Grindy Grind

Still grinding away at assorted bonuses. I don't normally have this much free time to devote to the poker so when I gots it, I try to maximize it. Since the last update I've finished off all the Cryptos, the PokerStars reload, and am halfway through the Gaming Club one. While I'm clearing the TGC bonus at a nice clip, I can't seem to make any overall headway in my bankroll. I've lost the last six hands when I was dealt AA, keep getting out-boated, out-flushed, etc. As I'm typing this I just dropped another 10BB when my set of aces got beaten by a rivered two-outer. Why are thy punishing me lke this Gaming Club, when I have done naught but sing thy praises?

It's been a mixed month, as far as bonus whoring results. The Party reload wasn't so great, as I only cashed out ahead +$110. I did clear it in about five hours though, so that isn't so horrible. (If you want to blaze through bonuses on Party and related skins, learn how to play Omaha Hi competently, pop up 4 $1/2 6-max Omaha Hi tables, and watch the bonus fly by. Nearly every hand is raked and your decisions are pretty easy, as you fold pre-flop 90% of the time, so it's easy to play 4 tables.) I kicked arse on the Empire account-specific reload, though. Did pretty well on the Cryptos. Basically broke even at PokerStars.

It's interesting to take stock and look at my bonus whoring efforts over the last six months. I track all deposits and cashouts in a spreadsheet, as while PokerTracker is nice, it doesn't capture bonus information and I also play on a lot of sites it doesn't support. I'm working on an uber post with more detailed results, but it's pretty interesting. It's a bit hard to quantify the actual value of chasing specific bonuses themselves, since your general play is always mixed in, but the results are pretty dang encouraging.

One of the more interesting things is the variance involved. Exact same site, exact same player, exact same bonus, widely different results. Which is to be expected, I guess, but I would have thought the variance wouldn't be as high as it is in some cases.

But yeah, hopefully next week I'll be able to get all sorts of uber posts up, regarding bonus stuff, casino stuff, and the obligatory poker year in review post. Work is going to be a graveyard with no one there so I should have plenty of spare time to kill with such silliness.