I've seen and read hilarious stuff on the internet about stars/full tilt. I can't defend myself but have to laugh hard. I got through the most insane bad beats on FTP as well. I won few tourneys at first where everything seemed to be random and all of a sudden I am running into Quads, full houses and best flips that I have are like JJ vs 99 with 9 on the flop and no help from God Himself. I run normal on play money tables where beating fish is no bother, yet the minute I enter the ring, whether I flip or not, I face some kind of funny hand. My last hand of last night basically went KQ vs A9s (I didn't get it in good, but hey there are two ways to get me down. Have worse and run into nuts - which in poker is normal or have better or flip and run bad. In most cases I lose anyway) flop comes 999. There is nothing else to say just knock the felt. I have had good fun losing approx. $8 and I am ready to bust there $17 more trying to beat their cold deck.
However I went to play on Party as I mildly remembered that the site, is somewhat solid, besides my past experience of having to play too high of a stakes, not many tournaments with slow BI structures.. Etc. However these things slightly have changed to better and I really enjoyed the "no pressure" 1c tourneys and 2NL tables. I enjoyed the action so much, that I was willing to play fish HU when tables were breaking even though HU is my weakest game (or at least so I thought since I couldn't win a flip for ages on stars/full tilt. And without winning last hand, there is no winning player for HU).
I've lost big hand KK vs randomized 7 but still kept about 4+ BIs and basically had only one big stack to worry about. I have managed to get my dough back, but I didn't get the slightest piece of it. This guy calls me down with 5 high for T high on all 3 streets. I am having aces, he is calling down. And he is willing to pay $4 more bucks on the river as well.. Un-freekn believable!
My first impressions? Tourneys are geared towards rebuy. I was basically always against the wall even best hands running into monsters like Quads on pre-flop all ins. It was contrary to my Cash Game, where I seemingly run good, but! I have also played very solid as the suckout sites have taught me. There was plenty of fish. You can overbet to somewhere between 16-28BBs and still get enough action.
Now when I think about it, the action was way too much. Maybe there is some ring operating because same guys paid my big hands to the till by both over calling. One of them always min-raising my limp and then they both went ahead and call something like 25BB re-raise.
Although there seems to be very little or almost no action, I would recommend Party as alternative to THESE Giants: stars/fulltilt, as Party seems to be one of the few places where you can run decent and play decent without fear of having frequent suckouts (unless you mass multi-table ofc)
GL
