Spring Break Bonus Whoring.....

[zeero3]

OK OK. "No more poker while in school." I finally followed it (for the most part). My current bankroll is approximately $1000 from not TOO much playing and starting off with a $600 loan (paid it back have a grand left).

So while school has been chugging along, I've been bonus-whoring like a...... uh, whore? This is how the bonuses are looking currently:

$120 at PokerStars
$375 at UltimateBet
$180 at FullTilt (had $600 but need to clear $180 more)
$200 at PokerRoom
$200 at Party (will get this deposit 3/23)
$300 at FullTilt (if and only if the last $180 is cleared by the end of the month)

Total Bonuses: $1375

Ok well that IS more than my current bankroll /images/graemlins/grin.gif, but hopefully all will go smoothly. I actually intend on clearing MOST of these bonuses by the end of Spring Break week (3/24 - 4/3).

Does anyone have suggestions on how I should go about tryiing to clear these? I'm guessing I shouldnt tackle the PokerStars bonus until I move up to $0.5/$1NL and FullTilt I'm not clearing at a decent pace unless I'm at $1/$2NL. How is UltimateBet's bonus and PokerRoom's? The Party bonus will be cleared easily. Wish me luck on my was to a poker-filled spring break.......

I'll keep this thread posted with my current status. LOL, if you don't care /images/graemlins/tongue.gif, ignore the thread, just gonna report trials and tribulations of a spring break bonus whore.............

[zeero3]

Spring break has come to a close for me. And how it went... fairly good. I can at least give a run down of the quality of certain games on certain sites. This MAY be helpful to some.

With my ~$1000 I went to Party to clear the $200 bonus because this was the site I am EXTREMELY familiar with and the bonus is pretty easy to release. I played the $50NL tables because that was the highest game within my requirement of 20buyins. I tried the full ring for a SHORT time and didn't find very many fish, so I decided to try the 6max tables ($50NL still). My game plan was to look for the games with the highest average pots and scope for the fish at the table; if I couldn't find a big enough fish, I'd leave the table looking for one. BIG SUCCESS. I've had great success at these tables before, but it's been a LONG time--the fish are STILL THERE FOLKS. In two sessions, I made my money up to approximately ~$2000.

Alrighty, I'm on a nice streak here. I now decided I could play the $100 tables with the amount of money I now had in my bankroll. I tried the PokerStars 0.5/1 tables and these tables too are VERY soft. Many players on this site seemed to limp in with any two cards and my big blind was RARELY raised (flopping two pair in the big blind seemed all too frequent /images/graemlins/grin.gif). After three sessions of this game i made an additional $1500. I also, played Party's $100 table at the same time during my last session. NINE-TABLING was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, but timing out happened a few times when I had 2 hands to play at once or a big decision. I made about $500 on Party during that session.

My bankroll was now at approximately $4000 and I felt like this spring break was going to be extremely profitable in a very short time (it was only Monday and I still had a whole week to play already quadrupling my $1000).

I should have stuck to these two sites......

I had $180 in uncleared bonus money at Full Tilt and if I cleared it by Thursday I would be able to reload again for another $300 in bonus money. So, I attempted the 1/2NL tables at FTP because anything less the bonus would clear WAY TOO SLOWLY. I played on a weekday, so maybe that was my first mistake. I was 8-tabling w/ Party's $200 full ring. I was doing fairly well on Full Tilt but horribly on Party. All my monster hands were getting hit with sets by other monsters and my overbets with monsters were called and getting tripped!!! I was getting a little annoyed w/ Party especially when I flopped a set of Tens, and the villain turned a set of Kings (and I had a feeling too)! I took my money out of Party being stuck $750 so that kinda hurt. But I was still doing good on Full Tilt up about $400. Then things went bad THERE too, when my KK ran into AA two times (shoulda folded on the first one too, damn minraiser!) I took my money out of Full Tilt after a net loss of about $200. Now my $4000 was looking more like $3000 /images/graemlins/frown.gif, but I wasn't too upset about that--I was unhappy with the rate in which my FTP bonus was clearing... I had played throughout the day and I still had $60 left to clear. I took my dough out of FTP and decided to let that bonus just sit there until the next time I was ready to get back into poker.

I still had $200 to clear at PokerRoom, but I found their software to be SO CRAPPY. When it was my turn to act the screen wouldn't pop up when I was 8-tabling. Also, this bonus was clearing rather slowly too, so I only made about $100 before I took my money out. (My AA got called by THREE people when I overbet preflop on this site though........TWICE /images/graemlins/cool.gif).

I didn't even attempt to clear the UltimateBet money because I know the quality of play on this site is better than most and I felt like I could make more money playing the Party $100NL 6-max tables. I made about $400 in a short session here and decided to stop the poker for spring break there.

My starting bankroll: ~$1000
My finishing bankroll: ~$3500

I took $750 out to cover some bills I had and now I'm looking at having a bankroll of $2750. I look forward to playing the Party $100NL 6-max tables when school is over for the semester..........

I don't know if this thread is very useful, but I haven't posted anything like this before and wanted to. Uh, if this teaches anything I guess it shows that game selection is key? I don't know, good luck. Later