Selections ...

It's all about selectivity, one way and another, isn't it? Selecting the hands with which you'll call before the flop; selecting what sort of game you want to play; selecting your table; and, for me at the moment, selecting at which online poker room(s) to play. I think there are people who lose consistently who might win equally consistently in different games, and I certainly want to avoid becoming one of them.

From the general consensus of opinion among reviewers and players, it seems that Bodog Poker and Pacific Poker both have plenty of fairly loose games of a not-particularly-high standard in which it's not too difficult to win some money. As against that, at least two people who have withdrawn money from Bodog recently by cheque (why would you want to withdraw by cheque?) have apparently reported that the cheques didn't clear, which is about as potentially alarming a thing as you can hear, to me. And I've also read a couple of pretty hair-raising stories casting some real aspersions about the integrity of the support staff and/or management of Pacific Poker. Pacific is owned by a casino company, and I think these poker rooms, perhaps partly because of the way they promote themselves online, probably attract more than their share of gamblers, which might make them easier places for a patient, disciplined player to win some money?

I have been offered an almost unbelievably complicated rakeback/incentive deal at Betfred Poker by one of its affiliates (rakeback deals come through affiliates, not through the sites themselves). I'm really struggling to predict its longer-term significance, but my guess is that for a very serious player it might work out at about 45% rakeback and in my case it might work out at about 25% - 30%. But I think it will still be available next month or the month after anyway, so I'm not feeling like jumping at it.

I'm going to try Poker Stars, I've decided. It's the biggest poker site in the world, clearly one of the best, the availability of games is second to none, and the software is really very nice. The only negatives about it that I've managed to discover (and I've done a lot of research) are (i) that they don't give rakeback and their sign-up bonus is pretty small (in the long run, the size of the sign-up bonus is irrelevant, though rakeback certainly isn't) and (ii) that it's not the easiest place to win money, because the standard's a little bit higher than most (but in a way, that might not be such a bad thing, really, because I need decent experience too, and at the stakes I'll be playing I hope that won't really be too significant anyway). So I'm going to pay my few hundred Lati in there, and we'll see what happens over the next month or two.

I'm also reading the SAGE system, by Lee H. Jones and Collin Moshman's sit 'n' go book (more about these soon), both of which I think will save me a lot of money in the long run ...