POKER TREK

PSO League Event #3

2007-04-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Had another solid finish in the PSO League tonight, taking 3rd place again. I really wanted to win this one, but it was not to be. For most of the tourney, I was below average in chips, but finally had a nice double-up with AQo vs A9o. I sucked out big time once at the final table, with a runner-runner flush, which gave me a nice stack of chips, but went pretty card-dead after that and coasted into third place. Had AA once the whole tourney when it was down to three, but MathP wouldn't fall for my trap. Finally pushed with a pair + flush draw, but waited until the turn after taking a free card on the flop. Unfortunately, the free card filled up my opponent's gutshot straight :(

For the overall league prizes, because of the scoring system it doesn't really matter whether you win an event or not, as long as you place high. They take your best 5 of 8 finishes, but the scoring system is linear, not top-heavy, plus the scores don't vary at all with the number of players in the tourney. Thus, the overall winner will likely be someone who consistently finishes deep, but probably might not even win a single event! Kind of strange, really, to declare someone like that the "winner", but that's the way the system is, so that's the strategy I'll have to take.

Anyway, I promised a review of Cake Poker, so I'm gonna work on that tonight. It should be up before I go to bed.

If Only It Was A Bad Beat Table...

2007-04-18T23:30:00.000-07:00

...then I would have had a share of a nice jackpot. The stupid cards are blocking out the screennames, but I'm the one holding AA. This was the sickest one-outer re-suckout I've ever had. It was in Event #2 of the PSO League, where I managed to finish 3rd out of 82. In Event #1, I finished a lousy 74th out of 83, but probably would have done a lot better if I hadn't lost a ton of chips when Scottwire re-sucked out on me -- I turned a flush against his set of kings, but he rivered a full-house :(

Anyway, if you are one of my few readers who haven't joined the PSO League yet (such as some of you in Noodle's home league), then I urge you come join us for some great tournament fun. Each event has some nice overlay, plus it's not too late to still have a good chance at winning an overall league prize, since they take your best 5 finishes out of the 8 events. The events take place on Sunday and Wednesday nights at 6 pm PST on Absolute Poker, with the third event taking place this Sunday, April 22. Buy-in is only $5+$0.50, and there's a ton of added prizes. Each event pays an extra $220, $150, $90, $40, and $20 in PSO points for 1st to 5th place. There are also $20 bounties for knocking out PSO staff, as well as three random prizes of $20 in PSO points. The grand prize for the overall league winner is $1,200 in PSO points, plus a $200+$16 buy-in to AP's $150K Guaranteed Tournament. Second and third place overall get $800 and $500 in PSO points. Check here for all the details, and be sure to read the PSO League forum for all the latest league news.

Royal Flush #2

2007-04-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been an interesting month so far. I get a second royal flush less than a week after my very first one. You'd think I'd be running hot, making such great hands, and yet for the month I'm barely breaking even. At least I made a bit of money with this one...

eWallet Updates

2007-04-15T11:27:00.000-07:00

Moneybookers

The Moneybookers' credit card verification showed up on my online statement, so I plugged it in and my limit jumped up to $9500. Unfortunately, CIBC VISA processed the US$2.14 charge as a cash advance, and dinged me a CDN$5 cash advance fee (along with interest, of course). I called CIBC's customer support line twice to totally bitch about. I mean, why the hell would I advance myself $2.14 while incurring a $5 service charge? I tried to explain that the $2.14 was a fee for setting up my Moneybookers account, and wasn't truly a cash advance, but they wouldn't budge. They said that Moneybookers is classified as an online gambling merchant on their system, and that any and all charges from them would be billed as a cash advance. Oh well, at least it was still cheaper than setting up my ePassporte account, which had a US$5 fee for the inital $100 load.

I also received the snail mail address verification from Moneybookers. It arrived pretty quickly, after only about a week, since it was actually sent from a Mail Boxes Etc. from Campbell River, BC. After I plugged in the verification code, my limit jumped up to $16,200. I still have the bank account verification to do, though. If I can do a wire transfer for cheap from my sister-in-law's bank, I'll go ahead and do it, otherwise I'm sure I can live with the $16,200 limit.

Also, a Full Tilt rep on the 2+2 forums confirmed that they will be adding Moneybookers as an option soon, so if others follow suit, in particular PokerStars, then I'll probably end up using just Moneybookers as my primary ewallet.

ePassporte

I went ahead and tried to verify a second credit card, after not hearing back from them about my inquiry as to whether a second credit card would qualify me for Select status. I used my second CIBC VISA which I use for business purposes, and again it was no problem to get the amount of the pending transaction. However, this time after I plugged it into the ePassporte website, it said that it was the wrong amount. I adjusted the converted amount up by one cent in case it was a rounding difference from the currency conversion, but it gave me the same error and then locked me out of the verification screen. I converted the amount myself based on a couple recent currency exchange rates on my online VISA statement, and it was apparent that ePassporte's conversion rate was way off from CIBC's. I emailed them about the problem using their internal messaging system, but I wasn't hopeful for a quick resolution. They never replied to my previous inquiry, and from the messages on the 2+2 forums, their service is supposedly slow and not very helpful. To my surprise, though, they replied the next day and said they processed my verification manually. I then checked my Select upgrade status, and it said that I now qualify, so I went ahead and paid the $5 fee for the upgrade. All my limits have now doubled, with the most important one, the single cash transaction limit, now at a more useable US$1000.

Royal Flush #1

2007-04-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

Got my first ever royal flush tonight. Too bad it was in a stupid little freeroll satellite :(

So Long, Neteller :(

2007-04-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Last night I finally emptied my Neteller account, with less than 24 hours to go before the deadline. It's kind of sad saying goodbye to Neteller. It was such a great ewallet. It was universally accepted, it had practically no fees for users, and their support was excellent the couple times I had to use it. The only minor complaint I really had about it were their fees for peer-to-peer transfers and for currency exchange when cashing out to my Canadian bank account. These, however, were easy enough work around, by depositing into a poker site to do a free transfer, and by depositing into Party Poker to do an EFT with their better-than-market currency exchange rate (which, BTW, seems to have now changed to just market rate).

To replace Neteller now, I've had to sign up for two ewallets, ePassporte and Moneybookers. In combination, these two make a decent substitute for Neteller, though each come with their own quirks and inconveniences. ePassporte will give me access to the main North American sites where I play: Cake, FTP, AP, Stars, and UB. It can also be used for Bugsy's Club, Dobrosoft (Wingows), GamesGrid, and Poker4Ever (none of which I play). Moneybookers can also be used for Cake, AP, and UB, but will also give me access to Mansion, Party, iPoker, Microgaming, Ladbrokes, Ongame (except Hollywood), and WPEX, sites where I might play occasionally. It also works for b2b, Boss (some), Dobrosoft (Wingows), Everest, and Poker4Ever (none of which I play). The only sites where I might play, which currently aren't available through ePassporte or Moneybookers, are Cryptologic, Paradise, Pacific, and Poker.com. If I really want to play at these sites, I will have to deposit via credit card (I've applied for a TD Canada Trust US Dollar VISA) and withdraw via cheque.

Setting up the ePassporte account was pretty simple. You just have to create an account online, and then register a credit card. In order to verify your credit card, ePassporte will then authorize a pending charge on your card for a random amount between US$0.01 and US$2.00. I used my CIBC VISA card without any problems. I just called their customer service line, and asked what the value of the pending transaction was. At the same time, I verified with them that any charges that ePassporte puts through will be processed as a sale, and not as a cash advance. After finding out the value of the transaction (which will be given to you in CDN$ unless you use a US$ card), you then plug that value into the credit card verification page on ePassporte's site, tell them what currency it's in, and it will automatically convert it and verify it for you. To activate your account, though, you still need to load it with some money from your credit card. Loading is expensive, with a fee $5 per $100 or portion thereof, so I basically just loaded the minimum $100. After that, I was able to fund my ePassporte account by doing a withdrawal from Cake Poker.

Setting up my Moneybookers account was even easier. I simply opened up an account on their website, and was good-to-go. I was then able to fund my account by just doing a withdrawal from Cake Poker. However, to make your account more useable, you still need to do three verification steps. When you first set up your account, Moneybookers will place a ~$1300 limit on outgoing transactions over a 90 day period. Each verification step will increase this limit substantially, up to a maximum of ~$19,000. For address verification, they will send you a code by snail mail, which you then enter into their site. For credit card verification, you need to register a credit card, and they will debit a random amount between $1.01 and $2.99, which you then verify. For bank account verification, you need to wire transfer any amount from a bank account in your name to a Frankfurt bank where your Moneybookers account is held. I've initiated my address and credit card verifications, but haven't entered the codes in, yet, and my limit has already increased to over $5000.

For both ewallets, depositing to and withdrawing from poker sites will be free. The only catch here is with ePassporte, which has a limit of $500 per transaction, so you will need to move money in chunks of $500. This can potentially be a problem if you are trying to maximize a deposit bonus, or if you have a large bankroll to move around. The limit can be increased to $1000 if you upgrade your account to Select by verifying another load option. Unfortunately, the only load options available are credit card and US bank account. I'm currently trying to find out if I can verify a second credit card to qualify for upgrading to the Select account.

Fees will come into play if you want to cash out some of your bankroll from the ewallet. For ePassporte, you can only cash out by wire transfer ($50 fee) or ATM ($2 fee, but requires the ePassporte VISA card with annual fee of $35, and is subject to daily limit of $300, or $600 for Select). For Moneybookers, you can only cash out by mailed cheque ($4.68 fee) or wire transfer ($2.41 fee, but your bank will likely also charge a fee to receive it). So basically, when I plan to cash out, I will probably just request a cheque from a poker site, or maybe deposit into Party, do a little cover play, and then cash out via EFT.

One issue I was concerned about was trying to move money between ePassporte and Moneybookers. The problem with most poker sites is that they will only let you withdraw money back into your original method of deposit, up to the amount of the original deposit. You can only choose another withdrawal method for any money above the amount of the original deposit. This is apparently done for security reasons -- if someone hacked into your poker account, they won't be able to simply withdraw your money into their own ewallet account. However, Cake Poker, my primary poker site, handles withdrawals a little differently, by allowing you to select which method of withdrawal you want. Thus, I was able to deposit the majority of my bankroll into Cake via Neteller, and then I was able to withdraw some of it into both my ePassporte account and my Moneybookers account. This is very convenient, and in this particular case is worth the slight compromise in security.

Anyway, I hope this helps anyone who is trying to figure out the best way to handle the loss of Neteller. Coming up in my next post will be something a little different -- a review of my main poker site, Cake Poker.

Updates Galore

2007-04-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

I've been slacking off in the blogging department for the last two months, but that doesn't mean I haven't been playing poker online. In fact, I'm playing fairly regularly, now, and am probably playing more hands per month than I have in the past. For the month of February, I played about 6200 hands, and for March I played about 7700 hands.

At the beginning of February, I decided to try to find a poker site to call home. Ever since Neteller pulled out of the US market, reload bonuses have totally dried up, and after finishing all the promos at PSO and several at other affiliates, I'm left with promos at a few European sites which don't really interest me at all, due to the low traffic during the times I play. Consequently, I decided to pick a good site where I could do the majority of my play, instead of constantly jumping from room to room.

My first choice was Full Tilt Poker, but unfortunately, I don't have rakeback there because I (unwisely) chose to do the PSO points promo for it several months back. So I decided to give Cake Poker, where I have 33% rakeback, another try, especially after hearing that the traffic there has increased considerably lately. Indeed, traffic there is much improved, now. Whereas before I had difficulty finding even a single full table of $100 NL, it is now possible to find about four of them going on during the late evenings when I play (this works out well for me, because my comfort level is playing four tables at a time). The increase in traffic is due mainly to the influx of players from Sportsbook.com, which recently joined the Cake network as a skin. If you recall, Sportsbook.com used to own Paradise Poker before they left the US market, but now they've opened up a new US-friendly poker room and have enticed all the orphaned US players from Paradise to sign up. So, if you have ever wondered what happened to all the fish that used to populate Paradise Poker, you can now find them on the Cake Poker network.

After December and January's downswing, I was playing with a reduced bankroll, so I restricted my play to $50 NL for all of February. With the play at Cake Poker being quite soft, I was able to double my bankroll to $2000+ by the end of February. So for March, I moved back up to my regular level at $100 NL and continued to play at Cake, but also played at Full Tilt to clear a $100 bonus that they offered me during that month. Again, I did pretty well for the month, and ended up doubling my bankroll again to $4000+ by the end of March. Now that I'm properly bankrolled for $200 NL with 20+ buy-ins, my plan is to move up another level for the month of April to $200 NL, and see how it goes. If I continue to do well and can build my bankroll up to at least 15 buy-ins at the next level, I will aggressively continue to move up levels, with a goal of hopefully reaching $600 NL ($3/$6), where I plan to stay for a while to work on my game, before attempting $1000 NL ($5/$10), which, from what I hear, is a much bigger jump in terms of toughness of the competition.

SNG Challenge Update

I played some more $5+$1 SNG's on Titan in February, and placed 5, 3, 1, 7, 7, 3, 7. After this point, I abandoned my challenge, because the progress was just too slow for me. I felt my time was better spent working on my cash game, and occasionally working on my MTT tournament game. So, I ended up with a bankroll of $53 after playing 30 SNG's, paying $174 in entry fees, for a 30% ROI and 43% ITM. I guess that's not too shabby for starting off with a free $2+$0.20 ticket.

Bankroll Update

I made $53 from the SNG challenge, $94 from the PSO Small Game 2, $1625 from Cake Poker for the months of February and March, $1,104 from Full Tilt while clearing their bonus, and $112 from Paradise while clearing some bonus money in February. I lost $98 playing $100 NL at Mansion Poker, and another $100 after playing in one of their $100K guaranteed tourneys and not finishing in the money (finished about middle of the pack). This brings my bankroll to $4,017.

Neteller Update

Well, as everyone knows by now, Neteller will be blocking online gambling transactions by Canadians after April 9th. To deal with this, I am in the process of getting an ePassporte account running. I chose this option over the others, because ePassporte is the only ewallet that currently works with all the major North American poker sites. I will use this to move money between the various poker sites where I plan to play (Cake, FTP, Stars, Absolute, and UB). The disadvantage of ePassporte is the limit they place on the value of single transactions (limited to $500 per transaction). This means that you need to move money around in chunks of $500, which can be cumbersome if you have a large bankroll. You also need to load your account with some money via a credit card, before you can use it. There is also speculation that ePassporte may leave the North American online gambling market in the near future, but I guess I will just have to deal with that if/when that occurs.

Meanwhile, I have also opened a US dollar bank account at TD Canada Trust, which I plan to use for cashouts either via mailed cheques or echecks. Some sites, such as Stars, can also be linked to your bank account for both deposits and withdrawals. I have also applied for a US dollar VISA card (also through TD Canada Trust), which I will use as a secondary method of depositing money into sites. When I plan to deposit, I will put the VISA card in a credit balance to avoid the transactions from being processed as cash advances.

My bankroll will basically be divided amongst the few sites that I plan to play at. The majority of it will be at Cake for rakeback play, a little at Full Tilt for bonuses, a little at Stars for tourneys, a couple hundred at Absolute for the PSO league, and a couple hundred at Mansion for their $100K guaranteed tourneys.

Earnings-to-date: $14,614

Slowly Rebuilding My Bankroll

2007-02-02T01:49:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to play a bit more again, and I'm working on rebuilding my online bankroll after last month's downswing. A couple weeks ago, I played in a $100 NL cash game on Full Tilt with a bunch of regular readers of the PSO Hand Analysis Forum. The purpose was to play together for a couple hours, then gather all our hand histories afterwards for analysis and discussion on the forum. It was rather refreshing and challenging to play for once with people who you know are actually good at poker. I had a nice run of cards, and ended the session with a profit of $96. This might become a regular event, so if you are interested in joining us, watching the video replay, or reading all the strategy discussions, make sure you come by and check out the Hand Analysis Forum on PSO.

I've been playing mostly $50 NL cash games on Party Poker recently, trying to clear the reload bonus. I had to drop down a level because I didn't feel I was properly bankrolled for $100 NL anymore after last month. Tonight I finished the bonus requirements, and ended up with a profit of $156 including the bonus. I also played a bit at Full Tilt again, as I had to transfer some money to a friend, and made a quick $16.

I've also been playing the $5+$1 Maui SNG's on Titan, trying to work on my SNG Challenge. Since my last update, I've placed 2, 1, 8, 5, 5, 4, 2, 4, 7, 1, 7, 2, 4, 8, and 3. This brings my bankroll there to $50. It's progress, albeit slow. It's definately a far cry from my Cash Game Challenge, where I was doubling my bankroll every night or two in the beginning. I really need to work on my tournament game, and get on a nice winning streak. Otherwise, this challenge is going to take a really long time.

Earnings-to-date: $11,823
SNG Challenge Bankroll: $50

An Update Finally!

2007-01-19T00:13:00.000-08:00

Since the end of December, I've been on an extended break from online poker. I did play some NL$100 last month, but ran into a really bad stretch on PartyPoker while clearing a bonus. I don't think I played poorly, I just had a run of bad luck where I took a few bad beats, had big hands run into even bigger hands (especially with big pocket pairs not holding up), and never got any action when I made monster hands. So that was probably the main reason I decided to take some time off from poker.

I was also just too busy with real-life to have any time to play online. For one thing, it was the Christmas holidays, and there were a bunch of social events I had to either attend or host. One of these events, though, was a poker tournament that I held at my place. It was a STT with ten people, and I made it a deepstack tourney with a $20 buy-in, unlimited rebuys first hour if you bust (just to help out any novice players -- turned out only one guy had to rebuy and he was the maniac at the table). Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy the tourney, and I especially liked the structure 'cause it gave me plenty of room to manouevre. I played well and ended up taking down first place. I think I only sucked out once the whole game.

Other things also occupied all my free time. I had a bunch of work to do on the house, my kids got sick for much of the holidays and it was exhausting taking care of them (man, are they whiny and needy when they get sick!), and my wife kept wanting to watch a movie almost every night (I have a fairly large DVD collection, so there's a lot to catch up on). BTW, here's a few movies we watched recently which I would recommend:

The Descent - a good horror movie about a group of women who go on a cave exploration
Little Miss Sunshine - a very funny road-trip movie about a family taking their little daughter to a kid's beauty pageant
Love Actually - a nice comedy about several interconnected stories on love
Finding Neverland - a good Johnny Depp movie about the creator of Peter Pan
Saw - a good thriller about a serial killer
Lost In Translation - an amusing Bill Murray comedy; also, Scarlett Johansson's pretty cute
Spanglish - a more intelligent Adam Sandler comedy; also, Paz Vega is pretty hot
Stay - a good, David Lynch-type thriller with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts
My Super Ex-Girlfriend - a decent superhero spoof with Uma Thurman
A Life Less Ordinary - a quirky romantic comedy with Ewan McGregor and Cameron Diaz
The Last Kiss - a decent comedy/drama about love and commitment, starring Zach Braff from "Scrubs"
Munich - a good Spielberg thriller based on the aftermath of the terrorist acts from the Munich Olympics

Anyway, I'll slowly start to play more cash games again this month. I've also started a SNG challenge which I'll detail below. Plus, the Booya league will probably start again at the end of January, and a PSO league will probably start soon, too. And I'll probably try a few of the Mansion $100K guaranteed tourneys this month, since they regularly have around $50K in overlay.

Bankroll Update and Year In Review

I played the $1+$0.10 CPT satellite at Booya, but didn't cash. I also played some NL$100 at Mansion Poker during December, and squeezed out a $20 profit. For the PartyPoker reload, I ended up losing $560 during that bad run. So, my total earnings up to Dec. 31, 2006, stand at $11,555.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with my progress during my first year of poker. I exceeded my goal of $10,000 for the year by a healthy margin, and I think I've made great strides in my poker game. I started the year off as a total novice at the game, with $500 of my own money, and playing micro-stakes limit holdem games. I was profitable at the game from the start, thanks in large part to bonuses and PSO promos, so I was quickly able to withdraw my own money and just play with my winnings. I made the switch to NL holdem partway through the year, and my profitability improved because of it. I moved my way up the limits and am now comfortable playing at NL$100. I concentrated mainly on full-ring cash games, but near the end of the year I started playing more tournaments by joining the leagues at PSO and Booya Poker. My tournament game has improved steadily, and I finally won my first MTT last year.

Goals for 2007

Reach at least $30,000 in career earnings by Dec. 31, 2007.
Move up to at least NL$200 by the end of the year.
Cash at least $1000 in an MTT.
Win at least a $1000 seat to a major event, live or online (preferably the WSOP Main Event).

SNG Challenge

Titan Poker gave me a free entry to the $2+$0.40 Dirty Dozen Jackpot SNG last week, so I played that and ended up winning it for $12. Then I played in a $5+$1 Maui Jackpot SNG, and ended up winning again for $25, bringing my bankroll there to $31. So with a mini-bankroll established now, I decided to start a SNG challenge by continuing to play the Jackpot SNG's there until I either bust, or work that bankroll up to $2000.

I played some more Maui SNG's after that, and ended up 4th, 6th, 2nd, 6th, 6th, and 1st, bringing my bankroll to $35.

Earnings to Dec. 31, 2006: $11,555
SNG Challenge Bankroll: $35

$1050 CPT Satellite For Only $1+$0.10 At Booya

2006-12-18T13:25:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, Dec. 20th, 6:30 pm PST, Booya Poker will be having another Canadian Poker Tour satellite, with the winner taking home a whopping $1050 buy-in to any CPT event during the next 6 months. There will also be consolation prizes of WSOP Satellite tickets for places 2 - 5, depending on the number of entrants. All this for only a $1+$0.10 buy-in! So if you haven't signed up yet, better do it soon so you can play in this tourney. Imagine having the chance to win a CPT title and grand prize for only a buck!

The CPT event schedule for 2007 can be found here. Currently there aren't any events scheduled to take place in the GVRD within the next 6 months, but if 2006 is any indication, there will likely be a few events taking place at the Cascades Casino in Langley.

I'll be playing in Wednesday's satellite, so I hope to see some new people there! Good luck!

A Welcome To New Readers

2006-12-14T16:36:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome some new readers who may have recently been referred here by Eagle2727, who is responsible for organizing our home poker league. Season 1 of our league wrapped up a couple weeks ago, and I ended up placing 5th overall solely by luckboxing my way to a 1st place finish in one of the events. I played 4 of the 6 events, and only finished ITM once. Congratulations to CoolCtheMosaicist, who placed 1st overall and totally dominated the league! He played 5 of the 6 events, and finished ITM 4 times, with a 1st, a 2nd, a 3rd, and a 4th place finish.

I hope everyone manages to gain some useful poker-related information from this blog, and will check back regularly for updates. If anyone is ever online and wanting to join me in some cash game action, I can currently be found either on Mansion Poker or Party Poker under the alias Curatio, or on Booya Poker under the alias Curatio3, playing my usual NL$100 tables. Or, if you ever want to get a few people together for a sit-n-go, just email me (check out my Profile) and we can work out the time and the poker room. Also, feel free to email me or leave a message here if you ever have any questions or need some advice, whether it's related to poker, dentistry, or anything else.

Now that our home league is over for this season, you may find yourself craving some regular tournament action. If you are able to play regularly Tuesday nights at 6:30 pm PST, then I would highly recommend that you join us for season 2 of Booya Poker's Poker Night In Canada League. Season 1 has just wrapped up, and was a big success. There was $5000 in league prizes up for grabs, with 1st place overall taking home a whopping $2000! For only a $10+$1 buy-in for each event, and with an average of only 15 players per event in season 1 (this was even less than our average home league turnout!), everyone had a good opportunity to earn some amazing cash prizes, as well as have a lot of fun and gain some valuable tourney experience in the process. Season 2 starts up in mid-January, and Booya has plans to make it even better, with an improved scoring system and prizes/bounties for each individual event. The more we can get to play in the league, the more they can offer, so I hope to see many of you in the first event, particularly CoolC, Urk, Mellemel, and all the others whom Eagle2727 have told me are winning online tourney players. Even if you are fairly new to online poker, I would encourage you to join us -- the buy-in for each event is cheap, and you'll definately improve your game by playing against a great bunch of players in the league. And who knows, if you get a little lucky, you may even find yourself on top of the leaderboard!

If you don't have an account at Booya Poker yet, then just click on any of the Booya links or banners here, and when you sign up for a REAL MONEY account, you can get $10 absolutely free -- no deposit required! This is almost enough to cover the buy-in for the first league game! After opening your account, just email your Booya Poker screenname to manager@booyapoker.com, with the subject "Curatio Referral". This offer is only available to the first 10 signups, and once 10 new screennames have been received and verified the $10 bonus will be credited to your account. The only requirement is that you earn 1000 Action Points before you cash out the free money. In addition to the free $10, you can still earn a 100% deposit bonus (max. $300) when you do your first deposit by using the promo code Booya2. Please note that if you already have another account on the Tribeca network (e.g. Doyle's Room, Golden Palace Poker, etc.), then after you set up your real money account on Booya, you will have to chat with the online Manager found in the software to have the Cashier unlocked for you. Also, for any American readers, please note that U.S. players are unfortunately not allowed to play on Booya Poker.

Edit: If you do sign up on Booya, please leave a comment here with your Booya screenname, and I can help make sure you get the special bonus.

Edit2: Some people seemed to have missed this, but you need to open a REAL MONEY account, not a play money account, to receive the $10 free bonus. For those that have accidentally opened a play money account already, Booya Poker will help you correct this, but anyone still planning to sign up, please remember to make sure it's a REAL MONEY account. Thanks!

Booya League Event #8

2006-12-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

Tonight I played in the final event of the Booya Poker Night In Canada League, and managed to take down 1st place again, out of a single table of 9 players. The game started off fairly uneventfully. Play was fairly tight and conservative, as there were four players present who were still jockeying for 2nd to 5th place overall. Since I was stuck in 7th place, I had nothing to lose, so I guess I could have played more aggressively to take advantage of this, but instead I just played my usual game. There were two other players present whom I didn't recognize and obviously also had nothing to lose, so I didn't want to run into another aggressive player and have to make some difficult decisions.

My stack started a major downswing when I picked up TT UTG. I raised it up to 3.5xBB, and got re-raised behind me. I called, and had to check-fold to a Q-high flop. Things got worse when I got QTo in the CO. It was folded to me, so I raised it to 3xBB and got called by the button. Flop came up T58 with 2 spades. I bet out 2/3 pot, and got raised to 2.5x my bet. I called, and had to check-fold when another spade came on the turn.

After playing a few more pots but not connecting, I became the short-stack by a large margin, and had an M of 8. I managed to steal a decent pot when I picked up KQo on the button with 2 limpers ahead me, I pushed and everyone folded. I got excited when I picked up KK in MP, but dang it!, everyone folded to my 3xBB raise.

Blinds were jumping big time at this point, but I managed to work my stack back up by pushing with 33, AQo, 22, AKo, and AJo. I was now 2nd in chips, with the chip leader directly to my left. The turning point of the game came when I picked up 88 in the SB. Folded to me, I raised to 3xBB and got called by the chip leader in the BB. Flop came out Q53 rainbow, I bet out 4/5 pot, and was min-raised for nearly the rest of my chips. I thought hard, and finally decided to throw in the rest of my chips on the hopes that he may have been floating me with ace-high. He flipped over KQo, and I was ready to say "gg", but the miracle 8 came on the river to double me up and put me in the chip lead.

I continued to build my stack by taking out Note2323 with AQo vs AKo when the flop came out Q-high and he pushed, and by taking out Actyper when he pushed pre-flop with KTs, and I called with 66 and made a set on a K-high flop, and filled up on the river for the overkill.

When it got to heads-up, I was just slightly behind in chips. This turned out to be my first ever major heads-up session, but I felt good going in and was planning to play smarter this time. It went back and forth for a while, with no one catching any monster hands. I got the sense that he was playing a little too tight, as he was folding from the SB as well as not calling my raises a little too often. I tried to take advantage of this by raising slightly more than I normally would, but still mixing in some calls and the rare fold from the SB if my cards were total crap. Because of this, I managed to basically wear down his stack until I had over a 4:1 chip lead. In the final hand, he pushed with bottom pair and an OESD on the turn, I called with second pair, and he wasn't able to complete his draw on the river.

This was a great league for me. I had lots of fun, and gained plenty of good tournament experience. I played 6 of the 8 events, and finished with the best record overall -- four ITM finishes, with 2 firsts and 2 seconds. I made a net profit of $127.80, for an ROI of 194%. All told, I'm very happy with the results, despite finishing 7th overall because of the unfortunate scoring system, but I definately played well enough to take first. Too bad there's no prize for honourable mention :(

I also played in one CPT satellite, and two NHL ticket tourneys on Booya during the past few weeks, but unfortunately didn't finish ITM in any of them. So after everything, I ended up with a net profit of $111 to my bankroll.

Earnings-to-date: $12,096

Booya League Event #6 & 7

2006-12-12T01:40:00.000-08:00

I placed a lousy 9th out of 15 in the Booya League Event #6 two weeks ago, but last week in Event #7 I managed to place 2nd again, out of 12. It was a crazy tournament, with a lot of people hitting their draws or sucking out. I myself played three flush draws, all of which completed to take down some huge pots. It was fitting, then, that my last hand lost out to a runner-runner flush draw. It was the very first hand heads-up, and we were about even in chips. My opponent limped in, I checked. Flop gave me bottom pair, and we both checked to the river, which paired my other hole card to give me two-pair. However, it came runner-runner hearts to put three hearts on the board. I bet out, he pushed, I called without thinking too much. I played it very poorly, and I think if I had really taken the time to think it over, I would have folded. But my opponent, who was the big stack for most of the final table, had been bullying and throwing his chips around, and I felt he was doing the same again with just top pair, so that led me to make the bad call.

Anyway, even with that finish, I'm still stuck in 7th place, two places shy of the league prizes. With one more event to go, even if I place 1st, I won't be able to move up unless the two players in 6th and 5th don't show up to play. The top five players are pretty much set, with fellow bloggers and PSO regulars MathP having a lock on first place, and Actyper and Riverrun jostling with two others for second to fifth place. Congratulations, guys!

Bankroll Updates

2006-12-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

I played at Party for a bit so that I could withdraw some money from my bankroll. I made $163 at the tables, then withdrew $1163.

I did a PokerSavvy promo at 9Poker, and made $10 at the tables, and earned a bunch of SavvyPoints. I cashed in my points for $88 cash through Neteller, and also bought PokerAceHUD (worth $25).

I did a casino bonus at Lucky Nugget, but busted out of my bonus and $50 deposit.

Then I did a reload bonus at Dream Poker and had my worst downswing ever. I ended up down $543 (over 5 buyins at my usual NL$100 level), while earning a $125 bonus. You know you are having a bad stretch of negative variance when pocket aces is a money-losing hand for you :( It also sucked that over about 1000 hands played, I got AKo only 3 times, AKs only once, and my most frequent hand was KJo at 19 times. KJo is a hand that I usually don't like to play, but when even aces aren't holding up and this hand keeps popping up in the hole, then it gets very tempting to play it, especially when you keep getting rivered by mediocre hands like this, or you see others flopping monsters with it, or you see that you would have flopped a monster if only you hadn't folded it! Anyway, after this I knew I was on a bit of tilt, so I took a break from poker for several days to clear my head.

I just started playing again recently, since Full Tilt offered me a $50 bonus for 500 points. After a couple nights of playing, I cleared that bonus as well as $20 of my initial signup bonus, and made $103 at the tables. I enjoyed playing there, as the table selection is pretty good during the late evenings when I'm usually playing, so I'm going to look into trying to get rakeback there. I've already done the PSO promo there, unfortunately, so I think I'll have to get my wife to sign up with a different Neteller account. Anyone know if this is possible?

Earnings-to-date: $11,985

Booya League Event #5

2006-11-22T01:55:00.000-08:00

I had my very first online tournament win tonight when I placed 1st out of 16 in event #5 of the Booya League. My only other win in any STT or MTT prior to this was a live, two-table tourney in my friend's home poker league. It's kinda lame it took me this long to book a first place finish online, but the truth is I hardly ever play any SNG's (played maybe 5-10 in all), and only recently have I started playing MTT's (besides freerolls, I've only been playing in the last PSO league, and now this league). So I'm pretty happy with this milestone, even though I'm kinda late to the party.

I didn't get very many good hands in this tournament, but what I did get held up really well. My best hands were JJ, which won a medium-sized pot; TT, which won a big pot vs. a guy chasing a flush; AJo, which also won a big pot vs. a flush-chaser; and AKs, my final hand, which knocked out second and third place at once, when they pushed with KQo and A6o. I only got sucked out on once when I called a short-stack's ATo with K9s, and I flopped two-pair, but my opponent caught runner-runner straight. I sucked out on someone once when I pushed with ATs, got called by AKo, and managed to river a flush. It was a bit disappointing when second and third place got knocked out at once, since I really wanted to get some heads-up experience, but that feeling didn't last too long :)

Anyway, with this win I'll move up to 7th overall in the league with 191.2 points, but will still need to make up about 34 points to catch up to 5th place, where the league money starts. With only 3 more events to go, this is starting to look pretty bleak. With Booya's linear points formula, in each game the points difference between consecutive finish positions is only about 3 points, so unless someone in the six spots ahead of me either fails to play or gets knocked out very early in an event, it'll be practically impossible for me to catch up, especially if the top six continue to play as well as they have been. And with others below me also realizing their slim chances, the number of players in the remaining events will likely decline, meaning even fewer points will be given out. Man, I really hope Booya changes the formula for the next league, or at the very least make it something like your best 6 out of 8 finishes count towards your total points. That way no one is handicapped for having missed a couple events.

Booya League Event #4

2006-11-15T01:55:00.000-08:00

I played in the Booya League tonight and finished 7th out of 21. Not great, but not too bad either. It was a fun tourney, with the majority of the final table being PSO regulars. The turning point for me was just before the final table. I was all-in preflop with QQ vs AKo, and a win there would have given me the overall chip lead. Unfortunately, the flop paired my opponent's ace, and that left me near the bottom in chips. After that, I managed to survive a bit longer and moved up a few precious spots. Several of the league leaders finished poorly tonight, so after this tourney I think I'll probably move up to around 9th overall. Still a ways to go to catch up to the top 5, but at least the gap is narrowing.

I wanted to withdraw another $1000 from my bankroll, so lately I've been doing some more cover play at Party. Tonight was a good night, after making almost $300 at the NL$200 and NL$100 tables. Unfortunately, the night before I was down almost $200, so overall I'm only up about one buyin.

Party has been a lot quieter lately, ever since they blocked off US players, and the fish have definately been less plentiful. Tonight, however, I managed to reel in a nice big one:

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.50/$1
9 players

Pre-flop: (9 players) Curatio is MP2 with Js Jc
UTG folds, UTG+1 raises to $2, MP1 folds, Curatio raises to $6, 3 folds, SB calls, BB folds, UTG+1 calls.

Flop: 6d 9c 2h ($19, 3 players)
SB checks, UTG+1 bets $8.08, Curatio raises to $20, SB folds, UTG+1 calls.

Turn: 6h ($59, 2 players)
UTG+1 bets $9.71, Curatio raises to $30, UTG+1 calls.

River: 4h ($119, 2 players)
UTG+1 raises all-in $62.47, Curatio calls.

Results: Final pot: $243.94
UTG+1 shows Th 9d
Curatio shows Js Jc

I was kind of surprised how badly he played that for NL$100. I don't think it could have been any more obvious that I was holding an overpair, and with the board pairing he only had two outs. Kinda makes me wonder how much money players like this must be losing in the long run.

Bankroll Updates and Booya League Event #3

2006-11-11T03:15:00.000-08:00

I had to withdraw some money from my bankroll, so I did some cover play on Party. Last time I played about 300 hands, and they still denied my withdrawal to my bank account, so this time I played about 1000 hands just to be sure. I deposited $1000, made $48 at the NL$100 tables, and withdrew the whole amount.

I played a bit at Booya Poker as well, making $29 at the NL$100 tables, and clearing a $25 bonus. Last night I tried out Poker.com again, after reading that a lot of the fishy American players hang out there now. The play is definately looser there, and I ended up making $197 at the NL$200 and NL$100 tables, and cleared a $10 bonus. I think I'll probably play there a bit more often, when I don't have a decent bonus or promo to clear.

Last Tuesday, I played in event #3 of 8 in the Booya Poker Night In Canada league. This was my first league game, so because I missed the first two events, I'm pretty severely handicapped in the overall standings. I managed to finish the tourney in 2nd place, which will help a bit, but the formula for the points calculation will make it difficult for me to catch up. The formula is linear, and awards points for a top 20 finish. However, since the games have been averaging around 15 players, everyone is getting some decent points even for an average finish, and without a top-heavy formula, a top 3 finish isn't going to award me enough points to help me catch up. Combined with the fact that the blinds structure in the games is pretty fast, I'm going to need a lot of luck to finish in the top 5 overall for the league prizes.

Earnings-to-date: $11,994

More Blackjack, Less Poker

2006-11-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

Lately it seems like I've been playing more blackjack than poker. With the ban on US players at many of the poker sites, I've been having a bit of trouble finding some decent tables to play at during the late evenings when I'm online. I guess I could try Stars or Full Tilt, but usually I prefer to play while clearing a nice bonus; unforturnately, on Stars I don't have any bonus money, and on Full Tilt I find the bonus clears too slowly at NL$100. So instead of poker I've been working on casino bonuses lately.

I signed up at Ladbrokes Casino for the $50 match bonus (I already had a Ladbrokes Poker account in US dollars, but if you don't have an account you should do the bonus in Pounds instead to get almost twice as much bonus money). Played single-deck Blackjack and finished with $130 in profit. I also signed up for the Intercasino $100 match bonus, but ended up losing $41.

I had $100 in bonus money to clear at Paradise Poker, so I played for a while a couple nights ago, and made $89 at the tables and cleared $10 in bonus money. Paradise is one of the sites that has banned US players, so I was only able to find two full NL$100 tables that night. I wanted to play again last night, but for the next month Paradise has a really sucky promotion going on. They added $10,000 in bonus money to my account, but changed the bonus terms so that only pots raked at least $1, instead of $0.25, will earn a point, and now it takes 100 points to clear $5 in bonus money, instead of $10. Needless to say, I ended up withdrawing my money, and will return in a month when the bonus terms are supposed to go back to normal.

Earnings-to-date: $11,685

PSO League Tourney #8 and Golden Palace Casino

2006-11-02T10:26:00.000-08:00

I placed 34th out of 80 in the last event of the PSO league, and finished 14th overall. I played 7 of the 8 events, and finished in the money twice with a 2nd and 9th place, ending up with a net profit of $74. This last tourney, I was doing quite well at first and was the chip leader about 45 minutes in. Then I lost a bunch of chips chasing a flush draw, and then another whole bunch of chips tangling with another big stack when we both tried to take down DCampers' bounty. That was a big mistake, as I should have stayed focussed on doing well in the tournament overall, instead of trying to chase a $20 bounty. Lesson learned, next time I won't try to steal a bounty unless I have a solid hand.

I did the Golden Palace Casino signup bonus, depositing $100, and getting a $300 bonus with an $8000 wagering requirement. I played Blackjack Switch, doing 2x$10 per hand, and finished with a nice $710 in profit.

Earnings-to-date: $11,497

Bonus Clearing at Party and Gaming Club

2006-10-29T08:58:00.000-08:00

I cleared a reload bonus at PartyPoker, making $177 at the NL$100 tables, and $110 in bonus money. I also did a Gaming Club reload, losing $51 at the tables and earning a $50 bonus. Was actually down around $300 at one point due to a streak of cold cards, running into a monster hand (my AKo vs AA on a board with AK), and a couple bad beats on the river, but managed to grind back to break even.

I also cashed in some PSO points for $200 in Absolute gift certificates, and a set of Copag cards ($15). I withdrew $1000 out of my bankroll.

Cake Poker is now offering rakeback through affiliates, so I'm planning to sign up through Bonus Whores to try out the site. They have some interesting promotions, plus several people in the home league I play in are regulars there.

Tonight is the last event in the PSO League. Currently I'm in 12th place, and need to finish in the top 5 to earn a league prize, so I'm guessing I'll need to finish in the top 3 tonight to have any chance. Good luck, everyone!

Earnings-to-date: $10,713

PSO League Tourney #6

2006-10-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

I final-tabled the PSO league tourney again, this time finishing 2nd out of 98, for a prize of $98 plus 17,500 PSO points. I played fairly solid, but a little more aggressively this time, by defending my blinds from steals with a re-raise when I felt I was ahead, and often attacking weakness by raising in late position with any two cards if there was a single limper ahead of me. This helped me pick up a lot of small pots, and kept me ahead of the blinds with a comfortable, above-average stack for most of the tourney.

I became the chip leader for a while when I flopped a flush draw, and called a guy to the river where I made my flush and almost doubled up. From there, I pretty much cruised into the final table, where I stayed around top 2 in chips. When it got down to 5 players, I started getting really card dead, plus a lot of my steal attempts were meeting resistance. I bled chips until I became the short stack with 3 left. I had to push in the SB with K7s, got called by AKo, but the board was kind to me and paired my 7.

When it got to heads-up, I was behind about 3:1 in chips. I don't have a lot of heads-up experience, so I'm sure this is a weak point in my game. It went back and forth for a few hands, then I ended up pushing with 98s. Yeah, it wasn't such a great hand to push with, but it was getting late and my wife was getting on my back, so I figured my cards were live and it was worth a gamble. I got called by KQo, and the flop paired my 8, but the turn paired his K and I was done.

This finish should put me in the top 10 overall in the league, giving me at least a decent chance to finish in the top 5 for the league prizes. To take first overall, I'll still need to get a first place finish in one of the last two events, or maybe a top 3 finish in both of the last two events. Pretty unlikely, but you never know.

I played a little bit on Party a couple nights ago, and made $129 at the tables. I haven't really played much lately due to other priorities, but will start playing more regularly again in November. I'll tally up my winnings from the league games after the final tourney is done.

Earnings-to-date: $10,212

Brief Update

2006-10-18T23:46:00.000-07:00

I played in the PSO League Tourney #5 tonight, and finished 9th out of 112. It's amazing how far you can get with just a little bit of luck and nothing else. All night long, I had pretty crappy starting hands. I only had 3 premium hands, AKo once, KK once, and JJ once, all of which won only small pots. I flopped trips once, but all the other flops I saw didn't hit me with anything better than top pair, and I only managed to accumulate chips by getting lucky with some mediocre hands.

JTo - in SB, I called a min raise from the button, who had KK, I flopped trips and managed to stack him.

98s - had to push with this when I was down to only 2.5BB, got called by K2s, flop paired his 2, but I managed to river a straight.

56s - flop came up Q87, I pushed with the OESD, and got called by AA and 87s, turn was a 4 to make my straight.

K9s - all-in preflop, got called by KQo, I managed to make 2-pair on the river.

And that was the extent of my hands. A couple other times I was all-in preflop with a slight lead, and managed to survive. My last hand I was the short-stack at the final table, had to push with A8o, and was called by AJo. Now if only I can have both good luck and good cards for the next tourney, then I might have a decent chance at taking first place.

I did a CasinoRewards reload, 100% up to $150, played it like a sticky and busted out for a loss of $150. Did the Bet365 Casino bonus (#5 on Actyper's Top 10 Casinos), and finished with a profit of $164. Played a bit of poker on Party (which, BTW, feels like a ghost town now after banning all US players), and made $9.

I've removed eCasinoDeals from my Recommended Poker Links. DO NOT sign up for any promos there. That affiliate is a complete joke. Customers there have not received their points or their orders for 3 to 6 months, now. I myself have about $120 in points there which I may never be able to cash in. Supposedly, the owner is having some personal issues, but no one really knows what the heck is going on 'cause he doesn't even have the decency to post an update :(

Earnings-to-date: $10,083

Year-End Goal Reached!

2006-10-10T00:35:00.000-07:00

Yay! I reached my year-end goal of $10,000 tonight, with two-and-a-half months to spare. I did the Victor Chandler casino bonus last night (#4 on Actyper's list, or #6 on his other list -- not sure which one is more up-to-date?) and finished with a profit of $55, and tonight I played a bit on PartyPoker and finished the session with a profit of $77, putting my earnings-to-date at $10,060.

I played in the PSO League tourney #2 last night, also, and finished 37th out of 108. Nothing interesting to report there. I'm actually going to take a bit of a break from poker for the rest of this month, except for the league games. I've got a lot fiscal year-end accounting to work on this month, plus some projects at home that I need to finish, so I'll have to put poker aside until I get that all done.

Earnings-to-date: $10,060

Gaming Club Reload and PlanetLuck Casino

2006-10-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

I finished the Gaming Club reload last night, and made a nice $267 profit at the tables, playing NL$100 at the Bad Beat Jackpot tables. A lot of people seem to dislike the play on the Prima networks, but ever since I started playing the BBJ tables after a recommendation from a PSO member, Prima has become one of my most profitable sites. The tables are fairly loose, but not too loose, usually with a %players per flop of around 40%, which from my experience is just about right. Any looser, and you will start to get sucked out on more often, and any tighter, it becomes harder to get paid off. Most of the people playing there tend to be gambler types or calling stations, who seem willing to put their money in with the worst of it. When I'm on Prima, I play almost exclusively on those tables, now, and only play the regular tables when there isn't enough traffic on the jackpot tables. Even during North American evening hours, however, there is usually a couple full NL$100 jackpot tables playing, so traffic is not often a problem. I plan to sign up at the Prima skin, 123Poker, for 60% rakeback at Supreme Rakeback, so that I can play these tables when I'm not clearing any promos or reloads. Anyway, combined with the $50 reload bonus, I finished with a net profit of $317.

This put me within $22 of reaching my year-end goal, so I decided to do the #3 casino on Actyper's Top 10 Casinos list, PlanetLuck Casino. I deposited $100, got an instant $100 bonus, and had to wager $1600 before I could withdraw. This time, however, variance was not on my side, and after playing $5 blackjack hands and clearing the requirements about an hour later, I ended up with a bankroll of $90. I decided to play a little more, to see if I could work it up to at least show a profit, but of course with a negative EV game like blackjack, that probably wasn't such a good idea, and after dropping down to a bankroll of $50, I decided to stop and cut my losses to a net loss of $50. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

Tomorrow there's a $5000 PSO freeroll on UltimateBet, but I don't think I'll be able to play because of Thanksgiving dinner plans. I'll be there for Sunday night's PSO league tourney #2, though, so hope to see you there, and good luck to everyone!

Earnings-to-date: $9928

Party Reload and PSO League Tourney #1

2006-10-04T20:45:00.000-07:00

I finished the Party reload last night, making $57 at the tables playing NL$100, and earning a $75 bonus, for a net profit of $132.

Tonight I played in my first ever PSO league tourney, and finished a disappointing 74th out of 123. I finished work late, so I almost didn't make it in time. I had to call my wife, who knows nothing about poker, and get her to register on Absolute for me. The tourney was running for about 5 minutes before I finally made it home. Things started off badly, though, when I picked up QQ in the SB and re-raised it, button called me. Flop came up KKx, I made a cbet, and was called. That forced me to check on the turn, and I had to fold to a bet. I had some pretty decent hands after that, though, getting QQ two more times, KK once, AKs twice (lost once), AKo once (lost), and JJ once (lost), all before the first break. I got sucked out on twice by a short stack, who managed to double up twice through me, first time AKs vs 86o and he paired his 8, then JJ vs 44 and he hit his set. That left me with an M of around 10 after the first break. My final hand, I fell into a trap when my opponent flopped a straight, it got checked around on the flop, the turn gave me two pair and I pushed. Oh well, at least I finished ahead of Riverrun, who was out before I even started playing :)

Earnings-to-date: $9661

Charting My Earnings Progress

2006-10-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

For my own interest, I've charted the progress of my earnings from online poker and casinos since I started playing less than a year ago. Surprisingly, the road has been fairly smooth and steady, with maybe just one or two minor dips along the way. The most significant change occurred around May 2006, shortly after I switched over from playing limit to no-limit holdem cash games. My progress after that point has accelerated significantly. I will update this chart periodically to monitor my progress. It will be interesting to see how the chart will change as I start to add more tournament play to my game over the next year.

PSO Freeroll and Casino Bonuses

2006-10-01T22:27:00.000-07:00

I played in the $10,000 Poker Source Online freeroll at Poker Room last night. I made it past the first break with about an average stack. Had aces cracked earlier on by KJ which made two pairs on the flop and crippled me. Luckily, I managed to double up twice, once with KK and another time with something else (can't remember). With blinds moving up, I dropped to an M of less than 10 when I picked up KK again in late position. With an EP caller and an MP raiser, I decided to push all-in. EP folded, MP thought for a while and called with AKo. Board came out with no aces, but he lucked out and made a straight on the river to knock me out. Sucks when you get nice hands in a tourney but still end up finishing relatively early :(

After a long grind of poker doing the Doyle's Room promo, I decided to switch gears and try out a casino bonus instead, by working my way down Actyper's list of the Top 10 Casinos. I had already done #1, Casino-On-Net, so last night I did #2, Starluck Casino. I deposited $100, got a $100 bonus right away, and had to wager $1600 before I could withdraw. I played Blackjack using a basic strategy chart, and flat betted $5 per hand. Got a nice run of cards and worked my roll up to $360 when I finished the wagering requirements about an hour or so later, for a nice profit of $260.

I also cashed in some SavvyPoints for a $100 Party Poker gift certificate. This week, I plan to do a Party Poker reload bonus for $75 and 750 raked hands, and a Gaming Club reload bonus for $50 and 500 raked hands.

I'm getting pretty close to my year-end goal of $10,000. When I reach that, I think I'll celebrate and take my wife and kids out for a nice dinner :)

Earnings-to-date: $9529

Finished Doyle's Room

2006-09-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

I finally finished grinding out the Doyle's Room promo from WeDoItAllVegas. It took me longer than I expected, because the Action Points earned are based on contributed rake. It would have cleared faster if I had played higher limits, but I mostly played NL$100 because the NL$200 tables there seemed a bit tight (though it's difficult to tell with their software, because it doesn't give % Players Per Flop statistics). I had to play just over 3100 hands, and most of that time my bankroll just floated in the range of +/- $100. I didn't seem to get many good hands, and when I did get a monster, I rarely got paid off. I think I only got paid off once when my AKs made a straight on the turn and I got called by a smaller straight, but shortly after that I gave most of it back to the same guy when he turned a straight vs. my AA, and I couldn't lay it down, even though I was almost sure I was beaten (still a weakness of mine :( ).

Anyway, luckily I finished up the promo on the positive side of variance, and ended up with a profit of $198 at the tables, and earned a $135 sign-up bonus and a $50 Ebay gift certicate, for a net profit of $383.

I also played in the $50+5 Bounty tournament tonight, since all new players get a full rebate for it. I ended up finishing a modest 186 out of 770. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), I didn't get seated next to anyone famous, though I noticed that Actyper, who also happened to be playing the same tourney, got seated at the same table as Chip Reese and Hoyt Corkins. Oh well, it was a good experience, nevertheless, with a good chance at a very nice prize pool. At least I managed to go deeper than Acty, who finished 346th :) .

I also placed a free $100 sports bet at BetWWTS.com, but unfortunately that one didn't win. Actyper was kind enough to split the referral money with me, though, which needed to be rolled over 1x. Luckily, our resident sports betting guru Riverrun helped me bet the referral money on an NFL game, which ended up covering, so I made a profit of $50 from this promo.

Earnings-to-date: $9169

PokerSavvy Blog Tour Video

2006-09-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Part One:

Part Two:

Winners:

1. Kajagugu - $500
2. Katitude - $300
3. Dornie - $200

The folks at PokerSavvy are pretty cool. They made a video, along with commentary, of the last Blog Tour $1000 freeroll tournament that I played in. It shows only three of the big hands I was involved in, with the last one being the horrible beat that knocked me out in 7th place. Check it out, it's almost like we're on TV!

If you are a blogger and would like to play in the next event, just email PokerSavvy support at (support at pokersavvy dot com) to let them know you would like to sign up for the Blog Tour. The next event is planned for mid- to late October, and if 50 or more bloggers will be playing, they will bump up the prize pool to $1500.

As for Doyle's Room, so far I am down a little under $100 playing mostly NL$100. I seem to have hit a cold streak, not getting any good starting hands, and not hitting much on the flop. I didn't get AA or KK until I played about 800 hands, and when I did finally get them, they won small pots or just scooped the blinds. As for the Bounty tourney, I had to postpone that until next Thursday, since I had to watch the kids tonight. Still looking forward to that one, I hope I get seated at Doyle Brunson's table.

Finished Poker.com

2006-09-18T11:38:00.000-07:00

I signed up a few nights ago at Poker.com to do a PokerSavvy promo for 750 SavvyPoints. This was a pretty easy promo as it took me only one night to complete, two-tabling NL$200 for about 3 hours. Poker.com has arguably the best software out of all the sites I've tried so far. It's nicely laid out, and the graphics, sound, and animation are all very well done. Sorting through the poker tables is very easy as you can sort by columns as well as apply a filter. They also have a nice chat interface where you can use a variety of smileys, and they have unique mucking options such as the ability to show just one card, and a rabbit option where you can show your cards and ask the dealer to show any remaining, unseen community cards (so players can see if they could have made their draws if they had called). Competition there is on the weak side, as I did notice a few bad players even at NL$200. Traffic, though, is somewhat light, as I couldn't find any NL$100 tables going, so I had to move up to NL$200. Other negatives include incompatibility with PokerTracker, and a currently non-functional hand history feature. Overall, I ended up making $165 at the tables after winning two medium-sized pots with KK (also had AA that night, but won a small pot), but didn't catch any monster hands to trap people with. The bonus there is pretty difficult to clear, though. After earning 1000 comp points to clear the PokerSavvy promo, I was only halfway to clearing the first $10 bonus installment at 2000 comp points, so I decided not to chase the bonus and just moved on.

On the tournament side, I ended up busting out of the Paradise $10K tourney shortly after the first break. I chipped up fairly early when my 22 made a set on the flop, but after that I didn't get any good hands and dropped to an M of about 5. After the first break, I picked up KQo UTG, and decided to push with it. I realized afterwards that this was a mistake, and I should have waited for a better hand and/or better position. I would have needed a better hand to push UTG, as the likelihood of running into a real hand is much greater with everyone else still to act behind me. I got called by AKo, flop came up AQT, and I wasn't able to outdraw him.

Absolute also gave me $10 free to play with, so I worked that up to $12+ playing NL$25. I then played a $10+1 SNG, and bubbled out in 4th place, after falling for a trap when a guy slow-played his trip jacks.

I signed up at Doyle's Room today to do a promo for a $50 Ebay gift certificate through WeDoItAllVegas. Doyle's Room has a decent sign-up bonus of $135, which clears at a reasonable rate if you play NL$100 or higher, and works out to be 100% rakeback. They also give every new player a full rebate to the $55 Bounty tournament, where you can play against Doyle Brunson himself, along with Todd Brunson and Mike Caro. I'm looking forward to playing in that one this coming Thursday.

Earnings-to-date: $8736

My Best Online Tourney Finish

2006-09-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

I'm primarily a full-table cash game player, but lately I've been trying to play some more tournaments. It's a nice change of pace from grinding it out at the ring games, but with two young kids to take care of, it's often difficult for me to set aside the time needed to play tourneys. I also don't want to invest a lot of money into tournaments right now 'cause I feel my game still needs a lot of improvement, so what I've been doing lately is playing in a lot of affiliate freerolls, tourneys where I can buy in with points, or sit-n-go's if a site happens to give me some free cash to lure me back.

A couple nights ago I had my best MTT finish to date. It was a VegasPokerPro Green Chip freeroll where I placed 2nd out of 95. The prize pool was pretty modest, but the players were fairly decent, definately better than your typical poker room freeroll where a lot of donks push with garbage. I managed to double up early with AA, but eventually started falling behind the blinds until I reached an M of about 5. I then was able to pick a few good hands to push, and managed to work myself back up to about an average stack. I only sucked out on someone once when I pushed with 44, got called by TT, and made my set on the flop. The rest of the tourney, I just played solid poker, and made it to heads up, where I was behind 2:1 in chips. My heads-up experience is very limited, so I'm sure I ended up playing too tight. My final hand I got sucked out on when I called all-in with K7s, opponent had 97o and made two-pair on the flop.

I also played in a PokerSavvy $1000 blogger freeroll at the same time, where I finished 7th out of 21. I was at the same table as Actyper for most of the tourney, so that was pretty interesting watching him play. He ended up finishing 5th. The players, as I expected, were pretty tough, but I think I managed to hold my own. Unfortunately, I got sucked out on pretty badly on my last hand, where I was way ahead on the flop with trip aces, but my opponent made runner-runner flush. It was a great experience, though, and I had a lot of fun and will be looking forward to the next one.

Tonight, I played in a $500K qualifier on Superior Poker where I bought in for 200 POP points. Only one seat was given for first place. Again, I made the final table, and finished 9th out of 151. Tomorrow night, I'm playing in a Paradise $10K invitational freeroll with about 350 players, so I'm hoping my luck and/or good play will continue.

On the negative side, I lost $149 a few days ago playing on PartyPoker. I had cashed in some PokerSavvy points for a $100 gift certificate, and I also wanted to withdraw some of my bankroll, so I had to do some cover play. I should have quit when I played enough hands and was down only about $5, but I continued playing and had a run of bad luck. For some reason, I just cannot do well on Party. Up until this point, I was break-even at the tables, now I'm in the red about $150. So from now on, I'm going to only play the bare minimum on Party when I need to clear a bonus or do any cover play for gift certificates or withdrawals to my bank account.

So, after winning $75 in the VPP freeroll, cashing in a $100 Party GC, and losing $149 at Party, I have a net profit of $26 to my bankroll. I withdrew $1483 from my bankroll, leaving myself $1275 online.

Earnings-to-date: $8571

Finished PokerStars

2006-09-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

I signed up for PokerStars through Internet Texas Hold'em, and selected "Harrington On Hold'em Volume 3", "No-Limit Hold'em: Theory and Practice", and the DB Dealer Button/Timer as my gifts. I've already got HoH volumes 1 and 2, which are great, so I was eager to get volume 3. The Sklansky no-limit book was kind of a toss-up, though. The reviews I've read have been mixed, and his books tend to be rather dry reading, but since there wasn't any other book I wanted, I figured this would be a decent reference text. The dealer button is kind of a cool gadget that I've been eyeing. Usually, I just use my cell phone alarm as a timer for my home games, which is kind of lame, so I'm sure I'll be able to put this gadget to good use.

The play at PokerStars was a bit tougher than I'm used to, after having encountered a lot of soft play at Mansion and Superior Poker. I started off with NL$100, but since the pot needed to be at least $20 to get any FPP, the points were accumulating too slowly, so I moved up to NL$200. Then came the roller coaster ride. I started out on the positive side, up about $100, then made a couple questionable calls where I didn't give my opponent credit for having a hand. With AJo I flopped top-pair-third-kicker, but lost to AKs 'cause I didn't believe my opponent had a better kicker, and with KK I held an overpair to the board with a gutshot straight draw, but lost to a guy who flopped a set, smooth-called my flop bet, and re-raised me all-in on the turn. This took me down to a loss of over $300. I then decided to tighten up my play, and focussed on playing just one table at a time, as opposed to two. I managed to get back above even, and finished the promo with a whopping $4 in profit at the tables. Since PokerStars didn't give me any kind of bonus money to clear, I'm gonna settle for that tiny profit, and just move on to another site and promo.

So I ended up with a profit of $4 at the tables, and cleared the promo for about $60 in books and poker accessories, for a net profit of $64.

Earnings-to-date: $8545

Finished Mansion Poker

2006-09-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

First of all, way to go Steelers! Pittsburgh did end up beating the spread in their very exciting season opener, so congrats to everyone who participated in the Mansion Sportsbook promo and ended up earning a hefty $1000 (assuming you didn't hedge)! This was by far the fastest and easiest $1000 I have ever earned! Props go to Mansion for putting on such a great promo, and I hope everyone who profited from it will show their support for Mansion by at least trying out their new poker site. I know for sure that I will be back later on to play some more poker, as I still have a decent bonus to clear, and also the games there have been quite profitable for me. I also might try their PokerDome qualifiers to see if I can win a seat package to their PokerDome TV show. BTW, fellow blogger Actyper will be playing this Sunday to win a PokerDome seat package, so best of luck to him, and hopefully we will be able to see more than just his sexy back on TV!

Since my last Mansion update, I have made an additional $111 in bonus money and profit at the tables. It could have been a bit more, but I suffered a couple bad suckouts on the river a few nights ago. Overall, I am up over seven buy-ins ($728) in about two weeks of play, so I am quite happy with the site and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in trying it out. Combined with the sportsbook promo, this gives me a net profit of $1111 since my last update.

Next up will be a PokerStars promo. I have been wanting to open a Stars account for a while now so that I can try out some of their tournaments, so I will be doing a poker book promo through Internet Texas Holdem.

Earnings-to-date: $8481

Mansion Poker Update

2006-08-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to post a quick update on my progress at Mansion Poker. I've been playing mostly NL$100, with the occasional NL$50 or NL$200, and have made a profit of $617, including $30 in bonus. Since I have $1100 of my bankroll tied up in that sports bet, my tentative plan is to keep playing at Mansion until that wager is settled. Hopefully I can continue to make a nice profit at the poker tables while working on the deposit bonus.

BTW, the support at PokerSavvy has been excellent so far. My SavvyPoints were credited just a few days after I met the requirements, and their support via the forums has been very prompt. I requested that they add Absolute Poker gift certificates to the store, and they quickly replied that they have contacted AP and are working it out. Also, thanks to everyone who signed up at PokerSavvy using my link!

Earnings-to-date: $7370

Mansion Sportsbook Promo

2006-08-26T14:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Scottwire for the heads-up on this promotion! Mansion Sportsbook is currently offering a no-risk wager on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Simply place a minimum Point Spread (Handicap) bet of $1100 to win $1000 on the Pittsburgh Steelers for their game on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2006. If your bet is not a winner, Mansion will refund your losses of $1100.

I've never done sports betting before, but this promotion is too good to pass up. You can also hedge your bet on another sportsbook by betting on the Miami Dolphins. That way, whether the Steelers win or lose, you will win something. I've managed to work my $1000 bankroll up to over $1300 playing on Mansion poker, so I'll have just enough to bet on the Steelers and a bit left over to keep playing poker.

So if you haven't signed up for Mansion, yet, now's a good time. Make sure you sign up through PokerSavvy for their 900 SavvyPoints promo which you can clear by making that sportsbook bet. Go Steelers!

Started New Promo: Mansion Poker

2006-08-24T00:36:00.000-07:00

I started a PokerSavvy promo for Mansion Poker today, for 900 Savvy points which can be converted to $90 via Neteller or Paypal. For those who aren't familiar with PokerSavvy, they are a poker affiliate similar to PokerSourceOnline. They have a very nifty website, and great selection of promos, and their service appears to be excellent as well. This is my first promo with them, and I plan to do several more with them as I have pretty much run out of promos to do at PSO (still plan to do Sun rakeback, though, and Bodog if they ever allow Canadians).

If anyone hasn't signed up for Mansion, yet, I would highly recommend this promo as it is very easy to clear. You only need to generate $10 in poker rake, or wager $50 in their sportsbook/sports exchange. I cleared it easily in a little over an hour, two tabling NL$100. Their deposit bonus is quite generous at 100% max $1000. However, it is a little slow to clear, at 60 MCP points per $10 of bonus released. After my play tonight, I earned 40 MCP, so I haven't even gotten my first bonus payment, yet. On the bright side, the players there, from my initial impression, appear to be very weak, so I'm planning to play there for a little longer to see if I can make a nice profit at the tables.

On a side note, as with many others, Party decided to take back their $100 PartyGammon bonus, blaming a glitch in their software for releasing the bonus too early. I tried emailing them to complain, but they were unwilling to do anything. However, they did coincidentally give me a $40 restricted bonus afterwards, which I cleared last night. So, after breaking even at the NL$25 tables, earning a $40 bonus, and losing a $100 gammon bonus, I have a net loss to my bankroll of $60. I also withdrew $2044 from my bankroll, leaving myself $1000 for playing poker.

Earnings-to-date: $6753

Finished Superior Poker

2006-08-21T02:31:00.000-07:00

I felt I played pretty well during my challenge, but once it was over, I started playing like a total donk. Without the pressure of the challenge on my mind, I think I lost focus and ended up making a couple really bad calls (such as slow-playing a flopped two pair, and calling an all-in on the river without noticing a four-straight on the board - duh!), and ended up dropping about one and a half buyins at NL$300. So I tried to focus on my game again, and dropped down to NL$100 to clear my deposit bonus.

I didn't make much progress, with my bankroll just bouncing up and down. I ended up losing $368 at the tables since finishing the challenge, but earned a $100 bonus and 600 ECD points, for a net loss of $268. Not a great way to end the promo, but I can't really complain considering the awesome run I had earlier.

I used some PSO points to buy a $50 Absolute gift certificate, which I cashed out. I'll be taking some money out of my bankroll to pay some bills, so I'll be doing some cover play at Party Poker next.

Earnings-to-date: $6813

PartyGammon $100 Bonus

2006-08-15T01:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks to dlk9s from the PSO forums for this super easy bonus. Make a first deposit at PartyGammon using bonus code PGAMMON25 for a 25% max $100 bonus. Check the thread for full details, but basically to clear the bonus, you only need to play seven games and wager only $0.50 per game. I cleared the bonus in less than half an hour, and lost $3 playing, for a net profit of $97.

Earnings-to-date: $7031

Mission Accomplished...With A Bang!

2006-08-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

Well, today didn't start off too well. I went to work, and just after lunch I found out that my whole afternoon of patients either cancelled or rescheduled on me. So with the afternoon off, I went home and played a bit of poker online.

I joined a $300 NL table, and my stack more or less stayed even for a long time. Finally, I get a good hand when holding 55, I manage to hit a set on the flop, and my one opponent puts me all-in on the turn. He flips over AA, doesn't improve, and I double up. That made my afternoon, because with that one win, my challenge bankroll reached about $1940, pretty darn close to my goal of $2000.

Later on, after I put the kids to bed, I decided to play some more. I joined a $300 NL table again, and immediately started getting a rush of good cards. I kept getting pocket pairs, many of which either held up on their own, or I managed to hit a set or full house on the flop. Biggest hand of the night, I held 55 again and hit a set on the flop. I manage to get two opponents all-in, and they flip over QQ for an overpair to the board, and ATs for top-pair-top-kicker, and I net a whopping $516! To make a long story short, for the entire day I ended up making $1116, putting my challenge bankroll at $2737.

So I guess my cash game challenge is now officially over. However, I'm going to continue playing some more $300 NL at Superior Poker for a while. I've gotten the 500 POP points needed for the ECD promo, but I need another 1100 points to clear my deposit bonus. Since the points come fairly easily playing $300 NL, I'll continue playing to work on the deposit bonus, and hopefully my winning streak will continue.

Earnings-to-date: $6934
Challenge bankroll: Finished at $2737 (now added back to current bankroll)

Started New Promo: Superior Poker

2006-08-11T01:48:00.000-07:00

Although Paradise Poker has been very good to me thus far, I've decided to change sites for my Cash Game Challenge so that I can clear both an affiliate promo and a deposit bonus while I continue to work on meeting my goal. Thus, I have started an ECD promo for 600 points at Superior Poker, and will be clearing a deposit bonus of $100.

So far, the traffic at Superior Poker is way less than at Paradise. Tonight, there was about four full $100 NL tables going, one $200 NL, and one $300 NL. I played a bit of $50 NL and $100 NL to get used to the site, then joined the $300 NL.

One unusual thing about Superior Poker and the network it's on is that almost everyone playing there is Canadian. At the $300 NL table I was playing on, about 8 or 9 of us were Canadian, with about half of them being in the Greater Vancouver area where I am from. This is supposedly due to the aggressive television marketing by TigerGaming on all the Canadian sports networks during their poker programming.

So far, judging from the play and chit-chat I encountered at the $300 NL table, the level of competition seems to be fairly good. I did manage to squeeze out a profit of $41 tonight, but I can tell that it will be a tougher ride than on Paradise. Also, the site is not compatible with Poker Tracker, so it will be more difficult for me to keep track of my hands and my opponents' play. Oh well, it shouldn't take too long to finish this promo if I continue to play at $300 NL, so once I am done I'll probably move on to another site.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1621

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1580

2006-08-09T02:13:00.000-07:00

Got a bit lucky tonight. Doubled up at a $200 NL table with 66 vs 34s. I flopped a set, while he flopped bottom end of the straight with a flush draw as well. Pushed on the flop, and luckily the board paired to give me a full house.

Not sure whether I should keep grinding it out at Paradise, or try moving to a different site. I don't really like playing so much without clearing a promo and/or bonus at the same time. I feel like I'm not getting full value for my play, since I'm paying all this rake but getting nothing from the poker room in return. I'm considering doing the Superior Poker promo at ECD. It's on the ActionPoker network, same as TigerGaming. Anyone have any experience with this network? My main concern is whether there is sufficient traffic in the evenings at $200 NL or higher.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1580

Hosted Another Tournament Last Night

2006-08-08T02:26:00.000-07:00

Nine players, $10 buy-in for 1000 chips, $10 add-on after 1 hour, unlimited $10 rebuys first hour. I had to rebuy once after a bad beat crippled me. I flopped top two pairs, and my buddy who only made bottom pair went all-in so that he could rebuy - he ended up rivering trips and doubled up at my expense.

After the add-on, I didn't get much in the way of cards, and what I did get, either didn't hold up or didn't get any action. My AKo vs ATo on an ace-high flop, turn gave my opponent a T, luckily he played it weakly and just called my turn bet, and I was able to check the river. Had 99 in last position and flopped top set with about 3 or 4 others in the hand, checked to me and I made a modest bet but got no action. Made the mistake of limping in with A7o in SB, flop came ace high, and I got called by one opponent to the end and lost to A8o I think.

I bled blinds until I finally had to push with A6o, BB called with J3o I think, he paired his 3 and I was out in 6th place.

I played some more at Paradise, and was down about $200 when a guy rivered a flush vs. my flopped two pair, despite me check-raising the flop and betting heavily on the turn. Turned out he had both a straight and a flush draw, so he was correct to call. I could have folded to his raise on the river, but by then I was pot-committed. Luckily, I managed to make most of it back when I got KK in BB, UTG+1 and MP+1 call for $2, BTN raises to $4, SB re-raises to $9, I re-re-raise to $23, BTN and SB both call. Flop comes up 225. SB checks, I bet $40 into $73 pot, BTN calls, SB folds. Turn is an 8. I bet $71 to put opponent all-in, he calls. River is a 7. He flips over AKo! You'd think he'd have at least on overpair, but go figure!

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1371

Donkeys: A Love-Hate Relationship

2006-08-06T02:30:00.000-07:00

"Donkey" and "fish" are terms used in poker to describe bad players. Most people use them interchangeably, but there is a subtle difference between them. Fish are generally players that are fairly new to the game of poker. They play weak starting hards, make bad calls, rarely raise, and don't fold when they should, simply because they are novices and don't know any better. You can usually find plenty of them at low-limit or micro-limit games. Donkeys, on the other hand, are more experienced players. They have probably been playing for a while, know a bit about the strategies of playing poker, and may have even read a book or two about poker. However, they continue to play weak hands and make mathematically bad calls, probably out of habit or just because they like to gamble and play a lot of hands. These players can be found at higher limit games.

It should be obvious that good players like to play against bad players. Over time, the mistakes that bad players make will result in them losing money, and good players who are able to take advantage of these mistakes will, over time, make a profit. So, when you look at the big picture like this, you gotta love donkeys and fish - these are the people who are going to be paying you off.

However, poker is also a game of luck, and even though you may be a more skillful player, sometimes you will still lose to a bad player simply because they got lucky. These are the times when you just hate donkeys. It can be frustrating to lose to someone who made a questionable call and got lucky with the cards. It can be very frustrating when this happens, and they take you for your entire stack. And then there are the times, like four nights ago, when it can be extremely frustrating 'cause it happens twice in one night!

That night, I ended up losing $376, mainly because of two hands where my donkey opponent got pretty lucky with the cards. The first hand, I'm in SB with 77. UTG+1 calls for $2, BTN calls, I raise it to $8. At this point, I'd be happy to just take the pot right now. With just two calls ahead of me, I'm probably ahead with my pocket 7's, but I'd rather not see the flop if possible. However, both opponents call. Flop comes up 3K2. Since I was the aggressor, I lead out with a bet of $15 into a $26 pot, hoping to take the pot right there. If someone calls, I'll probably have to fold on the turn. Both opponents call, and the turn brings a 7. I check, knowing someone behind me will likely bet, and I can check-raise. UTG+1 bets $20 into $71 pot, BTN calls, I raise it to $84. UTG+1 re-raises all-in to $103, BTN calls, I call. River is a 6, I go all-in for $73, BTN calls. UTG+1 flips over AKo for top-pair-top-kicker, BTN flips over 45o for a straight! I lost $199 in that hand because the donkey called a 4x pre-flop raise with a crappy 45o, then called a huge re-raise on the turn with his open-ended straight draw, when he wasn't getting the proper pot odds to call (pot was laying him only 3.35:1 odds, while the odds of making his straight draw were 4.75:1).

The other hand, I'm in SB with AA. UTG, UTG+1, MP, and BTN all call for $2. I raise it up to $11 to try to narrow down the field. BB calls, and then the rest all proceed to call! Right away, I knew I could be in trouble. AA is a great hand versus one or two opponents, but versus five the odds go way down. Flop comes up 24J rainbow. This is a fairly harmless flop for me, so I bet out $35 into a $66 pot. BB calls, folds to BTN who also calls. Turn is a 6, I push all-in for $88 into a $171 pot, BB raises all-in to $158, BTN calls for $111. River is a 9. BB turns over KK, BTN turns over J6s for two pairs. I lost $134 in that hand, because the donkey player called a big pre-flop raise with a crappy J6s and managed to hit two pairs.

Anyway, after that night it continued to go downhill. I played again two nights ago, and lost another $180. My QQ vs AJ, opponent rivers a third jack. AA vs 55, opponent flops a set. By then, my bankroll was down to about $900. Still good considering I started with $50, but sucks considering it was over $1400 a few nights before.

Well, I played again tonight, and I'm glad to report that I'm once again loving the donkeys. I made $505 this session, mainly due to three hands.

First one, I'm in MP with KsKh. UTG and UTG+1 call for $2, I raise it to $8, MP+2, BB, UTG, and UTG+1 all call. Flop comes up 49T with 2 clubs. It's checked to UTG+1, who bets $11 into $41 pot. I raise it to $30, MP+2 re-raises to $60, folds to UTG+1 who is all-in for $26, I call. Turn is a 5. At this point, I don't think he has AA, as he didn't re-raise me pre-flop. I also don't think he has a set, as he probably would have pushed all-in after my raise on the flop. However, I decide to check and call to play it more conservatively. So I check, he bets $100 into $187 pot, and I call. River is another 5. I check, he bets $100 into $387 pot, and I call. He turns over AcJc for the missed flush draw, UTG+1 turns over 8h7h for the missed open-ended straight draw, and I win a whopping $316 in this one hand.

Second hand, I'm in BB with AA. UTG calls for $2, MP+1 raises to $7, CO and SB call, I re-raise to $32, it's folded to SB who calls. Flop comes up 994 with 2 clubs. SB bets $11 into $80 pot, I raise to $30, he calls. Turn is a 3. He bets $45 into $140 pot, I raise all-in to $145, he thinks for a while and folds, and I net $120.

Third hand, I'm in MP with AhJc, UTG+1 calls, I call, BTN and SB call, BB checks. Flop comes up 5J7 with 2 clubs. SB bets $2 into $10 pot, UTG+1 calls, I raise to $12, only SB calls. Turn is a T. SB bets $10 into $36 pot, I raise it to $30, he calls. River is a 4. SB checks, I bet $50 into a $96 pot, SB calls. He turns up 9d7d for third pair and a missed gut-shot straight draw, and I net $99. I asked him afterwards why he called my river bet, and he replied that he made a pair of 7's - go figure!

Anyway, I'm back to just a bit below where I was before I had that huge downswing, so I'm pretty happy again. Variance can suck, but it's an important part of playing poker. That's why you need a sufficient bankroll to play at the limits you usually play. For NL games, the general recommendation is that you need between 10-20 buy-ins at the level you play. That's also why this challenge is so risky. If I had been playing $500 NL like I was supposed to, with just under three buy-ins in my bankroll, I probably would have come close to busting out from that 2.5xbuy-in downswing I had.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1395

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1458

2006-08-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Played a bit again, tonight, and managed to make $251. Cards were just so-so, with most of the profit tonight being made in one hand, where my KK held up vs. JJ to net me $199. It's good to be back on track to reaching my goal. Just need to win another 3 buy-ins at $200 NL and I'll be done.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1458

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1206

2006-07-31T03:30:00.000-07:00

Well, my winning streak at Paradise is finally over, with my last three sessions being losing ones. It was bound to happen, though, so I don't feel too bad. Tonight, though, could have been a winning session if I didn't play one particular hand very badly.

With blinds of $1/$2, I'm in MP with JhJc. It's folded to me, so I raise it up to $8. Only the SB calls. Flop comes up 8hKd2h, and SB checks, so I bet $12 into a pot of $18. SB raises to $24, and I call. Turn is Ah. SB bets $24 into a $66 pot, and I call. River is the 7h. SB bets $45 into a $114 pot, I raise it to $160 to put him all-in, and he calls. He turns over KhJd for the nut flush, and I lose $216 in this hand.

In retrospect, I should have folded after being check-raised on the flop. I had another chance to fold on the turn, but I didn't think he had a higher heart, so I chased the flush. Then, on the river, he only bet 1/3 the pot, so I mis-read it thinking he might not have a better flush, and raised him all-in. So, a combination of not respecting his check-raise, chasing a non-nut flush, and misinterpretting his river bet led to a very poorly played hand on my part. At least I'll learn something from this hand, though it was an expensive lesson.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1206

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1370

2006-07-28T02:28:00.000-07:00

I tried to join a $500 NL table today, but apparently on Paradise, you need to have $2000 in your account before you can join a $500 NL table. This is supposed to be for "security reasons", though I have no idea what that really means. As for my challenge, however, I will have to try to finish it playing at $200 NL. I thought about switching to another poker room, since I've just finished clearing my bonus, but I think I'll just stay at Paradise. The play at $200 NL is soft enough that I feel I have a good chance of completing my challenge successfully there.

The cards have been running a bit cold lately for me, though, with no monster hands coming my way since the last time I doubled up my bankroll. I did get AA twice tonight, however, and won two very large pots with them. At one point, my bankroll was at about $1550, but then I lost a couple big pots when my QQ ran up against KK and we both made sets, and when my AQo lost to A5s on a 22A5T board. Oh well, I was still up overall for the night, so my streak of winning sessions continues on Paradise.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1370

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1127

2006-07-25T03:14:00.000-07:00

I played a bit tonight at Paradise, but there was no traffic at $500 NL, so I had to go back to $200 NL. Managed to increase the bankroll a bit, but nothing too exciting. I will keep trying to find a good $500 NL game, but if I can't find any I may have to try to finish the challenge playing $200 NL. I still have to finish clearing the bonus, so I don't really want to change poker rooms, yet.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1127

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $1034

2006-07-24T00:54:00.000-07:00

Well, my winning streak at Paradise continues. I finally got a chance to play again tonight, and managed to more than double up, allowing me to move up to my final level of $500 NL. This is getting a bit nerve-racking. I just hope all this good fortune so far isn't setting me up to fail on my final level :(

I'll just summarize the key hands:

TT vs AA - I flop a set, and net $253
KQo vs QJs - we both flop trip queens, but I have the better kicker, and I net $125
AKs vs K9s - 2K9 flop, but runner-runner J's gives me the better 2-pair, and I net $94
QQ vs Q5o - board is 534A7, no idea why he calls me to the end, and I net $59

Overall, I didn't find the play at $200 NL to be very much different. It's a bit slower-paced, with people thinking about their hands more, before deciding their action. It's also a little bit tighter, although I did manage to find some loose tables to play at. I always try to find tables with players-per-flop% in the 30's. Anything less than 30%, I find the play is too tight and I don't get enough action when I get a good hand. Also, too low a percentage will generally indicate a table full of better players. Anything higher than 40%, I find the play to be too loose, and thus the variance (swings in my bankroll) becomes too high. With too many players seeing the flop, my strong starting hands are less likely to win, although when they do win they will win a bigger pot to more than compensate, on average. At $200 NL, there are still some obviously bad players, as the last hand above clearly shows.

Anyway, I'm a bit nervous about playing at $500 NL, but I'm not about to quit now. There doesn't seem to be much traffic at this level either, at least on Paradise. I've checked a few times, and there is usually only one full table and one or two short-handed tables playing during peak hours. The play at the full tables seems quite tight, too, with the players-per-flop% usually at 30% or less. I'm only going to play at a full table, so it looks like I'll have to play one table at a time, instead of two like I have been doing at the previous limits. I guess that's better anyway, as I can devote my full attention to trying to finish my challenge successfully. Wish me luck!

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $1034

Played My Third Home Tourney Last Night

2006-07-22T09:59:00.000-07:00

The first home game I played in was back in December. I was a complete newbie then, and was the first one knocked out. The second time, I hosted a tourney in April. By then I had been playing limit hold'em for a while online, so I was more comfortable with the game, but my no-limit experience was completely lacking. That one I finished eighth out of a field of eleven. Fast-forward three months, and now I'm at the point where I feel I'm a solid no-limit player in full-table cash games, but my tournament play still needs work. So last night, I went in thinking that I could probably squeak into the money playing my tight-aggressive game, but probably won't come close to winning it. Well, surprise, surprise! I ended up placing first out of sixteen players for my first ever tournament win!

The night started off with a bit of $0.25/$0.25 limit hold'em, with about six of us at the table. I played tight, and managed to win a big pot when my pocket 7's made a set on the flop. Won maybe a couple other small pots, and finished ahead about $4.

Then the two-table tourney started. It was a $10 buy-in for 1000 chips, unlimited rebuys in the first hour if you bust, and a $10 add-on for 1000 more chips at the end of the first hour. I didn't get any good cards for a while, and limped in with maybe a couple drawing hands which completely missed on the flop. Nearing the end of the first hour, I was down to about 850 chips, and with a few limpers ahead of me, I limped in with KJo in late position. I hit a K on the flop, and took down a decent sized pot.

After the add-on, I continued to get trashy hands. Luckily, I got to see a few flops for free from the big blind, and I think I took down a couple pots with top pair or two pair. I can't really remember as I didn't take any notes. Eventually, it got down to eight of us, and we all drew for spots at a single table. I had about 3600 in chips, with blinds at 300/600, and the very first hand at the final table I got AKo in middle position. With a couple limpers ahead of me, I pushed all-in. The chip leader behind me thought for a while, as he didn't have a read on me since we were on different tables. He decided to call, and a small stack whom I had covered also called. Chip leader turned up J8o and small stack 22. I didn't hit an ace or king, but luckily rivered a straight and tripled up. I won another decent pot when I raised pre-flop with AQs, got one or two callers, and won with a Q-high flop. I was the chip leader by then, with one other guy close behind. I knocked someone out when, in the big blind, I checked with 97o and the flop came up 89T, giving me middle pair and an open-ended straight draw. I check-called my opponent's weak bets which gave me good odds, and rivered another 9, went all-in, and was called. Can't remember what he flipped over, but he lost.

It eventually got to heads-up, where I had about a 2:1 chip lead. My lead dwindled to about 1.5:1 when I got KJo and raised to 5000 with blinds at around 800/1600. My opponent called, and flop came up something like 426, basically all low cards. He thought for a long time, while staring me down. By then, I could pretty much tell he had just two overcards, since he usually bet without hesitating much if he had anything on the flop. He pushed all-in, I thought for a while, and decided to call based on my read, and also because it was getting late (about 1:30 am), and I had to work in the morning. He turned up Q9o, and admitted he was trying to bluff me out of the pot, and my king-high held to the river.

All in all, it was a fun night, and I was pretty surprised to win it since I didn't get many good starting hands at all, my best ones being AKo and AQs. I didn't get any premium pocket pairs at all. Most of the players there were loose-passive, and a couple were loose-aggressive, which pretty much fit well against my tight-aggressive style. I also got to meet Doug, one of the guys behind Cake Poker. He was really nice, and brought along a Cake t-shirt which was the bounty prize for knocking him out. For a guy who's running a poker room, though, his poker skills need a bit of work, as he was second to get knocked out. He told me that he was pretty happy so far with the number of players at Cake, considering that they haven't even started marketing yet, and are basically still tweaking their software. I think I'll sign up and check it out, maybe play in a few of the freerolls.

I made about $170 last night, but I'm not going to bother including home game results in my poker earnings. I play these games more for entertainment than for profit. Besides, I gave it all to my wife and kids so that they can treat themselves to something nice, since I stayed out all night. I think I'll do that from now on, kinda like how Barry Greenstein gives all his tournament profits to charity :)

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $436

2006-07-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

Man, Paradise Poker has been very good to me so far! I've only played 110 hands since my last update, and already I've doubled up again and will be moving up to $200 NL.

There were three key hands this time. First one, I'm dealt TT in the big blind. Four people limp in for $1, including the SB. I raise it up to $5, hoping to steal the pot, but if someone calls I may still get a favourable flop. UTG+1 and MP call. Flop comes up 9hQsTh. I hit my set, but with a 2-flush on board, I don't like to slow play, plus since I was the aggressor, I go ahead and lead out. I bet $8 into a $17.50 pot. I made the bet slightly less than half pot-sized to make it look like a continuation bet trying to steal the pot. Only MP calls. Turn is an Ad. I decide to check to make it look like I'm either scared of the ace, or I haven't made my hand and don't want to put more money in the pot. MP bets $24 into $35.50 pot, I push all-in to $87, he has me covered and calls. River is an 8c, opponent turns up AcQc, and I net $104 in this hand.

Second hand, I'm in CO and dealt QdJd. UTG calls for $1, I call, BB checks. Flop comes up 6c2d8d. BB checks, UTG bets $5.50 into $3.50 pot. I think about the overbet for a while, then decide to call with the two overcards and a flush draw. BB folds, and turn comes up 9d. Yay, I made my flush! UTG bets $12 into $14.50 pot, I raise all-in to $62, UTG calls. River is a Qc. UTG turns up Tc7d, showing he made a gut-shot straight on the turn, but loses to my flush. I net $67 here.

The other hand, I'm in BB and dealt AA. UTG +1 calls for $1, MP+1 raises to $3.50, and it's folded around to me. I contemplate a re-raise, then decide to call. UTG+1 also calls. Flop comes up Kd6s7d. Even though there's a 2-flush on board, I decide to check as I'm pretty sure someone else behind me will bet. UTG+1 bets $4 into an $11 pot, MP folds, I raise to $12, he calls. Turn is a 3s. Pot is $35, I bet $30 to put UTG+1 all-in , he calls for $27. River is an 8s, opponent turns up KcJd, and I net $44 in this hand.

So, I've played for three nights and have managed to double up each night. I know I'm playing solid poker, but I've also been pretty lucky as I haven't been cold-decked yet. Hopefully, my winning streak will continue and I can finish this challenge before too long.

Earnings-to-date: $4197
Challenge bankroll: $436

A Piece Of The WSOP Pie

2006-07-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

I didn't make any attempts this year to qualify for the World Series of Poker. I've only been playing for about seven months now, and am still working on improving my game. I've been focussing on full-table no-limit cash games, and haven't worked much on my tournament play at all. For next year, though, I will definately be working on improving my tournament game to try to win a seat at the WSOP.

Fellow PSO poker blogger Actyper, on the other hand, is an excellent tournament player, and has been working hard this year to qualify for the WSOP. He finally accomplished that on Sunday by winning a WSOP Main Event package through PokerStars. Congratulations on a well-deserved win!

Now, the next best thing to actually playing at the WSOP, I think, is to have a stake in it and have someone to cheer for. So I asked Actyper if he would sell me a stake in his tournament, and he graciously (and very humbly, I might add :) ) agreed. So for $200 (2% of the $10,000 buy-in), I now have a 2% stake in his WSOP finish. With an estimated $10 million first prize at the Main Event this year, this means my $200 investment has the potential to turn into $200,000. Not too shabby, eh?

I wish him the best of luck at the tables, and will be following his progress closely starting next Friday, July 28th. No pressure, just have fun out there and do your best!

Earnings-to-date: $4197 (took out the $200 stake money)
Challenge bankroll: $228

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $215

2006-07-17T01:40:00.000-07:00

I managed to double up again after a night of play, and will be moving up to $100 NL. Gee, I hope the rest of the challenge goes this well!

Had two big hands tonight. First one, I pick up AA in the big blind. UTG and UTG+1 call, MP raises to 3xBB, I re-raise to 9x, MP calls. Flop comes up 3cJs5s. I bet $5 into $10 pot, MP raises to $15, I re-raise to $35, MP re-re-raises me all-in, I call. Turn is a Td, river a 4d. MP turns up KdJd, and I net $47. Man, talk about overplaying top pair!

Second hand, I'm in CO with AhQh. It's folded around to MP+2, who raises to 4x, I call, the rest fold. Flop comes up QsQd7h. MP+2 bets $3.50 into $4.75 pot. I pause, pretending to hesitate, then call his bet. Turn is a 2c. MP+2 checks, I pause a bit again and make a smallish bet of $5 into an $11.75 pot. MP+2 raises to $14, I take a really long pause before calling. River is an 8s. MP+2 pushes all-in, I of course call. He turns over KdTd for an outright bluff, and I net $49. I felt really good about this hand, as I'm sure my hesitant reactions played a large part in encouraging him to bluff.

Earnings-to-date: $4397
Challenge bankroll: $215

Challenge Update: Bankroll At $112

2006-07-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

Well, after one night of playing, I managed to double up my bankroll, and will be moving up to the next level at $50 NL.

There were two key hands where I won big pots tonight. First one, I'm in UTG+1 with JJ and raise to 4xBB. MP+2, CO, Button, and SB all call. BB re-raises to 9x, everyone calls. Flop comes up 3s5hQs. SB checks, BB bets $2 into $13.50 pot, I raise to $6, MP+2 is all-in for $4.15, folds around to BB who calls. Turn is 7h. BB checks, I push all-in, BB folds. River is Jd. MP+2 flips over 33 for a set of 3's, and loses to my rivered set of jacks. Yeah, I got very lucky there, and netted $20.

Second hand, I pick up KK in the big blind. UTG calls, CO raises to 4xBB, Button calls, I re-raise to 13x, CO re-re-raises to 22x, I call. Flop comes up 5J2 rainbow, I bet $6 into $12 pot, CO calls. Turn is a Q. I push $13.50, CO calls. River is another Q. Opponent turns up AhKh, and I net $24. Yeah, he was a total fish. I mean AK suited is a nice hand, but calling my huge bets when his hand hasn't even improved? I only hope there's more players like this at the higher levels.

Earnings-to-date: $4397
Challenge bankroll: $112

Cash Game Challenge

2006-07-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

I was planning to do more promos at ECD so that I could get enough points to order a poker table. However, the table I wanted is no longer available, plus now that they've removed Caribbean Sun Poker as a promo, I won't be able to get enough points anyway. So I'm taking a little break from clearing promos and will be starting a Cash Game Challenge for myself.

This challenge was inspired by fellow PSO blogger Scottwire's Challenge, which in turn was inspired by Chris Ferguson, the poker pro. Chris recently won $2 in a Full Tilt freeroll, and challenged himself to turn this into $10,000 before the WSOP Main Event. I'm not sure how far he has progressed recently, though, since I can't seem to find any updates on the web. Last I heard he was up to about $200 back in the middle of June.

My own challenge will be a little less daring. I will be depositing $50 into a poker room, and will start by playing two tables of $25 NL. I will move up in stakes when I make enough for two buy-ins at the next level. The challenge will end when I either bust out, or make $2000, which would take me to stakes of $500 NL. The highest level I have played before is $200 NL on Poker Share. I did okay at that level, although I only played for a little while to quickly finish up my promo. If I can make it to $500 NL, it will be interesting to see how the competition is at those stakes.

Paradise has a $100 reload bonus offer which clears after 1000 raked hands of minimum $0.25, so I will be starting the challenge there. Any bonus money earned will be included in the challenge, so I will likely be moving from site to site to take advantage of any bonus offers. I will transfer the starting bankroll of $50 out of my current bankroll figures, and will be keeping track of its progress separately in a sidebar.

On a side note, my blog entries are more or less up to date, now. I've noticed that my Earnings-to-date figure is a little bit off compared to my actual current bankroll+cashouts+prizes, so I will adjust the figures in this blog entry. I probably lost the $13 playing at one of the poker sites, which I have not accounted for.

Earnings-to-date: $4397
Challenge bankroll: $50

Reload At PartyPoker

2006-07-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

Party offered me a reload bonus of $75 cleared after 750 raked hands. I took this opportunity to deposit some money into my Party account so that I can withdraw it into my Canadian bank account. As I mentioned before, an electronic funds transfer through Party is the best way to withdraw money into your bank account, since Party has extremely good currency exchange rates. For example, Party's exchange rate today was 1.1466, while the Bank of Canada's nominal rate was 1.1274 and cash rate (which includes the bank's service charge) was 1.08.

After finishing the play requirements, I lost $23 at the tables and earned $75 in bonus money, for a net profit of $52.

Earnings-to-date: $4460

Finished Hollywood Poker

2006-07-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

I played terribly on this promo. I made several bad calls, and by the end of the requirements, I had lost $192 at the tables, earned a $50 bonus, and got 600 ECD points (which I'm saving up for now), for a net loss of $142.

I won't get into the details of the key hands, but at least I identified a leak in my game from this experience. Most of my losses were due to an inability to fold my hand even though the betting was pretty clearly telling me that I was already beaten. I'm gonna have to work harder at plugging up this leak.

Even ignoring my poor performance, I can't really recommend this site, at least for now, because of one reason: glitchy software. The hand history file frequently just stopped being written to, which messed up my Poker Tracker records. I had to find out which hands I was missing, and then manually pull up the missing hands from their website. However, the website hand histories don't show hole card data, so my Poker Tracker records are still kind of incomplete. Partway through the promo, they had a software update which fixed this problem; however, the update created worse problems. The tables became very laggy, and it was impossible to play more than two tables at a time, as the program would crash. And if you put yourself on several waiting lists before you started playing, the program would often crash if, while you were playing at a table, these other tables popped up because a seat opened up for you. Anyway, the second I finished the requirements, I quickly withdrew my money and left the site. It was just too frustrating, and I don't plan on going back any time soon.

Earnings-to-date: $4408

Finished Ladbrokes Poker

2006-07-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

After playing about 800 hands of $0.05/$0.10 NL 6-max, I managed to lose only $1.46 at the tables despite playing like a fish. I then played some $100 NL 'cause I felt kinda bad for taking advantage of their bonus system, and ended up making $81 at those tables! I earned $145 in bonuses (I screwed up my initial deposit, and ended up getting only $70 instead of $100 in deposit bonus), and got $50 from LawGuy32 for using his referral, for a net profit of about $275.

I highly recommend this offer since the bonuses are so juicy (although I think they've changed the referral bonus, now), and the risk in playing the micro-limits is so small.

Earnings-to-date: $4550

Introduction

2006-06-26T02:19:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog about poker! I've been following some great blogs from fellow players at Poker Source Online, and have been inspired to create one of my own. I'm hoping my adventures will be an interesting read for you, will teach you a few things about poker, and perhaps will inspire you, if you haven't already, to venture out into the world of poker yourself.

I've only been playing poker regularly for about six months. My first serious game of poker took place on Nov. 26, 2005. This was the day of my friend Eagle2727's home tournament. Before this day and the preparation for it, I had played very little poker, and in fact only vaguely knew how the different poker hands ranked. I was well aware of the Texas Hold'Em craze that was going on, but didn't even know how to play that variation of poker. A few weeks before the tournament, I surfed online and familiarized myself with the basic rules of Texas Hold'Em, and then installed a java version of the game onto my cellphone, which I played often up until the day of the tournament. When tournament day finally arrived, I was pretty excited to see how my new "skills" would fare. Well, needless to say, that night ended with me being the first one knocked out. In my defense, however, it was a bad beat that did me in - I held two pairs after the turn, and my opponent put me all-in with top-pair-medium-kicker and managed to hit one of his five outs on the river (so he only had about a 10% chance to beat me).

Well, I was pretty disappointed at my performance, but that night was definately a turning point for me. I'm a pretty competitive person, and I like to do well at the things I try, so that performance motivated me to learn more about playing Texas Hold'Em. Luckily for me, the consolation prize for being the first one knocked out of the tournament was a Texas Hold'Em for Dummies booklet and pack of cards. Although it is a very basic guide, I read through it and started to learn some of the important concepts necessary to playing poker well. To apply these concepts in practice, however, I needed to play against real people, and I needed to play regularly and fairly often if I ever hoped to improve. That's where online poker comes in, and that is pretty much where the start of my journey through the world of poker begins, about one month after that fateful tournament.

Over the next few weeks, I will be working to fill in some of the details chronicling my journey to the present day, so please check back often and read the Archives as I try to get up-to-date. These blog entries will clarify how I started from zero and ended up presently at about $4300 in cash and prizes, which is about 43% of my target of $10,000 for 2006. My narrative will assume that the reader has at least a basic knowledge of poker. If I use any terms or talk about any concepts which are a little more advanced, then I will try my best to first give a brief explanation of them.

Got $5 Free From Absolute Poker

2006-06-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, Absolute deposited $5 into my account for free. Today, I decided to play a SNG with it. I wanted to try a $10+1 SNG ($10 buy-in, $1 tourney fee), so I played for a while at a $0.05/$0.10 NL table to see if I could win enough for the buy-in. I caught two good hands - KK, which held up to the river, and TJo, which made a straight on the turn - and after an hour I managed to turn the $5 into $11.

I then played a $10+1 SNG. I played pretty solid, and with four people left and me with a medium stack, two others go all-in against the chip leader and lose. In heads-up, I play okay for a while, but don't catch any good hands, and eventually finished second for $27.

Then I played a $10 Multi-Table Tournament (MTT). Again, I played pretty well at the beginning, but didn't get many good cards later on, and finished just in the money for $11.

Then I joined a $0.05/$0.10 NL table, and in the third hand, I lose $20 with the following hand. I call UTG with Ah3h, there's a small raise but 5 other players end up calling to see the flop. Flop comes up 4hTh2d giving me 12 outs with the flush + gutshot straight draw. This gives me odds of about 1.1:1 to make my hand by the river. I ended up calling two all-ins on the flop, since the pot odds were about 1.24:1, giving me the odds to call. Turn comes up 3c, river Kd, and the smaller all-in shows KTo to take the main pot with two pairs, while the bigger all-in shows 4cTc to take the side pot with two pairs.

I quit for the night after that. Luckily, I'm still up about $3 from my original free $5.

Earnings-to-date: $4275

Played A Bit At Full Tilt

2006-06-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

ECD held a $1 "freeroll" tournament on Full Tilt today. After building up a nice stack, I overplayed top-pair-second-best-kicker and lost most of my stack to an opponent with top-pair-top-kicker, and got knocked out shortly after that. Then I played a $6 sit-n-go and lost that, for a net loss of $7 today.

Earnings-to-date: $4267

Started New Promo: Hollywood Poker

2006-06-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

I started an ECD promo for 600 ECD points ($60 value) at Hollywood Poker (HP) today. HP is on the same network as Poker Room (PR), which I did back in January. I had an okay experience at PR - started off down, but managed to end up with a modest profit at the tables. I'm still a bit hesitant, though, about playing on this network again due to all the negative feedback I have read on the PSO forums, mainly about how the loose players seem to frequently hit their draws to beat you by the river. Hopefully, though, now that I have a bit more experience, I'll be able to handle these types of tables.

Finished Full Tilt

2006-06-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

I played $100 NL, and this promo was probably one of the fastest promo's I've done so far, almost as easy of PartyPoker's 250 raked hands. I played for less than four hours, and total of only 374 hands. I made $168 at the tables, earned $15 in bonus money, and got 9000 PSO points (which I'm saving for now), for a net profit of $183.

Overall, I enjoyed playing at Full Tilt. Some people have mentioned that the tables tend to be tougher there, since a lot of the pros play on that site, but I didn't run into any problems.

Earnings-to-date: $4274

Started New Promo: Full Tilt

2006-06-10T20:16:00.000-07:00

PSO upgraded their Full Tilt promo to 9000 PSO points, so I decided to sign up for it today. It requires 250 Full Tilt Points to clear, with 0.01 points being earned for each $0.01 in rake. I made a deposit so that I would earn $15 in bonus money after clearing the promo requirements.

Finished A PartyPoker Reload

2006-06-09T23:53:00.000-07:00

I finished a PartyPoker reload today. I can't seem to do well at Party for some reason. I lost $56 at the tables, and earned a $100 bonus, for a net profit of $44.

Earnings-to-date: $4091

Signed Up At Ladbrokes Poker

2006-06-08T20:13:00.000-07:00

I signed up for Ladbrokes Poker today because of a recommendation from a thread in the PSO forums. Ladbrokes is European site which uses the Prima software, but operates on their own network. The have a $100 deposit bonus which clears after 500 contributed raked hands. If you get referred by a friend, you get an additional $50 bonus which clears at the same time. Plus, if you fill out a profile on their website, you get another $25 bonus. Finally, I signed up using Lawguy32's referral ID, and he offered to split his referral money with me, adding another $50 to the offer.

So in total, you can get $225 after clearing 500 contributed raked hands. The best thing about this offer, however, is that you can clear it playing micro-limits. I will be playing $0.05/$0.10 NL short-handed 6-max games, and plan to call with just about all but the trashiest of hands. Unless I flop a monster hand, I will then fold to any action. This will make the promo clear much faster, since most of the hands I get, I will be contributing to the pot.

Finished Dream Poker

2006-06-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

This turned out to be a great promo for me. I made $276 at the tables, earned a $100 deposit bonus, earned a 300 pc Tiki Kings chip set (which I valued at $150), and also qualified for the Gold Club $2000 freeroll, where I managed to finish in the money for another $70. My net profit, then, was $596.

Needless to say, I really enjoyed playing at Dream Poker. As I mentioned before, I like to play at the Bad Beat tables on Prima, as it can be pretty profitable playing against these gambler-types, and it is well-worth the extra rake that you need to pay for the Bad Beat Jackpot. Plus, if you are really lucky, you might get quad 8's or better and lose the hand, in which case your table would win the jackpot (though I've never seen it happen).

Their Dream System is also pretty fun. Every two weeks, the top 80 players with the most Dream Points get to play in a $2000 freeroll, and the top 30 players get to play in a tournament for their chosen Dream Experience. My chosen dream was a weekend at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, and I was going to make a run to qualify for the tourney, but I ended up getting sick and didn't feel much like playing poker online.

Earnings-to-date: $4047

Finished PokerShare

2006-06-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

I made $116 at the tables, earned a $50 bonus, and earned a 300 pc Nevada Jacks chip set which I upgraded to 500 pc for 10,000 PSO points (which I've already saved up), for a net profit of $416 (I valued the poker chips at $250).

The promo was clearing pretty slowly for me playing at $25 - $100 NL. I needed to finish the promo fairly quickly, since I wanted to get the poker chips shipped to me in the US during my upcoming Seattle trip for the July 1st Canada Day long weekend, so that I could save on shipping and duty. So for the last third or so of the promo, I switched to $200 NL and played extremely tightly, and managed to clear the promo much quicker, and luckily also managed to not lose my shirt in the process.

I would not recommend this promo for low-limit players. It is best cleared at $200 NL or $100 NL. It will be a pretty long grind at $50 or $25 NL. Also, since this site is fairly new and caters mostly to Europeans, the traffic is extremely light during North American evening hours. You would be lucky to find two or three tables total at $25-$200 NL unless you play during the daytime, and if you play limit hold'em then just forget about it, as limit tables are almost non-existent. Also, I've heard reports of the software being a little buggy, although I myself did not experience any problems. This site is also not compatible with Poker Tracker. The one redeeming thing about this site, however, is how bad most of the players are. For some reason, there are quite a few players who apparently don't know much about poker, and will call your bets with trash like middle or bottom pair.

Earnings-to-date: $3451

Started New Promo: Dream Poker

2006-05-31T20:11:00.000-07:00

I started an eCasinoDeals (ECD) promo for a 300 pc Tiki Kings chip set at Dream Poker today. I wanted one more set of poker chips for cash games, as my Nevada Jacks are being customized for tournament games only. Dream Poker is on the Prima network, and the requirements for the promo are 30 Dream Points. Dream Points are accumulated at various rates depending on what level tables you play at. I will be playing $0.50/$1 NL, so I will need 390 contributed raked hands to clear the requirements. Since I will need to contribute to the pot for the hand to be counted as raked, I estimate that I will need to play about 1600 hands to finish the promo (I usually contribute to about 25% of the hands, including blinds). I made a deposit for a $100 bonus which will clear shortly before the promo requirements are met.

Played At UltimateBet To Get Some Rakeback

2006-05-29T20:10:00.000-07:00

I'm short about 600 PSO points to do the 500 pc. upgrade for my Poker Share Nevada Jacks promo, so I played some $100 NL at UB to earn some rakeback, which gets paid out in PSO points. I did surprisingly well, making $209 at the tables, earning $7 in bonus money, for a net profit of $216.

Biggest hand of the night was when I held AhAs and there was heavy action preflop from two other players, with the short stack going all-in. After the flop of 9c4hQh, I go all-in and the other stack calls. Short stack shows 2h2c, other stack shows ThTc, and my aces hold up to net $114.

Earnings-to-date: $3035

Started New Promo: PokerShare

2006-05-25T20:04:00.000-07:00

I signed up for another Nevada Jacks chip set promo at PokerShare today. PokerShare was recently added to the list of PSO promos, replacing Gaming Club. It requires 500 Frequent Player Points (FPP) to clear. FPP are awarded for each hand where the rake exceeds $0.25, with the amount varying depending on the size of the rake. I think this promo might take a while to complete playing anything less than $1/$2 NL, due to the points payout structure. I made a deposit for a $50 bonus which will clear at the same time as the PSO promo.

Finished Titan Poker

2006-05-23T20:04:00.000-07:00

I lost $162 at the tables, earned $20 in deposit bonus and an additional $20 just for logging on the first time, and earned a NJ ceramic poker chip set which I upgraded to 500 pieces for 10,000 PSO points (which I've saved up already), for a net profit of $128 (I valued the poker chips at $250).

Most of the loss was due to one hand where I put all my money in with the best of it, and lost to a two outer. UTG calls, I call in UTG+1 with 77, MP min-raises, UTG and I call. Flop comes up 297, UTG bets $2 into $7.50 pot, I raise to $6, MP re-raises to $10, UTG folds, I re-re-raise to $20, MP goes all-in to $83.50, I call. Turn is an A, river a T, opponent turns up AA, and I lose $96 in this one hand.

Besides the terrible performance at the tables, I actually enjoyed the site. The software is pretty nice, and the play is pretty soft, although the traffic is a bit light. The only real complaints I had were that the site is not compatible with Poker Tracker (but support is coming soon), and that there is no 4-colour deck option. In a 4-color deck, the spades are black, clubs green, hearts red, and diamonds blue. I always try to play with a 4-colour deck (even in home games, where I use 4-colour plastic Copag cards), since it makes identifying flush draws so much easier.

Earnings-to-date: $2819

Started New Promo: Titan Poker

2006-05-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

There's a couple of interesting promotions at PSO this month. First off, they have removed the one set per household limit for the Nevada Jacks poker chips promotion. Secondly, for Titan this month, in addition to the regular free-gift promo, anyone who signs up for Titan will have a stake in MikeJ's (one of the PSO founders) WSOP tournaments in July. This means if Mike finishes in the money at the WSOP, he will distribute 50% of his winnings as PSO points to the members who sign up for Titan this month. They had a similar promo last year, and Mike managed to finish in the money back then.

I decided to sign up for Titan and do the NJ promo, which I will upgrade to a 500 pc set for 10,000 PSO points. I figure any serious poker player needs a nice set of poker chips, and besides, I'm kind of tired of playing just for money to pay the bills. This month is also the perfect time to start the Titan promo, as PSO have recently cut the requirements from 3500 Titan Points, to 3000, and now to only 1500. Titan points can be earned at cash games, the amount varying according to the rake, with a maximum of 11 Points per hand. I estimate that I will earn an average of 2.5 Points per hand, so it will take me about 600 hands to complete this promo.

Finished Golden Palace Poker

2006-05-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

I made $122 at the tables, earned an $80 bonus, and earned 6000 PSO points (which I'm saving up for poker chips), for a net profit of $202. Overall, I really enjoyed playing at Golden Palace. The software is nice (I especially like the unique sound effects and animation), and the players are pretty fishy.

Earnings-to-date: $2691

Started New Promo: Golden Palace Poker

2006-05-15T20:08:00.000-07:00

I started a new PSO promo for 6000 PSO points at Golden Palace Poker today. It requires 10,000 Action Points to clear, and I made a deposit to get an $80 bonus which will clear at the same time. One action point is awarded for every $0.01 of rake that you contribute. So, to get 10,000 AP you will need to contribute $100 in rake. I would guess that I contribute to the pot about 25% of the time, including blinds, with an average contribution of about $0.25. Therefore, I would have to play about 1600 hands of poker to reach 10,000 AP ($100 / $0.25 / 0.25).

Finished Reload At Bet365 Poker

2006-05-13T20:18:00.000-07:00

I made $138 at the tables, and earned $100 in bonus money, for a net profit of $238. This kind of makes up for my poor performance at Gaming Club.

Earnings-to-date: $2489

Finished Gaming Club Poker

2006-05-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

This was my most disappointing finish so far. I lost $210 at the tables, earned a $50 bonus, and earned 6000 PSO points (which I'm saving up for poker chips), for a net loss of -$160.

There were about three key hands that were responsible for most of my loss. One hand I played very poorly, another I got rivered by a straight draw, and another I lost with my JJ overpair to a slow-played set of sevens.

For the hand I misplayed, I had 83o in the BB with six limpers. Flop comes up 893 rainbow, I check, UTG bets $2 into $7.50 pot, everyone else folds, I call. Turn is a 5, I check, UTG bet $2, I call. River is a J, I check, UTG bets $10, I raise to $25, UTG goes all-in to $74, I call. Opponent turns up QTo for the straight, and I lose $89. Lesson learned: bottom two pair can be a decent hand, but is way too weak to slow-play! And calling a re-raise all-in on the river with just middle and bottom two pair, and a possible straight on the board - not a good idea!

The other hand I have QJo in MP+1, it's folded to me so I raised 3x, BB calls. Flop comes up Js9c5s, BB checks, I bet $6 into $6.50 pot, BB min-raises to $12, I call. Turn is 6c, BB bets $18, I call. River is Qs, BB goes all-in, I called for my remaining $28. BB turns up Ts8c for the straight, and I lose $61. Looking back, I'm sure I misplayed this one as well. Top pair with Q kicker is not that great of a hand. I probably should have folded after being check-raised at the flop, or after being bet into on the turn. Even though it turned out he was on an open-ended straight draw, his most likely holding would be something like AJs so I shouldn't have called to the end like that.

The last hand I basically had no chance. With JJ and a board of 67349, the opponent just check-calls me to the river with his flopped set of 7's, so I end up losing $48 in this hand.

Earnings-to-date: $2251

Started Reload At Bet365 Poker

2006-05-05T20:18:00.000-07:00

Bet365 has a 5x reload going on, so I decided to do a deposit to clear the $100 bonus after 1000 raked hands ($0.25 minimum).

Finished Poker Rewards

2006-05-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

I made $178 at the tables, earned a $75 bonus, and earned 6000 PSO points (which I'm saving up for poker chips later), for a net profit of $253.

Someone on the PSO forums had recommended playing at the Bad Beat tables instead of the regular tables, because the players there tend to be gamblers and play a lot looser. I think I ended up doing pretty well in this promo because of the action at these tables.

Two consecutive hands accounted for practically all my profit at the tables. First one, I have 76o in middle position, and with one limper ahead of me I decided to limp in. Person behind me min-raises, three people call, and I close the betting by calling. Flop comes up 777! Of course, I check to slow-play it, person behind me bets, button calls, I call. Turn is a 5, I check, person behind bets, button calls, I call. River is a K, I check, person behind goes all-in, button folds, I call. Opponent turns up KK for the nut full-house, and I net $96 for my quads.

The very next hand, I pick up AA. UTG and UTG+1 limp in, I raise to 5xBB and get 3 callers including the 2 original limpers. Flop comes up 36Q rainbow. UTG bets, UTG+1 folds, I call, person behind calls. Turn is an 8, UTG bets, I call, person behind calls. River is another 8, UTG goes all-in, I call, person behind folds. Opponent turns up QT suited, and apparently thought his top-pair-medium-kicker with another pair on the board was good for his entire stack! I netted $83 from this hand.

Earnings-to-date: $2411

Reloads At UltimateBet

2006-05-02T20:29:00.000-07:00

UltimateBet has fairly frequent reload bonuses that come about once a month. Bonus money at UB never expires, so I like to take advantage of the reload offers by making a deposit and loading up on the bonus money for the time in the future when I might be playing at UB more often (probably when I've done all the PSO promos). You need to play a few hands after making a deposit for the reload, otherwise they may take away your bonus dollars. After several reloads over the past few months, I'm up about $116 including earned bonus money.

Earnings-to-date: $2158

Started New Promo: Gaming Club Poker

2006-04-29T20:22:00.000-07:00

I started a new PSO promo for 6000 PSO points at Gaming Club today. Gaming Club is also on the Prima network. The promo requires 750 raked hands at $0.25 minimum, and they have a $50 deposit bonus.

Played A Bit At Absolute Poker

2006-04-24T23:35:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a little at Absolute Poker the past few days, and lost $43 at the tables, but earned $40 in bonus money, for a net loss of $3.

Earnings-to-date: $2042

Switching to No-Limit Hold'em

2006-04-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

I've finished reading all of Harrington On Hold'em: Volume I, and parts of Harrington On Hold'em: Volume II which are pertinent to cash games, so I'll be playing no-limit hold'em instead from now on. I highly recommend these two books for anyone wanting to improve their no-limit game. There's a lot of useful information in these books, but it's a very easy read, and the quizzes at the end of each chapter really help to put it all together and show how the concepts can be applied in real poker situations. It's definately a must-read for all no-limit players, and many consider them to be the best books available on the game.

Started New Promo: Poker Rewards

2006-04-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

I started a new PSO promo for 6000 PSO points at Poker Rewards today. Poker Rewards is on the Prima network, like Bet365. The promo requires 750 raked hands of $0.25 minimum. I deposited to get a bonus of $75 which will clear at the same time.

Finished Paradise Poker

2006-04-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

I made $11 at the tables, earned a $50 bonus, and earned 9000 PSO points which I used to buy a $100 Absolute Poker gift card, for a net profit of $161.

Overall, I enjoyed playing at Paradise, although I would have liked to have done better at the tables. The software is pretty nice, and the players there are fairly loose, so it's not too hard to find tables with some fishy players.

Earnings-to-date: $2045

Started New Promo: Paradise Poker

2006-04-04T20:26:00.000-07:00

I started a PSO promo for 9000 PSO points at Paradise Poker today. It will require 1000 raked hands of $0.25 minimum rake (i.e. $5 minimum pot), and they have a $50 deposit bonus which will clear at 500 raked hands.

Hosted A Tournament Today

2006-04-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

A few friends and family came over today to play a no-limit hold'em tournament. We had a single table with 11 players, $20 buy-in, $10 add-on, unlimited rebuys if you bust within the first hour.

I didn't get much in the way of cards, plus I lost a bunch of chips when my AT lost out to A3 on an ace-high flop when my opponent hit his second pair on the river. I finished in eighth place, which is at least an improvement over finishing in last place the previous tournament. My friend Eagle2727, who hadn't previously made the money, finally burst the bubble this time to finish third. My brother-in-law, who claimed he plays poker but not hold'em very much, finished second. And my friend Ed, who sounded extremely pessimistic about his chances just before the tournament started, actually ended up finishing first.

Bad beat of the night - my friend Hung with a short-stack picks up AA and goes all-in preflop. Gets called by AJ. Flop comes up JJx, with no help on the turn or river, busting him out of the tournament.

It was a pretty fun night, so I'm hoping to host another poker night soon.

Reef Club Casino Bonus

2006-03-22T00:26:00.000-08:00

Reef Club Casino is owned by 888.com, and their sign-up bonus is very similar: 100% max $200, but with a 200x wagering requirement (instead of 50x for 888.com) before you can withdraw the bonus. Again, you can do this bonus risk-free by making your deposit and then withdrawing it right away.

I signed up a few weeks ago, withdrew my deposit, played blackjack and made $107, which I withdrew. I later played again and busted out my bonus money.

Earnings-to-date: $1884

Finished Reading "Winning Low-Limit Hold'Em"

2006-03-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the book overall, and I would recommend it for beginners. I learned a lot about the different types of starting hands, and which hands are worth playing and why. I also learned about pot odds and how to calculate them and use them to make decisions on whether or not to call a bet. Other valuable topics included the importance of position and aggression. The book teaches you how to play a tight and aggressive style, which can be very profitable at low-limit hold'em games. For anyone who is relatively new to poker, limit hold'em is the best game to start with. You can familiarize yourself with the basics of the game, and start to apply some of the important concepts and strategies in this book, without putting your bankroll at too much risk. The strict betting structure will help to level the playing field somewhat between a novice and more advanced players, by preventing a novice's mistakes from being punished too severely.

I've tried applying the concepts that I've learned, but one problem that I've run into is that I'm finding it difficult to break some of my old habits, especially in regards to playing too many starting hands. The thing about limit hold'em, and low-limit hold'em in particular, is that if you make a theoretical mistake, you aren't punished severely for it. The worse that can usually happen is that you check and call a few more bets than you really should have. There is no risk of losing your entire stack as there is with no-limit hold'em. Because of this, I am finding that I still tend to play some of the mediocre starting hands like KTo or QTo despite the recommendations in the book.

Also, lately I have been finding the play in limit hold'em to be too "mechanical". Without the need to figure out a suitable bet size, there doesn't seem to be enough thinking involved in playing limit hold'em to keep me interested for long periods of time. Also, bluffing is not very common or effective, since with low-limit games there tends to be a lot of people seeing a flop, and it can be difficult to bluff them all into folding.

I'm going to be ordering two other books on no-limit hold'em, and will be switching over to NL games after I finish reading them. These books are Harrington on Hold'Em: Volume I and Harrington on Hold'Em: Volume II, which seem to be the most recommended references for learning no-limit hold'em.

Finished Pacific Poker

2006-03-16T00:03:00.000-08:00

The players at Pacific are pretty loose, and with a lot of people seeing the flop, you tend to get a lot of variance. I started this promo on a losing streak and was down about $130, then proceeded to go on a winning streak and was up about $120, then started losing again. By the time I finished the requirements, I was just above break-even, making $10. I earned $100 in bonus money, and $50 from the CasinoOwnage referral, for a net profit of $160.

Earnings-to-date: $1777

Signed Up At Pacific Poker

2006-02-28T23:39:00.000-08:00

I signed up for an account at Pacific Poker through CasinoOwnage, for a $50 promo. Pacific Poker is owned by 888.com, and their poker bonus works the same way as their casino bonus. You can make the necessary deposit to get a $100 bonus right away. You are then allowed to withdraw your original deposit and just play with the bonus money risk-free. To withdraw the $100 bonus money, you need to wager $2000 at the poker tables. Email me for a referral if anyone wants to give this site a try.

Finished EmpirePoker

2006-02-27T17:29:00.000-08:00

I lost $30 at the tables, got $100 in bonus, and $25 from CasinoOwnage, for a net profit of $95.

Earnings-to-date: $1617

Bet365 February Bonus

2006-02-25T17:10:00.000-08:00

I played some more at Bet365 to clear the 500 raked hands for their $50 February bonus. This time I lost $32 at the tables, for a net profit of $18.

I'm going to stop doing the monthly bonus at Bet365 for now. It is a 10x bonus (need to clear 10 times the bonus amount in raked hands), and it is just not worth the time and effort. There are better bonuses around (some are 5x or 7x), and clearing these or a PSO promo is a much better use of my time.

Earnings-to-date: $1522

PartyPoker Gift Certificate

2006-02-19T17:03:00.000-08:00

The PartyPoker "gift certificate" from PSO is actually a transfer of funds. It unfortunately has a play requirement of 50 hands before you are allowed to withdraw it. Luckily, though, the tables at PP tend to be pretty soft, so you are likely to make a bit of profit while clearing the requirements. I made about $31 this time clearing the requirements for my gift certificate.

Earnings-to-date: $1504

Signed Up At EmpirePoker

2006-02-17T17:21:00.000-08:00

EmpirePoker (EP), like PokerNow, is an ex-Party skin which plays on the old PP network. I signed up through CasinoOwnage, which is a casino and poker bonus information site run by Actyper, one of the PSO regulars, for a $25 promo. EP has a $100 sign-up bonus which clears after 500 raked hands.

Played More At Absolute Poker

2006-02-14T16:23:00.000-08:00

After playing some more at AP and concentrating on tightening up my game and making fewer bad calls, I managed to turn my game around and become profitable. Since finishing the promo requirements, I have managed to make $140 at the tables and cleared another $20 in bonus. I'm much happier with this result, now, and will be moving on to another promo after this.

Earnings-to-date: $1473

Finished PokerNow

2006-02-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

I lost $30 at the tables, and got $100 in bonus, for a net profit of $70. The players left over on the old Party network tend to be rocks. These are tight-passive players who generally play only premium starting hands, and will fold to any significant action. It can be difficult to profit from a table full of rocks, unless you are good at playing a loose-aggressive game, which I am not. I still managed to be profitable after the bonus, however, so I'm satisfied with that.

Earnings-to-date: $1313

Finished Absolute Poker Promo

2006-02-06T16:13:00.000-08:00

After playing pretty poorly, I finished the 400 raked hands and lost $130 at the tables, made $40 in bonus money, and got 9000 PSO points which I used to buy a $100 PP gift certificate, for a net profit of $10. I know I played poorly because, thinking back, I played too many starting hands (played too loose), and called too many bets where my odds of making my hand were not too good. I think I will play some more at AP, but tighten up my play and call bets only when my chances to improve my hand are better.

Earnings-to-date: $1243

Signed Up At PokerNow

2006-02-05T17:33:00.000-08:00

PokerNow used to be on the same network as PartyPoker, until PP started their own network and left all the Party skins on the old network. They have a sign-up bonus of $100, which clears after 500 raked hands. I decided to sign up for this because it's a decent bonus, and also PokerNow is likely to be bought out by PP, so this bonus won't be available for long.

Finished PartyPoker Reloads

2006-02-03T15:43:00.000-08:00

After clearing both reload bonuses and continuing to play a bit more just for fun, I lost $30 at the tables, and netted $185 in bonuses (had to spend $15 to join Poker Player's Alliance), for a net profit of $155.

I'm not too happy with my play at the moment. I think I'm basically just a break-even player right now, so I'm going to buy a couple poker books and do some reading to see if I can improve my play. I've decided to get Winning Low-Limit Hold'em by Lee Jones and The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky from Amazon.ca.

Earnings-to-date: $1233

Started New Promo: Absolute Poker

2006-01-30T15:54:00.000-08:00

I started a new PSO promo today for 9000 PSO points at Absolute Poker (AP). The promo clears after 400 raked hands with minimum $0.50 rake, i.e. $10 pot. This means that I will have to play at the $1/$2 limit hold'em tables if I want to clear this promo at a reasonable rate. This is higher than my usual limit of $0.50/$1; unfortunately, pots at this level don't go over $10 often enough to make it worthwhile to clear the promo at this level. AP also has a deposit bonus which clears incrementally at a rate of $10 per 100 raked hands.