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Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Approaching 2k! Time to rob it!

Bankroll at $1788.83 counting bonus earned. Wilson County Fair is this week though, and sounds like a nice family out'ing. Time to strike a match to a couple hundred.

When my 2 year old is downing cotton candy as fast as he can while we're watching the fireworks, I'll pause for a brief moment to think about those folks who have made this possible... Vladdy, ICOMINATCHA, DKNY333, etc.



Peekaboo!





TY!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Nice PPA YouTube Video

I got a kick out of this, because I believe it captures perfectly, how absurd it is for the DOJ to be focusing on online poker. Congress: if the DOJ has enough budget to go after all the true issues + online poker, then they are overfunded. Please stop wasting tax payer dollars on goof ball stuff!



In other news, our bottomless bonus deal with Next Poker is getting pretty popular among non-USA players. It equates to 45% rakeback in ring games and 62.5% tourney fee rakeback. If you were ever searching for any of the following:

OnGame Rakeback
PokerRoom.com rakeback
bwin rakeback

Then please look over our Next Poker deal. It's hard to beat.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bankroll at 1500+

After tonights action, I'm at $1500+. A month ago after a withdrawal and a few crappy sessions, it was ~600, so that's solid growth. If I can keep it a secret, it might stay in the bankroll a while longer. ;]

The nice jump has been due to a couple of good HU sessions. The aforementioned Vlad match, and then tonight DKNY333 dropped about $160 before leaving. Funny.. usually when peole have their nickname as "donkey" or "fish" they're actually quite solid. Not the case for this guy. He's one of the most aptly named players I've seen.

Oh, and also a good run over at Stars. I started with a 0 bankroll there. We keep $$ on several sites to pay rakeback advances when they're requested, so I just have to keep careful records of plus/minus. I wanted to take a shot at a satellite to this years WCOOP 100k 7cs event. One of the regular satellites is a 3000 FPP buyin. I had a whopping 2400. Shows you how much I play there eh?

Anywhoo, figured I might as well earn 600 more FPP's and see if I could turn a profit at the tables and buyin for free to the satellite. Mission accomplished. +329 in ring game play there, and I've got just a tad over 3k FPP's.

The 5/10 game there looks soft. They and FTP are pretty much the only 2 rooms with populations large enough for soft 5/10 games in stud. If Stars had some sort of rakeback besides the VIP program, I'd jump on it. No way I'm going to play 99999999999999999999999 required to make the top level and earn 27% rakeback though.

Now to just find a few hours to play one of the FPP satellites to WCOOP 7cs event, and we'll be all set.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

PSORG vs. VLADDYMOGUL

Rarely do I make brag posts, but with blowhards like this I'll make an exception. Besides, ol' Vlad is the vain type, so I'm sure he googles his own nickname daily. Vladdy, if you're readying this... tx for the chips!

Vladdymogul - Absolute Poker, is the epitome of those wanna be players who are just good enough to ruin a good table. He's LAG, which makes him dangerous heads up. With a good run of cards, he can put a serious hurt on your roll. However, he has two glaring weaknesses which I won't mention here, in case he is reading. I like taking his chips.

For anyone who has played him, they know that he's has a penchant for calling anyone who beats him in a pot a "dumb lucky fish" for starters and then progressively worse from there. I got him so tilted yesterday that he was even calling our avatar pics names. Stuff like "your baby is so ugly, I'd wipe my a$$ with his face." Now, that really doesn't bother me. My babies are both Gerber baby quality. (Love is blind. If you have kids, you really do think you're babies are the cutest ever born). Another player sat, nick KOPE, who is a very nice social player, and one of my biggest donators. Unfortunately his avatar is his (or her) baby's pic as well. After about 3 hands of listening to Vlad's BS about 'ugly baby', Kope leaves. There goes my ATM. Back to me and Blowhard Vlad.

I went about +100 on him pretty quick, and then he got hot and won most of it back. The typical lines: "where did your luck go fish?! I own you!"... the usual. All caps tossed in to let me know he was shouting at me.

After his cards cooled off, I went back to taking his chips. I'm in the middle of reading Your Best Poker Friend by Alan Schoonmaker. He includes a great discussion on putting your opponent on tilt. So I broke one of my cardinal rules of not responding to jackasses, and started needling Vladdy. No cussing, no ALL CAPS, just little zingers. I even sang to him a bit:

It's just a matter of time...
You'll lose your chips...
And whiiinnnneeee....

(Sung to the tune of that old country song - Two Sparrows in a Hurricane).

It had the desired effect. For the longest space ever, Vladdy didn't say a word. I finally asked him if his chat had been banned and got the "lets move up a level! I'll pwn you!" response.

Anyway, final session stats:

87 minutes. 257 hands. PSORG +138.50 (23.88 BB/hour. Average players 2.5, so yeah, it was almost exclusively a heads up match).

Vladdymogul -209.75


He paid me, he paid all the rake, and he paid a few other players who sat for a few hands here and there.

Vladdy, if you're reading this, I'd be happy to teach you 7 card stud. I'd even give you a discount. $80 bucks an hour. That's currently cheaper than the rate you paid yesterday. (23.88 BB/hour multiplied by the 2/4 limit = $95.52/hour)

Like two aces get'n cracked by fives...
all you ever do is cry...
With a head full of dreams but no skills, you'll lose everythiinnggg

Man, I gotta get this up on YouTube!

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

90% rakeback at Absolute Poker?

Wow. I just did some quick math. My rakeback stats show I'm generating about 11 cents per raked hand. If I'm playing 2/4, I get 1 FAME point and 4 credits for every raked hand. 60 credits clears $1 in bonus. Got a headache yet?

The skinny is, if I'm clearing reloads (which I am perpetually doing at AP!) I earn $1 bonus for every $1.60 paid in rake. That's 60% rakeback. Tack on the 30% I'm earning from our standard Absolute Rakeback deal, and I'm earning ~90% rakeback if my math is anywhere close to being correct.

At $1/$2, I only earn one FAME point every 2 raked hands, so that math would fall apart there. Roughly $3.30 rake paid for every $1 bonus earned. That's still what.. around 33% rakeback. Add on my 30% rakeback deal, and it's still a nice 66% rakeback at AP.

I haven't even started calculating the fact that I can spend those earned credits for merchandise or points for cash trades. I need to sleep.... I'll run those numbers later.

Here's hoping AP doesn't catch on anytime soon and change the way we earn FAME points at 7 card stud tables. Antes > Blinds in the FAME program.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Poker Pet Peeves

I have two on my mind. If I wasn't so lazy, I'd make a top 10 list. I'll make them brief so I don't get bored typing them, and you don't get bored reading them.

1. "Gawd I hate playing with all these idiots. I'd rather play a small game with good players than a big game with a bunch of fish!"

Wow. That's a paraphrase of a post on our no deposit bonus forum. Some goober who think's he's solid got bad beat out of a tourney (if you're decent, that will usually be how you get KO'd! That or a coin flip loss.) He wanted to let everyone know that he quit the forum because of it. His post was titled "what a joke".

This goes beyond the "table coach" peeve (which would be on my top 10). From what I understand, this guy is decent at cards. He's just an idiot when it comes to the fundamentals of winning at cards. Little does he know that "joke" he's talking about is on him.

2. All the people still screaming rigged and posting 4 month old 'news' posts regarding the super user scandals at Absolute and Ultimate Bet. Let it die already. The players who lost money to the insider cheats were all paid back, and paid back with interest at Absolute Poker! Ultimate Bet, the new ownership repaid the players who were affected, even though the scandal happened under the old owners. That's pretty classy in my book.

High dollar players have a right to be upset and untrusting of AP and UB. Everyone has a right to be upset that Absolute tried to keep things under wraps instead of dealing with the situation in an open manner. The entire poker industry has the right to be ticked at the bad press this generated and the potential fishy's who got spooked away.

My peeve is the lifetime losers who keep pounding away at this on forums and in their own heads justifying their losses with the "AP is rigged" mantra. Please, try a new mantra. Slowly, thinking deeply upon these words: I suck. I suck. I suck...ooohhmmmm. I suck. I suck...

I gave a very polite rebuttal to one of these type posters and his reply was just to tell me I was "trying to cover up for AP". Ok. Better than trying to cover up my -10 BB/100 hands with a couple of "we wuz cheatered!" posts each day, eh?

Diamonds? Nice FAME change. AP/UB Merge soon?

Kudo's to Absolute Poker for already making a change to the tiers of their loyalty program, FAME. When they first launched, the tables that I generally play (1/2 through 3/6 stud), you earned 1 FAME for every 2 raked hands. It wasn't until 5/10 level that you earned 1 FAME point per raked hand. They've moved that down so that now you earn 1 FAME point per raked hand starting at 2/4 on up.

I got to "platinum" status in July, but it took around 100 hours which is double what I normally put in during a month. I figured ahh, no way I'll do that on a regular basis. However, with this new change, and the fact that 2/4 tables aren't totally uncommon at Absolute, makes me think that earning the monthly 2500 points required won't be too difficult. Tack on the fact that Absolute and Ultimate Bet are merging into the Cereus network this month, and I see plenty of 2/4 and 3/6 action in my future at Absolute.

Who knows? Maybe I'll hit diamond status one month. You keep that status for 3 months once you've made it, whereas the plantinum status has to be earned monthly.