More playing blind, freeroll thoughts

Well, I’ve almost depleted my play money bankroll with the “playing blind” exercise, at least the amounts that will let me play the higher buyin Sit and Goes. And I played a points tourney trying to earn tourney dollars so I could use that to play cheap real money tourneys blind, but I didn’t win/cash so that’s not ready to try yet.

I still find it embarrassing to go to the river ’cause I don’t know what I’m holding, but there’ve been funny ones. I stabbed at a 778 flop from the blind against two limpers, they called, a 6 came on the turn and another on the river and we checked both. Turned out that I had a 6 for a boat. So I bet when I had nothing, checked when I had something. They had both called with gutshots or something but OOP I expected one of them to be just calling with a 7 or at least an 8 or another pair. So you can see that my hand reading ability hasn’t improved.

One good thing coming out of this is that in regular games I sometimes notice myself looking at the flop and evaluating it for betting purposes even before I consider how the flop fits my own hand. I think this is a good sequence, and I should probably even look at the other players’ stats before I consider my hand. Raised/raised by whom/ limped, number of high cards, possible draws, likelihood of catching a piece of my opponents’ hands, opponents’ playing style/stats, then finally, how the flop fits my actual hand seems like a good sequence.

~

I mini-cashed in another freeroll on the weekend though it was on a site where I already have a bankroll so it didn’t really matter. But the thing to note is that again I was doing something else while playing. In this case, trying to make dinner. I play these freerolls not for the money obviously, but because there’s a couple competitions going on with some people that I know with regards to performance in these.

I didn’t cash, however, in a couple freerolls that I played on a new site for me. It’s one of the bigger sites/networks and I am considering having a bankroll there, especially after the site with my 3rd biggest bankroll closed. I’m going to give my building a bankroll from freerolls advice a go for a while first before I deposit. I don’t know if they have a first deposit bonus or not, but if they do, then I want to be fully comfortable with the software before I make a deposit, and playing freerolls is a good way to do that.

One of my poker sites goes under …

Well, one of my poker sites has bitten the dust.

I mentioned in my post on selecting a poker site that small sites can be a bit risky. I also mentioned in the freeroll strategy that small sites often offer more freerolls. The site that went down was a small site where I had my first real money bankroll way back from some small freeroll winnings. Eventually I built it up to $150 which I cashed out last summer because I was a little concerned about the owner going AWOL. He had been in email contact with someone I knew but then for a time she couldn’t get a response from him so I cashed out just to be safe and made a first deposit at another big site.

I still had player points at the small site and won some more freeroll money so I started up again. Built it up to $100, and now the site has been shut down by some gaming authority who apparently is going to send me the money that was in my account.

I’ve been pretty anonymous about things in this blog and want to continue to do so, so I’m not going to give the site by name. In six months the name will be irrelevant anyways, but the experience won’t be irrelevant for general internet information purposes.

I had heard that the site had been up for sale earlier but had not been sold. It didn’t go bankrupt, but what happened recently is that the owner promoted an unethical poker-related site and was shut down by his ISP. The story was that he was trying to find another ISP but what must have happened is this regulatory body convinced the ISP to shut down. This organisation is the one that I have been in contact with and is now supposedly going to refund the balance in my account. I am assuming that this organisation is legit as they have taken over the domain of the poker site and emailed me the information that I previously gave to the poker site to cash out to see if this is still correct.

This site was what is called a “skin”. This means that it joined an existing network of casino sites, built it’s own website and customer base, and the customers played on the network rather than on the site’s own poker software. The other players may have joined any of a dozen or more sites but play each other as if they were all on the same site. I thought perhaps one of the other sites might pick up the accounts in order to keep the player base up, but apparently not.

~

So, a lesson for myself and for anyone who reads this blog. From my perspective it may not end up costing me much other than the bank transfer charges (hopefully) but it is worthwhile noting that

1. a mis-managed small site goes down, that
2. a regulatory body shuts it down, and that
3. this same body is arranging to refund account balances.

~

Edit: The cash did come in, just under a week later for the wire transfer, less a $15 bank charge by my bank. Pretty much the same as last time I cashed out in the summer.

I don’t have anywhere that I want to make a deposit right now, so by my calculations I’m now ahead some $47 taking cashouts, less bank charges, less total poker deposits, and still have money still in two big sites.

Or, from the site itself, I started with freerolls, cashed out, started again with freerolls and now forced to cash out again for a total of $250 in cash outs over a period of about a year and a half, without ever making a deposit at the site. I think that’s fine, especially as it never was my primary site.

Higher win rates, less effort equals lower growth

My bankroll is gradually increasing, but I don’t seem to have the urge to work at it. Instead, I’m playing in situations where I have good chances of winning.

0.05/0.10 at the European site at 6 max tables there always seems to be one or two maniacs where I play tight/passive/aggressive, and 4 out of 5 times I can double up in 1/2 hour. I don’t multitable ’cause at the times that I usually play I’m doing something else at the same time. High win percentage, low risk, low attention requirement.

I still play cheap turbo SnGs. Again, high win percentage, low risk, minimal attention requirement. Plus I play limited entry freerolls and have been ITMing. High win, no risk, min attention.

This keeps taking me back to the Islewars entry, and the Pokemon game I was working through a little while back. A little bit of challenge, high win rates, low win amounts compared with bigger challenges, higher risk with higher win amounts.