I have been playing on Absolute poker for over a year, regularly.
I had been one of the top tourney players on the site.
I am a professional poker player, and have over 25 years experience in High stakes, no limit Texas hold'em.
I have, in the past been very happy with the games there, I had won nearly $20,000 in the past year on this particular site.
Their customer service has always been excellent, and the games very true to live games - until about a month ago, when something changed drastically there.
The odds stopped playing, the math and odds calculating system I have used successfully for the last 15 years, began to fail miserably - the reason being that the odds on this site have somehow been skewed in favor of the most unlikely. Thus handicapping intellegent, odds based play, in favor of weakness, stupididty, and players who think that the 2 cards in the deck that can save them will surely fall on the river.
In the past 2 weeks, I have been burned by the most ridiculous, longshot draws that can be imagined. Granted, poker is largely a game of skill, but the luck factor is a big part of the game.
A skilled player, working the odds, and percentages can consistently make money over time, because he understands the game well, puts his opponents on the correct pocket cards, and uses pot-odds calculations to determine whether a call is worth the asking price or not. To a seasoned pro, these calculations are done in the head, and are nearly automatic.
Let me describe my 3 main showdown categories and the last 30 or so showdowns I was involved in there:
10 of these showdowns were with hands that may or may not be good against an opponent where I was unsure of his hole cards; as expected, I won about half of these, and lost about half - no problem here - this is about what I expect to see.
10 of these showdowns were where I was holding 'pat hands' and all the other players were drawing virtually dead - I won all ten of these, because there was really no way to lose.
The last ten showdowns fall into tha category of the 'nearly locked up hand' in other words, I had (correctly) deduced my opponents hole cards, (correctly) determined that I was a 90% favorite to win the hand - since my opponant had only 2 or 3 cards in the deck that could possibly save him on the river, and I made my bets accordingly. The problem is that I lost 9 of 10 of these hands!
I'm very sorry, but when I have correctly determined that I am a 90% favorite to win a hand, I expect to win 90% of the time.
For reasons I cannot fathom, AP has apparently stacked the deck against me in favor of weak players -9 of 10 who should have lost as they stupidly chased their 2 outs and ended up gettin fed miracle draw after miracle draw against me.
I can only think of 2 reasons why they would do such a thing:
#1 to maximize the amount of rake they can take from a pot (the bigger the pot, the more money the casino makes)
and #2 to keep weak players in the game longer so as to further maximize their rake earnings.
It used to be my favorite site for poker on the web, but they have, in an effort to maximize their own profits, completely alienated me; formerly one of the top players on the site, giving favorable testamonials, but no more.
Something has changed ther for the worse, and I would strongly urge Solid Poker players to avoid this site for now. They have been good in the past, and I would hope that they would see how this BS compromize their integrity, and the integrity of the game, and fix it.
Until that happens, there is no point in playing there.
The odds simply do not work right anymore.
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