That’s 16, and counting.

The whole ECD free chip deal has seriously gotten me back into online poker (remember to put metsfan as the user who referred you on the comp form!) I decided the best thing for me to do is to follow Chris’s strategy of some serious bonus whoring.

I’ve continued my streak for December where every hand of poker played is counting toward a bonus. So far this month I’ve cleared $800 worth of bonuses. Wow! I wish I didn’t suck so that I could actually make money on top of the bonuses.

So, to start off, I cashed out my money from Absolute, and deposited $600 into Stars, for a 25% bonus of $150. I played the required 750 raked hands at 1/2 6 max, and finished down $60 after the bonus. Off to a wonderful start. I couldn’t withdraw the money from there for 48 hours after my deposit, so I played 2/4 6max and got back even (including the bonus, so I was actually down $150 at the poker). I played pretty badly, but also got sucked out on a whole lot. I suspect the two were related (damn tilt.) The number of runner runner straights against my two pair or underpairs hitting their set on the turn or river was insane.
The bonus really helped soften that blow. It was just a waste of time, not money. Plus, I do have about 800 more FPP to let sit there because I can’t figure out what to do with them.

I withdrew that money from Stars, and put it back into Absolute. They had a promotion for three days where you could get a $100 bonus each day (15% bonus on any Neteller deposit up to $100, and you could do it for three days straight.) Anyway, I only had $656 in Neteller, so I only got a $98.40 bonus. Absolute has a much looser definition of a raked hand than most places (you only had to be dealt cards, not contribute to the pot). You have to play 100 raked hands to unlock each $10 in bonus, and three tabling 1/2 6 max, I usually play 100 hands in less than an hour. Plus, the players are bad. I’ve unlocked $40 of that bonus, and I’m up $125 on top of that. It would be $31 more, but I accidently clicked fold instead of raise on a $31 pot when I had the nuts on the river. Oops. To give you an idea of the play: One hand, I was dealt JJ in middle position. There was a raise before me, so I reraised. I called the cap, and we were heads up. Flop was J73. Capped. Turn 9, capped again. River 7, one more cap. I put in the last raise, so I show first. Instead of mucking, the other guy shows his… QTo? WTF? Of course if that river was an 8 instead of a 7…

Anyway, I think for a while I’m gonna be sticking to 1/2 6 max tables and be looking around for bonuses. It’s actually a lot of fun, and the bonus generally makes up for the time the poker doesn’t go so well.

He’s got a ton of money, and now plays poker for a living, but he still cares that a web server he wrote in college is used to serve slashdot images.

In other poker news, I got my chipset from eCasinoDeals, and it kicks ass. See a crappy picture here.

I haven’t posted much about poker in a long time. Last time I played live, I spent all night at the $100 NL game and lost $30. Exciting, huh? I hadn’t really been playing online much, for various reasons. Mostly, I had just gotten bored of it. About a week and a half ago, my brother told me about eCasinoDeals.com, and asked me to sign up and refer him to get him some free stuff. I decided to do it, to get some free poker chips for myself, as well.

So, I signed up at eCasinoDeals.com. I clicked through their link to Sporting Bet Poker, deposited $100, and quickly played the 250 raked hands I needed for the free chips, and another 250 hands for the $100 deposit bonus. I lost about $30 doing it, so with the bonus, finished +$70. Not bad. I played the really low limits for the first time in a long time: .50/1 limit. After I completed the comp, I made the mistake of playing the .25/.50 NL for the rest of the raked hands for the deposit bonus. That’s where I lost the money. I signed up and played my raked hands just in time, though. Sporting Bet reports to eCasinoDeals every two weeks, and I finished my hands the day before they did it. They shipped out the next day.

Playing out that comp and bonus got me hooked again. ECD currently has a total of four poker rooms that they offer comps for (and are adding two more soon), and somehow they managed to pick four that I had never played at before. So this weekend, I signed up at Absolute, Golden Tiger, and Royal Vegas, and completed the raked hand requirements for those three as well. At Absolute and Golden Tiger I was three-tabling .50/1 limit, so it went really quickly. I’m amazed I ever had trouble playing at this limit. It’s amazing what just a year’s worth of experience will do. I was pretty much on autopilot, and pulled in about 12.5 BB/100 hands (or $25/hour, three-tabling), over around 2000 hands (lots of extra hands to clear the Absolute deposit bonus, as well). At Royal Vegas, I played 1/2 and 2/4 and broke even, but they have $10 free and a $100 despoit bonus as well. Overall, I’m getting lots of free chips, or something else from the Comp Store, and I made $466 including poker and bonuses while doing it. Plus, I made about $450 playing .25/.50 NL at the same time. A pretty good week.

Of course, that’s never enough. Here’s where I try to get other people to sign up for it as well. It’s really easy:

1. Sign up at the ECD Forum.
2. Sign up a one or more of the casinos on the ECD Casinos page, clicking through their links to get to the casino and following all the instructions there.
3. Deposit the minimum required amount ($100), and then fill out the ECD Comp Form, before playing your raked hands. Please put “metsfan” in the Referred By box. If signing up at Sporting Bet, don’t forget to use one of the upgrade codes found on the home page
4. Play the required raked hands, and then wait for the casino to report to ECD.
5. Get your comp, and hopefully make money playing poker and get lots of deposit bonuses as well.

That’s it. From what I’ve heard, the Las Vegas Pro chips are great. I should have mine Wednesday, according to UPS.

Side by side with my old one.

I finally got my free iPod yesterday. It did take a whole lot of time from start to finish, but I did eventually get it with no money out of my pocket. I didn’t take pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

My first impressions of it are kinda mixed. It’s much thinner but actually has a slightly bigger footprint than my old 20gb. It didn’t come with a dock or wired remote, and the power/USB/Firewire cables it came with aren’t quite long enough for my setup. With the dock/power connector on the bottom instead of the top, I’ll have to find some way to charge it while it’s sitting in my cup holder in my car. I also need to get a new car adapter, anyway. Given all that, though, I absolutely love the clickwheel instead of the buttons around the wheel on my old one. I like the thinner form factor. I like that it pauses itself when I pull the headphones out (but, unfortunately, not when I turn my car off – that would be awesome). I like that I can have the clicker sounds from the scroll wheel only come through the headphones. All in all, I’m pretty happy about it.

If you want to sign up and try to get one, use one of the following links:

• Gene: http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=9783111
• Jon: [removed!]