Crypto skins new .50/1 limits: The good news and the bad.

The Good News

I checked out the new microlimit tables offered at places like Interpoker and William Hill. If you aren't ready or comfortable playing the 1/2 limits, this is a great addition for you. The blinds are 15 and 25 cents and have plenty of players. The pot doesn't hit the $5 mark as often to count toward your raked hands. And these limit players will play a touch slower than at the 1/2 limits.

The Bad News.

Along with adding these limits, Interpoker raised the raked hand requirements for their monthly bonus to 8 times the bonus amount. So now you need to play 720 raked hands to make your $90 bonus. This doesn't make it a bad bonus, but it seriously reduces your hourly rate if you are used to playing 450 hands to clear that bonus. This is especially true because the Crypto skins will only let you open 3 tables at a time. The best you can really hope for is 150 hands per hour. That means at least 5 solid hours of playing time is needed to clear it.

May Poker Bonuses

The first weekend of the new month is here. It's time to hit those reloads. I think I'll be working on the easy ones first so that I can have my cash ready in my Neteller account for the larger ones that will pop up as the month goes along. So the game plan looks like this:

William Hill - 5 GBP per hour for 5 hours.
I'll clear this playing two tables for 2.5 hours quickly. I received an email that said they now have lower limits than 1/2, but I'll need to check it out and then update you here.

Interpoker - $90 for $90 for 450 raked hands.
Playing 2 and 3 tables (depending on how good the table selection is) this will take me around 4 hours to complete. I'll probably take care of it on Sunday. I seem to have the best results on Sundays and late at night on Interpoker. I'm looking forward to this one. I did especially well last month and pulled out an incredible 25BB/100 profit not counting the bonus money. I want to take care of this early in the month since I just completed a cashout for last month's play. If you play two months close together and then wait, they'll send you an extra free $20 bonus to come back after 3 weeks or so.

PlanetLuck - $100 for $100 blackjack bonus.
I still haven't gotten around to this easy casino signup bonus. I figure I'll use it this weekend to take a break from my poker play. I get bored easily and inevitably play too loose if I stay at a poker table too long. I figure this will take me about 4 to 5 hours to complete. I still need to refer to the basic strategy card for some plays, so I only manage about 400 hands of BJ per hour.

All together, that's about $238 in bonuses in less than 12 hours for puttering around this weekend. I can't wait to see what other offers come in this month.

Casino bonuses are free money and a great break from your poker game.

If you have the discipline to be a winning poker player, then you should also be taking advantage of the casino bonuses that are out there. It's just more free money but easier to attain. There's no thinking required. You just follow the appropriate strategy card at Wizard of Odds and click click click.

If you've never played online casinos before, here are a couple easy bonuses to get you started that are completely risk-free.

The first one is at Planet Luck. You can deposit $100 for a $100 bonus. You have to wager $1600 dollars to clear the bonus. That's known as a 'Wagering Requirement' or WR for short. (not to be confused with 'Win Rate' in poker). So you wager $1 per hand and play 1600 hands of Blackjack. Don't play any other games. Follow the basic strategy as that will cut the casino advantage down to the barest minimum. (less than 1%)

1600 hands sounds like a lot of blackjack to play when you're constantly looking at the card. You'll pick it up pretty quickly though. A lot of the plays are common ones that happen the same way the majority of the time. Even looking at the card you'll still manage at least 200 or 300 hands an hour. Once you get familiar with a lot of the more common plays, you'll probably be doing about 500 to 600 hands per hour. So you will probably take anywhere from 3 to 6 hours to clear it. Don't forget to count your double-down and split bets too. Each dollar you wager counts toward clearing the bonus.

Bonus clearing - weak-tight play?

You may give some thought to this as you navigate between games like 1/2 or 2/4 Limit-Hold-Em down to the .50/1 tables while you are clearing a bonus. You'll wonder if your play is too tight as you fold hand after hand waiting for one that you can play. You'll wonder if that, once you do get a hand, if you fold it too easily to any strength shown by other players. Did that other guy bet because he has something? Or better yet, did he raise because he has a monster? He probably does. Don't beat yourself up over folding.

The majority of the players at the lowest limit tables aren't tricky players. Since this is true, you know that the majority of the plays that they make are straight-up plays. Sure, there will be the occasional guy that has watched a little too much WPT on television and try to bluff. In limit poker, however, it is much easier to play your pot-odds and just draw to your hand. You WILL get a monster hand eventually. And if you picked a good table, someone (or more than one!) WILL pay you off. It pays to be patient. Be disciplined. This is why so many winning online poker players will play 3, 4, 6, or more tables at a time. You are just waiting for that moment. That monster hand in a .50/1 limit hold-em game will pay you a $12 or larger pot. That's 12 times the big blind. Let's go over some rough numbers to illustrate.

Let's say you play 3 tables waiting for a monster at a place like Party Poker. Generally you'll get from 40 to 50 hands per hour dealt per table. That's 120 hands minimum. You're paying for 12 rounds of blinds at $9 total. Now let's assume you are only seeing the flop with about 15% of your hands. (You can check this percentage with your stats given by the poker room) Tack on another $9 for those bets. If you only get two good hands during that hour for $12 each, you're still $6 ahead. That's a win rate of 5BB/100. You are a solid winning player and you only won with two hands in an hour!

So you see, you are not playing a weak game. You are simply being patient and disciplined.

What's almost as good as a maniac and a lot less scary for your poker bankroll?

Anyone who gets frustrated at suck-outs like I do should really give 6-max tables a try. It won't be A-B-C poker. But if you can play short-handed and pay attention to your position, you'll probably do well in the micro-limits (from 1/2 limit on down). I think you'll find that your starting hands hold up better because they're often playing against less hands. Straights and flushes don't have as much emphasis depending on the game. If the whole table is routinely calling to see a flop, then play those suited connectors. They're also great for clearing a bonus because you get more hands per hour in. More hands per hour means more raked pots and more good starting hands.

Anyways... On to the topic at hand. So what's better than a maniac and a lot less scary? It's a guy at a 6-max 1/2 limit table that plays 100% of his hands without a preflop raise AND calls down everything. This particular guy called the river even if I had check-raised him.

I was scouting tables on Interpoker and saw this guy that I thought I was playing with the night before. This guy was practically giving away his money. Well, it wasn't the same guy, but this other one at the table is the one I'm talking about tonight. He started out with about $120 when I got there and saw every single flop for 2 hours till he busted out. I was really hoping he'd reload.

Everyone else at the table was a decent player as far as I could tell. Since I sat to his left, I just raised preflop when I thought I had a hand that would be better than his random hands. It worked like a charm. He got isolated a lot. And if he wasn't isolated pre-flop, he'd inevitably bet first on every flop. If I wanted to play him heads-up, all I had to do was raise his bet. He sucked out every once in a while. But over the long run, he lost more hands for more money when he called with nothing. And the whole thing was a lot less scary than a maniac because he wouldn't raise unless he had a monster hand. The two-hour session with him alone made my night.

Putting the finger in the dike: plugging leaks from Feb

No one's play is perfect. We all have leaks. One of the things that seperates the -EV from the +EV players is their ability to take a hard look at their play and admit that they don't get bad beats. Leaks are called leaks because in the moment they might look like the right play, but over time you are just throwing away a little bit of money each time you play that decision.

So I'm down 40BB in .50/1 and 1/2 over the course of February. It could be a swing, but I don't think it is. I should be killing these games. I have a suspicion that I'm playing too loose. I'm not adapting my play from game to game. So time to break out Pokertracker and go over the stats.

One thing is for certain: I play to many hands out of the blinds. Trash is trash. And playing trash out of position is horrible. The funny thing is that I don't cold call without a hand. What I will do is catch part of a flop and keep playing. It's a small leak, but it's there. That one bet I'll throw in to see a turn card is -EV in low limit games. Don't do it.

Another interesting leak is that although I play pretty tight with a <30 VP$IP, I'll cold call with less than a category one hand when I shouldn't. It's hard for me to bring myself to fold those AJs or AQs, broadways, and even middle pocket pairs when someone raises preflop. So although I've been selecting good starting hands, I've gotten married to them pre-flop.

30K Freeroll today at Bet365 Poker.

I originally signed up at Bet365 because they offered a $50 bonus for a $50 deposit and it only took 250 raked hands. That's a pretty good deal on its face. It's a Prima skin and I seem to do pretty well on their network. 250 hands is only 5 hours of single table play. So you're looking at your normal earning plus $10 an hour on top of that. Add a second table and double that.

The bad news first.

The TOC says it pays out $10 of the bonus money for every 50 raked hands that you play. BUT you need to email them to claim it each time AND it takes 48 hours to recieve it. Well I emailed them once right after I cleared the whole thing. Then I called on the 3rd day. I got the usual run-around about how they're backed up yadda yadda. So I emailed them a second time and let it go to see just how long it might take if I left them alone as an experiment.

A little over 2 weeks later, I called them to bitch. They told me that they had no record of my emails at all but they added the bonus money before I got off the phone. So I promptly logged in to withdraw it. My advice is go ahead and sign up, but make sure you call and bitch at them to get your money right away everyday. They can add it while you're on the phone. If anyone has a better or worse experience than me, please comment on it.

The 30K Freeroll good news

The good side of this is that the 250 hands to clear the bonus qualifies you to play in their monthly 30K VIP Freeroll. I don't see this MTT tourney on any of the other Prima skins. So it's strictly a Bet365 offering. It's starting this morning in about 4 hours and there's only 891 people signed up and 80 places pay. That's one hell of an overlay.

80th place pays $60. 1st pays $6,000. I'll be happy to get in the money. But I've been playing a ton of 1K freerolls on Prima skins this past week to gear up for this one. I've managed to place in the top 30 a couple times now. That pays $180. Wish me luck.

PokerNow 100% bonus up to $100 and 25% rakeback.

Gawd I totally forgot what playing .50/1 on a party skin was like. I haven't played since the beginning of last month. But this rakeback deal and bonus I got from Jessica at RaketheRake.com got me to play there this weekend. It's the best deal I've seen for PokerNow. (or any party skin, for that matter) You need to play through 1200 raked hands. But multitabling at party is a snap. It's just so swingy for me tonight with people drawing out with garbage hands.

Tighten Up Your Play and Don't Chase

Don't play all loosey-goosey like you see everyone else doing. Sure they make some hands. But they're just getting lucky. You'll need more than luck to beat it in the long run.

If you don't hit a your flop, fold. I'd even go so far as to say most of the time if someone bets, you can fold. Most people in the .50/1 games aren't tricky. You'll remember all those suck-outs as your stack gets eaten away slowly. Just remember that your bread-and-butter hands (AA, KK, AKs, QQ) alone will win back everything you've lost and then some. If you just played those four hands, you'll come out ahead with with the bonus money.

Do you use PokerTracker for internet poker?

If you do, you should check out the PokerTracker Guide. It's a new ebook created by two veteran internet poker players, HDouble and Iggy.

I couldn't begin to tell you all of the valuable information I've gleaned from reading their blogs, posts, and articles. So just check out the link and read about it yourself. It's +EV.

NEVER DO THIS

I'm in the big blind and have been playing two really good tables for quite some time now. I was going to check my 45s. The text in the Prima skin mini-view is getting kinda hard to read. So I didn't see the raise and reraise and ended up cold-calling a raise and reraise. I was chastizing myself profanely till I saw the flop. Talk about being a lucky bastard. I knew the guy in the SB, so we got a good laugh when I told him what happened.

> J-Dogg2 posted big blind ($0.50)
> Game # 267,191,087 starting.
> Dealing Hole Cards
> UTG folded
> UTG+1 called for $0.50
> UTG+2 called for $0.50
> MP1 called for $0.50
> MP2, you have 10 seconds to respond
> MP2, you have 5 seconds to respond
> MP2 raised for $1
> MP3, you have 10 seconds to respond
> MP3 folded
> CO folded
> Button folded
> SB raised for $1.25
> J-Dogg2 called for $1
> UTG+1 called for $1
> UTG+2 called for $1
> MP1 called for $1
> MP2 called for $0.50
> Dealing the Flop(4h4s9h)
> SB bet for $0.50
> J-Dogg2 raised for $1
> UTG+1 folded
> UTG+2 folded
> MP1 folded
> MP2 called for $1
> SB raised for $1
> J-Dogg2 raised for $1
> MP2 called for $1
> SB called for $0.50
> Dealing the turn(2c)
> SB checked
> J-Dogg2 bet for $1
> MP2 called for $1
> SB called for $1
> Dealing the river(2s¨)
> SB checked
> J-Dogg2 bet for $1
> MP2 called for $1
> SB raised for $2
> J-Dogg2 raised for $2
> MP2 folded
> SB called for $1
> SB mucked
> J-Dogg2 wins $23.75 with a Full House, Fours full of Deuces

Does poker love me?

I was still pretty wary of playing in a real cardroom so I drove way the hell out to Temecula and the Pechanga casino. (this was before the built the new casino) I didn't want to play at more famous places in Commerce or LA since I KNEW there would be some scary people there. I figured the one and a half hour drive would reduce that number a little bit.

Two years later..

Poker can be fickle and really hate you on some days. But if you are a winning player, she'll be kind to you over the long run. And I think she liked me.

I kept track of my sessions over a couple years and lo and behold, I was a winner overall to the tune of about 2BB/hr. The problem was that I noticed after about the first year, calculating in time and expenses, this was not going to produce even a profitable-part-time-hobby for me.

2BB was $12 at the most for me because I didn't have the 300BB recommended bankroll to really play 4/8 or 5/10 limit. And I knew that's where the sharks started to gather. Sometimes there wasn't a 5/10 or above game during the week so I'd played with some of them. I knew I wasn't ready for that.

I love poker.

I've been playing since my teenage years in the garage of one of my buddies where we''d split a gallon of vodka between 6 or 8 of us and play every game you've heard of and some you haven't. Believe it or not, I did pretty well. In my drunken haze, my competive nature still ruled me and helped me to learn to beat each game and all my friends. I'd almost always came out ahead.

Fast forward to years later..

I didn't start seriously playing poker till I moved to California. Another garage and another group of friends and playing a regular game. I still had it, but the concept of playing in a cardroom didn't even enter into my head.

Then I started getting some poker books.

Everything in the books I read was interesting and seemed intuitive to me. If you live near a large chain of bookstores like Borders, you've probably seen them with a coffee bar inside. (another addiction of mine) I'd order a drink and sit down with a stack of poker books and read for hours. Now that I'd read everything I could find in the bookstore that was a legitimate book on poker strategy, the idea that I could play in a cardroom and actually win started to creep into my head.

Free casino money is everywhere!

It only just hit me the other day that they can't really email you a steak dinner when you play in a virtual casino. I mean those little fake drinks you can order in some poker rooms that sit next to your character are cute but they don't get the job done.

So I figured I'd start a blog to share my finds and maybe a little of my poker play so everyone else can benefit without searching tons of forum posts and going blind reading the terms and conditions of every offer that you come across.