Blood on the tracks
Mar. 2nd, 2007 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksSince there appears to be carnage everywhere, perhaps I shoould be grateful that I am not bankrupt; that, indeed, I showed a minor profit for February ($250). However, it was an unsatisfactory month. If PJB PLC were an insurer, it would report an underwriting loss, saved only by return on investments (i.e., rakeback and bonuses).
Just as January felt like I was running good, so most of February felt like I was running bad. But with that comes the rider that times tend to be tougher. Party during the early evening these days is very tough indeed. I really can't see myself doing any better than breaking even against nine other players with statistics that are similar to mine. Not only that, but they are playing the same moves as me! I mean, what's a man to do?
With Party apparently closing the door to French players, and instituting a new push in the UK (flyers in The Sun and an Amazon package this week), perhaps we will get a spell of softer newcomers. On the downside, bots such as A6pak (on Wednesday, six tables open , playing at all six, as he/it is most evenings) and a few other serious suspects (Zebroy?) are just there all the time, so any serious fish money is hoovered up by some shithead in the Russian Federation who isn't even sitting at his computer. The farce is, a6pak isn't even a winner at the times I am on the game. He's flat break-even over 5,000 hands. But if he has a rakeback deal he must be generating thousands of dollars a month, simply by breaking even (I would guess he plays 3,000 or more hands a day). Meanwhile, well, it's beatable, but the variance is necesarily high.
I check out all the other sites with which I have accounts on a fairly regular basis, and, although soft players appear occasionally, as a rule the early evening UK time seems to consist mainly of grinders. Money can be made here, mainly through rakeback and bonuses, it must be admitted. But it isn't fun and it isn't easy. They certainly don't give their money away. I would guess that any edge I can gain would now be on the river and on the river alone. Their performance on flop and turn doesn't have much minus EV to it. But they do seem to have flaws in river bets, raises and calls.
But that's a very marginal area. I doubt that one hand in five gets to the river these days during the times that I play.
Still, March may see things change. It's a short month (off to Vegas on the 23rd) and April will be shorter still (just two weeks in the UK). So I can happily accept that the winnings of two years ago, and possibly even last year, are unlikely to be repeated.
And, of course, Neteller still has $2.5K of my money "pending", while the US pores over all suspect funds. Sigh.
Just as January felt like I was running good, so most of February felt like I was running bad. But with that comes the rider that times tend to be tougher. Party during the early evening these days is very tough indeed. I really can't see myself doing any better than breaking even against nine other players with statistics that are similar to mine. Not only that, but they are playing the same moves as me! I mean, what's a man to do?
With Party apparently closing the door to French players, and instituting a new push in the UK (flyers in The Sun and an Amazon package this week), perhaps we will get a spell of softer newcomers. On the downside, bots such as A6pak (on Wednesday, six tables open , playing at all six, as he/it is most evenings) and a few other serious suspects (Zebroy?) are just there all the time, so any serious fish money is hoovered up by some shithead in the Russian Federation who isn't even sitting at his computer. The farce is, a6pak isn't even a winner at the times I am on the game. He's flat break-even over 5,000 hands. But if he has a rakeback deal he must be generating thousands of dollars a month, simply by breaking even (I would guess he plays 3,000 or more hands a day). Meanwhile, well, it's beatable, but the variance is necesarily high.
I check out all the other sites with which I have accounts on a fairly regular basis, and, although soft players appear occasionally, as a rule the early evening UK time seems to consist mainly of grinders. Money can be made here, mainly through rakeback and bonuses, it must be admitted. But it isn't fun and it isn't easy. They certainly don't give their money away. I would guess that any edge I can gain would now be on the river and on the river alone. Their performance on flop and turn doesn't have much minus EV to it. But they do seem to have flaws in river bets, raises and calls.
But that's a very marginal area. I doubt that one hand in five gets to the river these days during the times that I play.
Still, March may see things change. It's a short month (off to Vegas on the 23rd) and April will be shorter still (just two weeks in the UK). So I can happily accept that the winnings of two years ago, and possibly even last year, are unlikely to be repeated.
And, of course, Neteller still has $2.5K of my money "pending", while the US pores over all suspect funds. Sigh.
Neteller, Betfair and a 100%+ book
Date: 2007-03-03 12:36 pm (UTC)My Neteller account was suspended before it even got started, presumably because of their incompetence in ringing a UK number to confirm I am who I say I am. Now I would like them to cancel the damn account so you or Mikey can at least get a referral bonus from me. I only opened the account to make it easier to transfer money to Betfair in a manner that Mrs. Fiendish would not notice, as for some reason Betfair will not believe that my PayPal account is a UK account. However, bank transfers seem to do the trick, albeit with a bit of a time lag. A Neteller account would still be handy as an alternative to paying by Paypal on the Fiendish Games site but I suppose I could use Mikey's account.
Talking of Betfair, I have been having some successs (read: losing 100% of the time) backing against Spurs on there. At the time of writing, the odds on the West Ham/Spurs game this Sunday are:
West Ham win 3.35
Draw 2.32
Spurs win 3.6
Helpfully, Betfair even calculate the book's margin on this and it is a profit of 0.73%, which is a pretty efficient margin.
However, if you want to lay any of those results, the odds are:
West Ham win 3.35
Draw 2.34
Spurs draw 3.65
This is a 99.98% book. I was just about to get very excited at this arbitrage opportunity when, thankfully, it dawned on me that if I am LAYING these bets, a less than 100% book is a bad thing! LOL.
Thus are greedy, stupid people eliminated from the gene pool by means of natural selection, but only (sadly) over a period of several hundred thuousand years.
TTFN,
John
http://my.opera.com/fiendishgames/blog/
Re: Neteller, Betfair and a 100%+ book
Date: 2007-03-03 02:18 pm (UTC)Ever since then I have received occasional e-mails from the donkeys at EBay, begging for my custom via PayPal. Well, if they hadn't destroyed the brand (as far as I am concerned) by vetoing poker site transfers, I might have accommodated them.
My PayPal account (like my Neteller account) is in dollars, because when I opened my accounts it was dollars or nothing. Then these upstarts decided that they were multi-nationals, and offered multi-currency options. All of which made things difficult for us non-US residents with dollar accounts. Attempting to speak to anyone in customer services is pointless. Most of them seem to be 15 years old and unaware that there was a time when the Internet didn't exist.
So, I still have to get round to organizing things for the end of this year, when I hope to auction off bundles of stuff on EBay in the run-up to Christmas.
Neteller did telephone me (at home) when I first opened my account, to check that I was who I said I was. Until that happens, I think that the account says "suspended".
PJ
Re: Neteller, Betfair and a 100%+ book
Date: 2007-03-05 04:58 pm (UTC)It's just a minor point, but lest you think the people on Betfair are crazy mug punters, I think I got the odds on a draw and on a Spurs win transposed in my earlier reply.
As I mentioned on my blog, I am now 3 for 3 when backing against Spurs, and each time they have scored 4 goals. Next up, Chelsea. You have been warned!
John H.
http://my.opera.com/fiendishgames/blog/