Friday Night Poker News

Faldo been muddling along this January, slightly down in the profit department.

I did have a couple final tables this month however. I finished 5th in a PokerStars 90 player SNG and 8th in a World Poker Exchange 206 player tournament. But these small cashes, coupled with my comeback in the UB challenge did not stem the tide completely. Looks like the first month of 2011 will find Faldo in the red.

Oh well, get them next month.

There is some interesting news on the internet poker landscape. In a very strange move, Doyle Brunson has moved his skin name “Doyle’s Room” from Cake Poker to the Yatahay sites – True Poker and BetCRIS.

This – from the outside looking in – is insane! First of all, Cake Poker stood 15th in the world in player traffic and 4th in the United States (BoDog Poker 5th).

True Poker stood 25th in the world and 9th out of the ten sites that accept US players.

My estimate is that this move drops Cake Poker to #7 in US traffic and raises True Poker to #8. Big deal. SNG’s still won’t fill on Cake Poker and tournaments still won’t fill on True Poker.

It is also my opinion that collusion runs rampant at True Poker.

Doyle Brunson has been a disaster every site he has put his name to. This divorce – or outright failure - is Doyle Brunson’s 7th from internet poker skins. Either he is terrible businessman, one jerk of a partner or he goes around scarfing up signing bonuses and then contributes nothing to the project.

Doyle has been at; High Rollers Poker (bust), Pamela’s (Anderson) Poker (bust), BetUSPoker(quit), TheGamingClub (bust), Platinum Poker (bust) and Cake Poker (quit).

Now True Poker picks him up? What did they gain? Well, maybe some residual advertising. Whether it continues remains to be seen. Doyle seems to drag rake fine, but is stingy with the comps. I have a feeling Cake Poker was paying for a lot of the Doyle’s Room advertising.

True Poker’s advertising - if they even had a budget – was virtually non-existent. If they are expecting Doyle to front some cash for ads, they may have a long wait. I would love to see the “slow reach for the wallet” standoff when the bill comes.

True Poker’s best attribute was the animated software with the 3D feel at the table. The avatars moved like humans and talked like humans with laughter and simple phrases, with great random table backgrouds. Doyle’s Room is only in the True Poker 2D format – which looks pretty much like every other bland site. But it still has the hitches in action that occur with the 3D version. You put up with it on TP because of the animation. You hate it with the 2D version.

I go back and forth on this. Half the year, I am a big site advocate (PokerStars, Full Tilt and Ultimate Bet). Then, half the year I get a bug to try the smaller sites “again” and see if the traffic or action has improved – or there is something out there new and improved.

There never is, and I just waste my time and money – while opening myself up to risking deposits/withdraws with the site, and collusion, bots and kill buttons at the table.

Although I am still on a couple more than these, the only sites Faldo recommends are:

PokerStars
Full Tilt
Ultimate Bet
Bodog Poker.

I play at Sportsbook Poker and World Sports Exchange also, but their bookie “reputation” is not top notch as far a payouts. So I do worry about that if I ever did hit a big cash there. So I don’t recommend them.

Cake Poker, as I already mentioned, along with Poker4Ever, may just be too small to remain viable. Sure, I like the sites, but the tourneys are usually nothing but big SNG’s and I worry I will log in one day and they will be gone on me (like Jet Poker, Tropical Poker, etc). They don't have a bookie service backing their cashier's window.

As a guy who has been to almost 300 on line poker sites, I would stay clear of all other sites except the four I listed.