The PokerWorld, Chico, and everything in it.
Since the beginning of December, I've shifted my play from PokerStars to a much smaller site. I'm happy with this change and wanted to relate the experience to the Wayward Searcher and readers of this blog. The intention of this post is not to grow affiliate traffic at the site, with the current situation of being financially linked with the operation of a pokersite.
The first of December I received an email from a poker related site that I'm not sure if I can mention here. I'll check on this and make another post on it if possible. The nature of the situation may give my readers enough information to guess what I'm talking about, but Wayward Searchers, as usual, are lost. This email contained enough incentive for me to check out PokerWorld. Looking at their homepage, there are various promotions. They have a 20% bonus on all deposits, freerolls, a football pick'em promotion, King/Jack of the day, and 2006 WSOP involvement. The football promotion was a bit unclear. They had large dollar figures but didn't specify if it was limited to players at the site, or what was needed to win cash. The King/Jack of the day looked intriguing. PokerWorld picks a table type for the King and for the Jack, currently $2/$4 LHE and $5/$10 LHE. Each day they track who had the most hands (I'm unsure if the hand being raked is a requirement) on those tables. The top five players for the day with hand counts above 250 are given prizes for both tables. No prize wasn't given out the previous day, so it looks like they don't get much traffic at those levels or they don't update this promotion often. (update: the King/Jack promotion is no longer mentioned on the site) The mention of the 2006 WSOP tie ins were interesting, even if it was too late to capitalize on them, because they showed that those packages do (or did) exist.
At this point, I was willing to give it a shot. I downloaded the software (over duh-ial up) and installed. Their client was okay. To go to tournaments, you needed to click a button that opened a second client window. In cash games they offered Hold'em, Omaha, and Stud. Hold'em had the majority in not all of the traffic. In Hold'em, about two-thirds of the traffic is on the micro NLHE games. I set up an account with $500 (play money, of course). It was easy to get into the $10NL or $20NL games. There was usually one or two $100NL or $200NL games going on.
For the last year, I've been a LHE player on Stars, using PokerTracker and PokerAce HUD. Playing on this site would mean I'd have to adapt to NL play and cast aside my data crutches. In the last two weeks, my $500 has turned into more than a grand. I've had a couple big hands. A couple of $100 dollar hands, one with AA vs KK, and QQ vs KK with a Q on the flop. I also lost $100 on a hand with KK vs TT, all in preflop, with a T on the turn. Mostly, it has been in $20 and $50 chunks. There are bad players here. Monday night, an action $200NL table was full. It had big pots and players per flop. I got in and on the other side were three stacks around $300 and another just over $200. In the next 20 minutes, there were two stacks above $500. One player ran his up to $700, and then back down again when he got in a match with the other big stack. I stayed around until he left and made $50 off him. After he was gone another player mentioned that he ran off $600 the day before. I won $80 from him on a KK hand with an AAx flop. He called my continuation bet with me acting last. He checked the river and so did I, and the pot was mine.
The software does not show history, so losing mucked cards are truely mucked. Getting a seat is a bit tricky. If you leave a table with more than the max, you have to return with that amount, which is all well in good. However when you try to enter the table, if you try the max, you lose the seat. You don't get a reminder asking if you want to join with the previous amount. Multi-tabling doesn't always bring the table needing action to the front. It's worse if you have a browser window open also. The bet amounts aren't all displayed unless you put your cursor above the stack of chips. They automatically show you the amount in the pot before the betting round, and the total amount including all action to that point, so you can either deduce the bet amount from that, or place the cursor on the chips.
In my two weeks, here are the things that stand out to me. The bonus is very slow to clear. It clears in $10 increments. The bonus points have little value. You can use them to buy into tournaments, but they accumulate slowly. The guarantees that they run are mostly rebuys. It appeared to me that it was a freezeout, but I was mistaken. The guarantee is set up that with the rebuys and the minimum number of players, it should reach the guarantee. If the posted time goes by, it will wait around until they get the minimum number of players. It seems to share players with check and fold as well as a few other sites, and the players are aware of this. There are strict cash out rules to the site. You must send them a copy of your ID to be eligible. If you are eligible, there will be a $15 fee, unless you meet the following three rules:
1) Previous deposit made through Neteller (maybe same method - mine was Neteller)
2) No withdrawal of any type has been made in the previous 7 days.
3) The account has been open and active for the last 30 days.
I plan to continue to try this place out exclusively and see how I do there. One bit of wisdom that has gone around the poker blogger group is that a bad interface and low volume of players will keep out the sharks. I can see that here so far. If something more develops of this, I'll try to provide an update post.
