Wednesday 13 May 2009

Playing the PLO!

Hey all!

Sorry for the unexpected absence. My laptop, which I bought less than a year ago, completely packed in. Couldn't boot it up or anything. Luckily I had it on warranty so I managed in the end to send it back to Sony. At the time I was pissed off as I need my laptop for uni work purposes and of course to play online poker. Especially as my exams are coming up in a few weeks. In retrospect however, it seems to have been a bit of a blessing in disguise as not only did I manage to visit the uni library to get a good amount of work done but I also managed to get down to Dusk Til Dawn, my local card room a lot more and got stuck in the cash games.

And good god, I start to wonder why I don't go down there more often.

In the two weeks I managed to spin up £100 into £2200 playing the £2/£2 omaha cash game. This has bought my bankroll to the highest point its been once again so that's a big relief! I'm still way of-course from my somewhat optimistic goals for the year, but I'de like to think I can get somewhere near them again. Oh the joy of going on a mini-heater again!

So the plan of action now is to revise for exams and keep up learning and mastering the somewhat crazy game of omaha.

But the problem is that once the exams are over and I go back down to Dorset, there is a severe lack of live poker. As in there is the turbo-shove fest casino donkaments but thats it. Nothing in the way of cash games and even then its a good 35 minute drive rather than the 5 minute hop down the road to DTD. So I need to choose a good poker site to maximise my gains and become a regular hoping to move up the limits.

Unfortunately, I can't show you as my old PT database was wiped with the rest of the data on my hard drive after the laptop broke, but I managed to get in the initial 10,000 hands at 25plo for a win rate of roughly 12bb/100. So it's move-up time now.

The options as I see them are:

-Full Tilt: This would be ideal if I could get $*^£ rakeback but the pricks in charge won't upgrade my account as when I originally signed up I didn't even know what rake meant. GRAHAH. The software is the best out there and although I expect the player base to be better, at 25c/50c it is still likely to be beatable.

-Pokerstars: Tough field, no rakeback. Big no.

-Party Poker: Ok software, could definately grind here but no rakeback. They do seem to offer a few bonuses along the way but nothing special.

-iPoker: I actually find the iPoker tables full of regs and short stackers, plus I really can't stand the software :( It's a no here.

-Betfair and Ladbrokes (on microgaming) are on option where rakeback are quite nice but the software is life-tilty. Not sure how many games are consistently running either.

-Boss: Only tables that seem to fill are the turbo ones with no timebank. So so smooth timing out on every decision. No thank you!

-Ongame: Probably my preferred choice. The software is a bit shoddy but I can live with it. Shame there's no timebank, but beggars can't be choosers and I can theoretically get 50% rakeback here through an affiliate.

So the choice seems simple with ongame right? Yeh, that would be the case but the affiliate I'm with seems to want me swapping sites every other month or so. Oh, and he didn't take the initiative to tell me this first either, but only when I started the conversation with him why I didn't receive any rakeback for a month. Cheers for that one mate. Not only that but half these sites like Whitebet and recently GoalWin: the latest site he's asking me to play on seem really dodgy. I mean we are in tough economic times, am I wanting to risk a good portion of my bankroll on some dodgy new site that could just go bust and scoop all my hardwork and ethic just so i can get that extra 10-20% in rakeback per month? It's a tough choice.

I think ideally I'de like to use a professional established rakeback website like raketherake.com. Funnily enough, just checking the site now they confirm that rakeback on Ongame is a big no-no. No wonder that affiliate bloke is constantly changing sites. Looking at ongame it seems that they are offering about 15% rakeback through the VIP system for my volume of play. Gahh nothing comes easy lol!

If anyone has any other good solutions or sites they can recommend please tell me! Would be so helpful. At the moment I'll play some party poker grinding my current bonus. After that and once my exams are finished I hope to find a good site with a good rakeback deal so that I can grind up the levels again!

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