BeerAndPoker

+1

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.

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.

Good blog and twitch