Sunday, October 7, 2007

Another fake cake challenge

The Tiger Gaming site is cool for Chinese Poker but they just don't have nearly enough people on that site so it's nearly impossible to find tables running the games I'm looking for like low limit Omaha or Stud. So in order to practice up on other games I downloaded the Full Tilt Poker's client and started a play money account on that one too.

Previously, I had said that I thought 7cs hi/lo was the softest game online. Add Razz to that also. Some truly horrific play on there too. I have a possible 9 high showing and this guy with KKT showing is calling me down on the river. Sure, I might have had junk in my down cards but I knew that he could not possibly be beating me and I still got action.

Unfortunately the smallest game they offer on play money is 10/20 which is dangerous for a 1000 starting bankroll but I had no choice. I got mixed up in some bad hands and got dangerously low to about half my roll but just played LDP and folded until I got a super strong starting hand and got paid by all the calling stations. Pretty soon I got my roll back up to even and have been grinding away with solid starting hand and bailing if I start picking up bricks in the middle streets. Gain some, lose a little, gain some more. Anyway, I've been on for a couple days and I've tripled up from 1000 to 3500+.

Also, the interface is stupendously absurd. The "check" button gets replaced by the "fold" button when there's a bet to you. WTF? I have absolutely no idea how players have tolerated that. I'm using a track pad and I ended up mucking three or four hands because I have inadvertently clicked down on the fold button because my on screen pointer was left in the same place as the check button the round before. Un-freaking-believable. If there are any game designers in the audience, please do not replicate this horrendous user interface travesty.

4 comments:

Sushi Cowboy said...

Now over 4000, quadrupled up. And by the way, yes, I am going to do a *REAL* Cake Challenge. Just need to get my account set up with Joe.

Sushi Cowboy said...

Played a little this morning. Cracked 5500 and a shade under right now. Easy money.

The limit structure prevents any difficult decisions. And since you are so likely to get looked up on the end, bluffing on the end is useless especially since the last card is down. I've had callers who scannot beat my high and no qualifying low call on the end when there is absolutely no way for them to take either part of the pot. Bluffing could possibly work on 4th and 5th streets when you are showing well coordinated cards and your opponents are throwing up bricks, particularly true in Razz where it is possible for another player to know that they cannot lose the hand. By 6th street I think people are likely to feel priced in to chase unless there are multiple raisers and they can't see a showdown cheap enough.

I've also been multi-tabling Razz and 7cs hi/lo since I am folding so often. The 7cs hi/lo tables run about 90% of players seeing 4th street and I'm at about half of that though that statistic can be deceiving because some of those are when I've brought it and no one has raised so I see 4th for free. Likewise in Razz, I'm 44% to see 4th but even more of those are for free. Razz tables average a lower amount to see 4th street though, closer to 70%.

When I get my Cake account running I'm definitely going to see how the Razz and 7cs hi/lo action is because I think those are the tables with the best ROI for my game.

Ryan said...

You may want to do your "Cake" challenge on a different (bigger) site then, because there is no Razz or Stud on Cake. They have Stud and Stud Hi-Lo buttons, but there are never any tables up.

The pro of Cake is that it's a small site not on the radar of a lot of the better internet players, and has a lot of fish.

The con is that it's a small site and doesn't have the game variety or population of a bigger site.

I'm bummed because they don't have Omaha in my stake range. .10/.20 is the lowest, and I can't justify even a short-stacked buyin there yet.

I've been playing a lot of O8 because they have .05/.10 games where I can buyin short and not feel like the blinds are too much relative to my stack, but it's an extremely volatile game, much more so than Omaha.

I think my ROI will be high on Omaha if I can just get my roll up to the level where I can play it according to Ferguson rules...

Sushi Cowboy said...

Now I'm over 8200 playing Razz and 7cs Hi/Lo almost exclusively.

If you guys are on FTP or whatever I recommend you give this a shot. There are players out there that think they can catch two perfect cards on the last two streets and they are easy money.

I am tempted to kick it into second gear and move up a table but the stakes are 100/200 or 10x what I'm playing now so I'll have to keep building my roll before I can get there.