Poker Grab bag

First things first. There’s a new Party Poker skin in town. It’s called Poker Now, and they are offering a great sign-up bonus right now. Use the code “Shark” (not affiliated with me in any way) and you can get 20% of a $500 dollar deposit, twice. Play 500 raked hands to earn your first $100. Play another 500 raked hands and they will manually credit another $100 to your account (happened a few days after I played by second 500 hands). The website also mentions a free poker book and t-shirt with 500 raked hands played, but I’m not sure if that will come through. I have heard that this bonus will end Oct. 22, so take advantage now. Rumours also hold that they will be offering a reload bonus in the next few weeks. Sounds too good to be true, but I do have an extra $200 in my account there on top of the $100 I earned at the tables, and I have read many reports of successful cashouts (they are using Pro-Pay) so it all seems on the up and up so far.

Secondly, there are two poker anniversaries that were celebrated recently. Both HDouble and Chris Halverson have great posts up talking about their first year as poker players and bloggers. In other blogger news, Iggy has announced that he has quit his job to play poker professionally. I wish him the best of luck in his new career. He certainly has the skills to make it as a long term poker professional, but the short term luck will get him off to a good start.

On a less positive note, Felicia is writing a series of posts talking about just went wrong with the WPPA’s tournament series at the Orleans. After hearing many vague negative reports, I am looking forward to getting the whole story, in all it’s gory details, from Felicia. Also, readers should note that Felicia’s blog has moved to a new address (http://felicialee.blogspot.com).

Also, I successfully cashed my money out of Choice Poker. Unfortunately I had a particularly bad session on my last afternoon and dropped $100. The good news was that this reduced my balance to the number of hands I had already played, so I immediately cashed out the remaining $184. A few days later it showed up in my Neteller account. This was essentially free money, as I had written it off months ago. Still, I should have been more disciplined so that I could have withdrawn the full $293. So, for those holding back because they still don’t trust the site, they will indeed honor your withdrawal request if you abide by their ridiculous requirement to play through X hands to release your X dollars of outstanding balance. I do not agree with them holding that money hostage like they are, but I did appreciate finally being able to recoup it.

As for me, I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather; physically, mentally and emotionally. And it didn’t help that my poker play hit a rough patch at around the same time to grind me down just a little bit further. I had thought that I had gotten past the emotional swings of the game, playing at the relatively minor limits that I do (minor to my bankroll, at least). Unfortunately, it can still give me a bit of a boost, or a bit of a kick if I hit an extreme run. Though honestly, the worst it’s ever gotten has been a few hundred dollars lost over a couple days.

Thankfully all the bonus offers that have been available recently have helped to mitigate the losses. And the $200 in PokerNow bonuses I unlocked this weekend corresponded to a solid $100 at the 25PL. Not a great rate by any stretch of the imagination, but since I was 4-tabling and never hit a particularly good streak of cards, it felt like a step in the right direction. I’ve also managed to reverse my losing ways at Absolute, where I continue to work off that bonus, $10 at a time.

I do need to hit the books again however. All my recent experimentation has made me lose sight of the fundamentals.
I also wanted to give a belated shout out to JP and CJ at Up For Poker (I’m pretty sure it was CJ, not Otis, with Up4Poker), who I shared tables with over the past few weeks at Party’s 25PL. I was probably too preoccupied to say hello at the time, but I did notice them there. It’s always nice to spot another blogger at the table, though my bankroll might disagree.

One Response to “Poker Grab bag”

  1. […] under: Poker — tp @ 3:27 pm I just remember what I forgot to include in my Poker Grab Bag post. The next Poker Blogger (and readers) Tournament, organized by Iggy, is happening this […]