Once upon a time, I was a decent poker player - when I was in university, I used to head out to Gardena, California, where there were a few poker clubs such as the Normandie and the Horseshoe.  On other occasions I might hit the Commerce Club or the Bicycle Club when my roommate would lend me his car.

In those days, Texas Hold ‘Em was not the most popular game - the poker clubs still played a lot of draw poker, Omaha, and my favorite, Lowball - you know the one where you try to get the worst hand possible?  I won three jackpots in a month playing Lowball, even though I only played about 10 hours a week.  All poker games were limit games - so perhaps one could say that I was a moderately successful limit player, though I had many bad sessions as well.

Anyhow, Texas Hold ‘Em is far and away the most popular poker game now, while draw poker and lowball have basically fallen off the face of the Earth.  Not only that, but no limit Texas Hold ‘Em games have basically changed the face of poker, and with the advent of online poker, poker has boomed dramatically.

Anyhow, I decided that it was time to scratch my poker itch - but after going to 32Red Poker and fruitlessly searching for a deposit option, I contacted my old friend Pat, who threw me a few bones while he investigated why my debit card deposits weren’t going through.

But that didn’t last too long - my pocket Jacks got beaten by someone else’s pocket Queens - sometimes I am amazed at the number of times playing at a Microgaming poker room when there are multiple pairs at the table - not that I suspect anything amiss, but it often makes me wonder…

Anyhow, a day later, and after a few back-and-forth emails, we finally discovered that Entropay would work - but at a hefty fee of 4.95% to the user.  But I didn’t care, as it meant that I would be able to play online again.

So I made a deposit and started playing - many ups and downs playing no-limit games at various stakes - but then I accidentally sat down at a limit table, and I suddenly started getting cards which would have made me a bundle at no-limit, but only small wins at limit - nevertheless I also discovered that many of my old strategies continued to work well at limit games.

After notching up a small profit, I went back to the dog-eat-dog world of no-limit - and again continued to go up and down - up because there were many players at the tables who were not as good at poker as I - and down because my strategies were not well-suited to playing no-limit poker.

In the end, I lost my deposit, but I had managed to play with it for about 12 hours - not too bad, almost encouraging - but it was clear that I had to learn more patience, as well as adapting my gameplay to a different type of game.

Stay tuned for more Spearmaster poker (mis)adventures!