Online poker so far

Today was the first day I was able to play LEGAL online poker!  So awesome.  Definitely an exciting day and something I've been waiting for for a long time.  It's awesome living in Las Vegas and being able to play live poker, but online poker is a different animal and something I've been dying to get back into.  Being able to play so many more hands in a single night is very tempting, and also TOURNAMENTS!!!  Live tournaments are awful.  They take forever, the rake is terrible, and you have to tip.  Not so online.

The Client and Setup

On Tuesday night I came home, fired up my Mac, and tried to download the client.  Unfortunately I realized that there is no Mac client yet.  Luckily for me I have VMWare and Windows 7 on my work computer, so I downloaded and installed it there.  

Setting up my account was pretty straightforward.  You have to enter your social security number which seems a little sketchy, but I guess it's a gaming regulation and probably tax thing.  You also give them your mobile number, they text you, and you have to text back.  Triangulating your cell phone signal to determine that you are actually in the physical borders of Nevada is something they do and that's why the texting part needs to happen.  You give your consent to be located.

Deposit

First hand dealt to me.  And I won!  :)

They said that you can deposit and withdraw right at a Station Casinos cage, which is amazing.  After work on Wednesday I went up to Green Valley Ranch to deposit.  Waited in line at the cage, and gave the lady $300 and a piece of paper with my email and username (Bluff Meat) on it.  She also asked for my ID.  It looked like this may have been the first time she did an online poker deposit because she had to ask her manager some question.  Overall it went smoothly though.  I received a receipt showing that I deposited $300 into my account, and I was off to the races!

Play

I got home and fired up the client.  Logged in, and sure enough my $300 was there.  Sweet.  

Started looking at the lobby.  The amount of games going was pretty pathetic.  Only a few games at each level.  Right away I notice that there is no way to join the waiting list for a table either, so you just have to watch the lobby and jump in when you see a seat.  There were a TON of things like this that I think will be noticed and complained about immediately that they will fix soon, I'm sure.

I started jumping into few rooms.  5c/10c NL, 10c/25c NL, 1c/2c NL.  Just trying to play whatever I could.  I also registered for a couple of sit-n-go tournaments.  All they had were 1 tables and heads up sit-n-gos.  No multitable tournaments going.  They have one every night at 7 PM I think for $50, but there weren't going to be any more MTTs that night.

The client itself isn't that great.  Here are some things I noticed first day.

• No auto-rebuy on cash game tables.
• Can't resize tables, so I could only fit 4 tables (if I didn't want to overlap) on one big monitor.
• Very clunky if you want to click and type in a bet size.
• Clicking on the bet slider went up in weird increments, like 2 BB instead of 1 BB like I would have preferred.
• Auto-posting blinds is enabled by default which is SUPER annoying because it will post for you out of position if you don't unclick it.
• Rebuy button is present even in non-rebuy tournaments, which is confusing.
• No hand histories whatsoever, so there is no way to use a HUD (which I don't really care about) or track your hand histories so you can analyze play later (which I really want to do).  A rep on 2+2 said they were working on this.
• You can only buy in for 50BB max (20BB min) in cash games today.
• No way to add custom pictures, but you can choose from a set of 20 or so (pretty lame) avatars.
• When the flop comes out, you see the door card first and the other cards slide out which is AWESOME seriously - so much fun to sweat the flop coming out.  :-)

First Day Results

Multitabling

I played for a couple of hours and ended up losing $12.  I played 2 tournaments (a $2 and $5 sit-n-go) and got 2nd in the $5 tournament for $12.50.  Biggest hand I played was when I stacked off my 50BB stack in a 25c/50c NL game with J-J on a 2-4-5 board.  Guy flopped a set of 4s.  Not good but honestly I was pretty overwhelmed playing 6 tables at once, being away from online poker for so long.

First bad beat!  All in preflop.

I also had to do a CAPTCHA during play to verify I was a human being.  Super annoying to do while 6 tabling.  It was one of those standard CAPTCHAs where they display 2 words (well, "words", some aren't even real words) and you have to type them in.  Tried once, failed, worked on the second attempt.  Really hard to keep up with while you are playing.  I have never had to do that on any other poker sites.  I hope that doesn't happen on a regular basis.

Overall I think the client isn't that great, but I'm sure it will improve over time.  It was a lot of fun getting back into playing online poker, and I'm super excited about it.  Looking forward to some fun this year online!