Received a mail from PSO this, telling me that my account with bodog was confirmed (“Thank you for signing up for online poker through Poker Source Online. Your account has been confirmed and your order is being sent to our fulfillment department”….”If you selected PSO points as your free item, your points will be posted within 3 business days.”). Groovy…and now I login to find that the points have been already credited to my account. W00t!

That was a really great experience with an easy promotion to go along with it (clear it just over a week playing at the loooow levels). Thumbs up PSO!

…why? Because ” Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” (Murphy’s Law). Today was such a day, let me give a quick example:

Everytime I hold a flush in guts, someone will have a straight. Everytime I have a straight, someone will have three of a kind or even a straight flush. Everytime I’m involved in a huge pot, I will have no hand. That pretty much sums up the day at the guts tables on nine. What stood out even more was that four players were either a) the ultimate luckboxes or b) I don’t want to get out my tinfoil hat so I’m not going to say it, but it still makes you curious as to why these players hold the winning hand EVERY SINGLE TIME a big pot is decided (guts is a progressive game, for all those who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a quick wrapup: all players ante up, this seeds the initial pot, then every player is dealt 3 cards, you check the ranking of your hand (High Card, One Pair, Flush, Straight, Trips, Straight flush), then you decide if you’re in or if you’re out (fold). If you’re in and noone else is in, you win. If you’re in and you showdown the best hand you win. If you’re in and you don’t show the winning hand you must ante up the pot in the next hand (example: 10 players at the table, everybody antes .10, so the initial pot is $1, three players are in, one wins the $1, in the next hand the two losing players ante up ($1-rake), the others ante up .10, so the pot is something like just under $3, three players are in again, two lose one wins, two players ante up ($3-rake) the rest antes up .10, etc). So there can be some huge pots, even in the smallest limit (which is .10) and every friggin time a big pot came up (the biggest being well over $20) the same friggin players hold the winning hand, unreal. I forgot to ask them where the got the horseshoe and the matching buttplug to keep it in 😉

After that shit run on the guts tables I fired up the usual NL game and got my ass handed to me. AQ vs A4 no good, AK vs K2 no good, etc etc. So I said to myself: do you really want to keep burning money around here? Walk away! …and so I did.

I thought it would be a good way to get some steam off by playing a low limit SnG on bodog. In the beginning a calling station cost me half of my stack as he refused to laydown third pair and my draws didn’t get there. Then the two orbits of mayhem occured. I look down at 44 on the button. Two limpers. I decide to limp in too, if I flop something good, if not, I’m not commited. Flop comes down 44x…wheeeeeeee…I let one player hang himself and push in after the river, he was commited and his Aces up were no good. The very next hand I find myself one off the button with KK. The player who just lost to my Quads is now short and in the BB, so I pop it up and he reraises. Nice, I call and he shows AA. Hmm, damn it! Flop comes down Kxx…wheeee…turn and river are blank and I sit on a nice stack. We’re on the bubble now and I fold till I’m in the BB again, looking down at QQ…hmm…someone popped it up from the cutoff, so I want to see where I’m at and reraise, he instapushes…now I’m wondering if he’s really got a bigger pair or if he’s just trying to push me off an Ace. I call all-in and he shows 66…wheeeeee….wait, there’s a 6 on the flop…and I’m out on the bubble. Karma’s a bitch!!!!!!!!!

Hehe, I’m not sure about their official spelling, but I guess it’s 9poker, not that it mattered as both domains (.com) are connected. So, why am I even talking about that? Because I selected nine to be my next bonus hunt “victim”. After finishing bodog within such a short time (points still pending, I hope I’ll get them soonish) I was on the lookout for another good promotion. The nine promotion at PokerSavvy sounded good: the usual 50 deposit and you’ll need to get 250 Points with nine to get 700 points. Fair enough, so I got to it yesterday.

Quick review of my experience so far:

1. Signup was mostly painless, there were numerous inconsistencies and inconveniences though:

– the sign up is done via the secure part of their website, so far so good, the only thing they should explain to me is why I can use all letters, numbers and symbols on their website, but not in the poker client. I had the feeling that this was the reason I couldn’t login in the poker client. So I fired up Live Chat support and got the answer and the password changed right away. Fine, I still told the support guy to bitchslap the designers and that they should get this fixed…this is ridiculous..a simple character check in the sign up form shouldn’t be hard to implement *cough* 😉

– I deposited via the signup and once I was able to login I was facing the next problem: where’s my money? So I fire up the cashier, nothing, I fire up the FAQ, nothing, I fire up the account info, money there, but how to transfer it? Cashier, nothing. I fire up support yet again…aaaaah there’s another cashier, which is a symbol in the poker client. Error #1: I clicked on “deposit to poker” during signup, money still went to “normal” (sports betting) wallet. Error #2: Why would the “transfer funds from (other) wallet” be only a symbol, but the same functionality isn’t available via the cashier menu???

– The points you grind out are only updated once a day as far as I’ve seen so far…this sucks!

So after that little headshaking and laughing at the messy system I fired up some poker games and played for a while. As it was approaching early morning, yet again, I decided to quit though and so I pause my play until this afternoon. Impressions so far: the games are good, the sidegames (Chinese Poker, Guts, etc) are addictive, the traffic seems to be 98% from Canada (at least 90-99% of the players I’ve met so far were from Canada), the UI is not the best I’ve seen…I mean it’s pretty looking…

…but some features are just a big PITA, e.g. the raise function – the standard raise function is a min raise, so far so good, if you want to raise more though you don’t have a bar to pull right away, but you have to click on “raise other” first and then adjust the bar (or type in the amount) and then click the raise button…not really good.

So…so far I would rate the room with a two thumbs up for their quick and easy support (via live chat), two thumbs down for their inconsistent stuff all over the place, one thumb down for their poker client. Let’s see how long it’ll take for me to grind out the 250 Points…

On another note: Did you know that Matt from PokerSavvy added a nice little item to the shop? For every 450 points you can order a money transfer of 45$ to either paypal or Neteller. This really rocks! Now I don’t say that Gift Certificates are bad, but they’re limited in use (e.g. only for Amazon.com) and the other stuff is basically out of reach for international customers like me (shipping&handling is not worth it)…so instead of going a route like PP gift certificate -> PP acount -> withdrawal to Neteller, you can now go the direct way PokerSavvy -> Neteller/Paypal, this clearly puts PokerSavvy ahead of the competition, so I’ll probably focus my search on their partners once I’m done with nine.

Well, got to 200 points with 3 more SnGs, so now I’m done. Now I’ll just have to wait till the PokerSourceOnline points roll in (if you don’t have an account yet, feel free to use referral code: Ingoal). This was one of the easiest promotions I’ve done yet, the easiest since the Mansion promotion at PokerSavvy.

I think I’ll get myself some nice Amazon gift certificates for the points and buy either some poker dvds (WPT) or poker books, gotta check my own wishlist. Now I gotta check for a new promotion  🙂

…played a shit load of SnGs today, 10 in total which is quite a lot as those aren’t turbos. Even better: finished ITM in 9 out of 10 🙂

So my hunt for the 9000 PSO points is nearly completed, I guess after another time played bonus tomorrow I should be under 5 SnGs to get there. Nice, just over a week of low limit grinding and I almost tripled up my deposit 🙂

I guess I’ll get some Amazon gift cards once I get the points and I’m positive that I’ll keep playing at bodog for a while, after all there are that many donkeys around, why not take their money?

Ups: 2 wins and 7 other ITM finishes for a total of 9 out of 10

Downs: Folding the nuts some of the time – no those were all correct plays, it’s just that the board would have rewarded me (55 folded to a raise and all-in reraise, opponent showed AQ and QQ…flop 55x; 67o folded to a raise and big reraise, opponent showed KK and QQ, board:  A7AJ7; etc)

Hehe! Well, poker can really be fun sometime even if both the play at the tables and the result are bad. I’m near clearing the bodog points to finish the PSO promotion which is a good thing as I’m about to lose it with bodog. No, not my money, I’m way up, but my sanity! The play of some, if not most, players is so awful that it hurts to watch them even if you’re not in the hand and sometimes even more when you’re in a hand.

That’s when I said to myself: Why keep it in? Why not have some fun at the table, especially due to the fact that there was one particularly chatty player at the table anyway. So I went ahead and did a little Public Service Announcement…lol…

Ingoal: if play get’s a tiny bit worse than this bodog is required to hand out mandatory barf bags…
Ingoal: …so please get your act together or the rake will go up
Kevin_thekid_A: LOL
Ingoal: cheers the management
Ingoal: lol

Man, I’m still laughing at this one, and you know why? Because it’s indeed the awful truth. So, my plan is to grind away at the points to finish the promotion asap and then I’ll probably take a few days off before returning to bodog to skin more fish.

I leave you with some stats and one of two lovely hands which included the same shit, AQ vs QQ…no Ace to be found, but the case queen…

…the other similar hand was even better, A10 vs 1010, flop comes Ace high…turn blank…river case 10…yeeeehaaaw! I was so shocked that I didn’t make a screenshot.

Stats: Coins won 2, Coins lost: 3

…nothing spectacular to report, just the same ol’ same ol’ bullshit at the SnG tables. Sometimes it’s just to hard to take, sometimes it just makes you laugh your ass off. The latter applied to a hand that played itself out nicely: AJ in LP, I limp (I know I know, but I don’t want to commit too much at this particular table as “people are calling like crazy anyway” (c) tuff_fish ), flop comes down AAQ, checked to me, I check, turn is the case Ace…hehe, check check, river K, player in EP pushes….lol! So you’re holding a King after all, I instacall and show my quad aces 🙂

Apart from that nothing, and I mean nothing literally, going my way especially down the stretch…can’t win a coinflip once again…and people are sucking out like Dyson’s top model, unreal…and before I puke because my junk is hurting so badly I’ll quit with a slight loss tonight…

Coinflips: 5, won:1, lost:4

Sucky sucky: errm…dominated hands? What does the deck care…lost all 4 of ’em…

Play is still aweful, although there are some regulars, like myself, who try to both get their hands on the fish and keep the level of play a little bit above “stinkin aweful”.

Good news: made money like always despite numerous suckouts against me plus the fact that I couldn’t win a single coinflip for a while (including yesterday’s coinflips starting with the mook I went a whoopin 0 for 5 before I finally won one again – now we all know that coinflips don’t work in the win one lose one way, but it still sucks if you’ve got such a consecutive streak of losses). Just slightly over 50 points to go to clear the PSO bonus, too. Should be done soon enough (I’m guessing early to mid next week). Cool stuff as I doubled my deposit too…so I’m going to keep playing there for a while even after finishing the bonus 🙂
Bad news: I’m starting to wear out and it’s hard to stay focused, although my hand reading ability has benefited from the grind – it’s almost scary how accurate I can put my opponents on hands most of the time…okay, it’s not all that hard with most opponents either as they don’t know what the heck they’re doing. One question I asked in the table chat tonight was: “Does anybody around here have a post-flop game?” – and it’s a valid one as most people know only two ways to play (especially preflop): push or fold. Now there are some people, including myself, who try to exploit it…but for the most part a push means either nuts or something else (d’oh), namely small pair or weak Ace…lovely to see this, especially if the player is in EP and you’re looking down at a monster.

Coinflips played: 5, lost: 3, won:2

“Coolers” and suckouts: 55 vs AA lost, QQ vs KK vs AA lost but not broke as the spidey sense kicked in just in time to only lose me 200 odd chips, AQ vs AK lost, AJ vs AQ lost, AJ vs AK (all those lovely AJ vs hands were three- to four-handed, nice shuffle there), times I sucked out: 0, times I got sucked out on: 4

Nothing too spectacular to report today, played SnG after SnG to bring my total of SnGs played on bodog since sunday to 35. Today, I cashed in 7 out of 10, so not too bad, once again only one win though, which sucks, but what can you do more than stick your money in with the best hand and hope for the best? Exactly, nothing more and hopefully nothing less. The cards just can’t fall your way any time.

Coinflips played: 3, Won: 2, Lost: 1

Real coolers: 3, 99 vs KK, 78 vs 89 on a 884 board and 55 vs AA, lost both

Coolers the other way round: AA vs KK, Aces held up

Times sucked out/sucked out on: 4 and 4, so even…not taking into consideration that most of the sucked out on hands happened really deep in the money (usually headsup), so even is just a real number comparison, I’m way down when you look at the “money factor”…and I’m not counting the one where a player sucked out a chop my QQ vs Q7…board AJ10xK…
I would like to end this summary with a nice message that kept popping up earlier in the day before bodog threw out a software update this afternoon…

Errrrm, yup…thanks for the message 🙂

…spent quite some time at bodog again today, grinding it out in the SnGs and throwing in a little NL25 action to spice things up. Played 8 SnGs today mostly two at once, it’s just too damn boring just playing one and boredom sometimes leads to stupid (action hungry) action which I like to avoid these days. Play wasn’t great at the tables, nothing new there, and I restrained myself from doing stupid things, mostly…one time I pushed my QQ into Ace rag although an Ace hit the flop – should have known better, but hey…it happens.

So, I cashed in 6 out of 8, but only taking down one win. I blame it mostly on the bad timing on some of the hands: today I didn’t only play and write down user notes on tendencies and stuff, but I also kept track of some of the usual situations that come up during a session, namely coinflips and their result and “coolers” – now I use the word cooler loosely, I mean it’s definitely a cooler when you’re Daniel Negreanu holding 66 against Gus Hansen’s 55 on High Stakes Poker (Season 2, Episode 11) and the flop comes down 965…and then the turn is another 5 and you lose to the tune of 300.000$ out of your own pocket, so excuse that I use the term “cooler” here at all (after all I’m playing LOW limits), it’s just that I fell in love with the expression as it totally fits when it comes down to certain situations (you are playing Fold’em for half an hour as you can’t even get SMTL or the hammer, left alone a “real hand”, so you get dealt AQ, AJ or whatever and every friggin time someone is holding a stronger ace).

So the stats for the two facts would be:

1. Coinflips played: 2, won: 2, 99 vs AK flopped a set, AK vs 44 hit a King

2. “Coolers”: AJs vs AQ, AQs vs AKo, A10 vs A6…and you guessed it, I didn’t get lucky on any of them and even got unlucky on the last one (board A-10-6, turn blank, river 6)

So all in all I almost doubled my deposit so far and I’m on my way of getting to the 200 bodog points, which will result in 900 PSO points soon enough…nice.