Secrets of the Amateurs

How good is Pokertracker ? How high is the sky ? How deep is the ocean ?

So let's review where we are. You wouldn't think it was possible to lose money on a $150 bonus at Party ($1 every 7 raked hands) playing $1-2 : and indeed I didn't. But it was close. I managed to lose $138 on the tables for a profit of $12. Something is still awry with my limit Hold-em. I thought I was paying off too many raises on the turn, but thanks to PT I checked this evening and, to my surprise, I wasn't. There were two occasions where I called a turn raise and river bet with top pair and won, which covered the times I did so and lost $4. I could still have done better by making a few obvious laydowns (like with 3 flush cards on board), but that's not why I'm losing in itself. It could just be a bad run ; more likely I go on tilt too often and try to bluff the unbluffable. I think I'm learning though - not least when to use the check-raise for maximum profit.

So anyway, having cashed in the Party bonus (or 8% of it anyway), I turn my attention back to Stars. And I think "hmmm. I wonder if $1-2 Omaha 8 clears the bonus quicker than $1-2 Hold-em". So I give it a spin, and people are throwing chips at me. Here's an example of the standard of play. I raise pre-flop with AKK2, the BB calls as does a limper. Flop comes KK6 - kerching ! Limper bets, I call, BB folds. Turn is a 4, he bets I raise he calls. River is a 5, he bets I raise he calls. I scoop against his .... AJ74. Go figure that one out. And Omaha has bigger pots, so more hands qualify for an FPP. Per 100 hands it clears about twice as quickly as $1-2 HE, although this is offset by fewer hands/hour.

I go back to Pokertracker Omaha (it's just as good !) to find that I made $85 in 1000 hands of $1-2 Omaha on Party and Stars about a month ago, before deciding the game was too small, giving it back at $2-4 and switching to HE. In itself, the game was too small. But that was before I started on the bonuses. Now I reckon that Omaha could be the way forward when bonus whoring on Party and Stars, while HE is the only game in town on Crypto so I'll have to live with that.

There are quite a few $10/table hour bonuses around at the moment. This adds up to $30/hour if I can break even at 3 tables of Hold-Em, and about the same if I can manage $5/hour on 2 tables of Omaha. Doesn't sound like much ? Well, look at it this way. Playing live in Vegas you would almost certainly have to play $20-40 to make that, and of course the swings would be humungous. Furthermore, last year Daniel Negreanu, considered by many to be the top tournament player in the world (and I would definitely put him in the top 10), estimated his hourly rate in B+M tournaments to be ... $50/hour !

It remains to be seen whether I can maintain my interest in these - I couldn't in Sit and Goes, and I was making about $40/hour in them when I tried. But there's much more to these games, you have many, many, many more decisions to make and it's always nice to feel like you're moving forward. One other bonus is that it appeals to my perverse nature to bang on about $1-2 limit at the same time as everyone else is talking about $2500 tournaments !