Auckland City

Well I have to start taking my own advice! Recently, Full Tilt ran a “rush” poker promo. Although it was quite a generous promo, it involved getting quite a few points over a number of days. I decided to chase the $50 bonus. I lost my whole bankroll of about $60 and ended up depositing another $60 besides so it cost me about $120 to get a $50 bonus. Doh! I’m not such a great rush poker player, tournaments are more my thing. Even so, I think I would have been OK if I had chosen to chase the $10 bonus instead of the $50 bonus as you needed much fewer points. Since then I made the final table in a couple of tournaments and made most of what I lost back, but still… my New Year’s resolution is to be more careful about chasing promos!

Chasing Promos

I’m a low stacks poker player, but I still make a small profit. One of the reasons I make a profit is because of some of the generous promos available.

For example, Full Tilt recently ran a “Double Table” promo. Although I’m normally a tournament player, I made an exception for this promo. All you had to do was earn 5 points a day double tabling 2 ring games for 9 days in a row. Although I’m not a great ring game player, I managed to break even by playing very tight. The prize for completing the promo was $25 and since my bankroll was only $50 to begin with, this promo boosted it by 50%!

You have to be careful though. THINK CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU CHOOSE TO CHASE A PROMO. It’s very easy to loose more money than the prize is worth chasing.

IF IN DOUBT, DON’T CHASE IT.

The best promos have achievable goals that don’t force you to risk too much of you’re bankroll.A good example of a promo NOT to chase would be the Full Tilt “Ironman”. To qualify, you need to get 50 points a day for 25 days. It’s just too many points and too big of a commitment. I’ve been tempted too chase it in the past, and always lost money doing so. If you’ve managed to build your bankroll to $2000+, you might consider chasing it, but otherwise, you should probably just forget it.

Part of the Ironman promo is a little one point a day freeroll. This promo is worth chasing for a bit of fun as it’s not hard to get a single point on Full Tilt. Even then, you should look at how busy you’re life is. Having to get that one point every day can be a drag if your life is busy at some point in the month.

Another good promo to look is Full Tilt’s Poker Academy challenges. These can be done in low stakes games, and they can help you learn poker at the same time.

Before you decide wether to chase a promo or not, you should to look at these 4 points:

1. Will the promo force me to risk too much of my bankroll?
2. Will I loose more money than the prize is worth chasing this promo?
3. Will I enjoy chasing this promo, or will it be a drag?
4. Will I be able to complete the promo?!

If ANY of these points are a problem, you should NOT chase the promo!

I’ve posted a silly little YouTube version of my “The Gambler” parody:

Gus Hansen is a great poker player. He’s won numerous tournaments including the Aussie Millions. He’s most famous for his super aggressive playing style.

Everybody knows the “The Gambler” song made famous by Kenny Rogers, and it has some good advice to, knowing when to hold‘em and when to fold‘em etc. Well I’ve done a comedy version of the song with lyrics that fit Gus Hansen’s playing style:

The Gambler – Gus Hansen Version.
A parody by George Pauly!

On a cold winter’s night,
on a plane out of Denmark,
I met up with a gambler,
we were both too tired to sleep.
He said if you don’t mind me saying,
I can see your out of aces,
for a handful of peanuts,
I’ll give you some advice.

You got to know when to raise’em,
you gotta, know when to re-raise’em,
know when to re-re-raise’em,
and go all-in.
You always count their money,
when you’re sitting at the table,
’cause you know it will be your, money,
when the dealing’s done!

Now every gambler knows,
the secret to survival,
is knowing when to raise a little,
and when to raise a lot.
Cause all your hands are winners,
and all their hands are losers,
and the best you can hope for,
is to take down that pot.

You got to know when to raise’em,
you gotta, know when to re-raise’em,
know when to re-re-raise’em,
and go all-in.
You always count their money,
when you’re sitting at the table,
’cause you know it will be your, money,
when the dealings done.

The Poker boom came late to New Zealand. In 2007 a TV show called “Celebrity Joker Poker” started playing on Sunday nights, hosted by Comedian Brooke Howard-Smith and Aussie Millions winner Lee Nelson. Right from the start I was hooked. Before then I had no idea what Texas Hold’em was, I only knew about Draw Poker from old movies. All the contestants were local celebrities and most of them were complete rookie poker players. As you can imagine, play was fast and loose. (Most rookies seem to think the game is called “Texas No-Fold’em”.) Anyway, I was completely fascinated and looked forward to watching it every Sunday.

I signed up with an on-line Poker Room and started playing with play money. They mentioned on the TV show that Lee Nelson had written a book called “Kill Phil” and I managed to find a copy at the local library. When I had to fly to Oz on business, I took the book with me which is unusual as I normally wouldn’t take a library book overseas. Even on the trip over there the movie they played on the plane was a poker movie called “Lucky You”, which surprised me as I’d never seen a Poker movie before, not counting old Westerns. (Not a bad movie by the way, although I don’t like the ending.) It just felt like the Poker doors were opening for me and I haven’t looked back since!

Years before I started playing poker, I had a go at betting on horses. First I came up with a system, I’ve always been interested in systems, and started testing it on paper with pretend money. Once I thought it was running a profit I started trying it with real money. It became clear pretty quickly that my system wasn’t working at all. I was down $250 and I couldn’t think of anyway to improve my system short of going to university and doing a course on statistics, so I just dropped the whole thing. That was 15 years ago. I haven’t bet on a single horse since.
When I started playing poker a couple of years ago the same sort of thing happed. I would be working on some sort of system, it wouldn’t work, I’d loose money. I’m still playing poker but I don’t bet on the horses at all. What’s the difference?

1. The commission:
The commission on the ponies is too high. In New Zealand it’s 20%. It’s difficult to make a profit against such a high commission. On-line poker rooms usually charge around 10% commission on tournaments. Even less with rakeback. Some poker tournaments charge no commission at all! Full Tilts “Daily Dollar” for example.

2. Poker is deeper than you think:
On the surface poker looks like a simple game, but as you study it, you find that it’s actually much deeper than it appears. Every time I lost at poker I would put my thinking cap on and try to improve my game. Gradually my bankroll started lasting longer and longer, until finally I didn’t need to re-stake myself at all. I’m still playing a system of sorts, but it’s got quite complicated now.

3. Promotions and Freerolls:
Some of the promotions and freerolls out there are very generous. They could be the difference between making a profit or a loss. You have to be careful which promotions you choose to chase, no sense losing more money than the promotion is worth.

Sorry ponies, I couldn’t figure out how to make a profit on you so I stopped betting. My profit in poker may be small, but it’s a profit so I’ll keep on playing!

I should have started this blog three years ago. That’s when I started getting interested in poker. My plan is to use the next few posts to go back in time and look through those three years.

Once we’re up to date, I’ll talk about where my poker is at right now. Also I’ll be writing posts about my systems and strategies. Yep, I’ll be telling you ALL my poker secrets so stay tuned!

Every time you play poker, the house takes a commission from the pot. It’s called “The Rake”. Did you know that there are websites that can give you some of this commission back! It’s called “Rakeback”. I only just found out about it and I’ve been playing on-line for a couple of years. I’ve been missing out for all that time, d’oh!

The problem is, you have to organize rakeback when you sign up at a new poker room. If you don’t organize rakeback at the very beginning, it’s hard to fix. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Check out Rakeback BEFORE you visit a poker room website!

I’ve surfed around a bit and the biggest and best rakeback site I can find is RakeTheRake.

Click Here to check them out.

I live in Auckland, New Zealand. I’ve been playing poker on-line for a couple of years now and I’ve finally decided to start a blog about poker!

The name of the blog comes from my on-line screen-name.
On FullTilt.com my handle is “Auckland City”.

Rookie:
I started playing poker a couple of years ago and it’s become a serious hobby. When I first started I was a serious loser. Every time I thought of a new system or experiment, I’d restake myself $50. Over the course of a year I lost about $1000. It was OK, I could afford it. In retrospect, I consider it my Poker University.

Challange:
That all changed when the recession hit a few months ago. All of a sudden I couldn’t afford to blow off $50 every two weeks. I decided to change things up. The bankroll in my Full Tilt Poker account went all the way down to zero. I decided to see if I could build it up without re-staking myself again.

Success:
I did It! I had to play a lot of freerolls and take advantage of a lot of promotions, but I managed to build my bankroll up to about $350. A few weeks ago I made my first real cashout. I got out enough to buy my Mom a pink iPod for her birthday. I call it a Poker Pod. Not huge dollars, but a genuine profit, and Mom loves her iPod.

The future:
After cashing out my Full Tilt bankroll is down near the $100 mark. My plan is to build it up again from there. I’ll let you know how it goes!