Gonna Have My Cake / Gonna Eat It Too / Make No Mistake.

[shipitfish]

I have disappeared from my journal because I've been coming home from work every day and immediately launching the Cake Poker client and playing until I can't keep my eyes open anymore. I've put in approximately 6-8 hours each weekday and 12 hours each weekend day in playing on this site. I'm earning around $64/hour muli-tabling mostly $1/$2, $200 max, and occasionally $2/$4, $400 max NL HE.

This site is completely amazing. The closest game I can compare it to is what you find in the $1/$2 NL HE games in Atlantic City. These games can be beaten by the clueless. Indeed, the would-be other “sharks” on the site are actually very weak players who simply hold money for me and one or two other strong players to get.

I think there are a few factors that make this site so amazing:

• The Sports Book Players: Cake poker has a skin arrangement with with an online sports betting site. Most of the players (based on chat comments) are actually coming through the sports betting site, not Cake Poker. These players are truly horrible, and have virtually no textbook knowledge of the game and minimal playing experience. They don't even know what hands particular bets represent, let alone figuring out if the other players hold the represented hand or are bluffing.

• Lack of Poker Tracker Support: A lot of otherwise strong online poker players are not that smart. I once knew someone who has been a losing player for years who told me there was no reason to play on a site that didn't support Poker Tracker. He said this during the hey days of Pacific, when the limit games there were the best ever seen on teh Internets. Pacific then was much like Cake is today. This fellow, who was struggling to do well at limit games, would only play on the shark infested waters of Party and elsewhere, losing steadily, while I was cleaning up on Pacific. At the time, I was probably only a little better at limit HE than he was, but I was a consistent winner and he was a consistent loser, because of his stupid Poker-Tracker-only game selection criteria.

  Of course I'm annoyed that my hand histories aren't imported and I have no heads-up display on the players. Thing is, I started playing online poker before Poker Tracker and like systems were even available. I know how to beat the game without it. Anyway, the opposition on Cake Poker is so bad, even someone who is completely spoiled with the Poker Tracker crutch should be able to beat the games with ease. These players are horrendous; a trained monkey should be able to at least break even in these games.

  Frankly, I am heavily rooting for Poker Tracker to not support this site. Once that happens, many sharks will give it a try. I recall that six months after HandGrabber came along and made PT work for Pacific, the games started to decline. Now, Pacific is nothing special — just another crappy software poker site.

  I am so amazed at the near-exact parallels between Pacific and Cake Poker: another gambling site sending players over (888 and Sports Book), bad software, no Poker Tracker support. In poker, you have to live where the fish live, even if it puts you out of your comfort zone.

• Completely readable, loose passive players: This is key here. They slow-play when they shouldn't, and min-raise with monsters. They just call down with any top pair, but let you manipulate the pot size. They stack off every time with any two-pair or better holding. You basically have to be a moron to get a lot of chips in the pot bad against them, since they are trivial to read.

• Profitable Promotions: They have this “gold card” thing where you collect cards from their vault. They are used for a number of their promotions. The most interesting one is the weekly “GC 500”. There's a lot of luck involved, but if you play every day for five hours or more, odds are you are going to win an average of $250 in the thing a week.

You may note that this post was originally friends only. I didn't initially want to tell the whole Internets about the fish pond. These days, it doesn't matter as much.

Anyway, I might not be posting a lot, as I want to suck down this money before it runs dry!

Comments

[arctic-giraffe.livejournal.com]

I noticed that bonuswhores.com is advertising 33% rakeback at cake for using their affiliate link, paid directly to the user's account on the 5th of every month. If you can match that offer I'll sign up through you instead of them.

Thanks for the headsup!

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

I am unfortunately not sure I can, because they don't actually tell me who's who. The people who give rake back must have negotiated a special deal with the site that allows them to do it. I see nothing in the affiliate interface that tells me anything about which player is which. Not to mention the fact that, at moment, I have absolutely no idea how to get my money out of my affiliate account, because they have no payment processors listed for affiliates at the moment. I guess they'll start doing check cashout or something.

If you aren't going to use my affiliate link because you need rake back (wouldn't you just want to give it to me for the kindness of telling you about the site? Seriously, though, I do understand. :), I'd suggest going with rakefreeze.com, which is Adam Schwartz's rake back site. He's the host of the radio show, Rounders, and he's the original source of where I heard about Cake Poker. He's what I use for my own rake back accounts, and he's a pretty nice guy, so I'd love to see him get the business. He's offering the same deal as Bonus Whores for Cake.

More than anything, please do tell me your username on there once you've signed up. There are so few good players that you really have to watch out for them. I am happy to share with you my notes that I have on other players; I've developed quite a bit. There are a number of 2/4 players to watch out for: Bulldozer, LuxInterior (that's Adam Schwartz himself), and a few others I'd have to look up. At 1/2 and .5/1, kalensc and darmok (me) are probably the biggest sharks. charitycase is pretty good, too, but he can't get off an overpair.

Finally, don't spread this around! This site is a fish market of the type you will only believe when you've seen it. I'd hate to see it get all sharked up. But, I feel I owe “somebody” for the kindness that was done to me when someone told me about Pacific Poker back so many years ago.

[arctic-giraffe.livejournal.com]

I won't spread the word, don't worry, and I'll let you know what my username is once I sign up. I probably won't be playing higher than $0.5-$1 NL though, so you don't have to look out for me.

You should send them an email asking about rakeback, it may just all be done automatically and you just have to get them to initiate it for your affiliate account. I'd like to sign up through you if I can. I'm probably going to wait until the weekend before I do anything, so I'm not in a rush.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

It's pretty clear from the interface there is nothing automatic about it. (Trust me, they don't have their software stuff together; you can tell just by looking at the affilate interface.) I'm sure it would take weeks to get it all coordinated. Don't worry about it; if you really want the rake back, just go for Adam's. Or, just give me free money for the kindness of sharing info about the best fishing hole on the internet. :)

I do play the .5/1 when there are not enough 1/2's running, so we'll probably see each other from time to time.

[arctic-giraffe.livejournal.com]

Ok, I'll sign up through him then and let you know what my username is once it's done. Do you also have an account through him so that I can list you as the referrer? If so, let me know.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

I don't think Adam does anything special for people who refer, but if there's a box for it or a comment field, just put shipitfish@livejournal.com in it. Adam is a very nice guy and he's very helpful to new players on his show, so I think it's good to support him. I should warn you — I still haven't successfully done a check cash-out from Cake yet. I'll post more about it next week, but be somewhat conservative in your buy-in with them, I suggest. I think it's all going to get sorted out and just a delay situtation due to the fact that they have to cash a lot more people out by check then previously.

[mmaariammaaria.livejournal.com]

I am exactly like you, I have only a hobby which is online casino (http://www.gowildcasino.com/promotions.html). I come from work and play online till the morning. I win often but I also lose. You know you can have an income from these gambling games, how well you play the more money you have.

[shunny.livejournal.com]

If you need to get some money out of Cake Poker, let me know, I'd like to move some money in there and have no way of doing so. I'll send you FullTilt money for Cake money.

[shipitfish.livejournal.com]

How much do you want to exchange? I may have $800 or so I need to move around the end of the week if they still haven't processed my check cashout. (BTW, the games in there aren't as good as they'd been since the Neteller thing really hit hard, but they are still better than any other games on the Internet I've seen.)

[shunny.livejournal.com]

Something like $600 sounds good. I'm not sure if I'll be playing NL or limit as there have recently been some $3/6, $5/10 games going on the site that might be fairly juicy.

If you use AIM send me an IM at Shunny14 when you're available and we can work it out. Money for money transfer of course, no fees or anything.