Bitcoin Poker

I'm definitely back, and oddly enough, I'm now a cash gamer.

Current bankroll: 28 bitcoins ($574.56 at today's market rate) That's right, my bankroll is being held not in dollars, but in bitcoins.

What's a bitcoin, you ask? Well, it's pretty much the best currency for online poker in the US since Black Friday happened. Bitcoins are a digital crypto-currency made up in 2008 by some group of possibly Japanese programmers.

Here are the important parts: It's as good as cash, it operates in a legal grey area because it is not a legal tender, and it can't be frozen by any government or law enforcement agency. This means that all those laws under UIGEA that shut down poker and gambling web sites for illegal money transfers don't apply, cashouts are blazingly quick from bitcoin poker sites compared to USD poker operators like Merge and Revolution, and most importantly, there's no chance of funds being frozen like on Black Friday!

At the site I play at (Seals with Clubs), it takes 12 hours maximum for a cashout. Compare that to waiting half a month to four months for a check from the dollar-denominated gambling sites, as well as ruling out another Black Friday, and you have a site that dominates the competition. Bitcoin poker is here to stay, and I'm very glad for it!

I'll do a more in-depth write-up of Seals soon.

It's been a while...

It took me a year and a half, but I've finally rebounded enough from the shock of Black Friday to venture out into the poker world again. It's a strange new world, and the live/online poker worlds seem to have been completely switched up for me. Before, the nearest live casino was 5 hours away in Atlantic City while online poker was available just a few clicks away.

Since then, not only did Black Friday kill PokerStars and Full Tilt, but Bodog changed its name to Bovada and pulled out of my super anti-online poker state of Maryland. Casino construction projects in Baltimore and next door in Prince George's County were approved. Hollywood Casino (formerly Charlestown Races & Slots) in West Virginia got a poker room, this one just 2 hours away. I've tested the online waters recently, but no site seems to want to touch Maryland after its part in seizing the bodog.com domain name. The money-grubbers opening casinos must want all the action to themselves, but the casinos are probably years away from being built and opening. There's a big void for Maryland players... so I've started turning to home games, found on 2+2.

I sent an email to a game of likeminded young professionals (According to the ad, the average player age is just 23! At 25 I might actually be one of the older people in the group.). Aside from the blogger crew (wonderful as you are), I haven't had any live bodies to really talk poker to. It'll be nice to make some live friends who actually share a passion for my favorite hobby, to talk difficult hands through with after, etc. Also, I was surprised to learn that I still have some followers despite disappearing for so long! Thanks Josie, Mojo, and Lou for sticking around :) Look for more updates in the near future! I'll be able to find some poker action somewhere...

Full Tilt: Tips for Salvaging What You Can

The poker shutdown's Black Friday came and screwed up my day, and my favorite hobby, but I'm doing what I can to make the best of it and have done something new and exciting that I've never done before: Redeemed my Full Tilt points for merchandise!

I've always held out since it cuts into your rakeback, but seeing as I won't be playing for a while, and might not be able to do anything on Full Tilt ever again, I decided to give it a shot.

Yes, my order went through, but it's exciting how I really have no idea whether or not they'll be able to honor it. We will see! Here are the steps necessary to do this yourself:

1. Download the software update from to access the FTP client again
2. Open client
3. Redeem FT points at the FT store!

I ordered the 60" umbrella, the velour bathrobe, the Logitech z313 Multimedia speaker system, and a teddy bear for the wife.

Wish me luck; I hope I get it!

Riding the Rollercoaster

Today was a little crazy. I went up and down a couple hundred dollars, tried new games, had a PokerTracker3 malfunction, scored my biggest online tourney win to date, and finished the day $50 down.

First came the bad. I decided to stick my head back into cash games for the Take 2 Promotion on Full Tilt, where if you play 2 or more cash tables (or just RUSH) every day, there's some stupid prize at the end of a week. Just the carrot to lure a cash fish like me to open up EIGHT six-max tables. 30 minutes later, $61.44 down the drain. Hmmm how about heads up games? No luck there either, another $12.00 down the drain over the course of 2 hours.

WTF cash games! I hate you. I'm quitting you, for real this time! So I mosey on over and pull up the STTs again. I play two sets and lose about $20. Still, I don't feel bad about it. Unlike with the cash games, I actually understand the STTs inside and out and can pretty much assure myself I just ran really, really bad.

That means I need a change! MTT land it is! 45-mans and the Daily Double. Gotta dream big! Except I donk out of the first 8 45-mans, including one painful bubble and one near-bubble, and both Daily Doubles. I've lost over $200!!! That's worse than my RUSH downswing debacle.

I had one left and had just made the final table... and then my HUD stopped working. Right at the MOST IMPORTANT PART! AGH! And then I win it all to take back $171. SCREW YOU PokerTracker3! I don't need no stinkin' HUD to win it all! And now I'm drained. So this is what it's like to grind MTTs. Made me feel like this guy.

I think I'll do it again some time.

Exercising for life (and poker)

Exercise is good for your life, both physically and mentally, for my muscles and my poker. It keeps you sharp. I know this, but I've been a slacker. Since doing 80 days of the p90x program to get in shape for my October wedding, I haven't done anything but lose all my progress, enjoying the lazy married life and throwing sticks of butter into my cooking (the wife makes me do it, I swear!).

Waffles has been doing some really inspiring exercise programs lately. I mean, if this pushup program whipped an ol' mess like him into shape, it's gotta work for everybody!

Just the type of exercise program I need, actually. It holds your hand, tells you what to do, and sets your schedule FOR you. Perfect for a guy like me.

I'm in. And I think I'll throw in the situps program too, on the pushup rest days.

Cashing the Dank!

I decided to play in the final Survivor Dank.

I came in third, finishing behind 23Warsaw and Shabazz Jenkins when my AQo failed to hold against Shabazz's KJo all in pre.

So it's been forever since I last cashed in the Dank. It was actually still called the Mookie back then. And I definitely can't complain about losing to KJo because it took a hell of a lot of sucking out for me to get that far!

I pretty much couldn't lose the tourney until the bubble burst, cracking DDionysus multiple times, including his AA with QQ all in pre, taking down Josie's top pair with 3 outs after getting it in on the flop, and conquering Numbono's AK vs. my A3, also all in pre.

It was fun, but I'm tiiiiired. Goodnight!

If you want to join in the fun, look for The Dank on Wednesday nights at 10:00pm, and visit to hear a live webcast from the organizer! Password is vegas1.

March wrap-up: Impressions of the STT scene

Current Bankroll: $1,135.94

Since my switch to tournaments from RUSH poker, I've had a very good run of luck at the STTs. I call it luck because I've only played 119 of them, and my ROI is at 37.34% (thinly veiled brag) which is ridiculously far above what is supposed to be sustainable: 15% for the best of the best.

After a really rough February, I'm loving poker again. I've learned another poker skill, too! The ability to really multi-table. I'm up to 8 at a time!

Observations on Multi-tabling:

1. Full Tilt has an "auto-tile" function if you are playing multiple tables. So long as your monitor resolution is high enough, if you select a table and push CTRL+9, it will arrange them all in a nice little series of boxes net to one another so that you can see all the tables at once, like so. This is me pretending I'm good enough to 9-table NL 5/10.

2. Eight tables is definitely my limit, and even then it gets a little crazy if I end up surviving late in 6 or more of them. I tried playing 9 once, and had the good fortune of cashing in 7. That was a little ridiculous.

3. Above the $11 level, it looks like the STTs on Full Tilt really don't run too often. While they fill and go every 45-60 seconds at the $11s, the $22s looked incredibly slow by comparison. I guess that's a price that's too high for your average Full Tilt donkey. Definitely not my friend if I want to move up and multi-table them. If my success continues, I very well might put a part of my roll on Poker Stars again because their games actually do run fairly often at the $22 level.

4. I'm seriously considering getting TableNinja to help me multitable better in the future. What it does is use AHK scripts so I can fold, raise, bet, or open a new tournament with the click of a button. A whole lot less mouse clicking, but a whole lot easier for me to mistype and screw things up. Also, on their website, it explicitly says their software doesn't work with PokerTracker 3, which is what I use. That would be a problem since I would need to buy Hold Em Manager, but I've seen posts on forums, etc. that it actually DOES work with PT3. Not to mention, I can always just try the free trial first.

Does anyone out there use TableNinja (hopefully with PT3)? Thoughts? Anything I should know before TableNinja is my undoing?