The Lucky Donut - Bargains and Freebies

Mad as a March Bonus [Part 2]

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Sat, 3 Mar 2007 10:30:00 +0000

Last weekend, Sporting Index threw a bonus deal at me because I hadn't given them any action for atout 2 years. It was effectively free money. I had to deposit to play, but they would refund any losses up to £50 over the course of the weekend. This was a refund of net losess, not on a single bet. As they offer spread betting not fixed odds, taking full advantage of their generosity is a little trickier.

I hadn't planned it that well last weekend and ran out of time before I could get one more bet before the deadline in whilst I'd still not lost the full £50. In fact, on my last bet I committed a cardinal sin - I had ended up with a winning bet, but the only result of that was that I won back some of the money they were going to repay me anyway - not enough to take home a profit! With this kind of promotion, the last bet you place should always make you busto (within the limits of the refund value) or guarantee a profit. With sports spread betting, I found this tricky to anticipate with my hurriedly placed total goals and corners bets.

The key would be to find a bet that has a limited downside so you can't lose more than £50, but also has the chance of hitting it big. A total goals bet on soccer, buying at 2.5 goals for £20 per goal cannot lose more than £50 (for a 0-0 draw) but a three goal match only wins you £10 - you need to find a real goalfest to win a significant amount.

This weekend's promotion is available to everyone, and is in a similar vein - a £30 net refund from your weekend's bets, but for their virtual games rather than sports spread betting. These games are gimmicky rubbish, allowing you to bet on fake horseracing, fake poker games, fake dice, fake slots and fake roulette as well as some really silly novelty games like a cartoon tank that fires footballs with random numbers into the air.

However I liked the look of the roulette game in order to play through this offer fairly easily so I had a go. It's a single zero game and you create your own market by placing chips as you would in a casino, and then betting higher or lower than an expected win amount that the system generates for you.

To keep things simple, I only looked at single unit bets and for every type of bet the market was set at 0.94-1.00. In other words, when you buy the market at 1.00, the amount you win is exactly the same as you would win on a regular roulette table. A single number still wins 36 times your stake and a red/black bet wins even money. The house edge for each bet comes only from the zero on the wheel - 1 in 37, or just over 2.7% - just as it does in a casino.

The 0.94 figure is for when you want to bet against the spin producing a winner for whatever bet you placed on the roulette layout. When you sell this market, you can win 0.94 times your stake but you risk the amount of the roulette payoff multiplied by your stake. Betting against a single number, you could win 94p or lose £36 for a £1 stake whereas on an even money bet, you are laying £1 to win 94p. The zero on the wheel works in your favour - you win 19 times out of 37, but the payoff is reduced.

If my calculations are correct, the edge on selling bet is very small. For a red/black bet at £1, every 37 spins you will lose (18 x 100) and win (19 x 94), a net loss of 14p. That's a house edge of 0.38%! I'd love someone (if only I knew a maths teacher, for instance...) to correct me here - that seems far too small, and I wish I'd noticed this before I actually started playing out this bonus!

I had also assumed that I would have to buy in any market in order to hit a big payoff. Now I realise this is also not true. I would have been able to cover multiple bets on the layout (e.g. two separate dozens) and sell that market for odds of roughly 2-1. Effectively I'd be betting the other dozen as well as the zero, and this might have been a better bet than doing the bet the "normal" way round.

There was a five bet play requirement and although no minimum risk was stated I thought it was wise to at least make sure the £30 freebie was wagered in full. I began with five £6 bets on red, intending to move on to a bigger bet after these five bets were complete. Things didn't start well: 22, 36, 26, 2, 6

Down to £12. I'd need a 2-1 payoff to get back to be only £6 into profit. It would have to be a 5-1 shot or longer to make it worthwhile. I decided to play it a different way - try to gamble back up to the free £30 and then go for one win for that full amount on a 2-1, aiming for a £60 profit.

I put the remaining £12 on red. 21. Hooray. £6 more to get back even, so I played red one more time. 18. Home and dry - almost. Now just the small matter of trying to win something...

I bet the first dozen for £30. If I win, it's £60 profit and I'm cashing out. If I lose, I get my £30 back on Monday. A great position to be in.

Click here to watch the spin and retrospectively sweat it with me. Remember, we're looking for any number between 1 and 12...

Mad as a March Bonus [Part 1]

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Fri, 2 Mar 2007 23:33:42 +0000

Both Party Poker and Absolute Poker have thrown free money at me this weekend. Which would be great, if I hadn't blown it all on blackjack already...

Party seem to think it's my birthday so they gave me $5 to celebrate with. In fact it just looks like I entered the month and day back to front, so I'll try to correct that and see if I get the same offer again when it actually is my birthday! $5 won't get you very far in any of their poker games, so trying to spin it up playing blackjack seemed like a good idea - the play requirement was $25 in total bets before being allowed to withdraw.

This is an eight deck game with the dealer hitting soft 17, and wizardofodds.com puts the house edge for these rules at about 0.8%. No point grinding through 25 $1 bets here to keep the swings to a minimum and cash in as much of the $4.80 expected value as possible - go for glory!

The plan here was simply to try to double up three times to $40 (actually $35 in total wagers - reducing my EV by a few cents) to get to an amount worth withdrawing. With the possibility of a 3-2 blackjack payout, it could even be a little higher than this. However I only got to see one hand - a hard 15 against a dealer 6, and the dealer did not bust.

Second try then. Absolute actually sent me two promotions for the price of, well, none. The first said "here, have $10" and the second said "here, have $20". Indeed this was a good mistake, as I found $30 waiting for me in my account. Both emails told me they missed me in slightly different ways. Funnily, I hadn't been missing their clunky software and super tight players at all.

The only play requirement for the free money was to play something - anything would do. But I couldn't be bothered to try to make something happen with poker - I already have a Party Poker bonus to clear this weekend - so this also came down to one hand of blackjack.

Absolute use six decks, but the dealer still hits soft 17. The house edge for these rules is ever so slightly better: 0.76%. Actually, playing just one hand for your entire bankroll messes up these figures somewhat - not being able to split and double down in favourable situations gives the house a bigger edge. Again, only giving up a few cents here in exchange for an easier life.

I saved this hand for posterity. They gave me a brief glimmer of hope for my useless hard 16 against a dealer's face card, but it wasn't to be.

Click here to view the hand in action!

EDIT: Of course, since replaying this I noticed the "surrender" button light up, which is the correct play here. I never even looked for it, dammit. I could have had $15 back to go on one more hand..!

Is anything better than free mince pies?

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Wed, 6 Dec 2006 10:22:41 +0000

Tesco have been giving away a free box of mince pies with every grocery delivery lately. A nice little bonus for sure, but these may well be the sweetest mince pies of the season. A very nice, completely unexpected freebie from Virgin Trains no less! Pies, cheese and booze. The perfect combination.

And yes it does indeed say:

It's better if I keep that out of context, don't you think...

Marooned!

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Tue, 5 Dec 2006 21:05:17 +0000

My return trip from London usually involves a late train. That way I never have to worry about leaving the office on time, getting stuck on a delayed tube and missing the train. It does, however, mean that I'm hanging around for up to two hours at Euston. This is where a cheap First Class upgrade comes in handy. By "cheap" I mean that you get the very lowest tier of First Class ticket. These are only available after they stop serving hot food to your seat, and instead you get a sandwich and a banana. However usually they put the most expensive tickets at the front of the train so they get first dibs on all the snack food, and by the time yours truely gets served the sandwich choice is probably only egg.

It's still better than at weekends, where you have to fetch everything yourself. And as the shop is right in the middle of standard class, you have to climb over three carriages of poor people (you can't hear the irony, but it's there I promise, because I only use the train at the weekend on a free ticket) to pick up a "snack box" that contains a couple of crackers and some dried fruit.

Still, it means I get somewhere warm to sit for a couple of hours with an unlimited supply of complimentary coffee and crisps. Today, they even have some rather nice chocolate truffles. I was actually disciplined enough to just have one. Impressive.

When I'm bumming about in the lounge above Euston Station, I'm usually online. No change there. There's a wifi hotspot - touted as a feature of first class, when you still have to pay £4/hr to use it - but I now have my super funky phone with wireless modem and unlimited data calls, which is just as good when there's 3G coverage.

Today, the phone said I had a full four bars of 3G signal but I couldn't connect to squat. It dialed, it thought, it gave up. Same thing happened trying to get online from the phone itself, and it's still the same problem now that I'm on the train. I waited a good ten minutes on hold to T-Mobile, but nobody is there this time of night... at half past six? Unlikely. So I decided to bite the bullet - and bite into some complimentary fruit cake - and pay for the wifi. I still had over an hour to kill and thought I may as well do something useful, even if "something useful" is trying to find out whether the 6-max $2/$4 game at Noble Poker is as soft as it appears to be, or if I just ran very hot so far. The early signs are good (and here I go tempting fate again). Sure, I've been getting lucky with some hands, but it's so lovely and passive, they're just always letting me catch up - and then paying me off! Of course I don't mind winning $30 pots with two pair made on the turn from 47o in the big blind, it's just a little embarassing... I'm sure people in the lounge were watching me!

However, as I've bought into Gutshot folklore, I was particularly pleased with this hand. Would have been worth an extra $50 at their online cardroom too!

The hotspot let me log in, but I had zero credit and when I tried to reload it said "this feature is not available". There's an award winning business plan buried away in there somewhere I'm sure...

So I was feeling a little marooned. NO INTERNET! But then I remembered the time I playing PokerStars here and my credit ran out but I was still able to play. I hadn't figured out whether it was because I still had an open connection and it didn't know how to disconnect me after the credit ran out, or if it just wasn't configured to block poker traffic. Turns out, it's their configuration. Which means...

Free poker!

Well, for some sites anyway. Noble Poker worked just fine. I could see the lobby and sit at tables. The only problem was accessing the cashier, which uses web pages within the client. But as I already had a balance, I could play away happily. And, yes, it still feels pretty soft. I think Stars will work, although I couldn't test it properly. It tried to get a software update, presumably from a web site, and failed. Party Poker and Mansion would not connect at all, but Paradise worked fine, and their cashier does not use the web so it looks like you get full functionality. For free!

That's about all I had time to check, but I'll be doing more research! They definitely block web and email access until you sign in with a credit card, and apparently MSN messenger too. However I could connect to ICQ and Yahoo! Messenger without any problems, and without paying!

I only have limited experience with wireless hotspots. The odd hotel and airport, and once at Starbucks when it was the hot new thing, which was memorable because it just didn't work. I wonder just how many actually allow free access like this!

Bargaintastic

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 12:08:15 +0000

Our house insurance just came up for renewal. £420 they said. Time to shop around I said.

If you haven't signed up for Quidco yet, do it. Seriously. Insurance companies pay a small fortune in commission for a new customer, and the idea of Quidco is that you get to keep most of that yourself. So not only did I get a quote from Barclays that was £80 cheaper, I'm also set to receive another £120 in commission in a month or so!

So not everything you earn is quite on that scale, but there's lots of little somethings that add up... With a cunning combination of Quidco cashback and online coupon codes I just ordered six CDs from HMV (of all places!) for, effectively, £43!

T minus 286

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Mon, 9 Oct 2006 00:24:00 +0100

There was never really any doubt that Claire and I would be heading to Vegas for the summer again next year. I just didn't expect that we'd book it this soon. Last year the flight prices were hideous this time of year before a promotion kicked in on Christmas Eve and we snapped up the seats in a flash.

So when the diamond club reservations system showed availability for the first four weeks of the school holidays - the first time I've ever seen it show dates to Vegas that would be vaguely useful to us - we snapped them up even quicker. Best deal ever - two flights in the summer for just £240 (just the cost of the taxes, plus 90,000 miles).

Between us we actually had enough miles for two free business class flights. This was a tough decision, but not being able to combine the miles using online booking, and really not wanting to wait until we can speak to someone to nail down those flights (I'm completely paranoid about losing them once we find a good deal) we made the booking on economy. I'm going to call in the morning and see if there's any way we can use Claire's miles now to upgrade, but even if not ... what a bargain!

So that's virtually my entire diamond club balance gone, but the countdown to Summer O' Poker III can officially begin. Two hundred and eighty six long and probably wet days.

I don't think this will be our next Vegas trip though. If for no other reason (and let's face it, any excuse is a good excuse) we need to go at least once more before the summer to maintain silver status with BMI. Possibly twice :) With the current promotion of 3x miles on all flights before the end of the year, and 50% extra on all Las Vegas flights until the end of October, if we can fit in a trip in half term then it's virtually a free flight. There's a £500 premium economy ticket that almost has my name on it. Just need to find out if Claire's "training day" on the Monday is an actual training day or a teachers bonus day.

With 50% extra miles on premium, plus the promotions, we're looking at somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000 miles depending on just how the offers combine. 45,000 miles gets you an economy flight to the USA. Can we say +EV!

Put a dime on it

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Mon, 4 Sep 2006 23:03:36 +0100

The award for best sports betting promotion ever goes to Mansion, who have set up this little gem for the start of the NFL season.

Place a bet of $1100 on Pittsburgh to beat Miami on Thursday and they will refund your stake if you don't win.

You can't bet less than $1100, and if you bet any more the maximum refund is still $1100. And you have to back the Steelers. But if you can bankroll this bet a, it has a huge risk free return. The bet you have to make is a point spread handicap at -110, therefore paying $1000 for the $1100 wager. That's a free shot at a grand. Or, as I've done, you can hedge it (as long as you use a different site) and lock in nearly $500 profit guaranteed!

The point spread was actually zero when I placed the bet, so I backed PIT with $1100 to win $1000 and then hedged betting MIA using their promotional -107 line at CanBet, risking $535 to win $500. Except really there's no risk:

If PIT win, I win $1000 and lose $535, net profit $465.

If MIA win, I win $500 but do not lose on the other bet.

So I guess I'll be cheering for Miami on Thursday, to try to win the extra $35. That's about as much as I'd normally put on a game...!

Cheapo update

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:44:53 +0100

The mission to not pay full price for food failed when I had to fend for myself at the Rio on a break, and I ventured into the "Poker Kitchen". This is a token effort, basically a tent plonked just outside the emergency exits at the back of the convention centre, and it's far from great. I queued for ten minutes at the hot dog and burger counter. The hot dogs were "still frozen" and the burgers were "going to be a while". So I had to grab a really stodgy sandwich for $6, a bag of crisps for $2 and a snickers for $1.50. Poor value, poor service and it made me miss three hands because I was waiting around so long.

Anyway, we were back on form yesterday at Ellis Island. This place is fantastic value even without a discount, but with a 2-for-1 it's unbelievable. I had a Frisco Burger, which is served on sourdough bread and sliced in two like a sandwich. Yummy. Claire had fish and chips, which she said was great. In total with drinks the bill came to $9.54. Total bargain.

Then it was matchplay time. We had no luck with the matchplays last trip and particularly at Terrible's where we lost every single one. Things started the same way this time at Ellis Island with a $5 and a $10 matchplay. We both lost.

So back to Terribles and not expecting much, we had two coupons for Roulette - bet $5 win $7 - which we played on red and odd and hit red 21 for a $14 profit. Almost back even.

For blackjack at Terribles we were on the "coupon table" as the dealer pointed out. Three of the four players were there for a single hand with a matchplay! We had 2 x $10, one won one lost for a profit of $10.

Also had $5 free slot credit at the Venetian, which didn't do any good. Four max bet spins at 25c video poker and it was gone in a flash.

So far: Up $9 and well fed !

Double bonus!

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 01:30:00 +0100

For as much as I don't like InterPoker (probably a separate rant) their monthly $100 deposit bonus is good and when you can clear this in conjunction with a second bonus it's really too good to turn down.

The second promotion was a bonus payout each time you are dealt poket kings. After submitting your account number and the hand number, they promise to credit your account with $10. The only condition is that the hand must have generated some rake. In theory this is a great promo. $10 free every 220 hands on average is worth roughly 1 big bet per 100 hands at $2/$4. I played 676 hands last night (ended up clearing about half of the bonus) during the promo period and was dealt KK just once, yet I saw AA and QQ 4 times each, and JJ a whopping 9 times. A cynical player might say that all the KKs turned to JJ for the duration of this promo, and I did see others chatting about how they hadn't seen KK the whole time. But this was an InterPoker promo only, so I can't believe that even if it was possible the whole Cryptologic network would put on a crooked deal just for one skin! Of course, when they run this offer for just 5 hours at a time you're not really getting a very big sample of hands, and those that are seeing a rush of Kings aren't going to be complaining...

So, let's just see how badly I messed up the one KK hand I did see: Remembering that the hand has to be raked to get the bonus, and with everyone folding to me leaving just two players and the blinds still to act, I decide to just limp in to make sure we get the flop and the hand is raked. Just the big blind stayed in for a free play, and of course flopped 2 pair with his Q5o to relieve me of $20.

Only myself to blame, though I still think limping here is probably right. With any other player already in the pot I'm raising, and from early position you don't want to encourage limpers to play against your big pair. An open limp in middle to late position on a tight table gives up your the edge on a $2 bet preflop but locks in the extra $10 win-or-lose bonus. It's just a question of whether the bonus compensates for letting in opponents with crud hands. In my case it didn't, but I did only have one chance to find out.

Kerching - Party Poker Reload Bonus

nospam@example.com (luckydonut) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 00:32:00 +0100

You just can't beat free money from Party Poker! Their reload bonuses are very easy to clear even at the low limits, so when a 20% up to $100 bonus popped up on my account yesterday I got busy.

I decided to play for this bonus using $25NL only. I wanted to see how no limit compared to fixed limit hold'em as I've mostly played $1/$2 to clear these bonuses so far. Because the wagering requirements are based on a number of raked hands, regardless of the actual amount of rake paid, the limits do not really matter. In fact a quirk of this system is that you have to play less hands at $1/$2 to clear a bonus than at $2/$4 - although you pay more rake in total, $1/$2 games are raked in 25c multiples, whereas $2/$4 is raked $1 at a time.

I thought you would probably need to play more hands at $25NL than $1/$2 as there would be fewer flops, but really this doesn't seem to be the case - I'd usually bank on slightly more than 50% of hands being raked at $1/$2.

Stand by, stat fans - here's how I did

Hands played:  1540 (for 1000 raked hands)
Hours played:  23.63 (approx 6 hours @ 4 tables)
Rake paid:     $30.10 (so Party Poker lose $69.90 on this promo!)

Amount won:    $35.52 (4.61 BB per 100 hands)
Win rate:      $5.92/hr
Bonus awarded: $100

Rate w/ bonus: $22.60/hr

Certainly not bad for the smallest game in town. And for those who like even geekier stats, here's how I was playing:

Vol. Put $ In Pot:       14.29%
Pre-flop Raise:           7.21%
Post-flop Aggression:     3.72
Won $ When Saw Flop:     33.59%
Went to Showdown:        20.99%
Won $ At Showdown:       50.91%
Folded SB to Steal:      87.50%
Folded BB to Steal:      80.00%
Attempt to Steal Blinds: 18.57%

So it's a fairly small sample size, but the diagnosis looks pretty good - firmly rooted in the Tight/Agressive camp. Poker Tracker gives me a little cash bag icon - result!

If I try to be objective, my blind play looks kinda weak, although 8 times out of 10 is probably nothing to be concerned with. Need more input. When there are a lot of limpers, as you get in these low limit games, there's not too many opportunities to steal. I could be raising a bit more pre-flop, but again with lots of limpers I'm aware that my range of hands to raise with is tighter than usual, and limping into multiway pots with small pairs and suited aces becomes attractive.

Oh, and I appear to be rather aggressive post-flop. That one really surprised me as I still think I check/call too much on the river. The aggression factor is calculated as the number of times you bet or raise divided by the number of times you call (checking is ignored). A number between 2 and 3 - betting twice to three times as often as you call - is thought to be nicely aggressive.

Grrrr, then.