throw him off the bridge and the crocs eat him.  He did say that the tech’s time was between 8am-8pm but because I didn’t need to be home it didn’t really matter, and that he would definitely call me when he was done.

So it’s the morning that the outside tech is supposed to arrive.  Somewhere around 9am my phone rings once then stops, but doesn’t ring long enough to show a caller ID.  No voicemail, no call back, nothing.  I assume this was the AT&T guy cause I mean why else would that happen.  Sure enough, a few minutes later the Internet connection goes out.  It stays off for maybe 20 minutes, then on for 10, off for 20, on and off a few times for another 30, and then stays on.  Things seemed ok for a few hours, and then sure enough, around 12:30pm it disconnects.  I go online to the appointment status page that informs me that my order has been completed.  Great!  I must have ordered a double dose of fuckall.  Looks like I also got a complimentary side of jack shit.  Awesome.

Just so you know my mindset through all of this, by now I was starting to give in to the fact that I may have to just tell them to fuck off and switch everything over to Time Warner.  Time Warner isn’t without their problems, and for comparable TV/Internet packages it’s going to be like $50/month more with TW.  Not looking forward to that, not looking forward to having to clear off the DVR, problems with installation or any of that.  I just don’t want to go through it because AT&T has been so good these last years.

Alright next step, call AT&T back again.  Tell them that the outside tech didn’t fix it and that he had to come back.  I told them that I was trying not to be angry, and that I wasn’t saying it as a threat, but that I was having to face the very real possibility that I would leave AT&T because of their inability to fix the problem.  This chick on the phone then tells me all she can do is send out an inside tech, because the system doesn’t let the tier 2 people on the phone send outside techs out.  I say wait a minute, the guy I talked to yesterday called an outside tech right away.  She tells me that the system won’t let her.  I say well the outside tech was here today, didn’t fix it, and he needs to come back out.  She then gives away their secret loophole…if the outside tech closes his ticket, they can’t re-open it.  That’s fuckin brilliant.  There’s outside techs out there who likely don’t do a fucking thing all day long, write any old bullshit in the ticket closure, and then they can’t get called on it to fix it because of the way their system works.  I wonder how many outside techs are getting paid to fuck off and not do anything.  That’s amazing.  I get her supervisor on who is almost as useful as the tier 1 chat techs who don’t know a fucking thing.  Neither of these nitwits seem to understand that the outside tech was JUST FUCKING HERE, so sending another goddamn inside tech isn’t going to do any good. 

I say ok, if you have to send out an inside tech he needs to be here today.  This was like 2pm already, and they said ok, we have a 12-4 timeslot available, and then she actually took the time to explain to me that since it was after 12pm that the timeslot would really be from “now” until 4pm because it wasn't possible for him to show up between 12pm and 2pm.  I was kinda hoping she would tell me that he could still show up at 12pm, in which case I’d kill the fucker, hide his body and steal his time machine.  I went and posted a whine on Facebook about this saga and asked if we should have a pool on how many techs I can have out to my house.  One guy wanted a pool to see what time he would show up.  I liked that idea, but to my surprise tech #4 called at 3pm from out front of the house, and came in shortly after.

Inside tech #4 told me right away that he was going to make sure there I didn’t have to have tech #5 come out, and that he was a senior tech and he implied that he got pulled off of a job to come out and fix this issue.  Not sure if that’s true, but at least someone is taking this somewhat seriously.  He replaced some inside cables and got rid of some 5 year old punch down boxes and then ran what he called an intrusive test.  He said it would put 120V through the line and that if there were problems with a dirty line or whatever that the test itself might fix it.  As an aside, that was an old trick we used to use in the dial-up days.  We would call up the phone company, tell them that we were experiencing line noise on a data connection, they’d run their test without really knowing what it was and half the time it ending up fixing the issue. 

He also said he found a problem on the outside line and he was going to call in an outside tech.  He showed me the software they use to run their tests, and showed me two separate tests that showed a problem about 800ft. from the house.  He got on the phone with whoever it was, and said “ok hopefully I can bully them into getting an outside tech in here”, and then sure enough he had to argue with the people on the phone to get an outside tech in, and then they denied him.  What the fuck?  So inside techs are the only ones who can call outside techs, unless some random fucker on the phone denies it?  Even if they have a test that specifically shows a problem at a specific place?  (800 ft in this case, remember this by the way)  Or unless it’s Kali Bill.  This fucking company is ridiculous.  So he hangs up and tells me “this is where I call my boss and get them to override the guys on the phone so I can put in the ticket.”  He then tells me that it’s good to be him cause all his bosses like him and he knows where they are at all times, and tells me that his boss is out buying a boat.  Cause yeah, we do that a lot here in Wisconsin.  In January.  At least there actually seems to be someone in the company that can make things happen, unlike what everyone on the phone seems to tell me.

During all this he asks me about the bass guitars I have hanging up on the wall in my basement office, and says he’s also a musician and plays “everything.”  Oh boy, here we go.  I already know what to expect.  Usually when people say they play "everything", it means they know 4 notes on each instrument and are fair to mediocre on their best one.  He has me to go his band’s myspace page and I listened to some of their music.  It’s average at best and before it even starts he apologizes for the shitty recording quality. He was right.  Unfortunately he didn't apologize for the song quality.  First song sounded like a 2nd rate version of a Tom Petty ballad, if that's even possible.  Then he has me play a song that he says they couldn't have it sound any more like a Kiss song if they tried.  It sounded nothing like Kiss.

I then play him a few of the recordings from my current and previous bands including some live tracks, and I can tell right away he’s a bit intimidated.  I don’t really brag about it, but I’m a very good musician, and I’ve played with very good musicians all my life.  I try to be as humble as I can, just letting the music speak for itself and not bragging, and I’m pretty good at not letting my ego get in the way.  Well, despite all that he decided to start the one-upping game, and it got more ridiculous as it went along.  Oh, and don’t ask.  I’m not going to give his band link away.  Everything below aside, he was a cool guy and might have fixed the problem, so it’s certainly not a Paul (EYE) situation.  (Those of you who don’t know what that means should search the blog).

He started by saying that he spent “the most” he’s ever spent on a guitar, $1200, then 2 days later got in a car accident which screwed up both of his wrists and he’s just now starting to be able to play guitar again after 6 months of not being able to play.  Ok sure, I’ve been there.  I couldn’t play bass for almost 2 years during my arm and neck surgeries of 2005-06.  It sucked, so I feel for the guy, cause buying a new instrument and then not being able to play it would really suck.  He then asks how much I spent on my main bass.  It’s a really damn fine looking instrument, as can be seen here.   I tried to just brush it off by laughing and saying “heh, a lot” but that wasn’t good enough, he had to know.  I gave him a figure almost 3 times what his guitar cost, and then it started.  He went into some story about how he was bidding on some guitar on ebay that was over $8000, and his bid stood for 2 days (he even gave me the exact amount of the bid), and that someone outbid him with 5 seconds to go by $2.  I said I had a lot of apprehension buying  a bass for as much as mine was, and he said that when he was 17 he had an original Les Paul guitar made by Les Paul himself and that it was $10k but one day his mom wanted to clean so she picked it up but dropped it on the cement floor where it smashed into a zillion pieces.  Oh yeah, at some point he also said his band got invited to open for U2 in Ireland, but that they had to pay $15k or so to fly there and move all their gear there, and they couldn’t afford it, despite getting $200k if they played the gig, so they had to pass it up.

Anyway, that was amusing and all but eventually he left, said he would put the ticket in for the outside tech to come out and it would probably be the next day.  But, not only wouldn’t I have to be home, he wouldn’t call me, and that he would just get things done and it should be fixed.  Cause you know, that worked so well the first time.  He did give me his personal cell number and told me to call him if it happened again.  He was nice and all but I really hope I never have to talk to him again.

Strangely enough, around 6pm that same night, the doorbell rings.  It was outside tech #2 who told me that his test he ran showed a problem at 800ft. but it was under a manhole cover so he had to get a crew out the next day to do it.  Imagine that, inside tech finds a problem at 800ft., some jackass on the phone won’t let the only person in the company who is able to call for an outside tech actually call for the outside tech, and once the outside tech gets here he finds a problem at 800ft.  That’s what we call corporate brilliance, folks.  Fuckin morons. 

At this point in the story I’m going to end the blog entry.  The connection has been up solid since outside tech #2 was here 4 days ago.  The connection hasn't gone down once since then, so I’m pretty sure no one did anything under the manhole cover, but that’s probably a good thing since that's just one more chance for them to fuck something up and start the inside/outside/upside down cycle all over again.  The error count is zeroes across the board, and speed is just fine.  Throughout this whole saga I’ve kept friends up to date on various parts of the problem.  They usually reply with some sort of joke like “you should probably reboot the router, yeah that’s the problem.”  Sad thing is, the truth is funnier than their jokes!  For those keeping track that was 4 inside techs and 2 outside techs, and however many people on the online chat and phone.  I feel like I should end this with some sort of moral to the story.  Moral is, don’t eat mushrooms.  They’re nasty.  Until next time, which may be soon, may be never, but most likely will be somewhere in between that.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Tilt-a-Donk, Chapter Eleventy-Seven

Hello Manifestites and a happy Friday to you!  Can you believe it?  4 (FOUR) posts last month?  Well, 5 (FIVE) if you consider the post announcing that I’m now on twitter is a real post.  It definitely served its purpose though.  That twitter thing is great.  A friend of mine lamented “ffs, I read your tweet which sends me to your blog only to find out that the blog entry tells me you’re on twitter.”  Isn’t technology great?  I’ve become part of the twittering tweeting twits.  Or something.  I don’t plan on using it much, but it’s a nice place to announce blog entries and various other random things.

So speaking of random things, here we are in the first week of May with yet another blog post.  I know what you’re thinking, how could I possibly keep up with both the volume and quality of April?  My more astute readers know this already, but the answer is, I probably can’t, so enjoy while you can cause this gravy train could end at any second.

As most poker players know, Black Friday happened for online poker in the US on April 15^th, 2011.  I’ve been following some of the developments, especially with one particular network, the CEREUS network, home of UltimateBet and Absolute Poker.  Readers in the know will recognize these names as they were the center of huge cheating scandals in the recent years.  I was seriously considering devoting an entry or two to discussing the sites and what’s been going on since April 15^th but then I realized that it would be much too much like actual journalism and nothing like what I’m really good at, which is telling idiots to shut the fuck up.  There are several really good blogs and news sites out there if anyone wants to follow the story for themselves, but for now I’m gonna continue on with what I do best.

This exchange happened earlier this year on PokerStars.  They have all sorts of rebuy tournaments, where you can buy back in if you bust for a single or a double stack.  They are very popular because they allow for some very deep stacked play later in the tournament.  Well that is, if you wind up playing well enough and caring enough to get that far.  I find tournaments are a nice distraction from cash game play, but eventually I get bored and find something better to do and my stack gets randomly distributed around the table.  Anyway I digress…  The first hour or so during the rebuy period can get a bit out of hand at times, because there are a lot of people who go all out nuts trying to amass a huge stack.  I’ve seen people rebuy 20-30 times in these things.  It’s pretty easy to do if you get carried away.  At some point, a guy on my table lost yet another hand, and starts in.  I don’t even remember the hand that started it all but I must have won, and of course I can’t help but to chime in:

R Lazzaro: what a joke

R Lazzaro: same ****ing hand and this donk still draws on me

XaQ Morphy: it's a $5 tourney, shut up moron

R Lazzaro: shut the **** up

R Lazzaro: fish

XaQ Morphy: headsup for your life?

R Lazzaro: go die?

R Lazzaro: ***got

R Lazzaro: anyone named Xaq is a queer

XaQ Morphy: lol

R Lazzaro: what a ***got name

Ahh yes, pretty much a standard exchange at this point.  I call him a moron, he calls me a fish, I offer the obligatory headsup challenge, and he starts in calling me gay.  Ever notice how they immediately start down this line? I’ve told them before and I’ll tell them again, I’m not gay, have no interest in being gay, and certainly aren’t interested in weird angry gay advances on a poker site.  Yet they still continue on.

A few hands later our friend RL shoves pre-flop with Jc Tc because it’s suited (aka, cause you know or cyk for short) and gets called by pocket tens.  Board runs out 5c Qd 4c 4s 2d, and the pocket tens hold up.  One thing that really bugs me about results oriented idiots are the comments about “on the river” or “I was a huge favorite on the flop” when the money went in pre-flop.  I blame the tv shows like the WPT and the WSOP for this a bit because of the way they over-dramatize the order the cards come out and all-in situations.  The fact is, the odds are calculated when the money goes in, then the cards are dealt and the player with the best hand wins.  In a case like this, the pocket tens are a bit over a 60/40 favorite over the Jc Tc.  Those are the only odds that need to be considered because all of the money went in pre-flop.  However, a lot of people flat out can’t see it that way because they think they “hit a flush draw” and then “missed”.  But this guy takes it a step further, as we see here:

R Lazzaro: nice

R Lazzaro: cant hit 1 out

R Lazzaro: cool

R Lazzaro: ppl draw out on me all day long

R Lazzaro: so funny

R Lazzaro: huh xaq

R Lazzaro: snt that funny?

So he gets his money in bad, flops a flush draw and then somehow thinks that he got drawn out on, even though he didn’t hit so much as a pair.  He also calls me out even though I didn’t say anything.  That’s not to say I didn’t deserve it, mind you…

XaQ Morphy: J 10 losing to 10 10 is drawing out on you?

R Lazzaro: after the flop

Oh yeah, so after the flop, where he’s still a 51/49 underdog, he still thinks he got drawn out on.  Of course he won’t mention that based on his line of thinking that he’s a 3:1 underdog on the turn, and if he hit a club or a J on the river that he would have drawn out on his opponent.   Makes sense, right?  Only if you’re a fuckin moron, but then again, that’s why we’re here:

R Lazzaro: dumb ****

R Lazzaro: did u see the flop?

XaQ Morphy: all the money was in preflop sparky

R Lazzaro: or are you ****ing blind

R Lazzaro: ?

XaQ Morphy: it doesn't matter

XaQ Morphy: goddamn idiot

See, I never believe in just letting people vent, especially if they are venting at me.  I always like to take things one step further.  I find calling someone an idiot after they vent something idiotic tends to bring out the real idiot in them.  Sure enough, he starts the all caps shit and loses it:

R Lazzaro: it does matter

R Lazzaro: after the flop comes

R Lazzaro: stupid ****ing queer

R Lazzaro: i picked up outs

R Lazzaro: are you ****ing stupid?

R Lazzaro: or blind

R Lazzaro: which one

XaQ Morphy: your money went in preflop as a big dog

R Lazzaro: WHO CARES

XaQ Morphy: doesn't matter what order the cards are dealt, slugger

R Lazzaro: AFTER THE FLOP CAME

R Lazzaro: I PICKED UP OUTS

XaQ Morphy: the flop came?  did you jerk it off or something?

LOL, this last line cracks me up every time I read it.  So simple, so eloquent, I mean that’s some of that journalism shit right there.  Or is that Donkalism?  Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be getting a Nobel prize in Donkalism for telling idiots to shut up, so might as well continue on here.

One of the great things about PokerStars is (was) the chat moderators.  You could go in and hit the “Call Moderator” button, type in a complaint, and then a moderator shows up at the table, claims to review the chat, does absolutely nothing at all, and then vanishes wishing everyone well.  The mods are absolutely useless and if anything are just a complete waste of man-power.  I’ve had mods ignore non-English chat where the people were flat out talking about their hole cards on the table.  I’ve also had mods tell me when people were blatantly cheating that the chat moderators weren’t meant for reporting “table play issues”, and that I should email support instead.  Useless.  So naturally since they are completely useless I try to waste their time as much as possible since that’s all they are there for.  Might as well make them earn their paychecks, right?  So I called the mod and told them RL was an idiot.

Moderator102 [Moderator]: Hello players.

Moderator102 [Moderator]: Please note that all chat must be clean and respectful at all times.

Moderator102 [Moderator]: Please refrain from using rude or derogatory remarks/comments.  We want everyone to enjoy their gaming experience at the tables without being offended.

XaQ Morphy: what if the guy is really an idiot?  is it ok to call him an idiot then?

Moderator102 [Moderator]: Thank you in advance for your cooperation and good luck with your games. :-)

See?  Completely useless.  Funny, but useless.  Then again, maybe they did something, because that was the last thing I heard from our friend RL.  I tried talking to him again, but he didn’t answer:

XaQ Morphy: hey Lazzaro, I'm sorry your flush draw you picked up after you got your money in as a big dog lost.  Can we be friends still?

XaQ Morphy: nh friend

Oops.  He busted out, didn’t rebuy and then vanished, probably getting his chat banned in the process.  Fucking ***got queer.

Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

xaqmorphy@donkeymanifesto.com

www.donkeymanifesto.com

www.twitter.com/xaqmorphy

Tweeting Donks

Or is that Donking Tweets?  Hello Manifestites.  I bring you a quick blog entry to announce that you can find yours truly on Twitter now at www.twitter.com/xaqmorphy.  The  main use for this will be to announce new blog posts, but of course I will also be telling idiots to shut up.  I may throw some other random stuff in there as well.  Follow me!  Or don't.  Either way.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

The Donkey Manifesto Presents: Shut Up Idiot

Hello Manifestites!  That’s right, 4 (FOUR) posts in 1 (ONE) month.  Can you believe it?  We haven’t had this since, well, the last time we had it (2007 for anyone counting).  I like the approach I’ve been taking with the shorter entries.  Of course you guys are going to expect this to keep up, so I’ll see what I can do.  I’m still working off of some older material, but at some point I’m sure I’ll get new material in.  I’ve gone back to playing on what I’ve called my donk sweet donk site, and the play and chat there are, well, donkteresting.  I had a really good chat going yesterday and the site’s software is so fucked up that it locked up just by trying to copy the chat to paste to a file.  Argh!

This entry I want to highlight one of my favorite terms from the past few years, which is simply, shut up idiot.  It’s hilarious how something so simple and straight forward can get people completely bent out of shape.  It’s taken on a sort of cult following.  Some of it might have a guess you had to be there sort of feel to it, but if you have the sense of humor that I do, the more you use it the more amusing it will be.

It all starts back with this quote, from the second entry of The List: 

thenutlow: gonna ratstab his way to another $6 profit and then ysteriously have to do some made up bullshit so he can run down his hole with that big bag of loot ratting its way on his shoulder

thenutlow: "ratstab"

thenutlow: verb: to win a small sum of money quickly and escape the table for spurious reasons

To describe what was happening here, my friend A-Ten_suited spent one afternoon sitting at a table, playing enough to win a few dollars (literally), then leave the table.  He kept saying things to me via AIM like “ffs woman leave me alone!” or “argh wife needs me again brb” every time he left the table.  Yet, he would show up at a new table 30 seconds later and do it all over again.  This went on for way too long, and TNL and I were damn near in tears watching it.  Thus, the chat above.

Sometime in 2008 a newish (and now deceased) poker site named FSG appeared.  It was one of those new generation sites with really shitty software and a tiny player base, but was “legal” because you could either play completely for free, or purchase a monthly subscription to be able to play various tournaments using points instead of cash, but could still earn cash prizes.  The main draw to the site was a $50k freeroll they were offering.  All you had to do was final table some other smaller free tournament once and you were entered in it.  Most people took advantage of this and played to just try to enter the freeroll, while there were others who practically lived on the site.  Anyway, I needed to come up with a name for the site, so I took A-Ten’s wife’s name and put a Beavis & Butthead spin on it and came up with The Great Patholio, or Patholio for short.  A typical entry into a room for me was:

PATHOLIO:  I AM THE GREAT PATHOLIO!!!

Of course someone always had something to say, so I’d pull the famous line:

PATHOLIO: ARE YOU THREATENING ME???

Remember, things are always funny when they are in caps.  You can imagine the standard response from some of these morons that don’t have a sense of humor and are there to play their free poker game seriously.  Naturally a few had some choice comments.  One day I just blurted out:

PATHOLIO: SHUT UP IDIOT

For some reason that was really funny to me, so I just started using it everywhere I could.  I even created the website www.shutupidiot.info which is there for your use.  Enjoy!

The first documented use of “shut up idiot” was somewhere in May or so of 2008, and documented here in this episode of Random Donk Chat:

h82bukid: lol

h82bukid: true to your name

DOKTER DONKEY: shut up idiot

Here, a good 3 years later, it still cracks me up every time I see it.  I don’t know why, and it very well could be unfunny to my readers, but since I write these entries mostly for myself, I don’t much give a shit.

From that same blog entry above I had a few encounters with a player named PhippsJ, who is one of those typical morons who thinks he knows everything and always has something to say.  Well, what’s the best response to something like that?

PhippsJ: your like the 5 foot 5 guy at the bar trying to pick fights

PhippsJ: and everyone just laughs at

DOKTER DONKEY: yup that's me

DOKTER DONKEY: except I'm 5 foot 10

DOKTER DONKEY: and have a blackbelt in dawnkeigh-do

Well no, that wasn’t it, although that’s pretty good too.  Here it is:

PhippsJ: great hand to play out of position

DOKTER DONKEY: shut up idiot

It works everywhere.  Here’s an example of how well it fits into a standard donk chat:

KeithFichas: ??

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

KeithFichas: ok i am a idiot but play and shut up plx

XaQ Morphy: what does plx mean?

KeithFichas: please

XaQ Morphy: oh yeah, the x is silent?

KeithFichas: are u a children?

XaQ Morphy: are u a moron?

KeithFichas: very funny

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

Simple, to the point, game, set, match.  Oh, and, shut up idiot.

Here’s another one.  This guy just couldn’t leave well enough alone.  We were playing 8 game on Stars, and a razz hand came up.  He had no clue what he was talking about, I won the hand, he had to say something.

poo500: nh idiot

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

See?  Simple, effective.  But they can’t ever sit there and just not say anything after being called an idiot.

poo500: i allways get stuck with the lucky morons in these things

XaQ Morphy: so it's everyone else?

poo500: yes u played that hand amazing

XaQ Morphy: thanks

I don’t get many compliments when I play, so I need to thank them when they do.

poo500: u were ahead all the time

poo500: i played mine really bad

poo500: ****ing clown

poo500: go learn something b4 u open ur mouth

XaQ Morphy: not sure if you know this, but razz is a 7 card game

XaQ Morphy: hey poo, I just ran the odds on that hand

XaQ Morphy: and it said after 7th street I was 100%/0%

Notice the similarities between these chats and the “nice bluff” chats.  They’ll never learn.  Never.  Which is a good thing for you guys because it means I’ll have a constant supply of material.

poo500: u were behinde the hole way

XaQ Morphy: the hole way?

poo500: ur donkey a.ss got saved and u no it

XaQ Morphy: do you mean whole way?

XaQ Morphy: care to make a wager that I wasn't behind the "whole" way?

poo500: u got lucky just shut up

poo500: why u keep going on

XaQ Morphy: say $500?

XaQ Morphy: $2k?

XaQ Morphy: $5k?

XaQ Morphy: your life?

poo500: why would o open ur mouth and start when u suck out on someone

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

Heh, cracks me up.  Every time.

poo500: no thats u

XaQ Morphy: you were the one with the comment

XaQ Morphy: I want to bet you though, you think I was behind the whole way

XaQ Morphy: let's put some money on it

poo500: do u allways play really bad, get lucky then start with the crap?

XaQ Morphy: yeah usually, so what of it?

Unfortunately he gave up after this.  Maybe he realized he couldn’t possibly win, maybe he was busy frantically writing notes on how big of a donk I was, maybe he looked up the hand in question and realized he was completely wrong, or maybe his mom took his computer away.

Finally we have another encounter with the clueless.  In the poker hand prior to this chat, conboy1969 was all-in, I called and someone else called, on the flop the other guy shoves with no hand, no draw and conboy1969 wins the pot.  Naturally I would have won if he hadn’t bet, but that’s ok, I’m used to those by now.  I start out innocently enough, with the comment to the other player:

XaQ Morphy: good bet there sparky

conboy1969: tanks

XaQ Morphy: yeah you should thank him

conboy1969: falk you dont tell me what to do

Sigh, here we go.  I wasn’t even talking to this moron and he chimes in with this.  Now let’s see, what possible answer could I use to reply to him?  Hmmm, maybe…nah, that’s too obvious, well yeah fuck it, bonzai!

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

conboy1969: yankee goof

XaQ Morphy: canadian, uhh, canadian

conboy1969: WHOS XAQ  YOUR BOY FRIEND

conboy1969: special

XaQ Morphy: who the hell are you talking to?

conboy1969: you donk

XaQ Morphy: ok then you're too stupid for me to understand, sorry

Seriously, I have no clue wtf he’s talking about.  He’s asking me if I’m my boyfriend?  Uhhh, righty-o.

conboy1969: nc house prices down there

Well there’s certainly an insult that strikes close to, uhhh, home.  Waiting for the “sticks and stones” line any minute here.

conboy1969: might bye 3 more next week

XaQ Morphy: bye?

XaQ Morphy: how about you buy yourself a high school education?

conboy1969: got 1

conboy1969: do you

conboy1969: sorry kicked out i kindergarden

conboy1969: in

So he spells every other word wrong and corrects “in.”  Brilliant.  Meanwhile I beat him in a hand where I was behind and caught up to bust him (shit happens, what can I say.  If luck weren’t involved I’d lose every one).

conboy1969: lol

XaQ Morphy: canadian goof

conboy1969: lmao

Dealer: conboy1969 finished the tournament in 10th place

XaQ Morphy: gg wp nh ul

Ahh yes the optimal parting gift:  “good game, well played, nice hand, unluck”.  These were the Fifty/50 sit and gos on Stars.  10 people, top 5 get paid based on chip count.  He finished in a respectable 10^th out of well, 10.  About 30 minutes later he showed up in another one I was in.

conboy1969: hey xaq you huge donk

XaQ Morphy: who are you?

conboy1969: carefull who you falk with xaq donk

XaQ Morphy: oh noes

XaQ Morphy: conboy is gonna stupid me to death

conboy1969: about an hour agao shouldnt be too hard

XaQ Morphy: conboy, I'm bored, say something stupid

conboy1969: carefull I said donk

XaQ Morphy: shut up idiot

Weird thing here, he did shut up!  Are they finally learning?  Well, I doubt that.  But until next time, see if you can find creative uses for shut up idiot, and send them to me.  I know with the whole online poker fiasco most of you aren’t playing anymore, but if you can find ways to fit that into every day conversations, send them to me and I’ll be sure to post them.

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

Donking the Spellchecker

Hello Manifestites!  I know you guys are probably freaking out about so many posts in such a short time, but hey, when I say I’m going to deliver, I uhh, well, I mean, err, sometimes I, uhh, ok yeah so how about another post?  I will say that the shorter post last time seemed to go over just as well, so I’m going to keep going with the shorter post/greater number of posts route.

Before I start this I might as well say a few words on the current state of online poker in the US.  As most everyone should know by now, Friday April 15^th, the US DoJ and FBI indicted the owners of PokerStars, FullTilt poker, and those cheating fucks over at Absolute Poker/UltimateBet.  They also indicted a slew of payment processors, seized bank accounts and generally did what they do in cases of money laundering and fraud.  I won’t really go into my thoughts on most of this only to say that online poker in the US is about to undergo some drastic changes.  Until everything is figured out across the board there’s not much to do, well, except read blog entries and laugh at everyone jumping around threating to move to another country because their favorite poker site broke laws and got busted for it.  Fortunately there are still a few places left to play, and we can hope the chat keeps pouring in so I can provide my faithful reader(s) with some more material.  Onwards!

We had fun with the English Is Donking Hard post with mostly non-English speakers, but the really amusing ones are the ones who natively speak English, are “intelligent” (and I use that word lightly) enough to figure out how to use a computer, yet butcher the English language so badly that you have to wonder if they are going out of their way to try. I ran into this guy a while back and walked away with the distinct impression that he just didn’t care.  About anything.  In the hand, player RogueWiener (lol) made a fairly large raise/shove, and slivy folded.  Then we have:

slivy: lol

slivy: thank you

slivy: fo beting os much

slivy: thank yuou

slivy: lol

slivy: cnat wai to pu****** all in

slivy: they avhe touenryes here ay know

slivy: u ugys kil me

slivy: dyingot push chips all in

XaQ Morphy: english?

English, no doubt.  You should see what MS Word’s spell check does to this shit.  Last time I saw that much red on a paper was in high school when I had to sit next to this semi-retarded kid who did his homework by putting a pen in his mouth and randomly drooling all over it and the paper on his desk in an attempt to write.  Apparently getting stuffed into a locker too many times causes retardation.  Poor guy.  Who knew?

I guess what slivy’s trying to say is that he doesn’t approve of the other guy betting so much.  He must have had a draw of some sorts (likely the old 1 pair draw) and got mad at RogueWiener (lol.  Sorry, too much Beavis & Butthead maybe, but that name makes me giggle) for betting so much, so that he couldn’t hit his hand cheaply and win the pot.  That’s kind of the point of games with no limit betting.  Back to the fun:

slivy: no

RogueWiener: should have sakked up to your big preraise

slivy: why?u adh aa or kk

slivy: oculdnt beat it

RogueWiener: then you shouldnt have been in the hand

slivy: is sacking up mena being stupid?

XaQ Morphy: dude no offense, but if you can't type a sentence without butchering a word you can't call someone else stupid

I can’t help to emphasize the point I made here.  We see this all the time in various online forums, poker tables, etc.  People who can’t string a simple sentence together calling each other idiots.  They ARE idiots of course, but if they realized they were idiots, would they still be idiots?  If a tree fell on an idiot in a forest, would the tree make noise?  Would the idiot whine?  Would anyone care?  Anyway…

slivy: i got 4 sites pen

slivy: 12 tables

slivy: sorry

Oh great.  The reason he’s typing like a legally blind semi-retarded ostrich (thanks for that brew) is because he’s playing on 12 tables spread across 4 sites.  I guess the only positive point about it is that he’s a really bad player and isn’t really slowing the game down.  I’d go on a rant about these kids living in their parents’ basements playing 20 tables at a time and barely making as much as they would running a corner lemonade stand, but there’s simply not enough time in the day to type out exactly how I feel about them.  Back to the donking:

slivy: try for w chek riase iwth the jack?

RogueWiener: maybe someone on the other tables will let you hang around in hands to catch some bs, not me

slivy: do what u wnat

slivy: i dont give a ***

slivy: why woud u assume i care?

Damn, he almost did it.  Almost got through one line without butchering something.  Almost.

RogueWiener: because you keep talking about it

slivy: keep?

slivy: i entioned one thing

slivy: si di u wcant wit ot ge tall in

slivy: neve sisd anogteh word

RogueWiener: im past it if you are

slivy: dud ei dont care

slivy: u cnat wit ot ge tall in

slivy: are u taking it as some kind of insult?

RogueWiener: no

And there we have it.  There’s at least 2 lines in there that I can barely decipher what slivy is trying to say.  Needless to say, shortly after this chat he made a stupid play, busted his stack and took off without saying another word.  And also needless to say, I’ve never seen him since.

This next one I’m putting this one here because I don’t know where else to put it.  I won’t even try to explain this:

pails09: mc sleeve i can't wait to snap u off u gerbil stufferrrrr

Of course then we have the geographically challenged donks:

gzagenius11 [observer]: and i have won live tourneys at the montreal casino

dagon2467: whers that

Who IS buried in Grant’s tomb anyway?  Where is the Washington Monument?  What state is the capital of Alabama located in? What country is spelled I-T-A-L-Y?  I know these are hard questions, sorry, it certainly wasn’t my intention to make my readers think!

So what makes a good online poker name?  Are the witty names the best?  The inside jokes that no one understands but has some sort of meaning to the owner?  Something completely nondescript that doesn’t stand out?  Some retarded new trendy phrase containing one or more of the following:  420, 69, philivey, teddykbg, pwn?  We’ve all come across some pretty amusing names in the past, from DOKTER DONKEY to one of my personal favorites, Stu Pidasle.  This next exchange got a good chuckle out of me:

CallMeNames checks

XaQ Morphy bets $21

CallMeNames has 15 seconds left to act

XaQ Morphy: fold asswipe

CallMeNames folds

Hey, he asked for it!  I see a lot of players with certain hands/cards as their name.  Like, if I see a guy with a name like AAbuster, I secretly hope I can bust him when he’s holding AA.  Or if his name is 43offsuit I’m most likely losing ¾ of my stack to him trying to bluff him with 43o.  My friend A-Ten_suited picked his name in his early days of playing, and apparently wishes he could change it, as seen in this next bit:

Joey5883: i hate a-10 suited

A-Ten_suited: me too

Ro0M 1.8.7.: you hate the hand...or the player

Joey5883: hand

A-Ten_suited: player

I’ll end this entry with a short but bizarre exchange I had a few years ago.  Every once and a while this guy shows up on AIM and has a line or two to say.  He’s a former RGPer and I haven’t spent much time talking to him, but our chats are always short and amusing, like this one:

(7:38:41 PM) Phillyscr: you like chutney?

(7:40:20 PM) XaQ Morphy: seems like a silly question

(7:40:35 PM) Phillyscr: yea - that is what I told Lenny Jenkins

(7:40:40 PM) XaQ Morphy: word

(7:40:48 PM) Phillyscr: to your motha

That’s probably a great way to end this entry.  Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy

English Is Donking Hard!

Hello Manifestites!  After writing up the last entry with the old chat from 2007 I realized that I really miss writing these blog entries.  Sure, lack of material is and has been an issue, but I also realized that I enjoy reading my own entries enough that even if I were the only reader of the blog I think I’d be ok with it.  They say simple things amuse simple minds and well, I’m amused a lot.

One of the things I have noticed, however, is that over the years the entries themselves have gotten longer.  What ended up happening was that I wouldn’t write up an entry right after it happened, so instead of a bunch of smaller entries I’d get one big entry.  Sure the entry in itself was great, but I found myself trying to tie completely unrelated things together all in the sake of clearing out the material.  I completely forgot our motto here at the Manifesto, which is quantity over quality.  So on that note what I’m going to do from now on is try to write up things shortly after they happen and keep the entries somewhat smaller overall.  We’ll see if it works.  I do have a bunch of material stored up that I’ve gathered over the past few years when the blog was mostly dormant, so what that means for my faithful reader(s???) is that you can expect a few more entries in the near future.

The theme of this particular entry is loosely based off of difficulties with the English language.  As you’ve seen over the years, I’ve had plenty of interesting, uhh, “discussions” with donks all over the world, and they make for some highly entertaining situations.  For some highlights, we’ll start by going all the way back to one of my favorite entries from 2005, The Time-Space Con-Donkey-Um, a pure classic.  From there we take a trip to 2006 somewhere in Nigeria with Donk Donk Walla Walla Donk Donk.  I was too busy with the PLO videos and such in 2007, but 2008 brings us the ever famous trenzen in You are donk of puta.  2009 was a slow year and 2010 all I really did was the Rush Poker posts.  There were a few others in there somewhere but those will do nicely to keep you busy while I write this.  Err wait, by the time you read this I’ll be done already.  Are you done yet?  Am I done yet?  Woah, I think I just travelled through time.  Is it 7:17pm for you guys too?

Err sorry, anyway, this entry will feature one main encounter with an English challenged donk,  but before we start with that I want to kick things off with a few RGP posts from 2006 from a poster who we’ll call Daniel because well, that’s the name he posted under.  Daniel’s native language obviously wasn’t English, so while it would be just funny enough to make fun of him for that, what he came up with was one of the most amusing phrases that has been a standby since the day he posted it.

From: Daniel

Subject: How many you see hands like this at PS??

Why every 3 hands at STARS one and is always like this.WHYYYY? Every one says thats not rigged, ok ok, but at least agree that the software generate action hands with a lot of bad river at river.

He then posted a hand where he had KK and got all-in on a flop of T88 with J9.  Turn brought a 7 to give J9 the straight, but the river brought a 4^th diamond to give Daniel a flush.  In other words, Daniel won the pot, but used that hand as some sort of proof that the “software generate action hands with a lot of bad river at river.”  Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean.  Well I’ve never been one to let something like that pass by, so I jump right in and reply:

From: XaQ Morphy

If you think it's rigged, stop fucking playing there you moron.  No one gives a fuck about your $3 loss or your views on rigged poker.  The only thing you have going for you is that because English is your 4th or 5th native language, your posts come out making you look like a raving nitwit. But seriously, fuck off.

Naturally Daniel takes offense to that, and fires back, providing one of the best taglines to date:

From: Daniel

Well thats a post of a great player, for sure.   About the 3$, those hands happens at every levels, and for sure you are a loser.  Allways same escuses,"bla bla 3$,blabla only 1$ no one cares, bla bla only 5$ thats for donkeys". What fucking stakes you play? 100000? You are my hero. English is not my native language,and im glad of that.But its funny that you had perfectly understud what i said and i also understand everything, but moron only speak one language.And like you said that no one cares so dont post. Die far to not smell badly.

Die far to not smell badly??!??!  That is simply awesome.  It was a catch phrase on RGP for weeks after that, and still every once and a while it will show up in post where someone butchers the English language.  I still don’t know what it means, but fuck me that’s some funny shit right there.

Online poker has really opened up world-wide and in the past few years the rest of the world has been experiencing various poker booms similar to what the US saw in 2004-05.  As a result of this there’s players from all over the world at every table, and because the online sites have English only chat rules, some of the chat can be rather amusing to those of us who are easily amused.  I pick up chat here and there and save it just for this purpose.  See, you can be playing, see something stupid and think it’s stupid enough, but when someone chimes in with:

iso lero: two biddest idiots

iso lero: on hole tournament

You can’t help but to laugh.  Or how about this next guy, who I’m afraid to say actually was from the US:

nhabn: FCK U all hope you al ldie andfck

Sometimes they even try to communicate with each other but fail miserably:

GrinDEr770: horriable

Thuong1712: yes it does bro !

Yes it does bro indeed!  Some time back in late 2009 I played  a donk from the nether regions of the world who goes by the name arturo468 on PokerStars.  I shared it with some friends but for some reason never thought to share it with the blog.  My apologies, I don’t know what I was thinking.

We start out with a relatively innocent poker hand.  It folds to arturo in the small blind and he gobbles.  Gobbling of course is the term for min raising made famous by TNL and then used mercilessly and beat into the ground by the rest of us.  I had the monster hand that is Q5 in the big blind, but gobbling drives me nuts, so I decided to call and take the pot away from him on the flop if I could.  The flop came T5T with no flush draw possible, and he again gobbled (min bet).  Well, gobble is as gobble does, so I re-gobbled.  He then pulled the seldom used re-re-gobble.  I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have a fkin thing at this point, so I move all-in on him.  Naturally he folds but then immediately says:

arturo468: fold KK

Uhh, what?  He folded KK?  If so, that’s damn near the worst played KK in history, despite all of the comments I make about folding that shit preflop cause it never wins.  Well, I couldn’t let that go without a comment, but I can’t really come out guns blazing here, so I start out slow…

Grant1525: lol really?

arturo468: juro..((Yn)

arturo468: you 10?

Grant1525: no I had Q5o

arturo468: Q?

SlackMac1: hehe

A lot of times people will just say “good fold” and make up a hand that beat what their opponents had (or what they claim they had), even if they were bluffing.  Sometimes both players are lying about what they had, and in some cases we get things like Player A telling Player B that what he had was really what Player B had.  Anyway, I felt no reason not to tell him exactly what I had, since he likely won’t believe it. Notice a player named SlackMac1 jumps in as well.  Time to get him confused…err, more confused, since I have no clue wtf “juro..((Yn)” is supposed to mean, unless it’s some secret sort of programming language meant to change the background colors or something.

arturo468: ufffffff

Grant1525: I had AA

Grant1525: good fold

arturo468: ok ok

arturo468: ufff

arturo468: ...

Grant1525: ok ok

arturo468: i had KK,,,

Grant1525: wtfffff

Yeah I don’t know wtf all the fffffffs were for, but I wanted to jump in and see what the big deal was with them.  Turns out they are overrated.

arturo468: I you do not bellieve that you had TO TO

Grant1525: well I'm not sure what TO TO is, but I didn't have it

SlackMac1: toto was dorthy's dog in the wizard of oz

Grant1525: no place for KK, no place for KK

Grant1525: I'll get you my pretty, you and your KK too!!!

arturo468: jajaja, the truth that well, you tape, worm, that to have throw shot allin , whit KK

Grant1525: uhh, what?

Oh boy, here we go.  First the obvious wizard of oz joke, couldn’t pass that up no matter how cheesy it was.  Just one of those things that everyone expected but still got a chuckle out of me, so needed to be done.  That “jajaja” shit drives me crazy.  Apparently certain countries are so fucked up that they can’t even afford the h key on their keyboards, so everytjing is jajaja jello go to jell jappy jalloween and sjit tje jell up and well you see, tje list goes on and on to tje point of sjeer ridiculousness.  Or sometjing.

Anyway, I don’t really get what he’s saying, but I think he called me a tapeworm.  I’ve been called worse.  But here we go, game on!

arturo468: that **** you DONK

Grant1525: hey now, no need to get testy, just because I out played you

arturo468: it he seem to me likely

Grant1525: is this a word scramble of some sorts?

arturo468: ??

arturo468: what?

Yeah poor bastard has no clue what’s going on.  Meanwhile arturo gets into another hand and folds.  He asks his opponent what he has, and I can’t help but jump in.

arturo468: youhad?

faflar: kj

Grant1525: I had TO TO

arturo468: i had 99

SlackMac1: previous hand function is a mystical thing

Grant1525: its mystery is only exceeded by its power

Bonus points for those of you who get this reference.

SlackMac1: ill bet you 10 that he had arturo

arturo468: ok

arturo468: NH

Grant1525: I bet how you know A 10 he had

rfeverlast: nh

arturo468: ty

arturo468: you had?

arturo468: A=

arturo468: yes?

rfeverlast: a7

arturo468: yyes ok ok

Grant1525: I had TO TO again

arturo468: :O?

arturo468: K 10

arturo468: idiot

Grant1525: don't smile at me

I find it’s best to fight donk with donk, so I just randomly re-arranged words figuring he might understand them.  Right about this time I raised in late position with KQ, a short stack shoved on me, I was getting almost 2.5:1 on a call and can’t really fold there, so I called and lost to A6o.  Pretty standard situation in a tournament, and one that most people won’t think twice about, being on either side of it.  Well, most people doesn’t include our jajaja buddy here, as you can see:

arturo468: jajaja K Q?

arturo468: good bye

arturo468: good bye DONK

Note that I still have chips here.  All this donk saw was that I called an all-in and he didn’t bother to look at stack sizes (which are right there on the screen for those who don’t play online poker), so he didn’t realize I was still in the tournament with plenty of chips.

Grant1525: lol you are truly stupid aren't you arturo?

Grant1525: I still have chips moron

Grant1525: fkin nitwit

arturo468: yeaaah jajaja

arturo468: K Q it is called the hand of the idiot since as your jajaja

Grant1525: so you fold KQ getting over 2:1 there, sparky?

Grant1525: oh wait, let me ask this:  do you know what 2:1 is?

arturo468: jajajaa

Grant1525: that's what I thought, thanks

arturo468: idiot

Grant1525: yes, you are

Grant1525: but it's ok, keep typing "jajaja" and all will be well

arturo468: I happen of discussing whit you, this is poker friends

Grant1525: yeah I'm sorry, I have no fkin clue wtf you are trying to say

Grant1525: can we get a translator?  someone proficient in translating moron to English?

arturo468: jajajaaj, man, i am spanish enough that i defend myself whit the english man estudpi

Grant1525: do you know a guy named trenzen by chance?

arturo468: do not grate the head and keep silent about you already

Die far to not smell badly!  Seriously, this is almost as good.  Do not grate the head.  Dear lord.  I mean I suppose I should be happy that they are at least trying, since the non-English chat happening online is a pretty big issue and even with their online chat moderators, PokerStars doesn’t seem to want to do anything about it.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t make fun of them!

I hope you enjoyed this one.  Hopefully I’ll have some other (relatively) shorter entries soon.  Until next time!

Yours Donkily,

Morphy