Well, after several weeks of savage and persistent bad beats and losing on showdowns I decided to mix things up a bit and have a go on Bodog and Party Poker, two sites that my bankroll seems to only know the way up.

I must say, it was a different experience altogether. I had mixed runs of bad and good luck which to me was luxury after the constant run of bad luck on Full Tilt for weeks and months in varying doses.

As I've said in previous posts, my hands are not holding up at all on Full Tilt. It doesn't matter if I am behind or ahead. My % of wins once I've entered a pot have dropped dramatically (always a sign to me that I am on some kind of losing setting) and everytime I either raise with a marginal or decent hand or try to bluff someone is always coming over the top. It is like everyone is catching their cards to beat me.

After a while of having people betting over me constantly I started to believe that it isn't possible they have it every time so I will call occasionally with a hand I think is better and yep, they have it every time! Every flop hits everybody. Every turn card persuades a bet.

So after such an awful run in Full Tilt my revulsion of the sight reached new levels and I no longer believed I could win there anymore. After all, if your hands hardly ever hold up how can you win at poker unless you master the art of getting someone to fold each and every time?

Playing on Bodog and Party Poker was a refreshing poker experience and restored the notion that poker can actually be fun as well as a game that can occasionally win you money. I actually caught some cards on those other sites and I gave some bad beats in Bodog. In one hand I was AK vs AA and sucked out a straight! In another hand I was 89 vs J9 and caught an 8. It was a complete novelty to actually win from behind, especially when I can't win from being ahead in Full Tilt. I had forgotten what it felt like to actually win a showdown! It seems completely ridiculous but I am not exaggerating when I say that nothing is holding up for me on Full Tilt and to actually experience a hand holding up is a novelty. People actually fold cards on other sites, because, surprise surprise, sometimes they don't catch a hand! Sometimes the big blind will fold to the small blind, because, surprise surprise, the big blind will occasionally not have a playable hand when the small blind has a playable hand.

Catching cards was an experience. I hadn't realized how few hands I was catching until I played elsewhere.

All this came to me as shock horror. After all, I had become accustomed to wins that were restricted only when opponents folded. Showdowns were a useless EV ploy on FT. I mean, if I am holding up 20% of the time there is no point showing anything down. I was getting close to only showing down my hands when I've got five of a kind. I haven't had 5 of a kind yet but I am expecting one soon on FT (anything goes there).

One more thing surprised me in my Party Poker game (which I ended up winning making up for all the losses in Full Tilt during the day). That was, my jacks held up against AK. More so, my opponent with the AK was the big stack. Now my entire life was taking on new meaning. Seeing a big stack not win a 50-50 in a showdown was like seeing god come down from the heavens and telling me that I will go to poker heaven someday and that humanity is actually good and not inherently evil.

On Full tilt when i am confronted with a coin flip, or my QQ are up against Aj, I am already sighing and joining a new tournament with the full expectation of getting knocked out. I will admit though, I had one hand hold up for me at Full Tilt today in which I was ahead, and I had my hands on my head in disblief.

Seriously though, when I can feel astounding lucky to win a coin flip or to suck out from behind on another site, things can't be right. Either I have situation specific schizophrenia occasioned by a severe case of confirmation bias in regards to my constant bad luck and bad beats on Full Tilt or something ugly is going down.

While I'd like to say that Full Tilt is the only site playing with glaring anomolies I can't. Pokerstars, which was incredibly kind to me for a couple of months and in which I won several hundred dollars, started to dog me as of a couple of weeks ago. I used to wonder why people called Pokerstars Riverstars. I am learning the hard way and its not pleasant. I keep losing hands to river cards. It keeps happening too. I will go all in with a significant stake in the outcome of the hand and the river will send me a losing blow. I have started to point before the river card comes and I will say 'ace' and bang! There's the ace. I could conduct party tricks over this predictable river card. It is either a gliche or Pokerstars way of distributing loser and winner modes. It is definitely much more obvious than Full Tilt's system. If there were only 4 cards put on the board in Pokerstars I'd be a gazllionnaire!

Finally one more thing. Just when I thought things couldn't get spookier on Full Tilt I had a hand that was utterly controlled on me. I had pocket nines in the big blind. The small blind had raised me and I called. The flop came JJ3 or something like that. I wanted to bet but my hand took on a life of its own and checked itself! It was like some mysterious force was controlling my hand. On the turn came an 8 and I so badly wanted to bed at this board but I was folded! What was going on!

The very next hand I had KK and flopped the stone cold nuts. I figured, whoever was controlling my hand decided to compensate me with the next hand. Although, the very hand after that I had KK in small blind and the button raised me. I somehow only lost half my chips, instead of the whole bloody lot when the button flipped over AA.

Sorry about the rant but I structured it in such a way that anyone reading it might get a laugh out of it.

Anthony