You just can’t beat free money from Party Poker! Their reload bonuses are very easy to clear even at the low limits, so when a 20% up to $100 bonus popped up on my account yesterday I got busy.
I decided to play for this bonus using $25NL only. I wanted to see how no limit compared to fixed limit hold’em as I’ve mostly played $1/$2 to clear these bonuses so far. Because the wagering requirements are based on a number of raked hands, regardless of the actual amount of rake paid, the limits do not really matter. In fact a quirk of this system is that you have to play less hands at $1/$2 to clear a bonus than at $2/$4 – although you pay more rake in total, $1/$2 games are raked in 25c multiples, whereas $2/$4 is raked $1 at a time.
I thought you would probably need to play more hands at $25NL than $1/$2 as there would be fewer flops, but really this doesn’t seem to be the case – I’d usually bank on slightly more than 50% of hands being raked at $1/$2.
Stand by, stat fans – here’s how I did 🙂
Hands played: 1540 (for 1000 raked hands)
Hours played: 23.63 (approx 6 hours @ 4 tables)
Rake paid: $30.10 (so Party Poker lose $69.90 on this promo!)
Amount won: $35.52 (4.61 BB per 100 hands)
Win rate: $5.92/hr
Bonus awarded: $100
Rate w/ bonus: $22.60/hr
Certainly not bad for the smallest game in town. And for those who like even geekier stats, here’s how I was playing:
Vol. Put $ In Pot: 14.29%
Pre-flop Raise: 7.21%
Post-flop Aggression: 3.72
Won $ When Saw Flop: 33.59%
Went to Showdown: 20.99%
Won $ At Showdown: 50.91%
Folded SB to Steal: 87.50%
Folded BB to Steal: 80.00%
Attempt to Steal Blinds: 18.57%
So it’s a fairly small sample size, but the diagnosis looks pretty good – firmly rooted in the Tight/Agressive camp. Poker Tracker gives me a little cash bag icon – result!
If I try to be objective, my blind play looks kinda weak, although 8 times out of 10 is probably nothing to be concerned with. Need more input. When there are a lot of limpers, as you get in these low limit games, there’s not too many opportunities to steal. I could be raising a bit more pre-flop, but again with lots of limpers I’m aware that my range of hands to raise with is tighter than usual, and limping into multiway pots with small pairs and suited aces becomes attractive.
Oh, and I appear to be rather aggressive post-flop. That one really surprised me as I still think I check/call too much on the river. The aggression factor is calculated as the number of times you bet or raise divided by the number of times you call (checking is ignored). A number between 2 and 3 – betting twice to three times as often as you call – is thought to be nicely aggressive.
Grrrr, then.
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