Virtualy everywhere is softer than Stars.

The smart (and not as complex as it sounds) way to do this is to sign up with an affiliate. Use their promo codes to sign up at a site you've never played on before. Grind the minimum to achieve the affiliate bonus, which will also give you part of your first time deposit bonus. Cash out, move on to the next site, do it again.

If you exclusively play SnG and MTT this is tough to do, you won't rack up enough player points, but if you play NL25 you will be able to grind out bonuses fairly quickly. Thus, even a BE player gains experience and a BR.

At this point in your 'career', worrying about rakeback is a red herring. You don't play enough to get much back as compared to one-time bonuses. If you want, leave a site like 888 for last, then you could sign up there with a RB deal. But it doesn't sound like that's much of an issue for you atm.

And as always, remember that sample size will always be excruciatingly small at live play, so it'd take years to know if you really can beat it.

Thanks for the input SW.

As of right now, I'm trying to deposit on both 888 and Party Poker to get their bonuses and then try the sites out.

Does anyone here know the best and easiest ways for Canadians to move money around poker sites? Both my Visa and Mastercard wouldn't allow me to make the deposits. I opened a Neteller account, and it asks if the money is for gambling or non-gambling transactions before I deposit. I also just tried Entropay but didn't have any luck depositing to there either.

After trying so many different deposit methods that didn't work, I was able to deposit on Party Poker using Instant Banking. Way less fees than using any of those other services like Entropay, Neteller etc.

Hopefully my stay on Party Poker can be a profitable and productive one. I'll see where this goes.

does anyone wanna hang out with this charming semi young lad and talk poker in vancouver or what .......

Does anyone play any plo home games?I just heard that some Chinese kid just lost $30k within a few days in these private high stake games in Richmond。

They're around but you won't see any of them listed on the forums. They like to stay low key I'm pretty sure, especially if it's high stakes.

going to grandvilla for the first time my move....keep yall posted

Merry Xmas to all the Van city poker players!

Anyone popped in to the local card rooms the past couple of nights? I was considering it but I just assumed they would be too quiet. I've played a bit online though and traffic doesn't seem too slow there.

I remember spending my 2015 NYE at Edgewater on the poker tables. I was hoping it would be a bunch of drunk partiers just donking money off, but that was not the case at all. Play seemed pretty tight and after a few hours on the tables, I came away ahead $20. That was the only time spending NYE playing poker at the casino and its made me reluctant to go back on NYE.

For anyone that still visits this forum thread, just a topic of interest is a buddy who plays at the River Rock told me they reduced the number of tables from 10 to 5. Although I don't play there regularly, I find that to be quite a concerning move from the biggest casino in the lower mainland. That is such a drastic reduction from 12 years ago when I first stepped in and they had that whole upper room dedicated to poker.

It makes you wonder how other casinos will follow suit, and what that says about the state of live poker in the Lower Mainland in general. Even the activity in this thread, or lack of it, doesn't speak well for the well being of poker in Vancouver players these days.

I also heard the news that River Rock has been reduced to 5 tables. I was also told their max rake is now $8 (anyone confirm?), with the rumour being that most other rooms will probably follow suit in increasing their max rake (yet again, as it's gone up a $1 per year over the last couple of years).

Gsky98%fallen,imoG

Nice to finally get a response in this thread after a few weeks. I'm a local downtown poker player, looking to connect and interact with other lower mainland poker players, but it doesn't seem like this forum is the place to do it. Are there other forums online that cater to Vancouver players or would this be the best place for me to be trying?

Why not just go out and play, and be social and talk to people?

+1

GgoodluckG

I'll get back to live poker and do my best, but I've been playing online mainly for the past year. But even in a live casino game, I can't just stand up and ask, "who wants to study cash game strategy with me?!" I was hoping to find more strategic minds in a forum like this.

The problem is the waitlist. Not many fun recreational gambling players want to wait hours to play. Then if they do wait and finally sit in the game it's just a bunch of tight nits. Zero fun.

The best rooms are ones where people going to the casino can just walk by the poker room and decide to sit in an open seat on a whim.

This is why weekday games are usually better than weekend games imo.

Good point. I PM'd you a message.

If BC casinos raise their rake from 7 to 8 ill stop playing poker in the city as its already too high at the moment.

Also if Parq doesn't add tables soon ill probably do the same. Too much time waiting around at this stage in my life

So many times ive gone into parq/Edgewater wanting to play poker only to just give money to baccarat/bj/slots because of long waits.

Home games are the answer if you can find a decent one

You can call 1.5 hours before arriving. Anytime other than peak hours this should make your wait time minimal. My average wait time on weekdays is probably 10 minutes and often i dont wait at all.

Thats exactly what they are hoping happens....you should just tell them you are upset with the wait and leave. If everyone did that it might light a fire under them to add more tables.

I agree this does work however I find over time the player pool gets worse as the casual player won't know to call ahead.

Yes i agree its terrible for the games

Very few "casual" players (i.e. randoms out on a Friday/Saturday night walking around the casino who pass by the poker room and say "hey, that looks like fun, I should try that") in this market, imo. Obviously the packed tables / long wait list don't encourage randoms, but I'm honestly not sure it would make much of a difference if it was different. Last time out for me (admittedly a Tuesday night) they had slightly too many tables running in my room and most tables had an empty seat; no "casuals" in sight to fill them.

Git's99%regsinthismarket,imoG