My head hurts ….

OK, as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, and the purpose of my ‘Poker Experiment’ is to see how far I can go and how big my bankroll can get without an injection of cash from yours truly. I’ve been playing on-line poker for about 3 weeks now and am ready to make my move to a new poker room and take advance of a sign-up bonus to help increase my BR and get me close to playing in a $3/$6 game (which is where I would like to be in the long run). As the e-book suggested, have a look around and make sure you review the current offers as they change regularly to ensure you take advantage of the most lucrative offer [just for reference, the e-book suggests that you go to Paradise poker next].

So I’ve been looking around and … wow, this may be more elaborate and ‘crazier’ than I thought when I started out. I’m so taken back by what I’ve found that I’m not sure how to put it into words … perhaps the best way to describe it is with one of the web sites I found [www.bonuswhores.com]. Yes, that’s right, you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself. Crazy stuff I say. From what I can gather, people actually make a living doing this kind of thing – moving their money between different poker sites and collecting the bonus.

Don’t get me wrong, I know there are hundreds of poker sites out there and they are all vying for our $$$. And the way they try to attract us is by offering such incentives as sign-up bonuses, reload bonuses, etc. The kicker here is the whole affiliate market which offer even more swag on top of the poker rooms. [I’ll add more about affiliates in another post]

So, where does this leave me you ask … at a crossroads I think. After trying to digest some of what I’ve found I can go in one of two directions …

First, become a ‘bonus whore’ and continue to move my money around from poker site to poker site based on the best offers of the day and be consumed by ‘the offers’

or …

Go back to basics and just play poker.

Don’t get me wrong, choosing the latter doesn’t mean I’m not going to take advantage of said sign-up bonuses etc.

It is early on in my blog so I’ll tell you which way I’m going … to play poker. I’m still going to move my money around in the short term in order to build up my BR. But the key here is that I’m doing this (experiment) because I want to play poker. I’m not going to be consumed by all the offers that are out there and move my money around once or twice a week to make a few bucks – that would feel like a job to me and I already have one of those!!!

As for what is next, well my BR is about $125 [yes, took a bit of hit the last time I played] and am going to play tonight and cash out at the end of the night. I’ve narrowed my next site down to a couple and will do a final bit of research tonight while playing to make sure I’m going to the right place [not researching better offers, just want to make sure the site rates reasonably well amongst online poker players].

I’ll be back later this week with verdict and a progress update.

Until then, AA up