New Developments

Poker-Strategy.org has recently added several new rakeback programs at some very interesting rooms.

Starting December 1st of this year, you can earn 25% rakeback at Pacific Poker. Pacific boasts some of the loosest, fishiest tables online; and now you can finally earn rakeback while playing there. The only downside to Pacific is that it's only open to non-US players.

One of the more up-and-coming rooms is Cake Poker, and wouldn't you know it...Poker-Strategy.org also now offers cake poker rakeback! 33%

A few weeks back, they also added a Carbon Poker rakeback program. There, you can earn 30% rakeback. Carbon is also open to US players!

Lastly, they added a prima poker rakeback room. The rakeback rate at this room is pretty astounding. Almost double the rates of most rooms! Poker-Strategy.org isn't able to openly advertise the rate they offer, but just email them and they can give you all the details on signing up for that program.

Learn you some Texas Holdem

Here recently we had the good folks at Learn Texas Holdem write a couple of strategy articles for MasteringHoldem.com and Poker-Strategy.org.

The first article is titled False Tells. Many players confuse the "acting" tell as a false tell, and this article not only straightens out the misconception, but throws in some good examples of what a false tell actually is.

Their second article was titled Handling Large Sit n Go's. Multi-table sit n go's are all the rage these days...especially at sites like Poker Stars. In this article, you'll get a few tips and thoughts to keep in mind next time you sit down at one of these tournaments.

Their latest article concerns the how to play at the end of large poker tournaments.

Anyway, just thought I'd share a couple of the recent additions to our strategy sections. Enjoy!

So....

Ok.

So I haven't updated the blog in nearly a year. Please try to contain your anger.

I've come to grip with the fact that unless I really take the time to sit down and improve my game and play with some sort of discipline that there's pretty much no way I'll ever be a truly profitable player. Sure, I can coast along taking advantage of reloads and other poker bonuses, and continue to plug the holes in my game with rakeback...but at the end of the day, I'm still a losing player.

But, to be honest, the fact that I'm not a winning player really doesn't bother me. That is, until I hit a losing streak.

I'm happy as a pig in shit when I'm playing poker. Plugging right along, earning that reload bonus. Hell, from time to time, I may actually be up a few bucks. And for me, that's the dangerous aspect of poker. When I'm winning, losing is the furthest thing from my mind...but its almost always just around the corner.

Hopefully, coming to grips with reality is just the kick in the pants I need to turn things around. After all, the first step of all these rehab programs is admitting that you have a problem. Right?

Getting back into the grind of things

Things have finally started to slow down a bit when it comes to the 'work' I do in the evenings, so I've now got some time to devote to Bonus Whoring, and chronicling those adventures into something that hopefully our readers will come to find useful.

Most recently, those adventures have taken me to Empire Poker, working off their $150 reload bonus. Party skins are notorious for their bonuses, and how easy they are to clear - and this one (at least for me) proved to be no exception!

Those of you that have visited in the past know that I have a short attention span. So as soon as my Neteller funds made it over to Empire, I quickly loaded up four $1/2 shorthanded tables and started going to town. After an hour of playing I had cleared about 200 raked hands (of the 1050 required to earn the bonus) and had made a little over $75 from the tables (30BB/hr.). Quite a start indeed :)

When I came back the next night, I sat down at 6pm and said to myself, "Self, lets clear this stupid bonus ... tonight!" So again, I loaded up 4 shorthanded 1/2 tables and got started. The first 2 hours were very productive +$55 and cleared 350 raked hands. And that's when fatigue began to set in. Pretty soon I was seeing the flop with ridiculous hands, calling the river when I knew I was beat, and bluffing at pots I had no business being in. Oddly enough though, I was still winning. With 300 hands left to clear, I was showing a profit over a little over $200 (201.25 to be precise).

For whatever reason, I decided to leave the tables that I had been pretty much dominating (not sure if people were just playing scared or what) and start fresh at 4 new tables. My shoddy play continued, and now it started catching up with me. With 100 raked hands left to clear, I had given back around $50 of my playing profits, and looked to be on the verge of losing my $50 buy-in at a couple of the tables.

So I stopped. Took at 30 minute break to play with my dog and came back feeling somewhat refereshed. It didn't take long to get those final 100 raked hands, and in the process I managed to earn back $25 of what I'd lost.

Overall, I earned $178.38 in play, and a $150 bonus. I think I may hang around for a bit and earn some Empire Rake Rebate, as there are no other reload bonuses going on at the moment.

If you've made it this far through my rambling, God Bless You!

Work and stuff...

Work has been downright busy the past few weeks. To the point that I've rarely found time to log on and play any poker. That being said, I have managed to once in a while log on and watch DJK123, a member of the poker-strategy.org forums, play some $25/50 at Absolute. The guy is definitely talented, but good lord that's a lot of money to be tossing around.

Part of what has been keeping me busy here in '05 has been a new website that Keith and I have been developing. MasteringHoldem.com has been in the works for several months now, and we're now ready to show it to the world. There's a lot of pretty interesting technology on the back end making everything work (the details of which, I'll spare you), and Keith has spent a good deal of time writing the content that makes up the site.

The goal of the site is to give visitors a very focused, easy to read, and informative guide to playing Texas Hold'em poker. We're planning another site of a similar name for 7 Card Stud (Keith's game of choice), so look for that soon!

So head on over there, give the site a good once-over and let us know what you think.

Heads up headaches.

Hi, my name is Bryan, and I have a short attention span. I am the posterchild for adult-onset Attention Deficit Disorder...but only when it comes to poker.

If I had to name the biggest leak in my game, it would be, by far, my tendency to get bored with a game and instead of waiting on solid opportunities to make money, I try to go out and make something happen.

Such was the case last night. I sat down at two mind-numbingly slow 9 player tables at AP (whose software is still dragging ass on my PC by the way), and after 30 minutes or so I could take no more. So I found myself checking out the heads up tables, and after 10 more minutes of absolutely nothing happening at the two 9-player tables, I ditched them both and sat down at a .25/.50 heads up table with $5.00.

That's precisely when the worst possible thing happened. Fun, fast-paced action - just the fix I needed. Not only that, but I started off winning like there was no tomorrow. My opponent at the table reloaded twice for $5.00 each time, and within 5 minutes, his money was mine. I played very aggressive, didn't waste money drawing dead, and forced my opponent to pay to draw out on me. After twenty minutes or so, I was up $12 bucks or so (the rake really takes it's toll at these heads up tables), and my opponent called it quits.

Feeling as though I was at the top of my game, I moved up limits a bit and sat down at a .50/1.00 heads up table with $10.00 vs. my opponents $40. That was my first mistake. $10.00 at a .50/1.00 heads-up table won't last long when your opponent has 4x your stack and is playing hyper-aggressive. I was fortunate though - I caught a couple of nice flops early, and made him pay. Pretty soon, I had tripled my stack ($30 now) and my opponent brought another $20 to the table, telling me, "You'll give it all back".

At this point, I should have stuck with my instincts. My mind was screaming at me to pick up my $30, hold my head up high, and call it a night. But the more devilish side of me just wanted to prove this poor bastard wrong - after all, I'd just cleaned up at one table, and had now tripled my stack at this second table. Who's to say I won't take this rest of this guy's money? The poker gods, apparently.

I took $10 more of this guys money (up to $40 now), and then things started going sour. I'd flop top pair, bet it like a maniac, and he would catch his 2nd underpair on the river. I'd be dealt JQs, flop a Queen, and he'd have pocket aces.

Long story short, I did end up "giving it all back", and then some. Another break-even night, with only my rake rebate to bring me out of the red.

Absolute Poker Review

I've spent the past two weeks playing at Absolute Poker. I consider it a pretty decent online poker room for a couple of reasons. Lets get the easy stuff out of the way...free dough.

They've got a great first time deposit bonus. At 35% up to $100, it is one of the most generous in the market. Practically every weekend they offer reload bonuses of up to $200 per weekend (these usually come in the form of 15% up to $100 per deposit - $200 max bonus per weekend), and comparatively speaking, their bonuses are pretty easy to work off as long as you're playing at least .50/1.00 limit hold'em. Lastly, on the $$-front, its simple to get a 10% Rake Rebate every month playing there. Hell, on the $$ side alone it's probably worthwhile to at least check the room out.

Action. AP has roughly 6,000 - 7,000 players online during peak playing times (7 - 12 EST). The vast majority of these players are playing Limit and No Limit Texas Holdem. As a holdem player, you should have no trouble finding a game, however, at the lower limits (.10/.20, .25/.50) the majority of the tables are shorthanded, 6-player tables. There's usually at least 1 or 2 9 player tables, but they're not nearly as plentiful as the 6-players. Now, if holdem isn't your game, you'd be well advised to shy away from AP as you're likely to struggle finding a table - especially during non-peak hours.

Negatives

Every room has to have something wrong with it, right? Well, Absolute Poker has a pretty glaring one. Their software can be very resource-intensive. That's a kind way of saying, "Absolute Poker brings my computer to it's knees." If you like to play multiple tables at once, I hope you've got a really powerful computer. I'm a technical guy. I write code for a living. It is quite sad to me to see what could be a really great poker room crippled by such a silly problem. AP, if you're reading this...please, hire some real programmers and get your software back in shape.

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Long story short, Absolute Poker is a pretty good poker room to drop some cash into. Hell, with the rake rebate and weekly bonuses, you could play break-even poker and still come out three or four hundred bucks ahead every month. Hopefully they'll soon find the memory leak in their software so that multi-tabling is a little less painful. Yeesh.