I can't believe I'm thinking this...

[bozlax]

(Thanks, Dave, thanks a lot! Now you've got me doing it.)

...I might stop bonus whoring Party skins. I know, I can't believe it either, but bear with me.

My thinking to-date has run along the lines of:

1. I'm playing x number of hands, some percentage of which are raked, in order to get the bonus.

2. My winrate for those hands is augmented by (($bonus/BB of limit I'm playing)/(x/100)), e.g. if I have to play 2,000 hands at Party .5/1 to clear a $100 bonus, my winrate is increased by ($100/$1)/(2,000hands/100) = 5BB/100.

3. I accept that I play sub-optimal (when I say sub-optimal, incidentally, I mean less than the best I can play, not less than the best that can possibly be played) poker in order to clear the bonus in the necessary time-frame...being a stay-at-home-dad, it can be hard to play 2,000 hands in 7 days, without multi-tabling. (The obvious alternative is to multi-table higher limits as I did with the most recent bonus, playing 1/2 6-max to clear it in the requisite 3 days, with results that were, shall we say, less than satisfactory.)

4. I don't think it's worth playing for bonuses if you're playing above 1/2...maybe 2/4...due to the amount of the bonus relative to your BB.

5. I've only been considering my winrate in terms of (stay with me, here) the number of hands I have to play to clear the bonus.

I'm wondering, now, what if the poor-play effect leeches over into the hands folowing a bonus period? Even though I go back to 1 or 2 tables, am I still playing sub-optimally for some time after clearing a bonus?

Let's take the most recent example: I cleared two $100 bonuses by 4-tabling 1/2 6-max for about 5 actual days (forgot I was going away this past weekend!). Started well, finished badly, wound up about 65BB down from my play, so net 35BB up. It was around 2,200 hands, iirc, so my net winrate is around 1.6BB/100...not horrible, but not what I'm capable of if I can pay attention to the hands. Now, if I keep playing sub-optimally (say at a winrate of 1.3 or 1.4 instead of 2.5 or 3) for another 1,000 hands to shake off the "bonus clearing effect" then that hashes my net even more, even though I was net positive during both periods.

(Part of what brought all this to mind is that I've noticed Empire and Party increasing the number of raked hands necessary to clear and reducing the amount of time you have over the past couple of months, which is going to compound the effect by making you play higher limits and faster games to clear the bonus.)

Anyway, this probably isn't very clear, but I think short-term bonus whoring is retarding the advancement of my game, and so I'm considering giving it up. In future I will play some hands at Party, but generally will restrict my play to Paradise, Stars, etc., where bonuses stack, don't expire, and pay out as you earn them.

Thoughts?