Mercenary

I have arrived back in G-Vegas with a successful trip under my belt.  The Pats managed to win the game against the Fins and all was good.  Saw a couple of fist fights up in the nosebleed seats where I was.  I just watched the general idiocy all the while thinking that it was a good idea to stop serving alcohol at the start of the 3rd quarter.  Prior to the game, however, I introduced the parental Bloodclan to dial-a-shots with AlCantHang.  Kudos to Dolphin Stadium for having hard liquor available, but 1000 shames for not having Southern Comfort.

I arrived back early enough on Monday to play in the G-Vegas big game, but was informed that it was cancelled.  The reason for cancellation was that many of the players were heading to Las Vegas on Thursday.  Confused?  Yeah, me too.  Why cancel playing on Monday unless you’re bankroll limited?  Oh well.

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For anyone who didn’t realize that I can be bought, let me set the record straight and say that I can.  To wit, a few months ago, Noble Poker gave me a “please come back” $20 deposit.  Not being one to turn down free money, I played for a while and managed to turn that $20 into $1000+.  Alas, the bogus software interface finally made me leave for good.  Enter Checknraise poker.  A couple of weeks ago, they too sent me a “please come back” $100.  It was not without trepidation that I logged back onto their site.

Just to set the record straight, I’m not affiliated with Checknraise whatsoever.  I have been the recipient of some goodies from that site thanks to their marketing rep being at the December ’04 WPBT Classic, but that is all.  For a while I played there but grew ever more leery about their 200 count player base.  Fears of losing my deposit and trouble finding a decent NL ring game caused me to cashout from that site expecting never again to reload.

I had received emails about them joining another network and overhauling their software, but I honestly expected that I’d blow my $100 free roll and not think twice about making Checknraise simply a temporary distraction.

Color me surprised when I found out that their player base had grown to around 7000-8000 players.  Also, they had made a downloadable software client available so that you wouldn’t have to rely on their Java-based web client.  The client even has their Fold, Call, and Raise buttons linked to function keys, so you don’t even need to use the mouse to play if you don’t want to.

As for the talent level of the player base, I’d rank them on an equivalent basis as those players on the former Noble/Titan poker network.  Not so good.  Either that, or I’ve morphed into a NL ring game Deity.  I’ve grown the $100 into over $1250+ in a matter of two weeks.  Trust me, I’m not that good.

I also made a cashout and can pleasantly report that it took only 1 day to get it into my Neteller account.  That’s not too shabby either.  I originally only planned to play there as long as it took to clear my checkpoint bonus, which would allow me to cashout the original $100 stake.  But as I approach that milestone, I’m finding it difficult to halt my play there altogether.

So perhaps I’ll linger on that site for a bit longer.  I still have much of my online bankroll at FullTilt and Pokerstars, but as long as I’m seeing such favorable results, I can’t turn away.  Because, like I said, I can be bought.