H
HooDooKoo
Visionary
Platinum Level
"Long sessions are rare." This is from the first post. I'll amend that now to long sessions are definitely rarer.
Also, on a related, but lesser prevalent difference in known player vs anonymous poker, I also postulate that hit n runs are more frequent. Hitting and running always has been viewed as poor poker etiquette by a majority of players. I've done it online, but it is rare. I have never hit and ran in a live poker game. The stigma associated with this practice is non-existent when when playing anonymous
What does anyone think? I would especially value an insult-free HooDooKoo opinion. I diplomatically withheld insult, just in case you didn't notice.
Bovada as a destination for US players
HooDooKoo,
I understand, you like Bovada. I can see why many people do. I did say in the first post that there are "obvious" reasons players choose Bovada, and listed the ones that you reiterated later. A few things that you didn't mention in the defense of Bovada, that I would add and also mentioned earlier are -- (1)the variety of tournaments (2) the convenience and ease of registration, and (3) the timeliness and frequency of MTTs. It is VERY easy to see why a mostly MTT player would choose them or anyone else for that matter, including almost exclusively cash game players like myself.
I'll mention this again because it is at least in the top 3 and likely the #1 reason for US players to choose a site right now-- Traffic is key for tourney or cash game players.
Sometimes I wonder if the rift in opinion on Bovada is more of a cash game vs MTT/SNG player thing than anything else.
Who cares if hit-and-runs are more frequent at Bovada?
1. Hit-and-runners are terrible players that give their money away in the long term. If I have the misfortune of getting stacked by a hit-and-runner that leaves, he takes the money he made from me and donates it to someone else, who donates it to someone else, etc ... and eventually I get it back because I'm a winning player. So I don't care about hit-and-runners at all.
2. Hit-and-runners generally play a high-variance style of poker and get stacked far more often than they do the stacking. They are the least of my worries.
Finally, I don't particularly like Bovada. I'd much prefer to play at pokerstars, but that isn't an option for me at this time. Rather than deal with payout concerns or pathetic traffic, though, I've opted to deal with Bovada's anonymity --- and the play really isn't as different as you think it might be.
Of the two of us, I'm in a better position to talk about poker at Bovada because I've played over 500K cash hands there as well as thousands of HUSNGs. I've also played many millions of hands at various traditional screen name poker sites. And I can say, honestly, that play isn't much different at Bovada than anywhere else. Once you settle, you'll find that --- with rare exceptions --- online poker is online poker. And, as I said, for all the long-term losers (90+ percent) --- who are giving their money away long term any way you slice it --- not having screen names HELPS THEM (which is the point of the anonymity) because it prevents we sharks from bumhunting. In my experience, that's the single biggest difference between screen name poker and anonymous poker. It's tougher to identify/target the whales --- but it can still be done.
I agree that, as an environment for determining who the best player in the world is, the anonymity would be problematic. But that's not Bovada's goal --- nor anyone else's.
-HooDooKoo
