Bonus chasing

This month is bonus chasing month as I got a nice bonus offer from Everest and Full Tilt is running another Take2 promotion.

On Everest I get $50 if I reach 600 points by the 16th. Currently, I'm at 230, so I figure another 4k hands at 10NL should do the trick. Because I'm at Base Camp, I'll get another 1200 points extra (200% bonus) and at 1$ per 250 points, that's a few more bucks.

Full Tilt is running a Take2 promotion which actually is a double bonus.
First, you get double points if you multitable. Nice, but not that great...
Secondly, and this is a great bonus, you get cash for playing regularly during this month: $5 if you play 5 days, another $10 for 10 days, another $10 for 15 days and another $25 for 25 days. So that's a potential $50, plus you only have to earn 1 FTP for that day to count. Bottom line for me: play about 10 minutes a day at Full Tilt and pick up $50.

Combined that's over $100 in bonusses to be earned and I'll definately make an effort to pick that up. I just need to make sure I don't drop too much on the tables when chasing these bonusses (as I have done in the past).

At the tables, I'm still struggling, making too many mistakes for sure, but it is sooo hard to put the many fish, playing >50% of the hands, on a hand. Often they really could have anything, from AA to J6...

Comparing sites and a milestone: a $500 BR

I have spread out my bankroll across 4 sites: PokerStars, Party Poker, Everest Poker and Titan Poker. Except for Titan, where I still have some 40 euro left (a bonus I cannot withdraw until I earn like 2k TP's), I deposited/kept $100 on each of them.
The next few weeks I'll be rotating them playing 10NL so I can compare level of competition, software and bonus/loyalty programs. The goal is to increase my BR at every site from $100 to $200, dropping back to 5NL if I fall below $100.

So far Pokerstars and Everest seem to be the extremes in terms of level of play. At Pokerstars, the average is definately higher than Everest, and maybe that's because at Everest 10NL is the lowest stake. In fact, there are a lot of bad shortstackers and on a typical table, it seems there may be one or two decent players and two to four total fish. On Pokerstars I'd say there's about two or three decent players (at this level of course) and one or two fish. Both Party and Titan seems to be in between.

After a very nice and sunny week-end with the family and friends, I was eager to play some good poker last evening. I quickly got up $15 and after a short break, I decided to add a third table (playing at Everest). I ended up $25 in about 350 hands so that was great. I played well, got some decent hands and people were paying off nicely. Next up in the rotation is Titan Poker.

I also decided to play the 2+2 Pokercast Invitational on PokerStars, which is a freeroll (well, it's 1 fpp) with some nice prizes ($200 for first). I didn't last very long though.
I'm OTB with AKo and decide to raise a bunch of limpers. UTG+1 3bets and I call (bad, bad, bad, bad, bad). I miss the flop and fold to villain's flop bet.
Then I'm card dead for a while and have to push with 2BB left. I get two callers and I'm out. No biggy, but it's weird: I feel I understand the basics playing cashgames, but have no idea how to play tournies. Also, I find it difficult to mix a tourny with several cashgame tables opened as well.

For what it's worth: that 2+2 Pokercast is a good show, with a lot of interesting guests (last episode featured Daniel Negreanu), strategy segments with aejones, Sklansky and others regularly throwing in some advice and stuff to think about, and a decent coverage of the latest news. As it is sponsored by the Pokerstars VIP program, Pokerstars gets some extra attention. So, my advice is to check it out at the 2+2 site. You can also add it as a podcast via iTunes.

Have fun!

Astafas

Exit Titan Poker

I have decided to withdraw my bankroll on Titan Poker and I'll probably even cash out as well. I haven't really played a lot there, mainly because the player base is a lot less than what I'm used to at Party Poker and I don't like the software that much. Especially when multi-tabling it's a pain, because you switch to mini-view, which is too small for me.

I'll have to leave my no-deposit bonus though, as I'm nowhere near the 1500 tp's I need to be able to withdraw that. So, the plan is to cash out everything except the bonus (about $50). Because I was going to take a shot at 10NL, I'll play some 10NL session with that bonus.

Apparantly, it will take 2-5 days before the cash is in my moneybookers account and some players have been requested to email id shots when trying to cash out. I can understand sites want to secure these kind of transactions, but I find it curious that kind of stuff isn't required when you deposit.

I just hope it won't be too much of a hassle and I can get my money fast.

Because I should be rolled for 10NL by March/April, I'm thinking about where to play. Should I go for another first-deposit bonus on a new site? Or should I return to Everest (lots of bad players I read) or just stick to Party Poker?
I didn't really like the Everest software (slow network and poor software for multi-tabling), but 10NL is the smallest stake there, so the competition might be weaker compared to other sites.

Any suggestions on that part are appreciated.

Currently I'm running 7BB/100 over 27k hands at 4NL, even at 30BB/100 over 9k hands since October 2008 (when I made some major adjustments to my game). My goal is to try and push that up to 10BB/100 over 40k hands and than take a decent shot at 10NL.
I really don't know what to expect in terms of stronger competition: is there a substantial difference? Is it the same level of play, but just for a little more money?

Again, any input on that is welcome.


PS: My favorite poker show 'High Stakes Poker' is currently running season 5, so I'll be checking out Youtube. I'm sure most poker players know that show, but if you don't, go check it out!!


Untill next time!

First steps on Everest

(March 11, 2008)

On Monday I got started again. I installed Everest, made a deposit of $100 and I also downloaded Pokertracker 2 to try it out.

So far I'm not all that impressed with Everest: the microstakes tables always have waiting lists (sometimes up to 10 people) and the average number of hands per hour is about 35-40, which seems pretty low to me. On the other hand, I do like having a bit more time to make decisions.
Because I wanted to avoid getting bored, I started playing on 3 full ring 2NL tables. Even though I didn't play all that bad, I lost about $2 playing my first 166 hands. I'm guessing partly because I needed to get used to the new software and tables (which is quite different from PKR because other than the 'knock' for a check, there are no sounds for different moves like betting or all-in).

Yesterday evening things went a lot better: I played 211 hands and won $7.22. Just sticking to solid tight play with very few (semi-)bluffs and folding when I felt I was behind worked pretty well.
I made a big win on pocket deuces that hit full house, but other than that I'm kinda struggling playing pocket pairs. Right now, I'm folding bottom pairs that didn't hit the flop if there are overcards and that seems to work for me. Middle pairs and even top pairs are more difficult: I tend to raise too much with my top pairs, getting no action, and I play middle pairs too passively after the flop: checking or folding them and getting no pots. So, any tips on how to handle pocket pairs would be nice.

I read Everest only allows playing on the 2NL tables for the first 90 days after you initial deposit and since the next level is 10NL I do hope to build my bankroll fast enough to be ready for that. I'm not going to 10NL with $100 or even $150, so I might have to switch again if I don't hit $200 - $250 in 90 days (which doesn't sound very likely).

'till next time...