So I signed up for pacific poker a few days ago in an attempt to start some major bonus whoring and came to some quick conclusions. The first one is it's a bad idea to start bonus whoring the same time you have 5 exams and 5 papers due over the next two weeks. Despite that though, I'm 1/3 of the way through, which will result in a free $200 made in about a weeks time.
The other thing I realized is it's a bad idea to play crazy in an attempt to clear the bonus faster. The players at Pacific are horrible, with the tightest tables that are playing at .50/1 playing at 45% of players per flop, on the six max tables. If you just sit around and wait, you'll hit big hands and there will be at least one person willing to stack off against you most of the time, sometimes more. It's ridiculous really. Sadly I just realized that now, and I'm down a couple of buy-ins because of it. I think I can easily keep the LAG style of play I'm using and end up being profitable, but I don't really think there is a point in playing a high variance style with such bad players, just so I can clear my bonus a little bit faster.
I also realized something else, and that is bad software can cause me to life tilt. I read on several sites that Pacific had upgraded their software and it was no longer an issue, which was something that had plagued them in the past. Well let me tell you this, if their software now is the improved version, I can't imagine how bad it was before. If I resize their tables cards stop showing up (either in my own hands, or on the table), and the software crashes every fifteen minutes. If I run the tables at full size there are no issues, so now I just deal with the overlapping instead. There are more problems though. First off it's hard to keep track of who's in a hand and who isn't, because the little cards they put in front of players are tiny. This wouldn't be a big deal if they gave you a moment to play either, but on the normal tables you have fifteen seconds to act, and on the fast tables ten seconds, and you can't request additional time. Try multi tabling 6-tables where you have 15 seconds to act, and half the time there is no noise to alert you that it's your turn. Oh, and if you miss your turn, you're set to being away and then you usually end up missing the blinds, which then results in a shit load more fun stuff trying not to post until the blind gets back to you, and then not missing it when it does (because in that case there is no sound, and you have five seconds to react... and no auto-post BB button, unless you want it posted when you're out of turn.
Overall the experience is shit, and I'm down 2 buy-ins so far. With the level of play, and another couple of thousand hands to go through before clearing my bonus though, I should have my bankroll up to approximately $700-800 by the end of next this week. Another massive problem is, Pacific Poker takes three days to cashout, plus another 24 hours or so for it to be processed, all business days. So really I'm in no rush to clear this thing right now. If I can it cleared by Sunday (shouldn't be a problem), I'll cash out on Monday, and have my money onto Chili Poker by Friday. I'm going to try and go for a bigger bonus there, because I hear the software is actually really good by industry standards and not simply improved, and I don't expect it to life tilt me. I'll download it ahead of time and try some play money games just to make sure thought. If I can clear a $500 bonus there, in say two weeks (by then I should be playing a lot more with exams being done), and say I make $200 during the same time frame, I'll be sitting with $1500. Well shit, that'll be 30 buy-ins for NL50, and from there I'll transfer my funds on over to Cake Poker where I can get 33% rakeback and I'll be a big in sit.
