Tag Archives: Poker

blog

In which I win and lose a thousand dollars

January 27, 2009 – 10:05 am

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.

Tags , , , | Comment (0)
blog

Variance and the importance of quitting while you’re ahead

January 6, 2009 – 3:00 pm

I posted about how I was doing quite well at Aced Poker last week. I was up over $200 and decided to call it quits. After thinking of making a deposit I emailed to see how long it might take. This was my response.

Check withdrawals are processed only on Mondays and Thursdays, with a 3 to 5 working days processing time. You will be notified by email when your withdrawal is approved or denied.

After that, the check may take up to 2 to 3 weeks to reach you.

Please kindly note that due to bank holidays over the festive season, we will not be processing check withdrawals. Processing will resume in 2009 from the 8th of January. We seek your kind understanding with regards to this matter.

Oh, the joy of gambling online. Since it would take 2 to 3 weeks and I couldn’t even get it PROCESSED until Thursday I decided to play a little today. Big mistake. My run of luck ended and when you add that to a few bad calls I have given a ton back. I’m still up, but I went from up over $200 to just over $60.I guess that’s why it’s called gambling.

Clearly, I’d have been better off waiting but you live and you learn. Or don’t learn, just live. It’s not like this is the first time this has happened. :)

Tags | Comment (0)
blog

Poker

January 2, 2009 – 2:02 pm

I haven’t played poker online in a long time. The last time was around October or September of last year. I just haven’t really had the itch to play in a long time. It’s weird when you think about the fact that I run a Phil Ivey site, but that’s just the way it is. Anyways, lately I have been promoting a site called Aced Poker which offers a 200% to $500 bonus. If I deposit $250 I can theoretically clear $500 from them if I can play break even poker for the required amount of hands. It seemed like a really good deal. The site is cool too as it offers things like odds percentages on all-ins, the ability to “run it twice” and rabbiting hands (showing what would have happened). After beginning play there I really enjoyed how fishy the play was.

However, after playing like 3000 hands and not even being 1/30th of the way to clear the bonus I realized that this site was ridiculous bonus wise and decided not to go for it. I decided to take my money and go home. I knew that I was playing good, but I had no idea I was up over $200 dollars. I didn’t clear any of the bonus, but a $200 profit is more than enough for me right now.

Tags , | Comment (0)
blog

Win a Nintendo Wii or iPod shuffle

December 4, 2008 – 2:05 pm

Yeah, I am so doing this.

For one of my other sites I am a poker affiliate. It’s a good business, but I haven’t really mastered it yet. I signed up for the Poker Affiliate Bible to help me along. I still kind of slacked on it in general though as I could never find the motivation to make money (what can I say? I’m an idiot.) However, that is all about to change. Why? The Nintendo Wii of course. A chance at a free Wii can make anyone do anything. I’m fairly certain John McCain ran for President because a free Wii was involved. I think Plaxico Burress shot himself in the leg for a Wii. Poker Affiliate Bible is holding a contest where the winner gets a Nintendo Wii and there is also drawings for Amazon gift certificates and ipod shuffles. All you have to do is promote this site and you could win and if you don’t win, you still get money off of the people that signed up for you. It’s a win-win. Check it out.

Tags , | Comment (0)
Internet

FINALLY

November 17, 2008 – 1:48 pm

I’ve had a Phil Ivey blog for a long time now. I closed it for a few months last year (which was a mistake in retrospect), but re-opened it this year with a newfound dedication. Did I open this blog because I have a deep seeded love of Phil Ivey? Of course not. Sure, he’s an awesome player and everything but I opened this site to make money. One of my good friends Scotsman has been in the poker affiliate game for awhile now and has been making a LOT of money. It’s embrassing to me how much money he’s made because 1) he wouldn’t even have started playing poker if it wasn’t for me and 2) he’s been trying to get me into it for a long time but I’ve refused. So why I have sat around losing money in OneSeason, he has sat around making tens of thousands of dollars a month. Not good times. The Phil Ivey site was actually his idea and it’s done pretty good, visitor wise. It’s the #1 result for “Phil Ivey blog” on google (which is nice because it comes up on related search) and is on page 2 for “phil ivey” (which pisses me off to no end because there is a blog ahead of me that doesn’t ever update). Where it hasn’t done good is in conversions. When I closed it up last year it was because of this. Nobody was signing up. At that time I was on page 1 of google, getting lots of hits and nobody was signing up. So I quit.

Later, I’d come to realize that quitting was stupid and re-opened the site. You have to spend money to make money, you get what you put into it, Lincoln freed the slaves. Whatever business, not giving up cliche you want to use here applies. I have been dedicating myself to the site trying to get at least 5 updates a week and learning all the little things I can about Search Engine Optimization to make the site better. It’s been a learning experience and FINALLY it has paid off. Yesterday, I got my first person ever to sign up under me. They haven’t deposited yet (my theory, they are waiting on their lottery ticket check to clear so they can deposit $25 million dollars), but that doesn’t really matter. They could deposit the bare minimum and never play again because now I know. Now I know that people will sign up and that the site is viable. And that is awesome.

Tags , | Comment (1)