The first week of the legends of poker is almost upon us, so if you are in the Southern California area come on down and play in some of these events at the Bicycle Club Casino.
| When | Event | Buy-In |
| 7/28 3:00pm | Casino Employee NLHE | $100+$20 |
| 7/29 3:00pm | Media Event NLHE | $0 |
| 7/29 4-6pm | Legends of Poker Cocktail Party | |
| 7/29 7:00pm | Legends of Poker Event Center Grand Opening NLHE | $300+$35 |
| 7/30 3:00pm | NLHE | $300+$35 |
| 7/31 3:00pm | NLHE Day 1A | $300+$35 |
| 8/1 3:00pm | NLHE Day 1B | $300+$35 |
| 8/2 1:00pm | Lips Tour NLHE | $300+$40 |
| 8/2 7:00pm | Limit Holdem | $300+$35 |
I guess I’m not a ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ kind of guy, so I like playing poker live at a few different cardrooms and I also like playing online at a few places. When I’m playing live here in Southern California at the Bike or Commerce I almost don’t care about the room I’m in as much as the particular game I’m playing. After all I can only sit in one seat live and I don’t have to work about cashout timing (I’ve always been able to convert my chips to and from cash at the live cardrooms without issue and most importantly, immediately!)
Online it’s a different story. The way the different cardrooms handle multi-tabling support (playing one more that one table at the same time), customer support, funding and cashing out all vary quite a bit, but in the online world there appears to be one constant. PokerStars is best. I might be able to find a better table (one with worse players) at UltimateBet or Full Tilt Poker but seemingly without fail of there’s a quality comparison between the cardrooms like which site is it easiest to multi-table 20 tables or which site has the best player loyalty program or which site has (by far!) the best customer service then the answer so far has always been PokerStars. Naturally that’s one very good reason to play poker there and I definite do that, but I particularly want to do that exclusively so this is a shout out to the top cardrooms to get your collective acts together. YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG and POKERSTARS IS DOING IT RIGHT. This is especially true in the realm of customer support where PokerStars actually gets back to you with REAL INFORMATION and they do it FAST. It’s also true in terms of software features to help people play more than one table at a time. I’ve found that I can play at least double the number of tables comfortably that I can play on any other site. Note to other sites: COPY OR IMPROVE ON WHAT THEY ARE DOING. Is there not enough money in online poker? Can’t you afford it Full Tilt? I know you can… So DO IT. Arrrg.
Starting at five minutes after midnight tonight (Eastern time), Full Tilt Poker will be starting their 55 hour 5 year anniversary celebration. All points earned during the 2+ day event will earn 5x Full Tilt points for all time spent at the tables. Got your eye on some fancy new Full Tilt gear? Now is the time to grind some poker (maybe clear your bonuses) and get a huge return on frequent player points.
One of the longest standing casino and online poker rooms, 888, has a decent page on their Australian site of holdem poker tips for tournaments and cash games. One basic concept they touch on is playing much fewer hands from early position which is extremely important even in loose limit games (but is a real game breaker if you violate it in most online NL games). I know you love to play J9 suited (or whatever your favorite hand is) but just lay it down when in early position and you’ll go a long way to plugging one of the most prevalent holdem leaks.
For poker players in the United States, one of the few reliable poker funding choices now is ewalletXpress. You can fund your ewalletXpress account using your checking account which must first be validated using the usual method (they make a couple of small deposits in your checking account and you have to report the amounts of those deposits back to them, proving that you own the account).
Getting money into ewalletXpress is fairly straightforward and they even have an instant option for a nominal additional fee the funds will be available immediately so you can get playing without any delay.
When transferring out of your online poker account back into ewalletXpress, the ewalletXpress website claims:
Once the merchant has processed the transfer, the funds are immediately posted to your eWalletXpress account. An email will automatically be sent to you to confirm the transfer.
The reality is that after your merchant (your poker room) emails you and says your withdrawal is processed, then ewalletXpress will take some of its own time to process, so don’t expect your money to appear instantly (although it will usually appear with 24 hours.
The Bicycle Club casino here in Southern California has announced the grand opening of their Legends of Poker Event Center and are celebrating it with a tournament. Here’s the announcement they sent:
$300 +$35 = $330?
$1,000 for $5 Bonus Chips (seems a bit steep!)
In any event if you’re in town come join this tournament. I think I will be taking a stab at it but I may have to forgo the $5 bonus chips.
