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November 15, 2006
Vegas Bound
I'm heading out to Las Vegas tonight. Anyone else going to be out there? Harrah's was apparently pretty impressed with my extra-curricular activities at this year's World Series of Poker so they're hooking me up with 5 nights of rooms, 4 free tickets to Chappelle at the Comedy Festival (my real reason for going is that I have tickets to a few other events too), and some cash. Plus my elite miles earned me a complimentary upgrade on Continental. I figured by taking the late flight out I'd have a better chance of business class still having some open seats (which they then fill by upgrading the people with the highest miles) and turned out to be correct. I expect I'll be taking nothing but the 8:45 p.m. flight out and the 11:45 p.m. flight back from now on for just that reason.
I won't be playing any casino poker out there, but since I'll be away from my video games I'll probably run some online. I played a pretty decent number of hours last week, but then I started playing on my Xbox 360 and haven't felt like doing much else. I beat some silly Zelda wanna-be game called Kameo: Elements of Power in under 20 hours of play (2 days for me) and then got Gears of War. Wow is that game awesome. It's the first shooter I've ever seen that at least tries to be somewhat realistic. I mean, you're killing giant locust-people who come out of holes in the ground and try to eradicate humanity, so I'm guessing it's not exactly like being in Vietnam all over again. They were more like cockroaches. But unlike most first person shooters you spend all of your time running from obstacle to obstacle, hiding behind things and shooting over or around them. I'm no veteran, but I'm guessing real war is a lot closer to that than the usual FPS where you simply run out in the open and start blasting while walking sideways.
So, umm, where was I? Oh yeah, poker. I actually played a decent amount last week and had a relatively good one. I'm trying to just get some table time in while I do other stuff. That works well for me. I spend hours a day reading RSS feeds, answering emails, etc. It's like nothing to play a couple low stakes tables while I do that. I wouldn't want to play any bigger games that way, but I'm still reeling from my bad year too much to do that anyway. I'm so far beyond the point of boredom and hatred with this game that I have to convince myself that I'm doing something else just to play it. That's working though, and if I can use it to monetize the 30 or so hours a week I spend looking at Google Reader I'll wind up a rich man.
I also bought an ultra-portable laptop that weighs 3 lbs and gets 11 hours of battery life. That means I could pretty easily play a table while doing things like cooking, riding in a car (thanks to Broadband Access), watching TV, playing Zelda, doing laundry, waiting at an airport, or pretty much anything else. I might give that a go. I can pretty much play one table with absolutely no thought. I just have to figure out a way to sleep and run one table of $15/$30 6 max now and I'm set.
I've been splitting my play between the two sites. PokerStars FPP program, I figured, adds up to about 18% rakeback at the Platinum level, which I got to in just a few days. Once you get to Supernova it jumps to about 25%. I think I might play there exclusively during January and February just to hit that, as I think I can do it in under 2 months with a reasonable amount of table time, especially given how blazing fast their software is now. It's only about 70k hands to get there, and two tables of 6 max nets me about 300 per hour, so we're talking 6 full time weeks.
Then I can split my time between there and Full Tilt and effectively get rakeback at both. It seems like at levels above $15/$30 you pretty much have to look around anymore, you can't just sit at one site like you could during Party's heyday, so it will be worth it. I wish I could just get 30% rakeback at Stars, and offer it to customers, I'd delete Full Tilt immediately. Stars is just that much better when it comes to software and customer support. But I can't, so I won't.
Posted by themaroon at November 15, 2006 4:47 AM
Comments
Chappelle bailed. Though I can't imagine you'll have trouble finding something else to do in Vegas.
( http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=7009b3fb-295c-43ff-bfaf-418c559a65b8 )
Posted by: Absinthe at November 15, 2006 5:52 AM
Damnit. What a flake. Hope I can switch the tickets to something else.
Posted by: Matthew Maroon at November 15, 2006 11:08 AM
i've never used epassporte for withdrawals -- how fast is it usually with Full tilt? thanks!
Posted by: chi at November 16, 2006 1:41 AM
Hey! Can You tell what laptop You bought?
Posted by: osinsh at November 17, 2006 1:20 PM