Well now that some time has passed since “Black Friday” for the online poker industry I have been able to watch the fallout and make some plans for going forward so guess I’ll post them here and see how we go.

 

The good news is that Pokerstars and FullTilt seem to currently be riding out the wave and performing for non-US players so I’m staying with them for the moment with a severely reduced bankroll. When the news hit the first thing I did (along with most I suspect) was attempt to cash out all the money I had on them at the time and they managed to come through in a reasonable amount of time tbh, received my cash back into Neteller about 5 days after the request so that’s most of my initial concerns covered.

 

After looking around it seems they are still the best two sites for me to stay on given the Merge network refuses australian players and the rakeback/vpp programs are better than at Party so I have put $100 back onto FullTilt and am going to go with a little challenge for a few weeks until we see more of the fallout. If things go to hell I’ll likely resume playing at Party or look somewhere like UniBet, iPoker etc.

Currently the plan is to start off 4-tabling $5NL Rush and move up with the following bankroll considerations.

$10NL – $250 – 25 Buy-ins

$25NL – $750 – 30 Buy-ins

$50NL – $1750 – 35 Buy-ins

$100NL – $5000 – 50 Buy-ins

$200NL – $15000 – 75 Buy-ins

$400NL – $40000 – 100 Buy-ins.

All levels below $100 NL will have a 5 buy-in stop-loss where I drop down, $100NL and above will be 10 buy-in.

 

Once I hit $200NL I’ll re-evaluate staying playing Rush or moving to 8+ table regular 6-max tables based on volume and rakeback considerations. Also, once I’m back at $200NL I’ll look at moving money back across to Stars in preperation for a run at SNE next year if it looks like they will still be around. I’ll also keep an eye on issues surrounding the DoJ charges and at the first real sign of potential significant action towards shutting down Stars and FullTilt permanently I’ll cash back out and move to the best option that the DoJ aren’t after….if shit really hits the fan I’ll just pull everything out of Neteller and focus back on the real world and just play cash games at the casino over the weekends. I’ll also likely just move to euro site if I bust out this current roll at FullTilt if the stats show something odd happening.

 

Currently since 31 April I’ve doubled the $100 and am sitting at $202 so should be moving up to $10NL next week if I don’t spaz this weekend. The games currently with no US players are ultra soft but also really swingy as I have no stats on most of the players and they are really bad so it’s hard to put them on a hand. At the moment it’s just a matter of playing ABC poker, making moves where it seems safe and just value-owning them with good hands as often as possible.