Poker Perambulation

The other day, Ultimate Bet gave me a ten-spot. I haven’t really played a lot there for a couple of years. I did deposit there a month or so ago to give a friend an account to play. After that hundred went up in smoke, I didn’t think about the site again until then.

I played UB SnGs and Tournaments over 100 hours a month back when I was active there. I was working on getting a better game and the site is ideal for that. (You can play SnG’s for as little as a $1.10 and they’ve got decent freerolls that are the best I’ve found for learning tournament play.) With all that play in $5.50 and $11 SnGs, I didn’t clear a penny of bonus. I wrote their support and got no results and told them I wouldn’t be back until they changed that. I was cutting off my nose to spite my face; I never played on a SnG site that was as profitable for me since.

They have a very reasonable approach to blind progression. I tried one of their freeroll tournaments yesterday. At the end of the first hour, blinds were 50/100. And the blinds after the hour went to 75/150. The TonyG tournaments I’ve been playing are 100/200 at the end of the hour and are 100/200 +25 going into the second hour. At UB that doesn’t happen until an hour and a half has passed. The point of slower blinds affect ones approach. I am a lot more aggressive on TonyG. I had a lot more flexibility in game approach on UB than other sites. Some – like FullTilt — are coming up with double stack games to ameliorate their blind structure. If you play there and like a tighter game, give them a go.

CC has his students playing on PokerStars and they’ve remarked on the aggression and loose play they encounter. I did an article on blinds before I started blogging here. You can find it and a bunch of others here. My play on Stars was the least profitable for SnG action over any other site. As I recall, their blinds are as low as 8-minutes and I don’t remember any above 10-minutes with shorter starting stacks than other sites. The UB blinds are 10, 12 and longer – even for their freerolls — and stacks start at 1500 and go up based on buyins. One of my articles talks about how blinds dictate the type of play you will find on various sites and what CC’s students are seeing is just what they should. You picked one of the ‘worst’ sites for nakedly aggressive SnG play, CC. It rewards L-AG players more than others. But, it is a good site to play if you are trying to improve the aggressive side of your game. You’ll be a better rounded player by varying the sites you play.

UB seems to have more Rocks and weak-passives than the typical tournament site. They can easily play at the increased comfort level provided by the blind structure. Very little of that transfers over to ring play. I wasn’t a serious ring player there but the bit I did play seemed pretty typical.

The other nice bit about UB is that their guarantees often go off with a nice overlay. That seems true of all buy-in levels. It was especially true of the daytime ones. I’m certain I’ve won and final tabled more of their tournaments than any other.

As to that 10-bucks, I’ll cover it in the next blog. I actually started out to talk about that and got sidetracked. So, in the spirit of the evening news programs, I’ll throw in one of those annoying teasers they use to try to keep viewers: Think HORSE.

Meantime! Click on the Ultimate Bet banner on the left. We all need to eat here.

ADDENDUM:

I haven’t heard of a ruling yet by the WTO on the Antigua-Barbuda case. I’d thought it was due over a week ago. It is the one bright light available to poker players in the states. It should be coming soon. Keep your fingers crossed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, click on ‘Poker Legislation’ in the categories area on the right side of the screen. There are a number of articles there that cover the topic.

Since I wrote the above there is some good/not-so results out on the WTO action.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 29th, 2007 at 7:01 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Thoughts, Tournaments. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.