Hello guys,

I've been a grinder/reg on Bovada/Ignition for about two years. I started from the micros at 5NL and built up a roll for 200NL during my college years. I've never really considered moving sites because I've been comfortable here, but after buying PT4 & seeing how much freaking rake I'm paying, I really want to try out ACR. I just want some opinions.

I've played quite a lot of poker over these two years, around 350k+ hands, and moved up fairly quickly from each stake. I even did very well at 200NL & 200NL Zone for the first 50k hands, but for the past 50k I've been running super cold and super below EV that I'm now winning at like 1bb/100 lol for the past 100k hands... My graph basically has a 50k breakeven stretch of hands, which is super demoralizing. Not only that, but over those 50k hands, I've payed $7,000 in rake! I never would have believed it if I hadn't checked PT4.

Ignition last year in December, I believe, increased max rake by 25%. They even reduced the tournament ticket values by 50%, which is basically now equivalent to .5% rakeback. Even then, I hate playing tournaments and have only final tabled/cashed in 1/10 or something like that. I must have payed Bovada $25k-$35k in rake from playing all the way from 5NL-200NL.

I've asked about the games at ACR, and I hear they are pretty reg-infested and nitty. I've heard people just say to stay on Ignition for the game's softness. But really, the games on Ignition are getting much more difficult than people realize. Having played almost half a million hands over two years, the games are nowhere near as soft as they used to be on Bovada, where there were also a lot of sports gamblers. I'll admit, Bovada used to be a goldmine. When I now sit at a table at 200NL and use my HUD, it's not uncommon to have 3-4 regs and only 1 fish, sometimes 2. People aren't stacking off anywhere near as light as they used to be, and the jump to 200NL is actually really tough. There are also shortstacking fish, but they aren't really a factor because there's not much money to be made off them, especially with the ridiculous rake.

I really want to move over to ACR. If you recommend it, how should I do it in terms of withdrawing/depositing/transferring? I have 40BI for 200NL on Ignition. Does this sound reasonable: depositing $1,000 the first time around to take advantage of the 100% First Time Deposit Bonus, and then use my credit card to transfer over the rest of my funds to get 1.5% cashback??

And if I do switch, maybe I could try out 50NL & adjusting to the presence screennames/usernames/HUD usage, then go to 100NL for a while, and finally go back to 200NL after beating the two previous stakes for good sample sizes??? Although the 200NLz & 200NL games on Ignition are pretty tough, I'd imagine that the competition on ACR is tougher. Especially with all those rakeback/Beast grinders. And what advice could you give me on adjusting from anon Ignition to ACR??

Also, the Beast prizes seem very enticing. I have thought about playing poker full-time this summer as a college student. How many hands/hours would I need to put in to get the $500/$1000/$2.5k awards? I don't think I'm aiming for the $2.5k because I won't be grinding mid-stakes anytime soon on there, but I've seen this guy just playing 25NL/50NL getting the $2.5k cash award o:. He must have had no life for this week.

Thanks for your help in advance!

I heard someone on here say that about 8k hands at 50nl get you into the $100 beast pool, that's all I know about that. For withdrawals everyone recommends Bitcoin and from what I understand it's easy to get started with it.


Also figure out how much you rake a year cuz I think it's around $16k and you can get better rakeback with Enlisted benefits then just rakeback.

edit: Just found this. So it's 17k and change.

I never played in Ignition (restricted for me) but ACR is really reg fested!
Even in 10NL you barely see more than 1 fish on a table.
I don't know about the rake at higher stakes but at 10NL I was paying around 11bb/100 in rake.
I don't believe ACR is going to be a good option over Ignition from softness perspective.
If you want to try it, start at 25NL or 50NL with $1K and see how it goes.
Don't rush into moving all you BR.
Btw, for money, nothing is better than bitcoin. Don't even think about other options imo...
ACR now processes BTc withdrawals in less than 24 hours...

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Ignition may have gotten tougher but WPN is still way way tougher. Almost every table is nothing but regs. If you are only going to play one site I'd stick to Ignition.

Toughness isn't everything, hourly is. You can get insane effective rakeback beyond that chart with the beast rake race.

If I were to play full-time (40hrs+) this summer at 50NL and later 100NL/200NL after getting used to the site, how much could I place in the beast race?? $2.5k sounds super sweet. That's basically a 6-figure salary, not including rakeback itself or beating the games for like 2-4bb/10

Putting in 65k hands on Ignition and seeing that I have to pay $7k in rake makes me pretty sad . Get no rakeback and rake is just ridiculous at $4 cap. I think theoretically you can have a slightly losing session but with rakeback, it can be BE or slightly winning.

I even emailed Ignition about playing for 2 years and if they could offer any promotions for being a loyal customer who's paid $25k+ in rake lol. Obv didnt say it like that, said it nicely and professionally. Got a response from I believe a higher-up, but they had no intention of making my experience there worthwile. It really pisses me off to not be appreciated as a customer, rake goes up, lol former 1% rakeback for tourney tickets get halved, and the fact that I've played 2 years paying 3-4x more rake than I earned & just basically saying "suck it up" is annoying. Plus player pool is getting a lot harder, regs are getting much better, less fish, I don't really want to stay at the site

How many tables are you playing at once? I wouldn't be the best person to answer as I largely do the sit n crush race but someone else probably could.

I could play as many as needed. Never played on ACR, but how many can I play?? I've played 4 Zone on Ignition 100NLz & 200NLz lately, which is approximately 15-18 tables. So I can play as many as the site allows me to, or however much is running.

For a lot of personal reasons, I really want to succeed at poker & make a good annual earning off it. I have things I can't accomplish/do without the money, and I don't really care if I have no life this summer, or even during the school year. School isn't hard for me, and I don't spend a lot on time on uni anyway & still manage to get good grades. I don't mind putting in the time, as long as the system rewards me, which it seems like the Beast/rakeback do.

Minatorr,

You made a thread a couple of months ago saying the same thing. Just make the switch already. Do a sample size of 30k hands or so at 25NL and see how you do. If you do well, move up to 50NL since you're more than rolled for it. Nobody can help you here. You just have to roll up your sleeves and dive in. Good luck.


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You should, you really should. Eventually all your friends are gonna get married, have full time jobs and have kids.



Also you can play 24 tables.

In the process right now. Just waiting for Ignition to process my withdrawal. I'm somewhat anxious. That's why I couldnt pull the trigger months ago. Im just fed up with Ignition's bs now.

Well, most of my friends, especially from uni, went back home already haha. But I do see your point

How many tables do you recommend I play?

Thanks for the responses so far guys, they're helpful and insightful.

I hear you man. Once they increased the rake and eliminated table selection, anyone that wants to stay need to have their heads examined.

ACR is definitely way tougher, but if you can put in the volume to climb the beast leaderboards, it could be worth your while. Not to mention rakeback.


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I have been playing online poker for 15 years. The ONLY site I have not profited on is ACR. Ive tried for years. I cant beat the regulars at a cash game to save my life. I have turned $500 into $60,000 in a night before on other sites. I have roughly played 200 cash game sessions on ACR in last year or so. I can honestly say I have never gone from $100 to $400. I cant beat the regulars. EVER. When I sit down at a table, I feel like they are vultures just dying to play me. I get up and move, they move with me. I try patience I never hit. When I finally hit big, they hit bigger. I try bluffing, They hit every hand they play. You cant bluff when they hit every time. Maybe its just **** ass luck, or I cant play anymore after 15 years.

The odds are that the transaction will be foreign. And most credit cards charge currency fees. These fees are typically in the range of 2-3% cash back. This would turn your credit card transactions into a net negative.

I would suggest using bitcoin to move your funds between sites. It will be much easier, and much faster. And free.

--
Kahn

Ah, yeah that makes sense. I've withdrawn half my roll from Ignition to ACR already using bitcoin, and I'm not too sure what I'm doing with the other half yet. Probably leaving it there for now. If I do well within the first few weeks of ACR & make a lot off the rake race/rakeback & do okay in the games themselves, I might just take the $4k out by check and treat myself haha. Maybe split part of it to ACR & the other part for myself, we'll see.

I will be starting most likely next Sunday. Wanted to take a small break from the 200NL grind, and I don't want to be behind two days in the first Beast race I'm partaking in.

I was a little wary of using bitcoin at first, as I had never used it before & I found out that the price fluctuates.

Keep us posted on how this works out for you, OP

Just started grinding for the beast today. I played one session before I went to bed at 4 A.M., and then played another session just now for 3.5 hours on 25NL/50NL & just two 100NL tables. I was approximately 18-20 tabling with Stack&Tile, did a lot of misclicks & timing out, but it went pretty good.

78th place in the Beast, already made it up to $100 cash prize. I'd be a lot higher up if I were actually grinding 100NL/200NL, but I don't feel comfortable doing that so soon yet. I'm most likely sticking to 25NL/50NL & just a few 100NL tables at least for a few weeks or month. Tbh, I'm a little scared of the full-time grinders like Ice Bank Mice Elf lol. He was grinding the same stakes I am right now last year, saw on a youtube video. Don't want to just yolo in there against full-time grinders with more experience at exploitation/HUD usage.

But the grinders/play at 25-100NL aren't as superb as everyone made them out to be. They have a lot of leaks, and I felt like I exploited a lot of players pretty hard. Made some big hero calls & leveled some regs into calling off on rivers.

There were a TON of fishy plays/players, and I don't really see why everyone is saying ACR is unbeatable. I can definitely say 200NLz on Ignition is way harder than 25NL-100NL on ACR, 200NL on Ignition is probably equivalent more or less to 100NL on ACR.

I ran pretty average, got sucked out on a few times when I was a huge favorite but I held in a lot of hands as well.

I feel absolutely drained though. This is the first time I've ever played so many tables. I was actually at 24 at one point, but a lot of the tables kept timing out so I eventually played 18-20. It was only a 3.5 hr session, but I just feel kinda lifeless o:.

https://ibb.co/dBz3h5

Is my redline okay? Been playing kind of nitty though. It's super hard to play my original LAGish style when I'm playing so many tables, tables are beeping 24/7, keep running down on time, etc. I've been trying to work on my redline in the past few months, finding spots to dbl barrel & the occasional triple, and light 3-betting. For some reason, I think my SD winnings are actually worse on ACR than on Ignition lol.

That is not true. This is how they process their BTC withdrawals. 24-48 to be approved and then, 24-72 hours to be sent to your wallet. And they even say it can take up to 14 days to send the money to your wallet on their website. PRETTY ABSURD if you ask me.

Yeah this was the case 1-2 months ago.
About 50 days ago I made a withdrawal and got paid in 25 hours to be excact, 12 days ago another one and got paid 23 hours...
Then talked to CD online and he confirmed they will fasten the proccess even more in the near future.

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You say that now, dude. Wait until the regs have several thousand hands of data on you and start using it against you. Remember, they literally have no data on you at the moment. Give it a few months and let us know how you feel after that. Good job on your first sessions, though. Keep it up!

I've done the 2.5k bracket several times on WPN so I'll chip in. The first time I attempted it, I played a mix of 50NL + 100NL 6 max. 16-20 tabling. The longer the session, the more efficient it is. You wanna go hard on day one as it'll set you up for the 2.5k bracket and the other regs who are looking at the leaderboard will decided by day 2 or 3 if they want to go after it or not given the competition at the top of the leaderboard. That week, I played about 90 hours and made the top bracket.


For the most part to make the 2.5k bracket, you will need about 31k beast points on average (27.5k is on the lower end, and I've seen some weeks where 33k didn't make it but 33k almost always does).

If you were to play strictly 100NL and want to guarantee 33k beast points, you'll need 75000 hands at 100NL in a week. Or you could do 48000 hands in a week at 200NL. I don't have as accurate numbers for 50NL, I would assume it might be over 100,000 hands at that stake alone in a week.


At peak traffic and tables, you're going to be generating about 500-650 beast points per hour. (Depends of course on your VPIP and stakes but this is what it is for mixing 100-200NL). That alone will require almost 60 hours but because of the slow starts and wind down time, you're usually looking at 70 hours+ 16+ tabling at these stakes.


I will say though that if you are losing at more than-4bb/100 at 100NL, its not worth it to shoot to the 2.5k bracket. a -4bb/100 loser at 100NL will be about +$500 at the end of the week after the reward + cashing in rakeback equivalents. -2bb/100 loser will be looking at about +2k.


@ 200NL, -3bb/100 loser will be about +600, -2bb/100 loser will be about +$1700 at the end of the week if they top the leaderboard.

Gl on the grind.