I feel weird about writing this post because I know that as soon as some people read it I am going to get yelled at. I know that I deserve it though so the yelling doesn’t necessarily bother me so I will write about it here.

For the past two months I have been trying to “bonus whore” Aced Poker. For those unfamiliar with bonus whoring it works like this. You sign up for a poker site, they give you a deposit bonus (for Aced it was 200% to $250, a $500 bonus) and then you have to play a certain amount of hands to clear it. I have done this many times in the past, but for this site I found it to be completely impossible. I played over 10,000 hands at this site and didn’t even get 1/25th of the bonus. So I started to play at higher limits, no limits to try and clear it. This ended up being a big mistake as my early $200 profit shrunk to a $200 loss. I was down to my last $50 and unsure what to do. I played a few tournaments to build it back up, but then shrunk it down at the NL tables (variance, I am your bitch). I ended up getting away from my game and before I knew it I was down to $10 with a long way to go towards any bonus releases.

Meanwhile, yesterday I am still on vacation in Costa Rica. It’s our last night and my dad and I decide to hit the casinos. I start out hot, but simmer down losing about $60 in the process. No big deal, it’s vacation and you can’t play slots and roulette expecting to go home a winner.

I get home around midnight needing to go to bed to get up by 7. However, still filled with booze and casino air I have a bit of the casino bug. I log into Aced Poker and realize that they have blackjack. Wanting to kill some time I log in and deposit $26. I start to play before realizing they have strategy and autoplay. You set optimum strategy (or use their default which is correct strategy) and a bet amount, then you set how many hands to play and tell the computer to stop if you win or lose a certain amount. I fool around with this for a big and before I know it I am up $100. I decide to raise the stakes and I continue winning. Meanwhile, my bonus is releasing every second and I’ve done more in this 30 minutes of blackjack than two months of poker. I decide to keep playing and see if I can clear the bonus. I keep getting hotter and hotter til finally I am betting $50 a hand, my account balance grows over a thousand. I stop for a second and decide to let this thing play until the bonus is cleared. I go into the settings and turn off the “stop if I lose” and “stop if I win” factors. Big mistake. Within 20 hands, the $1000 is gone.

It happened so fast, it never even seemed like I had $1000. Now I had next to nothing. I tried to get back in the game, betting $10 and $20 on early hands but losing. I ended up broke. From $1000 to $0. I am the world’s biggest idiot. My number one rule of gambling is to set a limit on what you want to lose and I broke it. I ended up losing everything.

In a panic I deposited another $26 and lost it in three hands. Now I wasn’t even playing smart. I decided to take a second and reflect on everything that just happened. What did I do? Where did it all go wrong? Why did it all go wrong? Well, for one thing I didn’t adjust to the swings. I didn’t set my limits. I didn’t play smart or within my means. After much thinking I decided that I couldn’t go to bed losing $1000. I could go to bed losing $999, but not $1000. So I deposited another $26. They have a word for this in the gambling world. In fact they have many. Desperate. Fish. Idiot. Norm Macdonald. Whatever, you want to call it this was probably not a good idea. I did it anyways because I know this. You have a 48% chance of winning a hand in blackjack. I lost roughly 16 out of 20 hands. Things even out over time.

I played it smart. I let the computer handle the strategy and I handled the money in the same way. When I got up a certain amount, I raised the bet. If I lost that amount, I lowered it. I set an amount that I was willing to lose and then I adjusted it when I made more. I didn’t go crazy, I just played and adjusted. I did this for about three more hours after the original insanity. The end result? Well, I cleared the bonus. That’s all I really wanted to do was get that $500 and I did it. Mission accomplished. I did the withdrawl and I will have a check in two weeks.

A check for $2070.