These are a few of my favorite things

I played in the WPBT Tournament last night at Titan Poker. I didn't get terribly good cards, but I managed to steal some blinds and get enough solid hands to stay alive for a while. I tried to make a move with a flush draw against a high pair which I didn't think would call--he called, I didn't hit my flush, and I went out 37th out of 67 (or so. I don't remember). It's fun to play in tournaments where most of the people play solid poker.

Iggy set up the tournament on Titan so that the bloggers who are employed by Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker could play. It's a shame that is necessary, because the Titan software really, really sucks. I thought it was slow, but since I run all my poker apps in Virtual PC on my mac, that may not have been the same for everyone. The chat feature was universally reviled, however. Every time there was some action, you wouldn't be able to type. Then, when you were able to type again, it started over at the beginning of the text box, so the end of your sentence was at the beginning. Then, you had to wait until action had moved on before you could delete the whole entry, and start the whole sorry process over again. Turning off the dealer messages alleviated this somewhat, but nothing could make it tolerable. Also, the action buttons are not intuitive. Want to raise? Type in the amount and click enter...but that doesn't execute the raise. It just changes the amount on the raise button, which you then click. I had moved $50 into Titan in order to cover the $20+1 tourney and a little ring game action, but after getting more and more irritated by the software in the NL games, I took my remaining $17.75 and went home. And here we reach my final complaint--I now have to wait 24 - 48 hours for the money to go back into Neteller. What a circus.

I play at Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker. I have never had an issue with the customer service or software with Poker Stars, and although I am still relatively new to Full Tilt, I love their software (except for the avatars. I prefer Stars, where I can upload my own). I tried Party Poker, but I did not like their software at all, and the reliance on the web browsers combined with the ads soured me on it. I know that all the fish are at Party, and that's where the money is to be made, but I don't care. I play poker because it's fun, and because I want to get better at it. I find that the players I encounter in the $11 SNGs on FTP and Stars are mostly pretty good, and I have a good time playing there. It's a nice bonus that I'm able to make enough to slowly grow my online bankroll, at least enough to weather the periodic dips.

So, um...Titan and Party bad, FTP and Poker Stars good.