I've never claimed to be an expert at poker or a killer player, else I'd be playing more casinos and makeing rounds at WSOP. However, I do well for myself at the end of my week. When I first started online it was Paridise and Stars. I didn't care for the layout so I didn't stick around for more than a few months. I've been at Party for a little over three weeks and have been doing terrible. Now I admit, at first I could only throw my hands in the air and entertain some paranoid idea about forced hands for the house rake. I was seeing more boats, flushes and straights in one night than I saw all week. And watching some of these catches on the river really made me raise an eyebrow. But, I just told myself that the ego talking from too many bad beats. It happens. It's natural to remember more of your bad beats than your best take downs. And of course you see almost ten times as many hands online than you will at land based games per hour. Even takeing all this into consideration I'm at my wits end here. I play for an hourly rate an my home games and a weekly rate at the casinos. Depending on the stakes, my ratio stays pretty consistant. Not online. Whether I have it or not, I have to shake my head in disgust at seeing the same thing over and over. You've all seen it. The things that are caught on the river, the constant flush wars that are always one overcard higher than the other and two pair against trips. Now, again, you see more hands online bc the game is much faster, but the ratio in the real world just doesn't work out like this. You can get "cold hands" or go on tilt just as easily. But, doesn't it strike you as odd to hit a slump everytime you cash out here? Now don't call me paraniod or a sore loser just yet. When you go to enough casino's, you find the fixed tables and the shady pit lords. It happens to all of us when we start out as fish. They can do it bc there's always more fish out there. It's the rake that bothers me about this site and the others. That's where the money is generated. Remember that. Now think back to the ratio of made hands that go up against each other. That rake goes up higher and faster the bigger the pot is. Now maybe you're doing well. I'm not dead here, but I'm not makeing any money. Nothing signifigant at least. It's always up and down. And no offense, but the hand selection I see makes me cringe. But then I noticed something. Nobody was makeing any real money. Aside from the tournaments, at every table the money was just being passed around from player to player. The only real winner I saw was, you guessed it, the dealer and his rake. Now out of, let's just say 30 catagories there are about 100 table in each. Each table pulls a minimum of $1 a minute for the rake. That's 3000 tables. All makeing a dollar a minute. You do that math. I'm not trying to spread propaganda here. Just this, if you want to play online, don't play anything less than the 5/10 table or stick to the tournaments. All you have to do is watch a table for half an hour to notice. It's uncanny to see the difference in the winning hands from the 2/4 table to the 15/30. -end-