Wizard

I respect the heart.

Welcome to the blog boyos

I'm 30 years old and live in London, England. I started playing poker aged 19, turning pro at 24.

I played quite a lot of live poker in London pre-covid from 1/2 up to 10/20. 

Currently I play almost exclusively online with most volume being 100NL and 200NL.

Career highs have been winning trips to Vegas and winning live tournaments in London.

Career lows have been bubbling the WSOPME and struggling with health problems (ME/CFS, Long Covid, Autism).

The goal is to post something every week that will interest / amuse people. 

That's enough about me, who wants to see an absolute WILD hand of poker:

I played this a while back and its quite the hand.

Any guesses on what Villain is gonna show up with? Once there are a few replies I'll post the result. 

Run good degens.

-12k Euro

Are these still a thing? If not, has something replaced them?

Unibet used to have monthly affiliate races, then it became one month a quarter (but larger). Not sure if these are still happening or not.

In the past I raked idk 50k Euro a year and received maybe 3k Euro in affiliate money so this is pretty significant.

This is also a fairly big incentive to grind more, especially when it was one larger affiliate race every third month.

Does anyone have any more info on this?

Cheers.

Poker

Google says the RTP for Big Bass Splash is 96.71% 

The swings on slots are wild, over a small sample most people will see a RTP significantly less than 96% and a few people will spike a big multiplier for heaps.

It be like that.

Happening to me on the client but not the website

I plan to flip until I hit the 250 euro supermoon ticket. I haven't hit it yet this month despite getting gold and silver tickets most days.

People who cash out smaller prizes will cash out very regularly with their prize.

In previous promo events I have won the max prize of 100 Euro several times.

The nature of flipping many times for a top prize (especially off bronze tickets) is that you will mostly win nothing, then a small % of the time win a big prize.

If you don't run hot you can just win nothing for ages, but you will eventually win a big prize.

If you don't like busting then you can cash out for smaller amounts.

If its gonna run out but you can't play, could you just enter a 10 euro flip satty tournament.

You are then 20% to win a 50 Euro ticket.

My heart has grown 3 sizes this day.

Are you still in the running for the hexa ticket if you bust before late reg ends?

Asking for a 'friend' who is liable to absolutely blast it in level 1 xD

Aspers Casino London, Tuesday 30th January - Sunday 4th Febuary 2024.

Website here:

https://londonpokerfest.com/

Love the prize drop animation and the gif, graphics team is killing it.

Love the XP race, enjoy those.

Banzai flips are a really fun sweat because I always play until 100 Euro or bust. Managed it twice lifetime (its a lot easier with Golden tickets). I prefer these over random freerolls that I always seem to forget about.

Are the affiliate races coming back? IIRC it was monthly, then one month a quarter, now I'm not sure where they have gone. I rated those and would smash out volume when they ran, really hope they come back.

You cant get them frozen or restarted, its use it or lose it.

On the plus side you will get a new bonus every 2 weeks. 

If you tend to fall way short of your bonuses they should shrink eg. if you never finish the 170 bonuses then in a month or two you will be offered 125 or 100 bonuses.

Every 2 weeks some players get a free bonus like 'rake 1500, get 375'.

You either complete it in 2 weeks and get the prize or you don't complete it in 2 weeks and get nothing, there are no extensions or partial credit or anything.

This is completely free money and is SEPARATE to the loyalty scheme where you earn XP.

You are still earning XP and progress on the loyalty scheme while completing this bonus.

The calculation for what kind of bonus you get isn't released publicly but I gather it is something like:

1) Unibet looks at the most you have raked in a week in the last 10 weeks. Lets say the most you raked in a week is 800 Euro.

They multiply this by 1.9 and then you have 2 weeks to rake that amount. Eg. 800*1.9 is about 1500.

The idea is you get a bonus you could plausibly complete but it will be a bit of an effort.

2) I believe the % RB offered can vary from 5% to 25% and theres a secret formula for that. It will vary from player to player and it can also change. eg. in 2 weeks you might get a 'rake 1500 to get 150' offer. 

Everyone has an individual one and it will likely change slightly every 2 weeks. 

If you suddenly play a ton you will start getting bigger bonuses (eg. rake 3k to get 450), if you play less the bonuses will (eventually) get smaller (eg. rake 800 to get 160).

Is there an affiliate race coming up in Q4 of 2023?

IIRC we used to have one small one per month but now it seems be a big monthly one every couple of months.

I assume its to balance the promos so each quarter has a bootcamp, an XP race and an affiliate race, all on different months?

Hexapro tickets are a fun spin IMO.

Might be worth posting the full HH next time and explaining what you think is suspicious.

FWIW most of the time someone makes an accusation of collusion it is simply someone bad at poker playing erratically.

FWIW I can't see SNG satties being a thing, agree w Andy there's no way these run.

FWIW I started out in poker playing 6-max SNGs / HUSNGs and transitioned to  6-max cash, in part because it was clear that there wasn't going to be long term progression within SNGs. I'm not talking specifically about Unibet, this is just what is happening in the industry.

WRT the proposed changes:
1) Maybe some MTT regs flick in a 5 player SNG sometimes???
2) Love it. IMO 5 seat SNGs and all MTTs should have antes in play from the start. It makes for more meaningful play from hand 1 and encourages action. Nits are punished and loose action players (LAG regs or recs) are rewarded. I actually like the idea of a cash game with antes as a daily special. Call it Ante-Hero Afternoons?
3) Sure why not.

I don't think any of this matters much though, as Andy said jackpot SNGs killed single table SNGs (be it HU, 5max 6max 9max whatever).

Every poker site has pushed jackpot SNGs very hard in advertising and promos, rec players like the jackpots and all the regs just follow the recs. This comes at the expense of SNG volume.

It is also very hard for Unibet to push against the industry wide movement, for example there is virtually nobody streaming or making content about SNGs, its all cash or MTTs (MTTs being very popular on twitch).

If someone asked me 'I want to make it in poker, what format should I play' i would tell them to avoid sngs because there is no ecosystem above nanostakes, learn either cash or comps because those run at every stake.

There is also a kind of economy of scale in terms of liquidity. Rec players do not want to wait around for a game to start, they want to click 'register' and be immediately playing hands. So if volume is lower in SNGs they just go play Hexas / cash that will snap run, meaning volume is even lower in SNGs, so people have to wait longer for a game, so they play Hexas / cash.

HUSNGs are a bit different because you only need 2 players for it to run and you will get regs just waiting for a game so I see those having much more of a future.

TLDR: SNGs are dead, long live Hexapros.

Yeah would love to see more events in the UK.

You get loads of players (easily 400) for a 1k in London so its not like there is a lack of interest.

• Fixed issue with Loyalty step 7 being reached earlier than expected

This sounds like a feature not a bug xD.

@novy

Its an XP race for certain people who signed up through specific affiliates.

Essentially certain affiliate sites will advertise Unibet and direct people to go sign up to Unibet through their link. 

Unibet pays these affiliate sites a commission of what these players rake (maybe they get eg. 5% of what these players rake).

In turn, these affiliate sites give a portion of this commission back to the people who signed up through them. 

in 2023 there seems to be a monthly XP race once a quarter where the people who rake the most (across all games / stakes) get prizes. 

The more you rake (as an affiliate player) the higher you climb the leaderboard and the more you stand to win.

BTW, you cant join the affiliate once you have signed up to Unibet. If you signed up through one of the specific affiliates then you are in the race, if you didn't you are not.

You can search on the leaderboard to find yourself, it has your first and last initial and your rake in cents. Eg. if you are John Smith and you have raked 50 euros it will show:

J. S. 5000.

Hope this makes it clear!

@Andy-Unibet Many thanks for the response, that all makes a lot of sense 🙂

Yeah you gotta have that beautiful gold background. It feels incredible to see that, or I assume it will do when I actually hit the 1000x.

RIP, this might be one of those daydreams that is kind of good in theory but where the technology just isn't there yet. IDK, maybe in some random future update there will be a need for a perfect universal cards up replayer and it becomes possible.

Solution: I will fire up OBS when I finally hit the 1000x multiplier and cast my own win. 

@bctrips Very good comment, I defer to you wrt 400NL as I'm sure you know more about the 400NL meta than me.

Your point about games not just solely running around rec players is huge. I see on other sites games where a reg is sat on a table for ages with nobody else sitting, eventually a rec sits and 2 mins later the entire table is full of regs, then one the spot busts the game breaks almost instantly. This isn't just high stakes either, I have seen this at at stakes as low as 100NL on certain specific sites / dodgy app clubs. Unibet has done a really good job of making sure that this isn't the meta here. 

FWIW I wasn't suggesting simply canning bootcamps without a similar big promo, I agree that rewards are super important. You can see the difference between rewards vs no rewards sometimes when a site / club sometimes offers no rewards and then a month later has some kind of promo on. Its like night and day, suddenly when there is a prize for raking more then people want to battle not bumhunt.

@Stubbe-Unibet  Disclaimer: I am not hugely tech illiterate and also can only see a partial picture (I can see what users see not what Unibet management has access to). When I finish a hexapro I can open the replayer and watch every hand in order, seeing my own hole cards. I assumed there was an equivalent version for management with all the hole cards face up. I was apparently wrong xD.

I have no clue how much of an effort it would be to create a cards up replayer that can work through an entire Hexa / FT hand by hand. As you said it already exists for the final hand in the game lab so IDK how much extra work it is to add the rest of the tournament. You might have to ask a full time developer, I genuinely have no idea if this would take 1 hour or 6 months of developer time. On the plus side this would have numerous uses, I assume it would be the most intuitive way to view tournaments / hexas / sngs internally. Eg. If I worked for Unibet and I was reviewing a final table for potential collusion / botting / cheating then viewing the hand histories in turn in a replayer would be the most intuitive way to look for anomalies. Viewing everything in raw text would be pretty challenging.

When I suggested this I was imagining receiving either:

1) A video of the entire Hexa / FT with hole cards up.

2) A link to some kind of replayer of the event so I can click through the actions myself.

Does Unibet have a cards up replayer for individual hands?

If you have that then its doable.

Its possible to play a HH in one window, then cut to playing the next HH in a fresh window, then the next HH in a third window and on and on. This would be kind of finnicky to do but it could be edited down in OBS or whatever video editor to make it smooth such that the transition from one hand finishing to the next starting is instantaneous, as if its just one long replay. The viewer of the final product wouldn't even know what had happened it would just look like eg. 25 hand histories that progress naturally.

I realise that this would be quite slow to do, specifically the process of using editing software to cut the transition from one hand to another. It is completely doable though.

I'm not sure if I understand this correctly / have explained this coherently so let me know if this makes any kind of sense. I never claim to be a tech expert xD.