Not much new

The Quest was joined for just a short while last night. I got home later than usual and after dinner I couldn't pry my ass off the couch. Before heading to bed I played for maybe 20 minutes. It almost turned into a rather lucrative 20 minutes.

My table had two of those crazy people who keep betting way more than is called for and then raise each other as if the size of the raise was indicative of the size of their cajones. It took less than two rotations to figure one of these two guys was going to over-raise pretty much every hand and then the other would come back over the top.

I made a couple half-assed attempts to play mediocre hands, as much to openly demonstrate that I was a weak fish as anything else. Then I kept folding until I caught some good cards. Flopped a set on one hand, just tagging along with the crazy guys on the flop and then pushing all-in on the turn. They backed down and I took a rather nice pot.

Crazy guy #1 seemed a bit less crazy than crazy guy #2. #1 was clearly wary of me after than first hand. #2 had no such fear. We got it all in with me holding AK and him holding AQ. I'd have ended up with a very nice stack if the board didn't river a second pair, neutering my king. I think I actually lost money on the hand due to the rake.

After that hand both of the crazy guys settled down quite a bit, betting amounts that were more in line with the size of the pot. I realize everyone is entitled to bet however much they want, but it still irritates me to see players who insist on open-raising $0.20 into a pot with $0.03 in it. Go play $0.02/$0.05 if you want to bet that much into an unraised pot. (I know it sounds stupid to get concerned about such small amounts, but I'm trying to approach this seriously and in proportion to the stakes. I've not played $1/$2 NL, but I'm guessing you don't see a whole lot of open-raises to $20. Or am I wrong?)

I've come upon an offer of free money to sign up at some new (to me) sites. Ultimate Bet is one of the few big sites I've never signed up with, so I'm eligible to get $100 free money to play with there. I'm debating whether I should take advantage of this, moving The Quest to UB and adding the $100 to the bankroll. It kind of cheats the idea of turning $5 into $5000, yet is still in line with the basic idea of starting very small and building the bankroll to a decent size. I'm conflicted on whether I should sign up and add this to the bankroll or not.

I just went off to look up some things about UB before finishing this entry. I guess during my time mostly away from poker over the last year there were some big doings at Absolute and now allegations of the same thing at UB. I had read a number of different allegations of cheating at Absolute but was unaware at least one such incident had been proven beyond doubt and they've been fined and put on probation with the oversight body. This YouTube video is quite revealing, pun intended.