Poker Perambulation

Over in the forums there a thread about favorite sites. When, I contributed it made me think a bit about sites and why or when I played them before the UIGEA. Things have changed. DUH!

In the hay days, I had so many downloaded that I stored sites in a subdirectory on my desktop where I’d pull out the ones I was currently active at. I used the same ID and PW on all of them. (Yes, that is dumb; but, I didn’t store Fort Knox on any; Neteller was the one I kept secure.) I’d see this promo or that and drag out that site to play for a while with a quick toss in from Neteller which might close out another site in the process.

I wasn’t a big bonus whore but there were those then. Sites got juicy for a variety of reasons back then. It is hard to recall why I’d move around. But, very few were loyal to a particular site.

That made me think about today. I’m playing almost exclusively on PokerStars with deposits active on Bodog and FullTilt. That’s the big three for U.S. Players. The bonus setups are typically either non-existent or suck. Even when you see one that’s ok, it is such a pain to deposit that I usually don’t bother.

A big chunk of the promo dollars these days seem to be going more into tournaments. It isn’t hard to find a way to pick up a seat in some major tournament around the world being played on any site. You throw some money at it with hope and prayers. I’m one that really doesn’t want to win one. Think about it. You get lucky and head for the big one. You’ve got a $12,000 tab being picked up by the site. You lose or maybe cash a bit. Now, if you’re in say the 30% bracket and lost, you’re still going to be out an additional $3,600 or more in taxes. Hopefully, you’ve kept really good tax records that can offset that a bit. But, you are still on the hook – win or lose. Ouch!

But, that is still a nice predicament. Especially, if you got it from one of our freerolls listed on our main page. We also have newbie freerolls for honest to goodness cash that come with registering. It ain’t as great as it use to be out there so every little bit helps. Look around the site here and find a deal.  If you hop over to $mokkee’s site, you’ll see he took down $T270 in one of our freerolls.  How sweet it is!  And only 81 runners.  That beats all but the biggest overlays out there.

Things have really changed for the average players like you and me. We still have a cost but they just don’t throw slop in the troughs like they used to. It is simple economics. When choice gets limited, the actors don’t have to compete as hard for customers. So the trickle down doesn’t trickle down.

ADDENDUM:

I think I need to avoid playing .50-1. I just had a session that was typical. It was a nice loser. And, I am making a fool of myself in the process. I’m running into those I call the 43’s. That where they have 4 outs and play their 3 downs. That happens and I’m comfortable with that. But, today was brutal. Not so much because of that but because the table was so juicy and I pressed instead of lurking. All the donks had hands while I was being the fool. Can’t blame anybody else for my table today. Time to take a break, I think. Maybe play a bit of HORSE.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 10:48 am and is filed under Journal, Poker Thoughts. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.