Updates

Sports

I went 3-2 yesterday on my picks. I lost what I felt where my two best plays. I thought the Clippers and Lakers were locks. The Lakers only scored 10 points in one quarter, thats pretty hard to do in the NBA.

I have been refining how I go about picking games. I’m sure it will take me a while to figure things out and get settled in, but once I do I feel I can make some good money placing bets. I’m not even chasing a bonus yet because I don’t really have the bankroll to do that. I just have some cash in four different books so I can get different lines and odds. Here is my card for tonight:

NBA

Orlando vs Boston — Orlando +6
New Jersey vs Denver — Denver -8.5

Poker

I am playing off some more of the Poker Room bonus as I type this. I have made back my losses from yesterday and am now up a little bit for the chase, only 8 BB’s or so but better then being down I suppose.

It has only been a month or so since I moved up to $3/$6 so my conclusions might be a bit off, but man there are some weak players at that level. I guess I just expected the competition to improve a bit at this level. You find the same basic idiots here as you do at .50/1, just with bigger bankrolls. Sure you run into the occasional good player, but there are still plenty of fish in the pond, which is a good thing.

Well, I am now up just over 20 BB’s, the Magic are ahead by 2 and Denver has not started yet. Good night so far, wish me luck.

Free books and some poker

FREE! Everybody loves that word. I hopped on the ITH Free Book Offer yesterday. I signed up for an account at Poker Room and got the standard 40% deposit bonus, plus two free poker books.

This is the second time I have taken advantage of the free book offer. Unfortunately I had signed up at most poker sites before I found ITH so I was not eligible for the offers. Last time I received, Harrington On Holdem Vol 1 and Internet Texas Hold’em: Winning Strategies from an Internet Pro. Both are excellent reads and I would probably put both of them in the must read category. This time I am getting Harrington on Hold’em Vol. 2 and Theory of Poker.

I played some hands at $3/$6 and cleared about 130 points and lost a few bucks, nothing big. I really didn’t get any cards to play. My best hand was a set of 10’s and they got busted by a set of J’s. Oh well, it happens that way some days. He was ahead the whole hand, so it wasn’t a bad beat at all, but it still stung a little

I noticed that Poker Room now has team tournament play on their site. At first I thought it was something like a chop team, but I don’t think so now. Still need to research it a little before deciding if I want to try it out or not. I would love to do something like the chop team on ITH, but I am probably not good enough to play with them just yet.

Bonus Bonus Bonus

Poker

So yesterday I cleared $200 in bonus money at Bet365. Now that I no longer play $1/$2 I despise going back to play at that level. I always have a hard time with it. This worried me for a while but a few weeks ago on ITH someone started a post about losing at the $1/$2 level and a lot of people posted they had the same experience. Technically, I am still in the black at $1/$2 but my earn rate is pretty low. Not sure off the top of my head what it is, but I am positive it is below .5 BB/Hr.

I enjoyed going back to the Prima network again. I just love the mini-view feature they have on their tables. I have had a very attractive rakeback offer on the Prima network for some time now and have been reluctant to sign up, but I think I will now. They don’t have many mid level limit games, but they have a lot of NL games, so I think they will be my NL site from now on. If anyone wants in on the rakeback deal it will probably be around 37-38%. The best you can find now on the Prima network is 35%. So drop me an email and we will discuss it.

Later today when I feel like it more, I am going to deposit some money into Check N Raise Poker. They are offering a 100% first time deposit bonus up to $600. I think this one is 9x, so it is a bit worse then the Holdempoker one, but this one clears in chunks of $10. That is much better because I don’t have to finish the whole bonus if I don’t feel like it. Cybrarian was dead on correct when he left a comment earlier this week talking about how long that Holdempoker bonus chase took, it was brutal.

Sports

Well, I went 3-3 last night. That doesn’t sound all that bad, but I will eventually go broke at that rate. I won’t go broke anytime soon, I am only risking about 5% of my betting roll every day, but it would happen eventually if I kept that up. Here are todays plays:

NBA
(L) Portland vs Atlanta Atl -3.5 (-103)
(W)Portland vs Atlanta Under 185 (+103)
(L)Indiana vs LA Clippers Clippers -1.5 (-110)

EDIT: I have added the New Jersey vs Lakers game for tonight. I took the (L) Lakers -1.5 (-107).

NFL
(W)New England vs Kansas City Kansas City -3.5 (-105)

I’m real strong on the Clippers pick. I had them at about -4 so this was a good bet in my book, if my system is half way decent, and I’m sure it’s not. I was a bit confused on it though. I could have gotten them at -2 (-107) instead of -1.5 (-110) Not quite sure what the better move was. I guess if I was positive about the -2 I should have taken that line. Oh man, so much to learn.

Record to date: 4-4

I lied

OK, so I lied. I thought I could create a page that would follow my career in sports betting, but I was wrong. I thought I could just put individual posts on it, but I would have to edit all of the HTML myself and that pretty much defeats the purpose of having a blog.

So, you are stuck reading about it here. I have seperated posts into two categories so you can filter them between sports and poker. On with tonights picks. Home teams are listed second, the team I am taking has the points listed.

NBA
(W) Toronto vs. Golden State (-9)
(L) Miami (-2.5) vs. Orlando
(W) Chicago (+2) vs. Houston
(W) Detroit (-4.5) vs. Milwaukee
(L) Detroit vs. Milwaukee Over 193pts

Another pick I am debating is Dallas -7.5. Might jump on that one later.

EDIT: Well, I ended up taking (L) Dallas -7.

Never bet on the Lions

What was I thinking? I have been a Lions fan for 30+ years now. I should know better then to ever bet on them. My mother knows nothing about sports, and when I told her I took the Lions her response was, “Are you insane?”

My thinking was, generally they are so pathetic that they really get up for the Thanksgiving game because it is probably the only time every year they are on national TV. It is a general misconception in the Lions community that they play well on Thanksgiving day. I did some research and found that to be totally not true. I think they are something like 33-31 and a few ties, so nothing to write home about.

New Section

I now have a new section up in place called Sports Betting. I will use that area to discuss my daily picks and my win/loss record. I am using poker bonus money to fund this new adventure, so I will be starting small. I hope to wager about $50 a day on average or $1500 a month.

I have been researching new sportsbooks to deposit some money into. ICFishes over at ITH recommended having a few different places to lay bets so you can take advantage of a site if they are offering a better line or better odds. I probably never would have thought of that myself, but he makes total sense. Imagine that, learning something new on ITH. That place really is a well of knowledge just waiting to be tapped.

I think I have found 3 sites to use. I will be using Cris, VIPSports, and probably Pinnacle. Pinnacle irks me a bit because some of their website messes up when I use Firefox.

I will also be using Bodog and Bet365 because I have poker accounts there and you can transfer money back and forth between your poker and sports betting accounts.

I hope everyone had a safe and good Thanksgiving.

Turkey and football

Well today is Thanksgiving here in the states. Nothing big planned, dinner with the family and of course some Lions football on the TV.

Today marks my first sports bet though, so that is pretty cool. I took the Lions +3 and Denver -2.5. I am much more confident in the Denver pick, but my Lions generally play good on Thanksgiving Day, so we will see what happens.

I think I might make a page on this site dedicated to my sports betting. Something with my past picks, who won/loss and how much I won/loss.

I haven’t been playing much poker the past few days. Been busy setting up a spreadsheet to track my sports betting and good stuff like that. Hopefully after the Holiday I can get back into the swing of things. Lord knows I have a lot of bonus money still sitting out there.

Well, I am off to stuff myself on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie mmmmmmm Hopefully everyone has a good Thanksgiving and to everyone not in the U.S., have fun at work

Bet365

I have heard people over at ITH talking about the $100 monthly bonus at Bet365 for a while now, but never pursued it because I thought it was not PT compatible. Doh! Man am I an idiot, its on the Prima network so of course it is PT compatible.

So yesterday I see they upped their initial deposit bonus from $50 to $100 and I decide to give it a whirl. $200 for 1000 raked hands is a pretty good bonus. So I drop in $300 and sit down at a $1/$2 table and promptly win 40 BB’s and clear a few hundred hands in the bonus chase.

I busted my cherry in online poker at Royal Vegas on the Prima network and have not been back since. I forgot how much I really like it. The color scheme is a bit odd, but I love the mini-view they offer. I play on a 15 inch monitor, so any multi-tabling for me includes oodles of over lap. With the mini-view I can play four tables at once and not an inch of over lap, sweet!

I really want to get into sports betting, so I think I am going to take this chance to do so. I will keep my original $300 deposit at Bet365 and take all my bonus and poker winnings to fund my new endeavor into sports betting. So expect some posts around here about that in the near future.

Finally finished!

Well, I finally finished off the deposit bonus over at HoldemPoker.com. I consider it a very successful bonus chase overall. I deposited $700 and cashed out $2080, including the bonus.

I was sweating like a whore in church when I first started the bonus. Everyone on ITH said the bonus should not be attempted at anything lower then $2/$4, and even that wasn’t a very good level to clear it at. That is all fine and dandy, but I had never played a single hand at that level yet. I had the bankroll for it, but had yet to attempt playing it out of fear I guess.

So I deposit my $700 and sit down to play my first session of $2/$4. I was doing OK, holding my own even, then I took a big kick to the junk. I promptly lost $400 in about 52 minutes.

After that big loss, things evened out and I went on a nice rush. In the next few days I was up over $600, so a net of about $200 bucks. I was now over the limit to play $3/$6 so I figured what the heck, lets give it a shot.

I had very good luck at $3/$6 and averaged over 1.5BB for the rest of the bonus chase. I even hit my first royal flush and pocketed a nice $300 bonus.

So overall, it was a pretty nice bonus chase. Deposited $700, cashed out $2080. Not bad!