Poker Perambulation

and, now we are just quibbling over your price. Yes, I am talking about bonus whoring. Don’t confuse this with picking up a new player bonus from here. I am talking about the site gypsies who move from day to day to another site. People who’s home page is one of the bonus whore sites that keep them up-to-date on the latest and greatest.

Now, if that is your bag, there is little I can do to dissuade you. You’ve developed a poker life style that you enjoy. And that is the best reason to play poker. The person I am addressing is the guy who thinks it is something he might be missing out on.

The reload bonus is the bonus whore’s delight. This is what he is looking for and salivates over. He will move sites in a New York minute to one that offers him the best bonus. He’s typically a multi-table player to clear the bonus and move on to the next.

You can do that. However, there is a downside. Bonus often don’t clear that quickly and some are even worse. It may take 500 raked hands to clear a modest bonus. On each of those hand you typically have to at least enter the pot. So, that means 500 hands at a minimum of the big blind amount is at risk — which exceeds the bonus amount. You’ve come from a site you were profitable on. You move to the new one and find more suckouts or different play by the players there. So, you are underwater a bit in the learning curve. How’s that bonus looking now? You may have moved up a level to clear the bonus quicker. The site may not provide you with the right players for your type of game. Or you just might have hit a dry spell. Combine all those things and the only profit to be had is by the house.

If you’ve found a site that fits your playing style, what is wrong with the bird in hand? The new site holds an x-factor. It is a new interface. It holds different players. There is a temporary or not so temporary disadvantage that you won’t be aware of quickly. You have to play a lot of hands to really know a site’s texture.

One of the sites I played at and did quite well at was PokerChamps”” a site among the first to lockout U.S. Players. It was the Gus Hansen site. TonyG also played there. It was loaded with loose Scandinavians who wanted to be like Gus and Tony and didn’t have their post flop play. An added bit of juice was the site gave a rakeback. Depending on the rake you’d payed over the month you’d get a certain percentage back. It wasn’t a huge amount for me but it was free money that I didn’t have to play 500 hands to get. Know what? TonyG’s site has the same program. Is it for you? Maybe; maybe not. It doesn’t have a huge number of people. I haven’t played there a lot yet. But, I suspect it will have its share of wannabes who will emulate his aggressiveness without the skillset he has.

If you still want to do the bonus whoring, fine. Just get out the Window’s calculator and bring up the site’s fine print on the bonus. Figure just what it will take to clear at the levels you play. Figure your hourly return by dividing the hands you figure you have to play by 50 or 60. If it makes sense to you then give it a try. For me, it is less work and probably more lucrative to dance with the girl (site) what brung me.

ADDENDUM:

If you agree or disagree with one of my blogs and want to contribute a bit more than something in the comment area, email it to me at: pokerworks.z.frodo@spamgourmet.com. Tell me what name to use in the credit. If it is interesting, I’ll put it in an Addendum with the name you want used. If you’ve got a poker blog, I’ll give that credit too. Whether you are agreeing or disagreeing is unimportant.  It isn’t 15 minutes of fame; but, it might make 15 seconds.

Take a look at the email address I provided. You can have a similar one by going to the site listed. It is a handy tool to have in your kit. What it does is allow you to do is use it to forward mail to your real account. If a mining program picks it up and starts using it for spam, only a limited number of message will be cleared to your account. When the maximum number you’ve assigned to that address or 20 is reached they junk them. You can reset the counter or make it a trusted sender which will let all future email be forwarded. It is also useful as a mailing address to leave in forums and the like to protect your privacy and avoid lots of spam. It also lets you identify the location where you originally left the address. I posted in a forum for a small town Arizona newspaper and got a 419 letters within a day. It beats using a gmail or yahoo mail account because it identifies the originating site of the email address used while concealing yours.

One of the things constantly being bandied about is that poker is a game of skill rather than chance. It is interesting that the proof of that lies on the poker sites that are shutting down or staying up. They have all our hands recorded. There could be an analysis made of those to support the idea. Figures don’t lie but liars figure; so there is some flexibility to the scheme. For example, they could do it for the high limits, or with the medium limit grinders and use the one that fits the notion best. Perhaps hitting the lower limit tables were I usually reside might blow the deal.

Today, is the day for the release of the new Firefox. Lots of neat features including spell check that will certainly help me with my forum posts. Number of other neat features listed here. As I post, it isn’t up yets.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 24th, 2006 at 5:04 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Other. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.