Ulimate Bet advice wanted, and Scum at the tables

Don’t know if there is anyone out there who could advise me on whether it is worth making the switch to Ultimate Bet from Fulltilt, but I am interested in their bonuses and have heard that the 100nl games are ok, although there are not many of them. Any comments greatly appreciated.

One other thing, I had the misfortune to sit at a table with one of the most repulsive individuals I have ever seen at FT the other day. This guy squeezed with trash, and then berated a guy who busted him playing perfectly decent poker in my view. Calling him all the names under the sun. He proceeded to pick on the guy 3betting him relentlessly and finally they got it all in with 2 high pairs preflop, his KK holding up against the others JJ (I think).

He proceeded to laugh in the chat box, and be a general piece of shit, after busting a player.

I looked him up and he's a big grinder, he had moved down from 400nl so clearly thought he was slumming it, above us micro players, and that the bet sizing wasn’t as important, due to the move down. He should know better.

It depresses me so much to see these classless lowlife hiding behind their keyboards thinking they can behave like trash. I would love to give his screen name out, but have decided against it. He was from Germany though. Most online players are pretty cool, but these scum ruin it.

Is it worth turning off the chat box, as others suggest? Up till now I have followed it because I think there are so many tells from fish people babbling away.

Pokerstars v Fulltilt

When I first started playing online, Pokerstars was where I played all my sitngos. When I moved to cash I wanted to try out bonuses and rakeback. So I signed up to Fulltilt. And I HATED IT. The software, the timeout features, the lobby everything. I persevered and spent the last 5 months there.

Well I have just spent a session at Pokersars which, although very profitable, was just not as I remembered it. I MISS FULLTILT!!!! The notes, the pot buttons and stuff. I think Holdem Manager sits better within their interface too.

Life is full of those contradictions isnt it??

I am sure it will take a few sessions and I will be just fine. Then I might go back to hating Fulltilt and loving Pokerstars????

My current poker set up, where I play and for what stakes

I am now playing 50nl on Fulltilt, where I deposited $510 at the end of October 2008, having just moved up from 25nl, and 8 weeks later, with a bankroll of $1400. All of this money comes from an initial freeroll win from Pitbull of $15 (see post below) so lets see how far that goes….

I use a 22inch wide-screen monitor, windows XP SP3 (just so much faster than Vista, which I have on a separate partition within a dual boot environment), Poker Office running as my tracking and HUD assistant. I multi-table usually around the 8 table mark, putting in usually 800 hands over a 2 hour session, which I try to do daily, giving me the 20k target of hands per month. 20k of hands is the minimum amount of hands I believe you need for a feel for your real ptbb/100 win rate beyond variance (where ptbb/100 is the “standard” measure of win rate, being poker tracker big bets won per 100 hands). You only really know how good you are over 100k of hands I think, but who wants to spend 100k of hands at 10nl if they are winning consistently?

I have money on Pokerstars , but at present am trying to work off the deposit bonus before end of February on Fulltilt. I also have a rakeback deal where I get 27% back. Pokerstars do not run rakeback, but the idea is to get to 100nl then move back there and aim for Supernova, which is part of a reward points scheme unique to Pokerstars and where a good range of bonuses lie. Pokerstars is also the best software to play on by a mile. Regarding how weak / strong the opposition is, I don’t subscribe to the idea that the quality of opposition varies that much between the various sites. Not beyond 25nl anyway. Choice of tables and software are where the primary win rate benefits are in my own view.

I prefer to play as deep stacked as possible, and Fulltilt has 200bb deep tables which is great. Pokerstars at present does not have this above 5nl. I am one of those who loathes the small stacker minimum buy in player. At 600nl I can understand it a bit more, but at micro and small stakes, these type of morons will never ever learn how to play post flop poker and will never develop at poker. I cannot understand what they are thinking. PLO is a different matter, which I may discuss later, but for hold’em, if you don’t have the bankroll, PLAY TOURNIES. Otherwise you’ll be a loser forever.

If I am travelling, I use a Sony G11 laptop (again dual boot with both Vista and XP) with a 12 inch screen (portability is the most important). This limits me to 4-6 multi-tabling.

getting started in microstakes NLHE

Writing from my own experience this is the route I advise….

Watch some TV poker shows, and read a book, assuming you don't know NLHE (no limit Hold'em).

Start up an account with an online site. DO NOT DEPOSIT ANY MONEY.

Play their play money sitngos. Although this is never the same as playing for money, there is still an element of skill and you will learn the game. Don't bother with their ring (or cash) games however, these are a total waste of time.

Once you are confident you have a feel for the game and you still like it, time to invest some money on the site.

Minimum Maximum bankroll $100 (anything less cannot take variance and initial failure, anything more becomes a waste, if you realise its not for you. Re-depositing is a sobering procedure which helps you to re-evaluate if you are ready to continue gambling)
Avoid cash games, they can destroy you in one session if you are inexperienced.
Play $5.50 sitngos (where 0.50 is paid in rake). Why sitngos?

You see up to 120 hands per sitngo
You only lose a set amount
They are somewhat formulaic
They have a 30% payout structure

Read the forums about simple strategy for this type of poker (its everywhere so no repeat here) and be prepared to lose as well as win. Choose a site where the blind structure is not a luckfest. (Titan Poker, PartyPoker, Pitbull are awful for example, with low skill/high luck). Initially therefore I recommend:

Fulltilt (2nd best blind structure, 2nd best software, 2nd best traffice)
Ultimate bet (best blind structure, 3rd best software, 3rd best traffic)
Pokerstars (3rd best blind structure, best software, best traffic)

In that order.

Play 4-500 games. If you are a winning player after that time, you have what it takes in tournament poker. Then re-evaluate, as you are ready to move into cash poker, where the next level of skill resides.

Please note I advocate no cash game play without around 30k hands of sitngo experience, if you want to be successful at cash poker.

Next post I try to talk about my own route and style as described above.

my route to poker

I first started playing poker live, playing 5 or 6 handed usually and for stakes of around £10-20 buy-in NLHE in a home game with friends and friends of friends I had the advantage of playing against good, experienced players. I was extremely loose aggressive and ended up losing more than winning. This was very bad for my ego and I stopped playing for a while, but I loved the game, just loved it. Instead I started reading, and I went read crazy. I bought book after book, and 3 months after stopping, I went back to the home game with a new approach and started to win.

As a teenager I became addicted to arcade games, (Scramble, Space Invaders, Asteroids) and then computer games (Command Conquer, Doom etc). I was thus very reluctant to start playing online as I believed I could easily become addicted and lose control.

Fortunately I discovered a free money site called Poker Underworld which just blew me away. This was a strictly play money site, where some of the players were bots, and some were real. It was a wee community and for a while I played there. After the inevitable boredom of play money, I signed up to Europoker where I played their play money online Sitngos, which had a little more skill to them, especially as you reached the final places.

Finally I searched out freerolls, and came to Pitbull, where after 6 or 7 attempts, I won $15 in a 200 person MTT. This was then used in their micro cash games (10NL) and at $60 bankroll I started entering their Sitngos. By October 2007, after around 4 months playing online, I had the bankroll up to $160 without having deposited a penny. I won a $30 MTT for $500 and that was my start. I had no software (PT, HUD etc) and had played no other poker sites.

With my new found confidence of controlling any addictive nature, I finally signed up for a Neteller account, and deposited $100 on Pokerstars by November 2007. there I grinded the $5 sitngos………and that’s how I got started!