Where will playing be most profitable?

[JH1]

I'm looking for suggestions on where it would be most profitable for me to play (apologize in advance for the long post). I live in Canada so I can basically play anywhere but Bodog. I have accounts at Party, Stars, Full Tilt (w/ rakeback), and UB (w/o rakeback).

My situation is that I built up a bankroll from $50 to a combined $1200 basically divided evenly between Party, Stars, and FT. I started at the low end and then worked my way up to NL10 and NL25 and took a few shots at NL50.

Now what I've done is I have cashed out about $1000 of this to buy myself a new PC (this was my goal, and I needed a new one badly as mine is 5 years old).

So with my remaining $200 I am obviously dropping down to NL10 again for a while. I would like to focus most of my attention on one site so that the loyalty programs and/or rakeback can actually do something rather spreading my time and money out between so many sites.

So I am wondering if the rakeback at FT makes up for the tougher competition compared to the extra money that I can win easily at Party. I still enjoy the MTT format of Stars, especially the 180's, so I will obv still be playing some of those there. I have about $300 bonus to clear on FT and $120 on UB if that makes any difference.

As an aside: I am also curious how a lot of you are cashing out, especially in the US. Neteller has taken the same action in Canada as the US now so that's out for me. I've been using Moneybookers, so transferring between sites is not a problem, but to cash out I have to wait 2-3 weeks for a cheque as that's the only option available to me. I suppose credit card is the only real way???

Thanks for any suggestions!

[Harv72b]

Being American I have no idea how much (or if) the games have toughened up on Party since we got shut out, but before the bill I found Party tables to be so soft that the site was basically an ATM for me--whenever I needed money I put in a few hours. I obviously didn't have rakeback there, and the "loyalty program" there I remember as being something of a joke.

Now I split my time between FTP and Stars. Stars has softer games on average and a much better loyalty program, while FTP has rakeback. At the stakes you're playing, I'd have to think that softer games is more important than rakeback to your bottom line; at higher stakes the rakeback might be more important (though at higher stakes it'd be easier to qualify for the upper tiers of the Stars VIP system). If Party games are still anywhere near as soft as they used to be, that seems to make this a no-brainer. I would, however, try to work off as much of your FTP bonus as possible before switching anywhere else full time; it's free money & would obviously be important to your remaining bankroll.

As far as cashing out, I've been going with paper checks ever since the ACHs locked Stars & FTP out. Credit cards are also not an option for us Amerikans, as they fall under the whole UIGEA thing (and many didn't work with poker sites even before that).

[TheSauce]

One thing to note is that is you do not currently have rakeback at FTP, you cannot sign up for it retroactively. Not sure from your post if you currently have RB or not. The 5NL and 10NL games at Stars are very soft but i have no other experience to compare them to to say which is better.

[68Mustang]

Go where the people are.... Stars.

[JH1]

I do have rakeback at FTP, but I do not have it at UB. UB was the first site I signed up for as a noob long before I even heard of 2+2 so I had no idea what rakeback was. That's why I'm wondering if it's even worth trying to clear the bonus there because it seems to be so full of nits and a big pot is quite rare.

And Harv's 2nd paragraph pretty much answered my question. So I think I'll do that and clear my FTP bonus first, then cash out and move solely to Party for a while to build my roll on cash games. I think once I manage to get up to NL100 and higher I'll reconsider moving back to Stars for the VIP program (for some reason there is something that keeps drawing me back there, maybe it's the MTT, I don't know).

I tend to agree a lot with Mustang. More people means more fish, and Stars has a lot of people online at a time. Party is somewhat similar to Stars during the morning, but the evenings and weekends are great, lots of calling stations/gamblers brought over from Party Gaming I think.

Thanks everyone for your help!