donkey reward program

[racenutalways]

I play a lot of poker, nearly 10hrs/day. What I do not understand is this "Donkey Reward Program" that these online poker rooms have. Out of 59 tournys I have played, I can not even reach the top 100. Average is 1000.

I play tight-aggressive and I read how players make money at online poker. However, explain to me that premium hands continue on being beat by an "All-in" any 2 cards donkey" If I have AA out of the hole, I can assure you I will be beat by 10-J,o, A3s, K-9o.
If I flop a set with my AA, I'll be beat by a str8 on the river, everytime. I keep records of my premium hands I play and how many I win/lost and by what hand.

When I play loose, it's worse yet. They have not added me to the donkey reward program n any of the sites I play at. LOL!!!!

I can not place any confidence in these websites if they continually reward stupid players. After 10 weeks of being beaten, I lost all confidence in them. Money goes in, but doesn't come out.

I'm not a beginner, been playing online poker for 3 yrs now. Home games, I win 80% of the time. Online poker 0%?????

Whether I raise 5xBB or all in, they will pay any price to go to the river. How in tarnations can anyone win, unless you flop a boat or better.

Sites I play.. Ultimate, interpoker, absolute, toucan, mansion, pokerhost, get off the rail.

I would like to deposit money in UB to chase the bonus, but I think I will just keep my money to myself.

I read and read and read, but can not capatilize on anything here. No matter what I do.

P.S. Cash games, played differently has the same outcome.
I just don't understand.

Some info would be greatly appreciated.

[TerryBorer]

Hi racenutalways -

Welcome to the forum! Did you mean 10 hours a week or 10 hours a month? Also, how big are these tourneys where your average placing is 1000th?

I'm sorry about your bad luck and experience. Horrible bad luck does happen and huge downswings can occur. I play a lot of hands per hour so I get a ton of bad beats too and they hurt. That being said the most likely reason you aren't doing well is that you're not playing well.

Usually a tournament has a couple of decisive hands where you lose a ton of chips or get eliminated. Maybe you can post a few hands so we can give our opinions?

Another suggestion is to play some low-limit sit'n'go 9 or 10 player tournaments instead of those monster ones you're in. There is a ton of luck of course, but it should even out and after 20 or so tournaments you'll have some idea where you stand since they are much easier to win. By playing low-limit ($5+$1 say) you won't lose much money even if you continue to run bad.

As for the donkey reward program, it often feels that way to me as well. Then I hit a runner-runner straight followed by a two-outer on the river against the same player and the balance is restored

Don't give up on the game!

Terry

[ciaran]

Race,

Online poker is not rigged against you. I could go into long explanations, but it's been done to death, and I won't convince you anyway if you're sure it is. Suffice to say that poker in general, and Hold'em in particular, is a game of fairly small skill edges, and luck can easily swamp those edges in the short-run, and even the medium or long (or at least what most people think is long) run.

Most poker players are losing poker players, and the greatest likelihood if you're losing money over any significant sample (again, significant sample is key, and significant is much larger than most people recognize) is that you're a losing player. I've been playing for 3.5 years now, and I'm probably just getting to the point where I can be reasonably certain I'm actually a winning player, and at that only in the relatively low-level games I've played. In fact, I just looked at my SNG numbers and it appears that it's 99.9942% likely I'm at least a break-even player (woot!). Of course, even knowing that, given my historical win rate (over 5000 SNGs), I'm about equally likely to be a loser as a winner over any given 50 game stretch, and that's for 9-man games.

On the plus side, if you are a losing player, or even a winning player on a terrible cooler, it's not hard to get better, and there are plenty of resources here to help you.

[taz115]

The variance for large tournaments is massive. You have to win at showdown many many times in a tournament with >1k players and even if you never get your money in bad your statistically likely to lose all your chips at some point. But someone has to win.

So if your honestly interested in improving your game and finding out whether or not your making good decisions post some hand examples in the MTT forum. And don't just fish for obvious bad beats either... post some hands that you are unsure whether you made the correct play or not. I do pretty well at MTTs and I post a lot of hands to try and have a critical look at how I'm making my decisions.

Welcome to ITH.

taz115

[racenutalways]

Yes, I play nearly 10hrs a day, most of it is now freerolls as I am attached to my money. LOL!!
I do not deposit money, I like to win a bit on freerolls and boost my bankroll. I.E, won $3.15 in a freeroll at get off the rail, in 4 months I accumalated $140.00. Playing both cash games(.01/.02) and MTT and SnGs(1.00-5.00). When my bankroll tumbled to 100.00 I pulled out my money and cried of the nasty fees that the
online bankers charge. Got 63.72 out of that. Ain't complaining much, it's still a profit.

Thanks for the replies, most appreciated. Although I don't think online poker is rigged, I feel that lesser experienced players often get rewarded for their stupidity. You watch them play each other, they will call all-in 8-Ts, against their opponents pocket 2s that he raised from early position. Waiting on the perfect fish to strike against when the time is right is a strategy I employ religilously. You know he/she will call your preflop raise, no matter what the raise. In these circumstances, I always raise 3-6XBB with AA, KK, in any position. AK in late position, I use AK like I do small pairs,(small pairs, 22-QQ) trying to steal blinds if there are 1-2 limpers. No matter how small or how big my raise is there is always a caller that will either re-raise you or call to the river, even with a 4-5s.

After keeping track, manually of the 10 man sit n go tournies, I was flabbergasted by my outcome. AA, KK and AK for example are not guaranteed to win, I know that, but the cards that other players play with makes me roughly 80%+ to win. I have lost showdowns holding AA to A-3s, T-Js, T-Jo, Q-8o, K-9s twice, K-2s twice, A-9o, that was 10 tournies lost of 19 tournies, due to an agressive play on my part. I placed 6x, no better then 2nd. 6 money finishes out of 19 that I have kept records of. My losses is as follows,

34.50 buy-in
4.95 fees
------
39.45
-17.90 winnings
--------
21.55 total loss Not much I know, but considering that I would like to move up the ladder and make a genuine go at this, I really need a confidence boost. I have totally stopped playing and pulled every dime I had in the rooms and play freerolls only until, my confidence can be regained.

I can use many examples, but the bottom line is I am tired of playing stupid players who keep finding that magic seat. They almost never donkey out other players. They assume I play as stupid as they do and will never muck. I know I can easly beat these loose aggressive donkeys, but at online poker. OH MAN!!! Much easier said then done.

When I play cash games, I use different strategies, We all go through bad beats and bad string of hands, I realize that, I analyze and critizize my own play to try and figure where and when I gone wrong. But their seems no strategy against the worse players in the world.

My sit n go tournies were always 10 players 2.50 to 5.00 buy ins. After losing 10, I dropped down to the 1.00 games.

I would like to chase the bonus that UB has, but, but, but.....

Is there a simple way to track your hands played that works regardless of poker room you are playing at. Poker Tracker is a great tool, once I start playing
at UB, but doesn't work on the other sites I play.

[ciaran]

[gp00053]

Online poker is not rigged is true in almost all cases. You are playing a lot of loose players; a of players who play any two starting cards; in most cashes between 60 and 90 hands per hour, so it looks like you are catching a lot of bad beats. You are not and in the end skill does win over. The only way to win long term using a general strategy is Tight Aggressive.

Online poker is the absolute height of knowing what kind of player you are playing against and play the opposite to those players. You don't have the luxery of seeing the player, you don't know if you are playing against Gus Hanson, Mike the Mouth, Daniel, there are no facial tells, no movement tells, no voice tells; only betting patterns. Who plays what cards from where what bets they make in different positions

I have been playing online poker for a few years now; Limit, No Limit Cash, S&G's and just started more tourneys. $100/$200 to $5/$10 in limit, $1/$2 to $20/$40 NL and every range NL S&G.
In tourneys I looked at NL Tourneys on 10 different sites tracked the top ten money winners in the 1st hour of those tourneys for 10 weeks the most unbelievalbe thing is that not one of those players who started in the money won the tourney.

To be successful at online poker you need to play a lot more than 100 hours. As far as playing in low level as opposed to high, you'll see that it doenst matter where you play, you have players playing any two starting cards from any position. They use terms like future pot equity, EV, Pot odds, expected pot odds, and tracking sites to justify their bad play.

The problem is you mostly only see when that donkey that went in with 10 8o against your pocket AA's sucks out on you, you don't see the other 99.9% of the time that they have to put more money in their account. If the sites showed all player deposits, you would see how bad play works as opposed to good play.

Keep your chin up. If you go in with the top hand, in the end your skill will win you the donk's money.

[TerryBorer]

Hey Race -

Nice to see you took my advice and tried some sit and gos. I think they provide much more immediate feedback. As you study and improve you'll see your results get better too (instead of going from 1000th place to 600th place). How you do with the big hands like AA and KK will stabilize as well.

If you've posted some hands on this site would you mind linking to them so we can see them please?

Also, please update us with how your next set of sit'n'gos go if you're still playing them.

-- Terry