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Bright Eyes
Feb. 21st, 2006 07:15 amIt was distinctly lighther this morning than yesterday, indicating that we have entered the "hour in a week" period of days when the days get longer very quickly. You would think that I would remember when this would happen (it is, after all, not like Easter, which can crop up at varying times). But I never do.
I logged into the Empire site to see if any changes had occurred in the past couple of weeks (particularly relating to the legal settlement with Party), and found $10 in there, plus a "40% bonus up to $200". Even though Empire is Tumbleweed City these days, this was a bit hard to turn down.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of a catch. I'd accepted the need to play 2,000 raked hands of a buck or more, but I was caught out by the fact that the "free" $10 suddenly became retroactively conditional. I had to knock out 300 raked hands before it was "released" (despite the fact that it was sitting in my "real" account rather than "bonus" account). Sneaky.
Now, 2,300 raked hands (probably about 4,800 hands in total at $2-$4) in 10 days isn't really a problem, except that at Empire you can struggle to find the games. there's nothing over $2-$4 for a lot of the time. And it also, it must be admitted, tends to rule out playing much anywhere else. And this can lead to severe boredom. Luckily I've run well there for a couple of days, although the month as a whole remains a struggle.
Foolishly I logged into Virgin later last night. I spotted an unbelievably soft $5-$10 game and, yes, promptly did my bollocks in it. I had decided to go to bed when, UTG, I picked up AJ off. I smacked in a raise, got called by loose player 1 and semi-loose player 2.
Without boring you with the details of the hand, I ended up winning with 2-pair Queens and Tens with my Ace kicker playing. One guy called me all the way with KJ off and the other decided that 32 suited was good enough to call on a flop of QQ2 and turn of QQT2 (no flush draw). But, for the previous hour and a half, I hadn't been able to pick a winner. This was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that Loose Player 3, who had by now burnt some $400 and left, played every flop and raised about half of them. I think that I was the only player that he could beat.
That puts me about $180 down on Virgin, even after $50 in bonuses, for the past month. The software remains unremittinlgly appalling and a large number of players make sure that they abuse their one all-in every 24 hours option to the max (some don't even pretend to hide that they are doing it -- that's Scandinavia for you. BossMedia does nothing about it.) But the games are so weak (bad players and angle shooting appear to go hand-in-hand, which makes me also suspect that there is a lot of MSN going on) that I'm half-tempted to deposit some more and focus on the bigger-stakes games. You won't see a $15-$30 gme this soft for some time.
On the downside, one table of $5-$10, no matter how weak, is less profitable than three tables of $2-$4. And it's very ddifficult to multi-table on Virgin because of (a) the software and (b) its incompatibility with Pokertracker/GameTime.
But a single table of $15-$30 for a month, that's a possibility.
I logged into the Empire site to see if any changes had occurred in the past couple of weeks (particularly relating to the legal settlement with Party), and found $10 in there, plus a "40% bonus up to $200". Even though Empire is Tumbleweed City these days, this was a bit hard to turn down.
Unfortunately, there was a bit of a catch. I'd accepted the need to play 2,000 raked hands of a buck or more, but I was caught out by the fact that the "free" $10 suddenly became retroactively conditional. I had to knock out 300 raked hands before it was "released" (despite the fact that it was sitting in my "real" account rather than "bonus" account). Sneaky.
Now, 2,300 raked hands (probably about 4,800 hands in total at $2-$4) in 10 days isn't really a problem, except that at Empire you can struggle to find the games. there's nothing over $2-$4 for a lot of the time. And it also, it must be admitted, tends to rule out playing much anywhere else. And this can lead to severe boredom. Luckily I've run well there for a couple of days, although the month as a whole remains a struggle.
Foolishly I logged into Virgin later last night. I spotted an unbelievably soft $5-$10 game and, yes, promptly did my bollocks in it. I had decided to go to bed when, UTG, I picked up AJ off. I smacked in a raise, got called by loose player 1 and semi-loose player 2.
Without boring you with the details of the hand, I ended up winning with 2-pair Queens and Tens with my Ace kicker playing. One guy called me all the way with KJ off and the other decided that 32 suited was good enough to call on a flop of QQ2 and turn of QQT2 (no flush draw). But, for the previous hour and a half, I hadn't been able to pick a winner. This was perhaps exacerbated by the fact that Loose Player 3, who had by now burnt some $400 and left, played every flop and raised about half of them. I think that I was the only player that he could beat.
That puts me about $180 down on Virgin, even after $50 in bonuses, for the past month. The software remains unremittinlgly appalling and a large number of players make sure that they abuse their one all-in every 24 hours option to the max (some don't even pretend to hide that they are doing it -- that's Scandinavia for you. BossMedia does nothing about it.) But the games are so weak (bad players and angle shooting appear to go hand-in-hand, which makes me also suspect that there is a lot of MSN going on) that I'm half-tempted to deposit some more and focus on the bigger-stakes games. You won't see a $15-$30 gme this soft for some time.
On the downside, one table of $5-$10, no matter how weak, is less profitable than three tables of $2-$4. And it's very ddifficult to multi-table on Virgin because of (a) the software and (b) its incompatibility with Pokertracker/GameTime.
But a single table of $15-$30 for a month, that's a possibility.
