LMFAO, choice made for me! December 12, 2006
Posted by yorkshirepuddings in Bonus Whoring, Online Poker, Poker.2 comments
Well after writing the post below I checked my home email account ( I can pick up home emails from work) and I had an email from Bowmans customer support. This email basically highlighted the fact that Bowmans is no longer on the Tribeca network and has been moved over to Bet365 on the Prima network! What this means for my outstanding bonuses etc I don’t really know. I’ve just tried to go to the Bowmans website and have been greeted with a message stating the site will be down for part of today “whilst we move to a new software platform”.
Looks like I’ll get to sample the Prima network afterall 
To switch or not to switch….. December 12, 2006
Posted by yorkshirepuddings in Bonus Whoring, Cash game, Online Poker.4 comments
…..that is the question. As you know I am currently playing at Bowmans on the Tribeca tables network and have been enjoying some pretty good success. In fact superb success as I am running at around 27PTBB/100 over 1.5k hands! A tiny sample I know but I honestly think that I can beat these players for 10PTBB/100 quite easily as your big hands seem to always get paid off. My problem is that despite being $160 up in my ring games I hate the site, yeah I love the money, but there are too many annoying things with the site that are making me want to find a new home.At first not being able to see mucked cards wound me up but then I came to the conclusion that I didn’t care what my opponents losing cards were especially as I wouldn’t get to see these in a casino anyway. Then there’s the weird maximum buy in for the NL games. Usually it’s 100xBB but here it’s 200xBB making it deep stack NL. These deep stacks suit me down to the ground but none of the donkeys buy in for the full amount, in fact it’s quite rare to see anyone with more than $10-$15 in their stack, although the short stacks do love to call off all their chips with nothing. Then there’s the annoying betting. Everywhere I have played, apart from here, have had a similar betting system where if you type say $3 to raise it raises TO $3 but on the Tribeca network if you type $3 it raises BY $3. This may seem trivial but it has caused me to either over or underbet on more than one occasion, especially as I’m playing 3 tables with huge overlap, I need a smooth, familiar setup where I don’t have to think more than I have to. The site is also pretty slow with even the 6-max games running at around 60 hands per hour, shocking in this day and age! On the plus side the fish are generous and I quite like the layout and larger than usual cards, once you take off the shit avatars!
So my dilemma is, do I stay at a site where I am winning (albeit a tiny sample size) or do I go find a site that has the other qualities that I want from a Poker room. My other main concern is that as I am playing with poor players my game won’t improve as much as it would against slightly better players. One of my great things about playing poker is you can make cash and everyone loves having a supply of beer tokens but another goal of mine is to become the best player I can be and playing sub-standard opponents can only be -EV in the long run surely. Have any of my beloved readers ever switched to a different site just to play against better players despite you being a winning player at the site you were leaving. Would this be cutting my nose of to spite my face?
I have been offered a rakeback deal with Doyle’s Room which is also, for now, part of the Tribeca network which would make my stay on this network more profitable, especially as the rake structure on Tribeca is pretty poor. However I have another concern in that Playtech recently announced that they have acquired some of the Tribeca network and that within 6 months Tribeca will cease to exist. Doyle’s Room (Bowmans and Golden Palace) weren’t part of this deal but that means that they are now looking for a new home and possibly new software and I don’t want to get settled on one site just for it to disappear from under me in a few months time. I’d go back to Ultimate Bet but their hand history is knackered at the minute and we all know how important I think Poker Tracker is to a developing player 
Well until I have to make a proper decision I think I’ll just try to log as many hands as I can and I’m aiming for another 2k hands this week which hopefully will be profitable as the last 1.5k and go some way to smoothing out this huge rush I’ve been on as of late!
I’d appreciate your comments on wanting to play better players vs poor players to help develop your game.
Best of luck at those crazy tables boys and girls 
