blonde poker forum

I'm currently playing my online poker at either DTD (William Hill) or Riley's (888) and, thanks to the guidance and tips I'm picking up here I'm becoming reasonably profitable and slowly increasing my funds

But to take the next step it seems I need to invest in Poker Tracker or something similar but as far as I can find out neither of the sites I'm playing on can feed into them? (Unless I'm misreading the situation?)

I don't believe I play sufficiently high stakes, or high volume to be thinking too much about rakeback. Although the DTD points I'm accumulating mean that I will eat and drink for free on my next outing there  :)

Assuming that I'm right about the PT issues - which sites should I consider moving to?

NB - I don't want to find myself playing too many of you guys yet!

Well there are loads, im surprised no-one has spammed blondes own cardroom yet, but that is on the ipoker network which im sure pokertracker/ holdem manager support.

Depends on what you are going for:

Traffic?
Soft Games?
Rakeback?
Good Software?
Good customer support?


The best answer to all of the above is not the same site.

probs Party if youre playing to win money.

The customer cupport and software is pretty tez tho.

Soft games sounds good....

Software - others probably know different, but is there a big variance in this?
likewise - Customer support?

traffic - as long as there's a game 24/7 I'm fine

as for rakeback - I don't think I play enough or for enough to be too concerned abiut that yet.

I'm just looking for a site where I can play people with more money than sense and no poker skills (aren't we all) and learn how to use the stats for now.

What I don't want is to wander unwarned into shark-infested waters

I would try Euro based sites like Party, Ladbrokes and Betfair imo

Yeah stay away from Stars and Tilt and anywhere that accepts US traffic. Party could be a real coup as the new software will attract more traffic. I hear good things about Betfair too.

Rakeback makes a difference no matter what stakes you play.

It can be difficult to set up rakeback after you've already registered with a site, so if you were to decide you wanted rakeback later it might prove to be a problem on some sites.

Blonde's own cardroom has an automatic rakeback system and some of the other sites advertised offer rakeback if you sign up thru' blonde. Otherwise type 'rakeback' into google and you'll be presented with plenty of options to choose from.

Rakeback actually makes more of a difference to your winrate at the lower limits than the higher limits. Low limit players pay more rake per pot, all online sites cap the rake once the pot gets to a certain size (normally $60) meaning if you are playing games where the pot gets over 60 regularly, everything over that is essentially rakefree. Whereas in an NL25 games every single cent put in the pot is normally raked. This also applies to tournies which have higher % reg fees normally.

It may seem like you aren't getting alot at the end of the month but relative to the level you are playing it is more, as essential your winrate has to be bigger to beat the rake.

And.... any money back is better than no money back!

+1

Pardon my ignorance. Why is that ?

US players are of a better standard.

As it is difficult to play online poker there so there's less casual fish traffic from the US who log on and have a random punt.

Also, they've generally been playing poker longer in the US, your average American player will hav more experience than your average British player.

I wouldn't go to the extreme of ignoring Stars and Tilt completely though, they have a lot to offer.

wat pp lacks in basically everything... no rb, shizz software etc it more than makes up4 in utter tez fishays, i LOVE it

I've always had a problem with this.

I like Fulltilt.  I like the look of it, I like the structure of the games, the pace etc.

I like the traffic, you 're never waiting ages for a game.

Up to now i've never bothered about this because at least on FT I show a profit, and I don't play a huge volume.

On other, ''easier'' sites there's always been something I can't quite get on with, and I generally struggle to show any profit at all.

But

If I'm hoping to give pokerswat a go, is it worth me playing on the Euro sites, and forcing myself to get better on them, or am I best sticking with FT and just accepting that I'm not optimising my profit.

I tried Blonde yesterday, and just thought the software was horrible.  How much of that is me being a prima donna, and is it a case of putting in the effort to get used to it ?

Tilt is beatable, it's not a fortress. I play on there, make money, and I'm pants.

You just need to keep a wary eye out for game selection and stuff like that. For instance, I've started to avoid playing on Sunday mornings coz the games are too tight.

If you make money there and you like it then stay there. What to do to optimize profit is probaly a different thing for everyone, and none but the most volumous of volume monkeys will have a realistic idea as to the answer.

the european sites seem to be softer but the larger US based sites are much better in general, customer support, tournament structures , value for money etc although the smaller european sites do offer very nice rakeback offers and this affects all of your income even if you dont play as much as the bashers who play all day everyday

dude, just stay where you are and feel comfortable, and buy HoldemManager which is better than PT3 and supports those sites.