A Love Hate

Filed Under: Poker

Wednesday afternoon I fired up Eurobet for an afternoon session and just as I logged in the site crashed. Thankfully this isn't a too regular occurrence but I wanted to play so I took a look at my spreadsheet. I found that I still had about $500 in bonus to clear at UltimateBet so off I went to play.

The first online site I ever played back in '03 was UltimateBet. It was there that I honed my early knowledge of the game so a soft spot in my heart will always be reserved for them. It was also a site that I came to despise last year. It wasn't crashes that caused me to hate them, it was the way I played.

Now I don't play every site out there but I've flung virtual chips at a rather large number of them so I feel confident in saying that at the lower limits the level of competition is greater at UB than most other sites. With that knowledge in hand, it wasn't that I couldn't beat the competition either. In fact, I was able to take advantage of them on many occasions by knowing that my opponents were, for the most part, able to make a good laydown. This led to a bad bought of fancy play syndrome. If I could bluff a hand every now and then, why not try it more often. Time after time I would start a session with a plan of keeping myself under control, yet by the end I would fall back into the same bad rhythm.

I quit playing ring games their altogether for a while but found myself going back earlier this year when they were offering reload bonuses on a constant basis. My play didn't change though. Same players, same rut.

Wednesday I made a breakthrough. I managed to not get tied up in the FPS that I was susceptible to and managed a decent session. Then another reason I dislike UB came up. The inability for a table to stay open for more than an hour. It never fails that one player will sit out, then two, and suddenly their is a mass exodus which leaves me all alone. This is enough to prevent me from playing ring games their on a regular basis.

It's good to know I can go back now with the knowledge that I've taken a big step in overcoming an old nemesis.