Aidan's Blog
June 2, 2009
I don’t know why it is so difficult to come up with posts or even just write random garbage here, but it seems like once in every four months I write something. Anyways, here is a little update of what’s going on in the life of Aidan.
Work/Affiliating – Barely any work has been done on my part and on Jim’s part as of late. What is also discouraging is that my main computer broke down again for the second time since April. I had to take it to my tech guy and hopefully he can get it back to me asap. Using a laptop as a full time computer is ridiculously annoying.
That is one solid thing about being an affiliate is that you can take some time away and continue collecting pay checks, which is what we’ve been doing the last few months. As of right now I’m ok with that because the weather is getting nice and there is a lot to do these days in Edmonton. Although, the daily grind of just passing time is at an all time crawl.
Jim and I decided to sell our Carbon Poker mini-sites and affiliate income to a baller several weeks ago. We will miss receiving the revenue that account brought in, but we both felt it was a +ev play to sell as things really seem to be slowing down for Carbon. That network seems to have so much untapped potential. The software is very solid, the games are juicy, yet the player retention is absolutely terrible and if you look at their past six month player volume you can see it’s slowly decreasing.
Vegas Trip - I’ll be heading to Vegas for Independence Day and my birthday as Harrah’s hooked me up with five free nights. I’m not so sure how I feel about five days in Vegas as each day there seems to have 34 hours. I’m looking forward to this trip as Jim and several other affiliates plan to be there and the World Series of Poker is running. I’m not sure yet if anyone is coming with me, a few friends have expressed some interest, but I’m also fine with heading there alone and meeting new people to chill with.
What I’ve been doing - The last few weeks have been party party time and that doesn’t look to slow down as it’s patio season and I’ll have a brand new deck in my back yard in a couple weeks. I can’t complain about Edmonton not being a fun city to go out in. Between downtown and Whyte ave there is always something new to do and people to meet.
I think when the weather starts getting shitty again I’m going to pick up bar tending gig. Just something to do during the weekdays and is a reason to actually get out and do something. Although, it’s been a long time accepting orders from the chain of command lol.
Poker – I’ve started playing live a couple times a week again and it’s been going pretty good. I even cashed in the bad beat jacket pot and got to take home roughly $2k after chopping half with my buddy. We always had a deal if we were playing together and the bad beat hit we’d split it up. The game I’ve been playing is $4-$8 limit dealers choice, which includes: Omaha, Pineapple, Crazy Pineapple and Hold’em. This is the only game I can play and not be completely bored and there is actually a decent group of guys who play the game regularly.
bait: There have been a rushes at playing roulette. In fact, check out my best roulette sites website.
I also have a ton of action on Jim who is in Las Vegas now playing tournaments. He will be playing in a couple WSOP events and other side series that are taking place. So hopefully he can take a big tournament down and make me a successful staker. You can track his success at TournamentDonk.com.
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March 5, 2009
My business partner Jim has been in Vegas for the past month, and I decided to rip down there and meet him in person for the first time. It is quite weird that we have been in business for over two years and have still not officially met. I booked the trip two days in advance through West Jet using my Airmiles. I have so many of the racked up and figured I should start using them. Although, it was quite silly that it still cost me around $200 for taxes and other bs charges.
It also worked out very well that one of my best buddies Vikse was also in Vegas with his girl friends family, and they were all going to Nascar. Since it was Nascar weekend the entire city was packed with testosterone of Nascar fans… Those stupid race car jackets have to be the most ugly and tacky clothing, even more awkward than a towel on a head.
One of the only hotels that had rooms left was the Venetian, which was cool because the last time I was there I spent a couple of nights in the poker room and really enjoyed the atmosphere. The prices were jacked up because of Nascar, although between Jim and I it wasn’t too bad, ended up being $200 a night. We received a great room on the 9th floor, although it was completely ridiculous to get to. I’m not even being lazy here, everyone that was in nearby rooms bitched about it as well during their hike to the casino. It must have taken close to 20 minutes to get from the middle of the Venetian casino to our room, including two separate elevator rides. If I ever end up staying there again I will be making sure that I don’t get stuck out in the boonies again.
I arrived in Vegas at 10:00 am and went straight to our hotel and met up with Jim. After some chit chat Mikeyv04 showed up, and we went and played some PaiGow at Harrahs. If you have never played PaiGow, I highly recommend it. It is a much slower paced game with a ton of pushes, so if you’re not much of a gambler and want to chill at the table games drink for free that is the game to play. I ran quite well the entire trip playing PaiGow and a bit of Baccarat.
I didn’t even play much poker at all, which is quite surprising for me. Played an hour of 4-8 Omaha hi/lo and only won a chopped pot, so took a small loss. Oh, Vikse and I also entered a $150 Harrahs Hold’em tournament, and we were definitely the loud guys at the table. We basically only played it to try and knock out one player to help Jim on the leaderboard. We ended up being pretty useless and both made exits early. Vikse got 3 outed and I put all my chips in with A10 of hears on a board with two hearts and was called by a guy holding pocket jacks. Jim ended up winning that tournament and also won the Harrah’s leaderboard which is quite cool.
The highlight of the trip came when Jim stumbled through the hotel room after being up many hours drinking and gambling at the Imperial. When he crashed through the door I woke up and he said, “We’re going to Daniel Negreanu’s house at 12:00, will you be awake?” I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about and figured he was just talking jibberish. So I ended up sleeping for another 20 minutes and got ready just incase he actually knew what he was talking about. Jim told me to wake him up at 11:30 so he could shower and get ready to go. I ended up waking him up at 11:40 and said, “Jim it’s 11:30 wake up.”
he replies, “It’s 11:40”
“Well, hurry it up then.” I replied.
He got ready very fast and headed out the door and we gave Ann a call back to make sure it worked out. Sure enough, Jim wasn’t that drunk and we were off to Negreanu’s house via Ann. Ann is the mother of Negreanu’s assisasnt and is quite close to Daniel herself. Jim met Ann at the Imperial Palace where she works and I was introduced to her, she is a super cool chick from Tailand who I called M, because Jim prounces Ann much different than I did. Then just before I was leaving I mentioned her and he was like dude, her name is Enn not M. We had some sort of accent barrier and realized her name was Ann. It was quite a hilarious conversation.
We had no idea if Daniel was expecting us or if he was even home, but after about a 20 minute drive from Harrahs and entering a gated community we were at his house. She walked in and said she brought company. Then I heard Negreanu’s voice as he said, “They aren’t going to steal anything are they?” We chuckled, “So should I show them where the money is?”
So we pounded it because I remembered watching one of his WSOP vlogs saying that he hates hand shakes and I can’t agree more about hand shakes losing. I took a glance around his house and it was pretty sweet, huge billiards table, arcade games, nearly every Wii accessory, big pool, putting green in the back yard and a semi-fancy kitchen.
Sure enough Daniel was making a Veggie burger when we got there. I don’t even eat meat myself and I still can’t get down veggie ‘meat’. We ended up talking for a bit and when he realized I was Canadian, he perked up a bit and Jim mentioned that I finally have someone to talk hockey with. Seriously, though it’s unreal how little hockey gets covered in the states. They don’t even bother showing any high lights, which is kind of disappointing for us Canadians.
I asked him if he was still a Leaf’s fan, and it seemed that he jumped ship and is now cheering for Chicago and Washington. Whata bandwagon jumper lol, and he also said something about an even money bet he made on the Blackhawks and Ducks. This got him going off on a rant about how people never pay anymore when they make prop bets and that even though he made a huge +ev bet, he assumes he won’t get paid. This rant came just after he did his gay impersionation for litterally 5 minutes, which he pulled off far to well. It was quite funny though.
If anyone else ends up visiting Negreanu at his house, whatever you do don’t pick up his dog without asking. The little taco bell dogs were running all around me and being an animal dude I picked one up, and I got a slight glare from DN and he asked if I was going to drop him? Obviously, I didn’t plan on it and gently lowered the dog back to the marble floor.
It ended up being a pretty cool visit with Daniel, and he is a very nice guy for taking his time to visit a couple of chumps. Especially, when he had no idea we were coming and just showed up with his assistants mother lol.
There really wasn’t anything exciting after that point of the trip. Jim and I stayed pretty low playing some Paigow at a few casinos and left the following Tuesday evening after winning a nice sports bet and watching my Penguins win.
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February 10, 2009
Here is my latest set up which features triple monitor set up.
Details:
Dual Dell 2709W monitors - 27inch - 1920 x 1200 resolution
Sony High Gloss 17inch - 1280 x 1024
Left Dell monitor running picture in picture (pip) with digital TV feed.
Bose Companion 3 Multimedia Speaker System
Logitech wireless mouse
Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard
Some computer system that I got my buddy to pimp out a couple weeks ago
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January 11, 2009
Our good fortune has ended as Google has removed their penalty to CarbonPoker.com and our search engine ranking position for ‘carbon poker’ is now in second and third positions, according to my searches. It was certainly a very nice gift from Google and we are very grateful that we were able to capitalize from it.
CarbonPoker.com received their Google penalty between October 5th and the penalty was removed on January 5th. I decided to share the information below of what having the top search result for a poker room can provide. The following information is gathered from that time period via Analytics on the following mini sites:
CarbonPoker.ca
19,682 Visits
30,199 Pageviews
70% Bounce Rate
52 seconds average time on site
CarbonPokerNow.com
6,970 Visits
11,709 Pageviews
66% Bounce Rate
48 seconds average time on site
Affiliate stats:
5,353 Hits
7,708 sign ups
363 initial deposits
$92,972 total deposits
Which brought in a surprising amount of affiliate income from poker and side casino games in that time period, and will continue to see high activity in the affiliate account for the next couple months until the players slowly migrate or go bust. However, Carbon Poker has been improving their player retention and Merge Gaming, their network provider, has been growing and higher limit games are now being played. Expect both Carbon Poker and Merge Gaming to be around for a very long time.
Also, would like to point out that Carbon Poker and the Merge Gaming Network currently have a bad beat jack pot that is over $1,000,000. Start playing for your chance to win your share now, by visiting CarbonPoker.com.
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I’ve never been a fan of “New Year Resolutions” although it seems I’ve inadvertently started one, which was basically eating has turned into eating healthier. I’ve always eaten quite healthy in comparison to the general public, although after reading Steve Pavlina’s blog and his success on eating raw, I’ve decided to increase the amount of raw food I eat.
Apparently being on a 100% raw diet is absolutely amazing and your body is given a huge energy boost, although after doing it for a week I realized there is a lot of work, and I’m not sure I would put in the time to make sure, I’m eating everything I need to be for proper nourishment.
I learned a lot just eating this way in just a short amount of time and will continue to eat a lot more raw food that will make up a large portion of my diet. I have also decided to continue to not eat meat, which means I will just have to get a lot more creative in the kitchen.
It sure does not take long to notice how different you feel eating actual good food. If there is anything that the average person needs to eat more of, it is raw food. Furthermore, there are so many delicious fruits, veggies and nuts that taste incredible, so why not eat more and be healthier.
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November 15, 2008
Nothing really has progressed business wise since the launch of Bonus Casino Poker, in which Jim and I partnered with an Aussie friend. The site is well and picking up some serps and it’s consistently being added with new content regularly. The three of us should have a couple of new websites live within a months time and I will certainly blog about.
Jim and I have caught a huge break with a couple of our mini sites that currently rank number one on google for Carbon Poker. I’m sure it won’t last long, but we are quite pumped about the substantial increase in our MGR that we’re receiving :). I haven’t looked into why Carbon Poker received a -50 penalty, but it must certainly be costing them a pretty penny not ranking number one for their own domain name. Although, for now we most definitely are blessed with our current ranking!
In other exciting news, Jeremy Enke has left CAP/PAP 
and has launched a new private affiliate program forum website and will have full control over it, something he lacked with Pokeraffiliateprograms.com (PAP). I will most likely be posting a lot more at his new forum, since it won’t be nearly as monetized as PAP and won’t endorse shady programs that include: BetUS.com, Absolute Poker, Ultimate Bet, etc. So yeah, here is some props JE and the forums can be found at pokeraffiliatelistings.com. You’ll have to be personally invited to join the forum, as it is private. If you’re an affiliate shoot me an email and I can invite you to join.
BTW, if anyone is not watching Califorincation (unless you are my mom), you must start watching this show as it is the best program on television!
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One awesome thing about working for yourself, as nearly all affiliates will say is the fact that you can say F it! and go where ever you want, when ever you want. Here are some pictures of when Natalie and I went to the Rocky Mountains about a month ago.
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Finally, here are some pictures of the house. Many things have changed since these were taken when I moved in. But enjoy
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September 23, 2008
Well, I’m all moved into the house, and it is absolutely fantastic. It already feels like home and did not take long at all to get comfortable in. The house warming party also had an excellent turn out with a lot of liquid being consumed by everyone. I’m pretty lazy but I’ll attempt to put up some pictures soon.
Business wise Jim and I launched a new site with an Australian marketer. Check out the site at BonusCasinoPoker.com. The three of us are also in the process of launching three other sites that should be launched shortly.
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August 20, 2008
It sure has been a long time sine I’ve posted on the blog and a ton has changed with me! First off I bought a house and will be moving in this upcoming Friday. I’ll likely post some pictures of the new place. Other than that I have been enjoying the summer and getting out a ton.
My business partner and I have been doing a lot of work and have sold one of our best sites that had low maintenance that provided decent monthly revenue. We are looking at replacing that lost income using the newly acquired capital and investing in building several mini-sites targeting specific online poker rooms. We also sold another site that we never had the proper time or ideas to monetize the site. Hopefully the new owners can make it more successful than we did.
I’ll report soon after the big move.
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