Thoughts on PokerPages, 6max Games and Shortstakers

Posted by icemonkey9 on Oct 12, 2009 in General | 0 comments

Wow it's been a while since I've chimed in here on the blog but I hope everyone has been doing really well.  Let's take this in chunks!

Personal Stuff

I volunteered at the American Diabetes Association's annual Walk for a Cure at Knotts Berry Farm here in Buena Park which is about 30 minutes from where I live.  The number of volunteers was very small compared to the HUGE turnout which was a great thrill.  My day started at 5am and ended at 9pm (well, dinner with friends was after!) but it was a great day.

Tomorrow I am donating my platelets at the Red Cross along with some plasma most likely.  My "stuff" is used to help build immunity systems that have been destroyed as a result of chemotherapy treatments.  The Red Cross occasionally calls and when they sound urgent I understand the situation. So, that'll be a couple of hours out of my day tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I have a baseball game and it HAS to go better than the last game.  I've played 20 games and hadn't struck out one single time and had never made more than 1 error in a game playing 6+ positions during 9 innings.  Well, you guessed it, game 21 I was 0/3 with three strikeouts and three errors.  It SUCKED.  This time I will definitely be wearing my contacts

Everyone Has an Opinion About PokerPages

It seems every journalist with a blog is saying goodbye to PokerPages. To many that have worked "inside" the industry much longer than I have it's the end of an era and many are feeling that it's only the first domino to fall. The model for successful poker websites has changed drastically from what it was when PokerPages started up.  Reading Amy's blog about her experiences there just shed more light on what I already figured to be true - the site wasn't run well, had terrible direction and several key mistakes that left the site with high costs and little revenue.

I actually looked into advertising on PokerPages to drive traffic to a site I was developing for one on one poker coaching. To be honest given their traffic, their rates were much too high and shut the door on people like me that were willing to invest. Now, I don't expect Joe Nobody to compete with say, Cake Poker with dollar for dollar advertising revenue ... but it's the internet and I really think anyone with even a small budget can be afforded an advertising solution somewhere if you have a little imagination.  Anyways, the content there wasn't very good this past year with a bloated and boring blogroll and solid live tournament updates. The site will go out with a whimper with very few online-centric poker players caring it's gone.

6max Returns!?

Well, many of you could tell my online poker exploits weren't going well over the last 20k hands or so at full ring and many recommended I return to 6max. Some said I should just drop down a level and crush the peons at the nether-regions of poker. I decided to combine both of those and played 50nl 6max and just absolutely steamrolled the level which got me into the green for the month after being way too long in the red. Anyways, I'm overrolled for 100nl but it's 6max meaning swings and weird donks so I'll just focus on getting re-established with the game there moving forward. I'm hoping to resume my studies with Stox Coach "Clean" aka ChuckTs, but we'll see what he's feeling about the whole situation. I hope he's in!

ShortStackers on FTP - Your Days are Numbered

As many know shortstackers are players that buy-in to a game for 20 big blinds, wait for a big hand, shove all in and then leave the table (ratholing). They are basically the scum of the Earth and actually use (the good ones anyway) a mathematical advantage of playing like this to win a nice profit. There's been good debate on the TwoPlusTwo forums about abolishing these bastards (you can tell which side of the fence I'm on) and there's growing sentiment and rumors that Full Tilt Poker will finally listen and change their buy-in structure. BelgoSuisse outlined a really good argument about how SSers don't pay more rake (meaning it's no difference to the poker site whether they stay or not really) and I've outlined hard data by doing manual counts of SSers at 100nl, 200nl and 400nl full ring games.  The problem is basically at these levels at full ring games, and it's definitely time FTP listened and did something about the epidemic. If they don't they basically risk losing all their FR regulars to PokerStars when the new year starts so they can take advantage of the SuperNova promotion.

Anything Else?

Nothing else really going on.  I wrote a great follow up to the Pitbull Poker closure for Poker News Daily which you can read here. The comments on the articles I wrote about this topic speak volumes including some from Pitbull's former Network Manager, Dave Brenes.