I have some nice pain meds if you think it would help.

Yeah empire was horrible to me...and I played horribly because of it!

Worked today on the Empire bonus. 4 tabling .5/1 with the other whores, it clears at about 100 raked hands per hour. I have check-raised 34 times in the last 2k hands, which is about twice as often as normal. I played two sessions today, two hours each. In the first, I went down $30. The second, up $50. I have never seen more TAGs at one table than I saw in the first session. I have made a point of exercising good table selection, and thank goodness that you can still datamine at Empire. Is there a bigger rock garden on the net? Alot of the whores are tight-weak, and will readily fold to a check-raise, so I have been abusing the check-raise bluff.

I am still learning how to play against a table full of rocks. I bluff more, and my numbers are close to what I normally run at 15.9/9.1/2.1. I will be glad to finish the Empire bonus and get out of there.

I notice that both Party and Empire MTTs are down for scheduled maintenance until 5:30 AM EST tomorrow. Wonder if that means anything or if it is mere coincidence.

I will be very glad to be done with Empire. 140 hands to go to clear the bonus, it can't happen soon enough. Down another $50 at .5/1 LHE. I decided that I needed a change, so I played some 25NLHE. I liked it. I am not much of a no limit player, but I think my next step wil be to learn no limit. I was down $18 4 tabling for 1.5 hours, but I consider it a small victory that I never got stacked. I even found some stones:

Party Poker
No Limit Holdem Ring game
Blinds: $0.10/$0.25
9 players


Stack sizes:
UTG: $4.75
UTG+1: $10.05
Hero: $20.05
MP2: $7.30
MP3: $37.92
CO: $14.30
Button: $18.10
SB: $27
BB: $24.15

Pre-flop: (9 players) Hero is MP1 with
2 folds, Hero raises to $0.75, 3 folds, Button raises to $1.25, 2 folds, Hero calls $0.5.

Flop: ($2.85, 2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $2.75, Hero raises to $7, Button calls $4.25.

Turn: ($16.85, 2 players)
Hero raises all-in $11.8, Button folds.
Uncalled bets: $11.8 returned to Hero.

Results:
Final pot: $16.85

Villian was super-LAG, numbers like 39/23/6.5 over 150 hands. He was picking up alot of pots uncontested, but had just taken a beat for about $30 a few hands before this one, and was pissed that the guy he doubled up left the table. I figure that I had a live club draw if nothing else, because villian would have pushed my flop check-raise with a high flush draw or a made flush - he had done this a few times and caught all but one when called. His range of hands here is huge, but I have to figure no king and no clubs when he calls the c/r - he would have come over the top all in. I'm thinking he probably had middle pair or OESD, unless I absolutely sold the flopped flush, in which case he may have laid down a K. My numbers at the table were 17/7/2.0. I would have probably led out the flop and folded to a raise against anyone else at this table.

I was thinking that Bodog would be a good place to go to learn NL. Empire was way too tight, and I like the idea of a bonus to cushion my learning curve expenses. I have not played Bodog before, so have no basis to compare the old software to the new software, and I have seen it said time and again here that Bodog has bad players.

having experience the full fishiness of Pacific Nl $200 last night, I would like to go on record as saying that anyone who plays ring and doesn't devote 1/4 of his desktop to a pacific table open at all times is flushing $$$ down the toliet

good call on the turn. the 99 was a moron for trying to get cute -- he gave every overpair great implied odds to draw. you also had a draw to a str8 that you could show down if the betting wasn't too active.

sounds like these guys were playing some janky hands (i'd like to know what the four-card hands were), so i don't think they should really be lecturing you.