60% Gross Rakeback... and multitable madness

Skip to the end if you just want the rakeback info :)

First of all a huge thankyou fo everyones messages of support and e-mails. Certainly gives you a little lift. Things are still progressing, however, Shell was diagnosed with gestational diabeties at easter which while not the end of the world compared to the other issues, it gives us a raft of other things to worry about. Never rain but it pours right? They are not going to let her go overdue so looks like within 2-3 weeks we'll have a new arrival.

Since we figured out last month that it was looking like there was going to be a baby I decided to occupy my time and take my mind off things by playing a bit of poker. With Hills moving to Ipoker I was taking a look at the 3rd party tools and scripts and came across two gems that make life easier and certainly make multitabling more bareable if not a joy on Ipoker.

First off is BETPOT. This is a customisable one click autobetting tool, you can basically assign actions to hotkeys or mouse presses and customise the standard betting on each street depending on the position and action before you. Clever stuff.

It also highlights tables that require action, saves your table layouts, allows one click sitdown and buy in at the tables and a load of other stuff. Well worth a look if you want to play a few tables.

The second one is MiniMaxMod. There are a couple of pieces of software out there that allow you to modify the way Ipoker looks and feels. MMM is the best I've come across... you can turn nightmare normal Ipoker screen into this with a few clicks....



It also allows you to resize tables so you can fit the right number of tables for you on screen with no overlap and no wasted space. I've never been much of a multitabler. I think the max i played on Crapto was 4. With the new software I was soon cruising with 6 and then jumped to 9 and 12 without much effort. This multitalbe experiment tied in with a Hills rakerace and I decided to see if I could rack up 100,000 Ipoker Points before the 20th April for a chunky bonus of £1400. Just about managed it after a bit of a push in the last week. All this was at 25c/50c NL.... I'm not daft enough to 12 table 2/5 and I dont think the bankroll could survive a bad hour :)


Some good news is that Hills are giving a rakeback boost to people that have previosuly opened a rakeback account via my blog :) A huge 60% gross rakeback in May and 50% in June and July base on the following rake requirements....



Drop me a mail at jimshell@talk21.com if you have any queries.

Cheers,

Jim

Not the best of beats....

Well the past few months have been a bit of a nightmare, in fact… I can honestly say they’ve been the worst few months of my life. I’ve been lucky so far in my 35 years, nothing truly disastrous has ever happened. My family is healthy, I’ve never really wanted for much and always been comfortable.

I’ve mentioned previously that Shell is pregnant with our 2nd child. In January we went along to the hospital for a 22 week routine scan that found……

“something we are not sure about… it’s probably nothing”.

We were asked to go back again a week later and “just make sure”. A week later the problem was still there and we were referred to a specialist in Birmingham for a detailed 3D scan. After this we were taken into a little room and told that there were a few problems they had found with the baby. A problem with the kidneys, a problem with the fluid spaces in the brain and a problem with the development of a part of the brain called the cerebellum. They said that taken individually each of these problems may not be too serious but taken together they added up to say that something was wrong somewhere.

We immediately had lots of tests taken to try and identify what the issue was, tests for chromosomal problems like Downs Syndrome etc… and an agonising 3 week wait to get the results which eventually came back clear. To this day they do not know what has caused these problems.

Shell also had to have 2 MRI scans to check the other parts of the babies brain were developing, at one point it was touch and go as to if there was going to be a baby or not. It goes without saying that poker has not been a priority during the past month or two.

Fortunately, it now looks like there is going to be a baby! However, we are still left with the problems with the baby’s brain that will not change and can not be cured.

The kicker comes with the prognosis; it’s so wide you could drive a bus through it. They don’t really understand the impact this is going to have. Some people have similar problems and go through their entire lives in relative normality and some are severely handicapped. Throw into the mix the wide range of physical and learning difficulties in between these two extremes and you are left with just about any outcome.

The odds of such a problem occurring are huge… greater than 40,000-1 ….. Not the best of beats is it? Shell is due mid May, and while our expectations of what this baby will eventually achieve with it’s life have been altered severely we’ve all got our fingers crossed that everything is going to be ok…. or if we are being honest … not that bad.