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BeerAndPoker

Some Random Poker Updates, BNP Twitch Streaming for fun for a little while now, and More.

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Hey everyone! It's been a while since my last blog so I figured why not do one?

This year as far as poker goes has had it's share of good moments and bad ones but a ton of taking two steps forward and two steps back. It's annoying but what can you do?

I play over a few sites and haven't played on Bovada that much since early last year when I cashed out everything but I decide to make a small deposit again when they offered me a free $55 tournament ticket if I put $100+ on so I did it.

The big problem with Bovada is they feel they are so elite in the USA poker world despite offering zero rakeback to players but being the biggest site and known for soft games that it costs you money to get money on there these days which makes me cringe but whatever.

So I said screw it and put $110 on Bovada which winded up costing me about around $125 or so to get on there which is irritating but it is what it is. The only other deposit option I had for Bovada is MoneyGram and they charge a fee too which no longer Bovada will reimburse like they once did. With that option it is more time consuming since you have to go fill out a form at a service location, wait for some clerk that messes up something all the time to put it in, and you could get blacklisted for life.

Western Union hasn't been an option on Bovada for a while now and from reading around several people got blacklisted for life using it for Bovada near the end so I rather not do that for any poker site right now since I don't want a life ban.

Most of where I play these days is over on WPN but I want to get back into some MTT grinding and some other soft action so I figured why not get back on Bovada and see what we can do?

A lot of the action I've actually said screw it lets try this whole twitch thing a bit and I've streamed the games up there where I'm playing music rather low so I can still talk over it which I play a mixture of stuff but mostly rap/hiphop, some alternative rock, and other random stuff I throw in as I'm always updating the play list. I've talked about a lot of things from sports, poker, etc... A few times I've got hammered on there drinking it up lol ahh well

Most of my streams have been late night Bovada grinding playing some smaller stakes $5 to $10 sngs mostly HU and double ups with an occasional MTT or Zone session. I've had some sessions where I've completely crushed everyone and others where things didn't go so well but I'm staying within a BR management on that site for now. I could always play more risky since I could put more on but again I just think it's terrible a poker site charges you fees to get money on it when they will make money off of you in the near future.

I've been doing the twitch thing just to add more fun to the poker grind at times and to motivate myself to play. Lately it's been about three to four nights a week on average over the past month that I've been actively doing this usually really late at night as I mentioned. Besides Bovada I've also played a bunch of these new Jackpot Poker SNGs over on ACR on stream too for fun.

Some of my past broadcasts are here which will go back two weeks:

http://www.twitch.tv/beerandpoker/pr...ast_broadcasts

I know by putting this up I could get trolled, critiqued, etc. but ahh well haters gonna hate. Sometimes the webcam is on and other times it isn't.

Just to be clear I'm not doing this streaming thing thinking I will ever get famous or even compete with some of the highest top tier pros that broadcast on there. This simply gives me something to do at times when playing and people that have came by my channel have seemed to enjoy it. At times I've played really solid and other times not as well as I would have liked to along with taking some sick beat downs in flipping and cooler department but such is life.

A lot of people fear showing others how they play whether it's regular players, solid pros,etc. but I have several gears and not everything gets shown on twitch. The thing about poker is someone can go pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for training but still not get it. That stuff will improve people to some point but a lot of it is hard work actually playing being in the moment able to make quality decisions which is something that no coaching or training videos can do alone for the heavy majority of people out there.

I've probably given out more info then I should during twitch sessions but still feel the average person when they get in some spots I do won't be able to see things the way I am in the moment which maybe they see it better then me. The key about poker is always having a plan and realizing their can be several ways to win in some particular hands/ game formats so you got to find out what works best for your style. I'm playing mostly lower stuff then normal on stream anyways so I don't really worry about much

If you see me streaming live and want to come say hello in my channels chat room.

Outside of poker it's been a crazy year with lots of shit breaking down such as needing a new furnace, central air conditioner, and other various home improvements that gets costly. Life is always good though no matter when things seem to fall apart in front of me I just keep on swimming. Everyday is a good one and if you don't believe that then try missing one just once.

Take care everyone!

- BeerAndPoker
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Comments

  1. jacosta24's Avatar
    +1
  2. Dan Druff's Avatar
    I have played on Bovada a whole lot since returning there in late September. I literally got under the wire with Western Union before they started clamping down. A few days later, I probably would have been denied or blacklisted. This was dumb luck, as I didn't even know that there was an impending problem, but just randomly decided to try Bovada again because football season was starting, and I figured more fish would be there.

    I agree that Bovada is very arrogant these days. They are arrogant for a few reasons. First, they are the biggest USA-facing room by far. Second, they actually DON'T want to grow anymore, fearing the DOJ will go after them. So they don't mind if you decide to take your business elsewhere, much like a restaurant which is full every night.

    Also, the anonymous tables open the possibility up for cheating, and it will be very hard to catch. The only reason GRAYCAT and others were caught was because of our ability to see screen names and datamine.

    Sadly, they're still the best option for US players, because they pay out reliably and quickly. They have been skimming $15 off my last few wire cashouts (their payment processors are doing this), and they aren't making it right for me. This also pisses me off. However, the bottom line is that I'd rather have a room which pays me and skims $15 of my $9500 cashout than one which either doesn't pay or limits me to $2000 every month. You can wire out $38,000 per month from Bovada, so this is a good place for high limit players such as myself.

    The anonymous tables used to bother me, and my criticism of them still stands, but I found a few advantages. First off, players can't datamine me or get stats on my own play, so they are forced to play a more "pure" poker game against me. Second, I don't have the psychological disadvantage of playing hands against players I've historically struggled against, which was always a problem for me. Third, if I'm slumping or getting beaten hard at a table, there is no embarrassment nor long term table image issues. I have found a surprisingly large difference in my results in games where I have a good table image versus a bad one.

    I am not a fan of Twitch. I don't watch them, nor do I broadcast myself. I prefer not to broadcast to the world if I play a hand poorly or do something stupid. It's bad enough living with my own personal shame in those situations. But to each their own.
  3. BeerAndPoker's Avatar
    Bovada is very arrogant for sure. The part I should have included in my blog that I didn't even think about in the moment was what they said to me when I deposited.

    They gave me a tournament ticket which was good even though I would rather have the equivalent in cash. Anyways, the tournament I wanted to play was the night I deposited starting around 10:30pm and I made my deposit at 1pm. In the past whenever they offered me something like this I could get the ticket right away so I would be able to play that night but this time was not the case and it didn't matter who I talked to they have an automated system that credits tickets the following morning no exceptions.

    This got on my nerves because it was during a tournament series where I could only use it for a $50+5 event they had going on and the one I wanted to use it for that night was by far the best event left. They had two other events one was a rebuy/addon which having any satellite ticket for those events is worthless and the other was a 11am event on a Saturday morning which I'd rather not play poker at that time.

    The support rep I talked to from Bovada felt he was so superior when I told him they always would give me the ticket that day in the past and I know they can make the exception that he even said to me a few times "Sir, we emailed you about this deposit offer for nearly two weeks and you wait until today to deposit when you had two weeks of time to do so"? Even though that is correct who is this guy to even bring that up especially when I did deposit within the bonus period and now he has the nerve to say this to me in defense? Customer support should never say such a thing and it really pissed me off.

    I left Bovada because they annoyed me about something around sometime last September only playing a tournament here or there with poker points I had built up and if I knew the hassle I would have to go through I'm not sure I would have even deposited again.

    With that said the games are softer on Bovada over anywhere else serving Americans and even some ROW players play a lot on the site because of how soft it is. They have given people collusion refunds at times but to track whether the amount is proper is a very tough thing to do for any site but impossible for anonymous tables.

    Before I left I played a bunch of the bigger HU SNGS which the highest is $200 on there and for those type of games an anonymous site is a great advantage. Prior to Black Friday when I played HU SNGs on other networks fish would either not sit me that much or lose once then never play me again but now they will just sit me someone without knowing who they are and even if they decline a rematch they might just go sit in my new lobby I registered in right afterwards whereas if I had a screen name they could remember that I am not a guy they want to play.

    The better players are almost always going to sit first because if you sit with someone they are usually going to be a good player and not a fish. This holds true for HU SNGS with screen names but even more so with anonymous tables.

    As for twitch it's just something I've done for fun and it helps motivate me to play. Their have been several times I say "I messed that hand up don't ever do that people" but in parts it has helped me think about certain hands more instead of just getting too click happy.

    For you Druff I probably wouldn't twitch either for a few reasons. You play a lot of short handed limit holdem and I think people could pick up on a lot of what you do in that game where you wouldn't want to educate people but for NL their is so much more information on the game out there and so many various styles of playing that when tweaked properly someone can win playing completely different then other winning players.

    In NL you have to be able to really think in the moment and guess what the future will be even more so then limit which I'm not saying you don't have to in that game but the betting just gets more costly or can be more profitable if your plan of action works out. I don't think enough people watching me or even say watching JCarver are ever going to be able to think in the moment of what he is doing even if he tells them why because their brains don't think like him and with all the other variables if someone tried to mimic what he's doing completely they will misinterpret so much that it will cost them.

    I'm sure you would make mistakes as we all do but the key is having your own personal reasoning of doing things whether it's opponent dependant, setting up meta game,etc. but I'm sure people would find silly ways to troll you for them given who you are in poker. Even I've got trolled a few times playing and one guy last night for example was challenging me to some game HU and said to be streaming it so I just ignored his request.

    Druff - I know you used to do computer programming and there are a bunch of people in that field that are good players or could be putting in the learning effort. In ways playing poker really is like coding a program when you think about it in commands like "IF" "THEN" "ELSE" ,etc... You get the idea.
    Updated 05-07-2015 at 12:15 PM by BeerAndPoker
  4. thesparten's Avatar
    Good blog and twitch