I've been playing at Sporting Bet this week and getting my deposit chewed up in horrible beats -- a mix sea of fish and sharks. I had tried to loosen up my starting hands and go for more drawing hands in big family pots, but it didn't work so well. I'll let you know how Counter-Play goes with what is left of my bankroll.

edit 7/30 OK, it went well. I played Tiiiight except on the folded-to-me-button. Passive call, call call, except for 1/2 pot raised in an unraised pot, or putting opps all in on my few monster flops. Cards were poor for a while, so I played very few hands. When I finally did play more, I sporadically limped in several decent starting hands (AK, AQ, TT.) I eventually was able to build a table rep by checking down my top kickers, my overpairs, and my 2prs repeatedly to the river, and thereby earned more folds later in the evening.

Other changes I made were 1) sitting down with a larger stack, so my big raises meant something even to the dopes who don't understand pot odds, and 2) moving up a limit.

Counter Play was good for my head, too. I felt like I was practicing slow play on willing vicitms, rather than being sucked out on. The one memorable bad beat was unavoidable, so it did not affect me for long -- villian held Q7o while I had AK with a K7x rainbow flop on the board. He check-called my half-pot raises until he hit his Q on the river, where he led out with a small raise, which I called. There were others, but I hadn't invested much.

Score? I was down 80% on this SportingBet venture, and now I'm back up to 40%, so I'm gaining some lost ground, and may eventually profit after the last bonus is given.

What I noticed was I was gaining ground from medium pots. The only big pots I got were the rivered monsters in multiway pots.

Anyway... Thanks! So far, so good. I'll add Couter Play to my bag of tricks.

EDIT 7/31 Finished out at 80% of my deposit plus bonus, giving me a profit on the venture. Thanks again, AOK