RIP Crypto

Times they are a changing on the online poker scene again! It’s been in the public domain for a few weeks now that Hills had announced that they are leaving Crypto and moving to iPoker in Jan 2009. Hills still have some contractual obligations with Crypto and will run duel sites on Ipoker and Crypto for 12months.

All this raises some interesting questions. First off iPoker is totally anti rakeback, so much so that they have removed skins from the site for offering rakeback. Hills will be a reasonable sized player on iPoker it will be interesting to see what happens. If you are looking for potential rakeback on ipoker you could do worse than setting a Hills account up now to see what happens. Even if Hills have to can RB…. They are going to have to offer a pretty big carrot to lure their existing Crypto players with RB deals away to Ipoker.

All this left Crypto in a bit of a dodgy spot as well. Hills makes up a significant % of the Crypto liquidity and without Hills Crypto is pretty much dead. There were rumours that Crypto and Party may merge but today it was announced that Crypto and Boss Media (GTech) networks will merge (Virgin and Poker Heaven etc) as of early 2009!

Looks like they plan to use the Boss Media software… so Crypto as we know it will be no more! :-(

Back to moi and I’ve currently got some rancid chest infection… been hanging around for weeks getting worse and worse… so pissed off with it. So much so that I’ve only played about 3 nights of poker in Nov so far…. All with not much success! There is some light at the end of the tunnel though… started packing for the CPC. Sure some Caribbean sun will sort me out!

How to win 3 sats in 24hrs...

I decided to play some Sats for DTD live events last week, so on Monday I entered a £15 Sat to a £130 Sat to the December Anniversary Cup £1k event and a £10 Rebuy to the monthly £330 3-2-1 event. The £330 has the same structure as the £330 deepstack i won in August and I had a pass out and had sold on 30% so I was definitely going to play it.

I managed to win the £10 rebuy and shortly after win the £15 as well... only one seat was available in each so I was very happy but still had some work to do on Tuesday night in the final for a seat in the £1k event. Again just one seat was available so you had to win it.... and win it I did :) Heads up I'd let the other guy back in after being 4-1 up in chips and was slightly behind when a really sick hand occurred. Mateyboy slow played a set of Kings on a K 2 3 flop..... I rivered a 4 holding A5os and all the money went in on the end for me to take it. Very pleased with 3 wins from 3 sats in two days. As you can imagine well chuffed to pick up a £1k buy in for £15!

Unfortunately I didn't run quite as good in the actual live DTD 330.... I donked off a few k from a starting stack of 10k early on when I made a good read but could not get mateyboy to make a laydown with 99 on a 2c 3h 7h 6x 8h when I bet heavy on the end representing the flush having played the hand to nip it on the end with a pair and a missed gut shot (work it out... I'm almost embarrassed).

I slowed down a little after this and didn't have the best table position with Dave Penly to my right and Waheed Ashraf and a pretty rocky DTD regular Peter Conduit to my left. After the early set back things just never got going. It was one of those comps where you think how the fuck have i ever won a MTT in my life. I was getting total filth level after level and missing by a mile on the odd occasion when I did pick up AQ etc. On occasions where I found a spot to play the filth I always seemed to find 2nd pair or a decent draw (that didn't hit) against a flopped monster and it ended up costing me a few. I did pick up Aces and manage to win the blinds on one occasion.... :-)

Things just dwindled and dwindled until I needed to make a move in level 7 .... found a good value spot to jam on the BB with 5 limpers holding J9s... a guy with a massive stack in late position was offering me a ton of protection and all bar the huge stack passed. He flipped 88 for a race which I never looked like winning on a rag flop. Oh well I guess I was due a cold one live.
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I've just noticed that a guy called Alan Stearn won the 330 after a chop.... slightly amazed as I'd played with him a few times at DTD and had him down as 110% free chips! Oh well... goes to show you never can tell.