In it to win it

I've put my money in to action

2009-01-06

I'm a decent poker player, I've won some money and done good in some tournaments. This is not good enough and I really don't have time to increase my playing to become better. I know a lot of good young guns in poker though that could use a little push so I decided to back a player this Christmas. I didn't put a lot of cash in to it but some, 500 euros. The deal is as following, as long as he rakes more than 500 a month, he keeps the whole profit, if he doesn't we split it 50/50. (He signed up on my affiliate code so I get a percent of the rake).

Going to see how this works out and if it is good I'm going to start searching for more players in the same position. The room in question is True Money Games.

2008-12-13

It's true, I need a break from work.

PokerOffice finally launches Poker Office 5

2008-12-11

PokerOffice finally opens the Poker Office 5 for Beta-testing. It has already gone through a closed beta period and now it's open for everyone.

The new version has a lot to offer that the last one didn't, fully customizable filters is one and (suck on this) support for Windows Vista.

Read more about it or sign up for the Beta.

But it makes me look like a Pro!

2008-11-21

Ok, this might not be amazing for some but for me it is. I just got signed up for having a bounty on a christmas Freeroll on True Money Games. It feels being pretty good and I'm being promoted as "Sort of a tough cookie" (Here) and interviewed (here).

Beat that if you can!

Ongame network has stopped Rakeback but...

2008-11-02

Ongame claims to offer a "Rakeback free enviroment" but Pokeriot can show us that this is not true. Poker rooms such as Betsson have had affiliates offering rakeback for quite a while. You can find the article in Betsson, Ongame and Rakeback.

On the other hand, according to Betsson this is something that is really being worked on as Betsson tries to clean among their affiliates. Read Betssons answer.

I find this increasingly interesting as Ongame is actually slapping rooms in the network with sever fines if they offer rakeback. It is of course hard for a poker room giving revenue share to keep their affiliates in line but this only proves the problems with offering the "rakeback free enviroment". Not only does it take a lot of work to check on all affiliates, it is also killing a good marketing channel.

A lot of smart people believe that all the bigger networks will eventually ban rakeback as it harms the liquidity of the poker network but this should mean that there are good opportunities for smaller networks to get a cut of the market. Usually Rakeback players stay within the same network but with the room offering the best rakeback. If all the bigger networks strangle the supply of rakeback though the intermediate to good players might actually drain away to the smaller networks.

No doubt about it, the rakeback market is interesting and there will be a lot happening in the near future. Maybe Ongame is actually shooting itself in one of it's giant feet. Maybe this is the time for diversity and fragmentation in the online poker business.

Read Cardlovers explantaion on Rake and Rakeback.

2008-10-28

I've been a member of a lot of poker communities in my days. I've blogged a lot and I've talked to a lot of poker players all over the world. Never before have I found a poker community with this amount of beautiful ladies compared to the amount of pale and a bit greasy guys.

Ok, due to my avatar I might look like a woman but if you look closely you will see that it is Samantha Fox (I'm not her).

I have two questions to you guys out there:

Are there more women in poker today?
Are all of them here?

I'm not complaining but I have a theory more properly explained in the post Girl Index of Nerd Hobbies. The theory is that when beautiful women turns up the hobby is not a nerd hobby anymore. This is only applicable on male nerd hobbies, on female nerd hobbies there are of course already women and guys will show up anywhere.

Well, according to this theory Cardlovers is the coolest place for poker players, it's true do the maths yourself.

Girlfriend has put an end to it

2008-10-15

Ok, for the next two weeks I'm not allowed to play any poker. This was an ultimatum from the girlfriend and if I have to choose, well sorry about that poker. This means I have a lot of spare time so I thought I'd make a list of things you can do without playing Poker.

Watch Poker after Dark
I haven't managed to se a lot of Poker After Dark so that is a good thing to do.

Practise the chip tricks
I really need to get a hang of it, can't be sitting there looking like a fool.

Blog about poker
Already doing it.

Find a better rakeback deal
If you just put a little time into it you can make more money, I will give it a go.

Finally read Supersystem
Am I the only one that haven't read it?

Go through the PokerOffice data
Ok you get a lot on the hud but to really improve there is a lot to find in the database. Going to see what I can find out.

Play Pai Gow Poker
The last of my ideas might be pushing it a bit but there was nothing in the deal about hitting the casino games. Going to take a good look in to one of Chinas biggest games, Pai Gow Poker.

Pokerstars, Cardschat and Pokersourceonline all kicked out

2008-09-07

During the last week a number of usually high ranking sites have been banned from Googles index. The biggest of them Pokerstars. Pokerstars have been keeping top positions on a large number of high traffic poker keywords in the past. Today they are back on position 3 on the keyword poker but they have been swinging up and down for days. There has been a lot of speculation about this and some claim sabotage while others say it's the large amount of paid links to the site that does it. Regardless of the reason, this is costly for Pokerstars as loosing thier Google traffic should mean a loss of at least 7 million dollars a year.

2008-07-25

Cheating in poker, is it still possible? Isn't that something that is strictly wild west?

There are a lot of ways to make more money in poker than you actually deserve. You can call it cheating if you want, there are a lot of poker players out there making more money than you though and they call it being smart. Cheating does not have to be the wild west crap, hiding cards in your sleeves or marking them with a secret hidden pin, it can be much more sophistacated than that and might even be endorsed by the poker rooms. Here is our toplist for maximizing your winnings:

Do Rakeback
By getting a rakebackdeal you will get a large chunk of your rake back (no kidding). This is not cheating any player but it damned well cheats the poker rooms of their profit. If you get 50% of the rake back you can be pretty sure that the poker rooms feel cheated. Get it here.

Let a machine play for you
The use of poker bots is something all serious poker rooms hate, they hate it not for the reason that it is bad for them but for the reason that it might scare off the other players. Poker bots today are a lot better than the rooms claim, ok they don't beat the pros, but who needs that. Just get a decent bot and combine it with a rakebackdeal and you're set for life. More on Poker Bots

Get a poker calculator
This is definately the best way to go about cheating in poker. There are several poker statistics softwares out there and if you use one of them you will improve your game by getting an unfair advantage against your opponents. With a good one you can see what kind of hands your opponent play and even their mucked cards (the poker rooms actually like these, don't ask me why. Here is a free one.

Whore for bonuses
This trick is getting a bit less effective but it still works. A lot of young "promising" poker players have made their salary this way. Sign up, get the biggest first deposit bonus they have and just play tight as a size 32 dress. This works both for casino and poker btw and casinos used to be the easiest. The edge a casino have on you if you play correct black jack is less than 1%. Just managing to play for hours and hours isn't a problem at all. Nowadays most of the casinos don't let you play BJ to improve your player points so poker is the trick. Remember to cash out though. If you continue playing you aren't really cheating.

Do custom tournaments
This is the cheatiest trick of them all. Round up 20 guys and girls (no matter if they play poker or not) and invite them to custom tournaments on a new pokerroom every week. Make sure you get a good CPA with the room and let your friends sign up through your affiliate link. None of them will continue playing on the poker room so don't do rev share, it needs to be CPA. You can easily get the poker rooms to add at leat $500 to a $20 tourney with 20 new players which makes the tourney a sweet deal for your players and you can cash out some sweet CPA. Don't accept CPA under $100 at least. That makes a weekends of cheating pay you $2000 and $900 to one of your happy friends. Keep do this until all the poker rooms hate you, I mean it they will.

What if I get naked?

2008-07-20

Strip poker is one of the most searched for keywords today. I remember palying strip poker in school with a couple of shy girls (yes, it was plenty fun) but I can't for my life imagine how you play it online. What I played was not even remotely poker and I don't understand how you aply the strip part to proper poker. What do you bet? Do you bet your panties and the opponent calls with her socks? Can you go all in, and exactly how do you do it? Do you put all your clothes in the pot?

I've been thinking a lot about strip poker actually, I can't see anway anyone would ever have more than 10 big blinds. Lets say the big blind is a t-shirt, you will have to bet at least a sweater or a bra to raise, if you want to double you have to put in your thong. This makes everyone shortstacked at least if te game isn't held in Greenland or Siberia. I can see the fun of everyone getting naked on the first flop but doesn't it take the poker out of the game turining it in to just strip?

Well, as you've noticed I have Samantha Fox for my avatar here and If you have a good memory you might even remember the old "Samantha Fox Strip Poker", probably the sexiest computergame ever. If you like pixely chicks from the eighties you just have to download it, it's available for C64 and Amiga but I'm sure you can find a decent emulator. I surely enjoyed Samantha Fox Strip poker a lot even though it was barely poker.

So my point being, If anyone's up for a game of strip poker, just drop me a message