[DavidC]

Hey guys,

I wanted to try to play Hollywood Poker, to take advantage of a decent-looking bonus / rakeback program there. I'm going to chronicle my experience in doing this over the last 24 hours or something like that.

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SETTING UP THE ACCOUNT / RAKEBACK / SELECTING BONUS:

I went to raketherake, followed their link and set up an account. The instructions on the site were:

[ QUOTE ]
Click on the button below and you will be taken to the Hollywood Poker website where you will have to register your
username and email address. By clicking on the sign up button below, you are agreeing to our Terms & Conditions. You
will then receive an email from Hollywood Poker with your full account activation code.


[/ QUOTE ]

When I clicked on the button, we weren't quite at the registration screen yet, so I clicked on "create-an-account" and followed the steps there. Hopefully this didn't just screw me over.

There's three options that you can choose when you make an account, as to which bonus you get (apparently they track the affilliate you used through your cookies). I chose HP1000, which is a $1000 bonus, but it clears at 15x points instead of the $50 bonus which clears at 9x points, according to bonuswhores.

From bonuswhores:

[ QUOTE ]
Points will be awarded in the following manner:
Hold'em, Omaha, 7 Card Stud:
1 point for every raked real money hand where the rake was $1.00 or more. You get 0.5 points for every raked real money hand where the rake was less than $1.00 (but more than $0.50). You do not have to pay rake to earn points, you just need to be dealt cards. If you are sitting out you will not earn any points.


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not sure on the details of the tourney bonus option, as I'm a poor tourney player.

At rake-the-rake, it tells you to click a link to send an email to their team, but I'm using yahoo mail (yeah, I know, it's lame), so I sent an email to Jessica instead.

I sent an email to "jessica raketherake" (avoiding spam here), explaining that I was a new player at the site, giving details, and asking her to forward it to the people who looked after Hollywood. I think I sent the email at something like 5:30pm Eastern to 7:00pm Eastern. At 8am the next day, I hadn't received a response yet... fair enough.

I went to raketherake again at 8am, and hovered my cursor over the link, to see the email address that you're supposed to send to: "newplayer raketherake". Got a response by 10a, from Jessica, at her regular email, quoting the message that I sent to "newplayer". [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I'm not sure what their hours of operation are... there doesn't appear to be any details on raketherake to let you know that sort of thing, but those of you familiar with other affiliates know that the process can be "informal" at times.

She told me someone would contact me in the near future to discuss payment. So far so good on the rakeback front.

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SETTING UP THE CLIENT:

I chose to download their client software rather than play the java version.

Now, in order to get any data from this site into pokertracker, you have to go into options->preferences and make sure that you have "enable statistics" checked. I don't know if this is on by default, but I'm a nit, and origianlly thought that this was just for something similar to the stats window on Party, and closed it up to save memory. After a search at pokertracker forums to find out why I couldn't find my DB from Hollywood, I went back and turned on "Enable Statistics", and it worked fine (PT).

I chose to enable the following options: auto-login, disable show menu tool tips, remove private tables, remove play money tables, show stack amount (this is important in nlhe, otherwise you have to guess by looking at a chip stack!?), removed show people, chose wait for big blind and autopost blinds under gameplyer, disabled shortcut keys (so that I wouldn't accidentally make an action), I unclicked popup table on action.

Now... this is a real gripe with their site... If you don't click to pop up their tables, then you can't keep track of when it's your action on a specific table. If you DO make it pop up, then you have to deal with stuff like:

-when you're going through your start-menu at this happens, you loose your place,

-when you're typing something (in player notes or whatever) it starts to get typed out in whatever chat box of the window you just opened. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

... but, at least you don't lose your turns... that's the consolation.

So, I think having the tables pop-up is best, but it does create some problems.

Under the chat options, since i prefer to remove all the stuff and just keep the player chat, and since the player/game is default, I chose to make the player/game chat options mimic the only-player chat options, which will basically make player-chat default. Kinda neat.

Neither PokerAce, nor the old beta of Playerview has compatability with PokerRoom skins... so you're stuck using GT+. When you use GT+, it works, but all the players names are in different areas of the screen than where they're sitting, and you can't drag them around... so basically you're left with either using GT+ and not really liking it, or using PT to periodically update player notes with their stats.

Also, you can't really datamine, from what I've seen... so it can be pretty intimidating at first, sitting at a table "cold".

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HOW THE SITE WORKS / Interesting stuff you should know:

In order to stop posting your blinds, you right click on your name to uncheck it in a little window that pops up.

If you select SIT-OUT, while in the process of posting your SB, then you will post your SB, sit out, watch the hand get dealt to everyone else, and when you choose to sit back in, to play the rest of your free hands, it will ask you to repost blind+dead! Ouch.

The no-limit tables have really weird limits in the lobby screen: 0.25/0.25. However, when you actually go to that table, it shows you that the sb is 0.15 and the bb is 0.25... You can buy in for between 2.5 and 25. (10bb/100bb).

The site has 5-card draw, same style as Paradise (no joker, one draw of up to 5 cards, no qualifying hand to open, no antes afaik), but with many more tables and players... Kinda cool.

At the 3/6 LHE, the SB is $1.5... VERY cool! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

When you select your seat at a table, you need to choose "ok" rather than "deposit" when buying in. Otherwise it opens the deposit window (makes sense). Also, once you're sitting down, you'll be in gray. This means that you're actually sitting out of the game, and you will be removed eventually, even if you have "wait for my bb / autopost blinds" selcted. You click SIT in, with these options checked, and then it will do this for you (you won't post until your bb). This is basically one step extra than party, but I can't explain to you how frustrating it is to try sitting at 2 tables, watching the button pass you, twice, then getting kicked off teh table, before you figure it out. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

One thing that bothers me about the site is that the auto-action buttons are in different spots than the manual-action buttons... and the manual action buttons are higher. If you're using a monitor that doesn't have 1600*1200, this is irritating. Also, the windows appear tot be large enough that even at that resolution, you will have overlap. So, you should have more overlap than party while multitabling this site.

Also, when you join a waiting list, the tables pop up right away, rather than giving you the option of going there (bonuswhores has this info on their site too).

I'm not sure what the max tables are that you're allowed to play, but at minimum, 4.

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RAKE:

Their lowwest limit is 0.15/0.3, which rakes 5% (at each $1) to a max of 1.5, no matter how many players.

Their first 6-max table is at 0.25/0.5, with the same rake structure.

This continues to the 0.5/1 games...

Now, I think that this actually works out to being more expensive than Party's rake structure, over all, because party's average rake is something like 4.77% of the pot at 0.5/1, but it maxes out at $2 at $40... so I'm not sure what % of pots hit $2 rake at party, but they probably charge you a little less to play there.

The 1/2 games have 10-max, 5-max, and 6-max (maybe not), with identical rake structure to the earlier games, except that it's 5%, 0.25 per $5, 1.5 max, again, probably worse than party.

The 2/4 game has 5%, 0.5/$10, max of $3 after 6 players are seated, $2 after 4 players seated. Again, worse than party, I think.

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CLEARING BONUSES:

If the pot is raked less than 0.5, you don't get any points. If it's raked $0.5-$1, you get 0.5 points, more than $1 and you get one point.

Now, I've only played 116 hands. 89 of them have been raked: 77% Average rake was $1.18, about $3.83% of the pot. This was during the daytime... over a small sample size, but so far looks better than party... Howver, I don't know how many points I've accumulated during this time, maybe as few as 45. If that's the case, then I have a LONG ways to go to clear this bonus!

As I pick up some sample size, I'll tell you guys about the table stats and bonus clearing at 2/4 and 3/6.

However, right now it doesn't look very good.