The Fall of the Party Network

Well, today will likely be a day long remembered in the online poker community. PartyPoker cut the cord on it's skins, Empire, Eurobet, etc., that people were using to get rakeback. So, Party now has the fish and all the sharks left high and dry playing each other on the skins. There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth in online forums today. It actually doesn't affect me all that much, because I was never able to successfully get a rakeback deal. Due mostly to my own stupidity. Party also set up blackjack and a sidebet feature on their site. So, now I have the temptation of playing blackjack anytime I want. This is actually kinda scary because it could potentially really hurt my bankroll. So, now I have to decide whether it's worth it to me to look for another site where I can get good games and maybe a rakeback deal with no blackjack to contend with. Other than the blackjack though, I'm not really that worried about the PartyPoker changes. In fact, I think that it may benefit me...at least in the short term, because I think the majority of the people playing on the skins were sharks and most of the fish were still playing on Party, so I should still have a goodly number of fish available to me.

In other news, things have been very swingy for me at 1/2 lately and after a pretty decent session tonight I'm at about 2.15BB/100 after about 8k hands. I've read on FCP that 1/2 is actually one of the worst games on Party, so I'll probably be moving up as soon as I have 200 BB for 2/4 and I've logged 10k hands at 1/2. I should have the $800 very soon too. I've got $50 sitting in Neteller that I took out of Bodog and I'm leaving $50 in there to bet on sports when I want to. I raided $50 to buy a couple of books and DVDs, the books will be on NL Hold'em, so hopefully that will help my game a lot. I also have a promotion from Party where I have to earn about 1200 Party points by 10/31 and I'll get 60 free dollars. After tonight's session I'm about a quarter of the way there I think, so hopefully I should be able to clear that. Finally, I've finished clearing my FullTilt bonus and I've got a little over $140 in there right now, after grinding some limit games and cashing in the FCP Ghost Town O on Thursday (the only NL I've played during my current hiatus).

All in all, I feel like I'm in pretty good shape poker-wise right now. The bankroll isn't quite as high as I would like it to be, but it's in decent shape especially since I raided it this week. I'm reading Theory of Poker right now and I feel like I'm really getting a lot out of it. I've got Ed Miller's Getting Started in Hold'em and Phil Gordon's Little Green Book on the way right now, and I really expect that to help out my NL game. I've also ordered Hold'em for Advanced Players and Super System 2, through PSO with the points from my Bodog promotion, so I should have plenty of poker reading over the next few months. I should also be getting 300 extra dollars in the next few days, from a short term real estate loan I did with a friend. I intend to make that money my live bankroll and take it to the casino. Preferrably I will find a 3/6 or 2/4 game, but if I have to I will take it all to the 5/10 game and hope that I can hit a rush early and not lose my 30 big bets.

Current Bankroll Numbers:
FullTilt (including Sat. token): $168.27
Party (including $ in neteller): $800 approx.
Total: $970