December Figures
Jan. 31st, 2006 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksAn interesting month:
First, the numbers:
Background colours achieved by random choice of hexadecimal numbers.
As you can see, I managed my $10 an hour target for the month. From tentatively playing three tables on Ultimate at the start of the month, I was regularly playing three tables of $3-$6 by the end. No tournaments, no pissing around. Profit maximization.
One upshot of this was that the 99 hours seemed considerably more hours than my normal month's play, even though the number of hours was roughly the same. I played 14,000 hands of limit, and for much of the month it was a bit of a struggle. In this sense, I am quite confident that these figures are repeatable; indeed, that they are improvable.
The next target is $10 per 100 hands. That would generate $1,000 in winnings in 70 hours rather than 100.
The one nightmare session was a few hours on Virgin where there were loose players who refused to fold and refused to lose. I got crucified.
I think that signing up for Virgin was a mistake, but the rakeback and deposit bonus, plus the promise of very weak players (which, with no Pokertracker available, seemed quite likely) tempted me. However, the software is terrible. I mean, genuinely the worst. Party is a Bentley by comparison. In addition, hands per hour are funereally low, and although the games can be loose and weak, they aren't that way all the time. There are the standard four or five players always there (Shouka, I swear, never leaves the house or sleeps) who are hoovering up the weak money before the games die, like they did on Betfair. These guys are not particularly imaginative and can be taken off hands where they are clearly on a semi steal (a bet out by Shouka after a limp in early position and a board of QQ5 rainbow quickly got raised by my JT-suited on the button. He folded after the obligatory "hmm, I'm thinking of calling" pause)
I'm going to continue until I see what the rakeback looks like and I have worked off the deposit bonus, but I really find playing there a chore.
I also cashed out my $1700 in Paradise after going there and getting the "the waiting lists are full" message just once too often. This is a software glitch that has been going on for months and is known by the operators. It's sad to quit Paradise -- I've played most of my online limit games there and it is still where I have won the most money. But the old owners did nothing with it for the last two years, and the new owners are suits in marketing who haven't got a clue. I had hoped that the cross-sells to sports betting clients would make it a softy fishtank, but the software flaw made trying to get a table a battle in itself. So, farewell Paradise.
That really just leaves money in Party and Ultimate (although a couple of grand sits forlornly unused in Pokerstars), and Ultimate might get the heave-ho if the regular deposit bonuses don't make up for the tighter nature of the games. I'm running quite well at UB at the moment, so my glasses are a little rose-tinted.
In terms of hours played, I knocked up 50 on Party, 25 on Ultimate and 23 on Virgin. Virgin just happened to be the home of the really bad game for me this month. But it's almost impossible to play more than two games on that site, because there are no audio cues that it is your turn. Oh, don't get me going on that software. Christ, it's hard to believe that a company could come up with something that bad after seven years of experience to work with.
For February, it's $3-$6 at Party, unless the games look awful, in which case I will three-table at $2-$4 instead. By the end of the month I hope to be trying $5-$10 and $3-$6 at weekends. This isn't really on the cards at Ultimate, where at these levels everyone is everyone else's cousin and you might as well walk into the Vic. $15 an hour is probably the maximum I can realistically hope for on Ultimate.
There is the vague possibility of single-tabling $15-$30 on Virgin, since, when the game is operating, it looks loose and beatable. But I have my suspicions about Scandinavian-run sites with a heavy population of Scandinavians, often with two at the table from the same town, and a small liquidity of players. Stars and the like spot use of MSN very quickly, but the people at Virgin probably think that Collusion is an eau de parfum served at airport duty-frees.
Onwards and sideways.
First, the numbers:
| $2-$4 | $1-$2 | $5-$10 | Bonus | $3-$6 | $4-$8 | Grand Total | ||
| Party | Win | $162 | $93 | $68 | $330 | $654 | ||
| Ultimate | Win | $141 | $48 | $12 | $100 | $23 | $325 | |
| Stars | Win | $42 | $42 | |||||
| Virgin | Win | $176 | $8 | $40 | -$212 | $43 | $55 | |
| Total | $479 | $57 | $147 | $208 | $141 | $43 | $1,076 | |
| Total Hrs | 57 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 17 | 1 | 99 |
Background colours achieved by random choice of hexadecimal numbers.
As you can see, I managed my $10 an hour target for the month. From tentatively playing three tables on Ultimate at the start of the month, I was regularly playing three tables of $3-$6 by the end. No tournaments, no pissing around. Profit maximization.
One upshot of this was that the 99 hours seemed considerably more hours than my normal month's play, even though the number of hours was roughly the same. I played 14,000 hands of limit, and for much of the month it was a bit of a struggle. In this sense, I am quite confident that these figures are repeatable; indeed, that they are improvable.
The next target is $10 per 100 hands. That would generate $1,000 in winnings in 70 hours rather than 100.
The one nightmare session was a few hours on Virgin where there were loose players who refused to fold and refused to lose. I got crucified.
I think that signing up for Virgin was a mistake, but the rakeback and deposit bonus, plus the promise of very weak players (which, with no Pokertracker available, seemed quite likely) tempted me. However, the software is terrible. I mean, genuinely the worst. Party is a Bentley by comparison. In addition, hands per hour are funereally low, and although the games can be loose and weak, they aren't that way all the time. There are the standard four or five players always there (Shouka, I swear, never leaves the house or sleeps) who are hoovering up the weak money before the games die, like they did on Betfair. These guys are not particularly imaginative and can be taken off hands where they are clearly on a semi steal (a bet out by Shouka after a limp in early position and a board of QQ5 rainbow quickly got raised by my JT-suited on the button. He folded after the obligatory "hmm, I'm thinking of calling" pause)
I'm going to continue until I see what the rakeback looks like and I have worked off the deposit bonus, but I really find playing there a chore.
I also cashed out my $1700 in Paradise after going there and getting the "the waiting lists are full" message just once too often. This is a software glitch that has been going on for months and is known by the operators. It's sad to quit Paradise -- I've played most of my online limit games there and it is still where I have won the most money. But the old owners did nothing with it for the last two years, and the new owners are suits in marketing who haven't got a clue. I had hoped that the cross-sells to sports betting clients would make it a softy fishtank, but the software flaw made trying to get a table a battle in itself. So, farewell Paradise.
That really just leaves money in Party and Ultimate (although a couple of grand sits forlornly unused in Pokerstars), and Ultimate might get the heave-ho if the regular deposit bonuses don't make up for the tighter nature of the games. I'm running quite well at UB at the moment, so my glasses are a little rose-tinted.
In terms of hours played, I knocked up 50 on Party, 25 on Ultimate and 23 on Virgin. Virgin just happened to be the home of the really bad game for me this month. But it's almost impossible to play more than two games on that site, because there are no audio cues that it is your turn. Oh, don't get me going on that software. Christ, it's hard to believe that a company could come up with something that bad after seven years of experience to work with.
For February, it's $3-$6 at Party, unless the games look awful, in which case I will three-table at $2-$4 instead. By the end of the month I hope to be trying $5-$10 and $3-$6 at weekends. This isn't really on the cards at Ultimate, where at these levels everyone is everyone else's cousin and you might as well walk into the Vic. $15 an hour is probably the maximum I can realistically hope for on Ultimate.
There is the vague possibility of single-tabling $15-$30 on Virgin, since, when the game is operating, it looks loose and beatable. But I have my suspicions about Scandinavian-run sites with a heavy population of Scandinavians, often with two at the table from the same town, and a small liquidity of players. Stars and the like spot use of MSN very quickly, but the people at Virgin probably think that Collusion is an eau de parfum served at airport duty-frees.
Onwards and sideways.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-01-31 10:55 pm (UTC)That's brilliant. "Collusion - a fragrance by Pascal Perrault". Who'd know the difference ?
Andy
PS No slight intended on the player - he just has the right sounding name. It was either him or Jean-Robert Bellande.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 04:19 am (UTC)DY
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 10:04 am (UTC)I think I'll ignore Virgin following your ringing non-endorsement...
Mike
no subject
Date: 2006-02-01 10:09 am (UTC)Stars doesn't have the liquidity - of the 55,000 players "active" at busy times, I guess that only a hundred or so are mid to high-level limit players. Most are either play-money or tournament people.
I look at the games reasonably frequently and the regular "18%" figure seeing the flop puts me off before I go any depper.
A pity, because the software is great and the hand history system is A1.
PJ