Flopped the Nuts

Since I’m featuring the affiliate link to Doyle’s Room in the sidebar, I thought I’d best spend some time on the thing and report back you you, my two readers.

So far, I have played mostly in the 10/20 NLHE ring games (yeah, that’s ten and twenty cents, y’all). I have however played in one multi-table tourney and one sit-n-go (which Doyle’s Room rather unimaginatively calls a “Single Table Tournament”).

First a short review of my own performance:

• Multi-table tourney: I started strong and then exploded to finish around the half mark. This, disturbingly, is my norm in large tournaments.
• Sit-n-go: Bubbled out. I used to kill these things, but lately I’m taking fourth place with regularity.
• Ring games: I was doing exceptionaly poorly until today. Over the course of the day I went from the sub-teen range (I had bought into the site for $50, mind you…) to around $70 (I was higher, but I slipped some.). There were two hands that helped me in particular:
  1. ftn_jake wins $33.24 with Flush A♣K♣Q♣T♣9♣ (the A♣K♣ was mine; an opponent had the J♣)
  2. ftn_jake wins $23.32 with Flush K♠9♠8♠5♠3♠ (I had 9♠5♠)

Now, what about the site itself? Well, it got it’s good points and it faults, like any other poker site.

Stuff I like:

• Buddy list — Not that I know anyone who plays at DR yet, but I like it when sites let you keep budie lists.
• “You folded” — On the table view, there is an area that either tells you your best hand while you’re in a hand or reminds you what you folded. Not a huge fan of the former, but I love that latter.
• Action Points — You accumulate points according the the amount of money you bet. Points can be used to buy into freeroll (not really) tourneys and perhaps other stuff.
• Diverse population — There are as many Europeans online as Yanks. Interesting.

Bits that bug me:

• No hand history — HUH!?!?
• Small population — There are 1876 players online at the time of this writing.
• Manual refresh and other interface junk — Assuming you can actually find the stats widget and get it to show you the right thing, you have to hit a “Refresh” button manually to see how you’ve been doing. Recockulous!
• Avatars — Every site makes a big deal about the widgets that represent you on screen. They just don’t matter.

So do I recommend you actually click my link and play at Doyle’s Room? Well, I can’t really argue that it’s “better” than something like Paradise or Party, but it’s not all bad.
Personally, I’ll probably try to focus on tourneys at DR while the fields are smallish.

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Unrelated note: When will a major poker site offer software to Macs? It’s more than a little ridiculous, if you ask me.