Ugh.  I'm super-busy again (later post), so I may only be able to post a few times a week.  But I figure that's still more than most bloggers.

Anyway, my big poker news is that I finally received my first Merge cashout via ewallet.  It took 11 days (1 of which was my fault).  So now, I'm freerolling with any money I win at Merge (for the poker noobs out there, this means I cashed out more than what I deposited).

It took three days for Carbon to approve my cashout.  I had previously sent in the Carbon identity document verification.  For any regulars playing on Carbon, I would urge you to do this before you need to cash out.  The instructions are on this link. The approval only took an hour and a half, but I suspect in a few months when everyone is done with trying to accumulate their deposit bonuses and tries to cash out, it could take longer.  Then the ewallet asked me for security verification the next morning and I didn't see the email request until the end of the day.  I got an approval early the following morning.  Once I got the approval, it took them about 3 days to process the payment and 1.5 days to receive it in my bank account.  Maybe if I didn't have the security ID check, I could have gotten the withdrawal in 8-9 days.  So I would urge you to pre-submit the security documents with your ewallet as well.  If you are a fish, no need to do all that withdrawal paperwork you're never going to need.

Once I requested the cashout, I voided the deposit bonus.  They had previously declined my request to change deposit bonuses, so I said F* that!  Then give me mah monies!  That $2K deposit bonus clears absurdly slowly ($12.5 in net rake to $1) - it's only like an extra 5% in rakeback, so it's really not worth it.  It seemed like I would probably rake less than 3K a month, so even if I played all 3 months on my new schedule, I was going to clear less than $450.  So for anyone who hasn't signed up, my rakeback site now offers a faster clearing 150% $750 deposit bonus (which clears at $7.50 in net rake to $1).  I'm pretty sure they have somewhat regular reload bonuses, so I'm hoping now that I've cashed out, they'll offer me one.  My ewallet offered me a $1000 reload bonus (which clears at $10 in rake to $1 bonus) - I'm not sure if I'm going to take that one.

But the other reason I cashed out is that work has gotten really busy, and I don't even think I can put in more than 15-20 hours a week.  I suppose that's a full week for many of you.  But before I suggested that people sign up small to the site, I wanted to make sure I was able to withdraw.  And I wanted to see how long it would take.  This way, you can have some confidence in the system.  Well, pending the second DoJ crackdown.  Eh hem.  Anyway, for my second cashout, I decided to try a check.  I requested it on Tuesday, May 10, so I'll let you know how that goes.

I also found out that personal rake race (that lets you earn up to 75% rakeback) appears to be a regular promotion on my rakeback site.  For $3K a month in rake, its 45% rakeback.  But that's still good.  They also give Free DragtheBar memberships if you rake $500.  Wonder what leatherass is up to these days?  Seriously tho, Carbon Poker has so many promotions, it's annoying.  Make sure you go to the promotions page of your account and sign up for them all (later post).