Danger, Danger, Ramble Alert, Code Red!

Many thanks for the comments and advice regarding limit/NL musings. One that I forgot that Badblood describes much more thoroughly is the willingess to be caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and the fact that you're not playing correctly if you don't occasionally look stupid from time to time, bluffing with J high into the stone cold nuts.

While that's somewhat true of LHE, too, it's a pretty different beast. Not only is there less bluffing in general in most limit games (debateable, I know, but generally true, methinks), what bluffing there is usually comes on the turn, and is often disguised somewhat. If I bluff raise a weak/tight opponent on the turn with a scary board and they re-raise, that's an easy fold, and no one is the wiser as to just how silly my attempted bluff was. If successful, they simply fold, and again, no one is ever the wiser. If they don't fold on the turn, they often fold on the river. Or lead into you again, at which point you quickly fold.

NL seems a bit different, though, as bluffs tend to occur more frequently on the river, which leads to more bluffs being called/shown/mucked. (True? False?) Which doesn't mean you shouldn't bluff, obviously, just that you need to be more prepared to get caught red-handed, for everyone to see, as opposed to LHE when you're often not called out quite so publicly, standing there looking like an idiot for all to see. Personally, I find myself shying away too often from potentially looking like an idiot at the NL tables, and need to get over that bashfulness.

For all you kids into the casino bonuses, you should check out the Casino Blaster group, if you haven't yet done those. These all used to be sticky bonuses but they recently changed them to be fully cashable, and to allow BJ, with a 20X deposit+bonus WR. I waited on posting this, as I assumed they'd quickly change the terms to make it sticky again or to make it slots-only, but they seem to be set on offering this for awhile.

Make sure it's still cashable and that BJ is allowed, though, as they might change the terms at any time. This group also is notorious for taking their time on withdrawal requests, and for asking for all sorts of ID before processing your cashout, including a scan of your driver's license, utility bill, and the top of a bank statement showing your address. They're also allowing people to only sign up at 2-3 of their casinos and getting a bonus before you're flagged as a "bonus abuser", at which point you can't get future bonuses at that casino or others in their group.

Below are the casinos in their group, ordered in terms of juicyness:

1) Golden Palace: 300% signup bonus up to $300
2) Online Casino: 300% signup bonus up to $300
3) Aspinalls Online Casino: 200% up to $200
4) Flamingo Club Casino: 200% up to $200
5) 24kt Gold Casino: 200% up to $200
6) Grand Online Casino: 200% up to $200

Congrats to Maudie for winning the WWdN tournament last night.

Didn't play much poker last night, due to the happy-fun joy of moving 5 cubic yards of decomposed granite gravel into its new resting home along the side of the house that's about to become the kiln/welding/metal foundry home. With a huge assist from a friend/co-worker/boxing kangaroo, 95% of it got done, and all that's left to do is rake it out and smooth out a few spots and find a creative use of the excess granite that's currently occupying our driveway.

Man, the end of June needs to hurry its arse up. Very much looking forward to my first dabbling in the WSOP, and just being back in Vegas again in general.

Good lord, my fantasy baseball team is pitiful. Pitiful. Randy Johnson is finally looking all of his 629 years of age, Junior managed to break himself again doing little more than being bipedal, and Manny is getting off to a typical slow start.

The degenerate challenge is bogging down slightly, largely just from a general lack of poker time, and the fact that I've done the bulk of the good casino signup bonuses, including the sticky ones, and have already hit all the good recurring monthly ones. I'm probably going to grind some more B2B bonuses in the near future, when I manage to sneak in some dedicated time for poker play, as I prefer to blast through them quickly and get them done instead of picking away at them slowly.