ePassporte to Limbo

Since the Port Security bill secured the United States ports (??) by making it illegal for US financial institutions to transfer funds to or from online gaming institutions (including online poker!) the major players (Firepay, Neteller) have turned their back on the US market and other funding solutions have taken their place. One of the more popular of these is ePassporte (http://www.epassporte.com/) who have actually been around since 2002 (well before the new law) and it's also one with the most problems... Customer support is dismal and requests for help or information about your account can take weeks for response. On the bright side the service runs efficiently most of the time and you can generally sidestep the issues by following some simple rules:

• Don't let your account balance go over $5000. If you do they require paperwork from you and the paperwork is going to take time and lots of it.


• Don't use the new "instant fund" option from your bank account. Doing so will cause your account to be locked for 8 business days (yes business days and they're very strict on that) so if you use this funding option on, say, a Friday you won't be able to get at your money for 12 days (locked from any withdrawal option including visa and atm and online charges). The regular method is slower but typically won't take 8 business days and won't cause your account to be locked.


• Do plan ahead for your withdrawals. If you need money in your checking account you'll have to withdrawal it $600 at a time (and that's IF you've ponied up the extra money to increase your daily limits) and that money will take a week to get to your checking account. You definitely don't want to wait until the last minute when rent is due to start making this withdrawals.


• Do increase your withdrawal limits by paying the $5 fee--taking money out $300 at a time is obnoxious and you'll regret it when you want to. Plus this limit extension may not happen instantly so get it started.


• Do get the physical visa. The price is worth it to have plastic you can use around town.


• Don't expect fast responses from customer support. You won't get them and sometimes they never respond at all.

When the ban on online poker is lifted (and I have to believe it will be) then other funding options will appear and ePassporte will have to get its ducks in a row to compete, but for now they're sort of like the phone company--the only real choice for a lot of people--and they know it. I hope these tips save you some aggravation until then.

When Aggression is Bad

Some time ago on the Low Limit Forums a hand came up which demonstrated why being aggressive might not always be the best choice in a low limit loose/passive game.

The situation was the hero holding

in middle position.

The UTG player limped and the hero raised. Two players after him cold call the raise and the big blind and UTG player called. 5 people see the flop which is:



Definitely this is a huge flop for the hero's hand with 12 outs to the nuts in a five handed game. The big blind checks, the UTG player bets and the hero...

This is where the discussion came in. The hero definitely can raise here from the value of their cards, but they'll be forcing three players to cold call two bets on the flop and will most likely force one or more of them out. The argument for raising here is usually that the pot is already "large" (5.5 big bets preflop) and you can gain overcard outs (for example if the flop were all low cards you could get a hand like KQ to lay down their hand which would free up additional outs for your jack to win the hand even if a queen or king comes as well). In this situation there really isn't any overcard hand which would lay down here that you really want to lay down here. You are either beating any ace in the pot, or their kicker (AQ) will give you the nut straight. In a five handed pot you will usually have to hit one of your 12 nut outs to win the hand so what you really want is to have as many callers as possible (and for as much money as possible at least on the flop), however raising here is usually the wrong move because you increase your investment in the pot and will probably reduce the number of opponents. You also leave the opportunity for a later position player to become aggressive on the flop which you welcome.

The bottom line is to be know why you are raising your strong drawing hands on the flop so you know when this move doesn't apply. If the flop had been instead:



Then raising in this position would probably be the right move because you are much more likely to gain additional overcard outs.

For more strategy tips for Low Limit Holdem visit Low Limit Holdem Strategy and Tactics



A quick blurb about UltimateBet--they're briefly offering a 111% first-time deposit bonus up to $1100 so if you haven't stepped into the exciting world of real-money online poker this is the time to do it. They're open to US players.

Don't tase me bro...

Have you heard about this? A University of Florida student was being especially loud and stubborn in his questions of Senator John Kerry and the police dragged him (while he continued to yell things like "What are you doing? Someone help me!" while no one helped me. Finally with four officers hold on we hear him say "Don't tase me bro, don't tase me bro!" which of course immediately led to repeated tasings... It sounds funny but the video is frightening... A full article is over on Wired Magazine

What's this have to do with poker? Well not much really, but some recent sessions could be described pretty well by the tagline "Don't tase me bro!"



The Low Limit sites are going through some changes and I'm spending a lot of time cleaning up the old and putting in some new.

http://www.lowlimitholdem.com/, http://www.lowlimitomaha.com/, and http://www.lowlimitstud.com/ all have some major changes in store, and the stud site will actually get its full share of real strategy content (what you wanted to know how to play??). In addition, the popular Low Limit Poker Forum is going to get a new home at the end of the month at http://www.lowlimitforum.com/ but for the moment it's still at www.lowlimitholdem.com/smf and we'll be redirecting old links to the new site so the transition should be pretty painless.

Here's to Fall '07 :)

Winning a piece of the $10,000 Commerce Casino Jackpot

Last week, towards the end of an especially bad session, I was actually at the table when a jackpot hand was won! The losing player had 9s 9h with the other two 9's on the board and the winning player had Kd Jd with the Qd and Td also on the board for a King high straight flush. The somewhat depressing reality was that the table share is only 20% there and at the time there were 6 of us (besides the winner and loser of the hand) at the table so we got 2000/6 ($334) each and for that we had to wait around over an hour for them to validate the jackpot. It was enough to turn a losing session into a winning one though, to the tune of about $30 – lol.