Trials of a Poker Apprentice: Ugh, Part II

I thought I had dodged this nasty stomach virus that has been laying out my entire family, but yesterday it finally got the drop on me. The day started fine, but by last night I was a mess of aches and whining and godawful fluids violently erupting from every orifice.

I know, too much information. We'll just stop there.

We are now one week from the premiere of the World Poker Tour's season four, but for me, I'm kind of getting a head start on it tonight. I don't know how I missed it, but I've never seen the Battle of Champions III that is being aired tonight. So at least that's something to look forward to.

Speaking of tournaments, I've just found an online qualifier with a pretty decent overlay. Americas Cardroom is currently holding qualifiers for the World Poker Showdown in St. Maarten. The satellites begin at $12+1, with one in nine moving on to the next round, a $100+8 tourney. Out of that, one in 20 get the trip to St. Maarten.

Of course, if you do the math (20 X $100), you'll see that prize package is only worth $2,000, not even enough to get you into the main event there, which is $2,500. Here's the deal: The tournament win pays for your trip to the event. Then, Americas Cardroom buys all of the winners into the main event on their dime, but you play as their "horse," meaning if you cash, you split the money with them.

Overall, not a bad deal, but here's something that makes it better. I've not been able to play in the qualifiers yet, but I have peeked in at them just to see how big the fields are. One $12+1 tourney I saw the other night was only five players, but the top prize remained the same (ticket to the $100+8 event). In other words, even if you start at the bottom rung, it's not going to take a huge amount of time to win a trip to St. Maarten. Americas Cardroom just doesn't appear to have that much traffic at their site, but they are one of the endless skins of Poker Room, meaning there are plenty of games to get in on.

The $12+1 tournaments are being held three times a day, at 3:10, 7:10 and 9:40 p.m. The $100+8 tournament is held on Sunday.

Moving on, as you'll see in the headlines below, yet another online poker site (World Poker Live) is opening up. This one isn't a skin of anything, so I don't know how much traffic they will have initially, but they are doing some interesting things. They do not offer any type of signup bonus or even an affiliate program, but they claim to offer a lower rake than other sites. I haven't had a chance to investigate that claim myself, so I'm just relaying what they say. They also have specific times when they offer half-rake tables and even zero-rake happy hours. Finally, they are offering one promotion I should be able to win. The "Big Fat Loser" promotion will pay a bonus to the person who loses the most money over the course of a week, starting today.

I don't know how interested I am in trying World Poker Live, but I always find it fascinating the new promotions these sites come up with.

But that's enough of my rambling for the day. My writing tends to stray, well, nearly all the time, but especially when I'm not feeling well. Therefore, I'll just call it a day and lead on to the headlines, where you should be able to find some more cogent prose. There's quite a bit of ground to cover today, since I was unable to update yesterday.