Just North of Wrigley Field

posted by James - 4:22 PM

Sorry, but I kinda wrote this in two parts...

So close... yet so donktastic... finished 9th in the Daily Dollar on FTP tonight. I wish I had said something here... I was twittering my butt off, but it was hard to keep up with everything and play my game... which I was doing pretty successfully... until the end.

Made the final table. Third in chips to start... got into a hand with the chip leader and I was done. He had a nut flush draw on the flop and he called my all in with it and hit his kicker to beat my pocket pair. Yeah, I turned $1 into $110... but I don't need to tell anyone in here how much money I left on the table. Amazed by my play until the end... I was down to 700 in chips when it was 60-120 and made amazing moves the whole way through... moves i usually don't have in my arsenal... but I can't be satisfied by this.

I have this ridiculously bad feeling that this is just another hot streak I'm on, but even when I've done that I've come up with a couple massive victories. Right now, I'm getting lots of medium-sized wins and deep runs in massive multi-tables that only lead to mediocre returns comparatively. I'm kinda worried that it's not going to last much longer, and I won't have the big score to show for it.



I feel a lot better about it this morning than I did last night. Also... I had been trying to complete the Chris Ferguson Bankroll Challenge on Full Tilt Poker Academy and the win put me over the "Increase your bankroll by 25%" requirement! So, even though I swear I should have been over that a long time ago with all the satellites I had been winning and HU SNGs as well, the 9th-place finish definitely pushed me over that. So, now I can move on to a new challenge!

In case anybody hasn't discovered the Full Tilt Poker Academy, if you're a SNG or Ring game player and you're not using it, you're missing out. They reward you for what you're already doing. If you play ring games and SNGs enough, you can easily earn Tournament Tokens through playing there as well as all other kinds of merchandise, etc. And if you were looking to take a stab at playing ring games, they'll definitely teach you good strategy. Unfortunately, they don't have any that are geared toward MTT or satellite players, but I would think they would in the future.

Some other advice that I'm seeking... the win definitely pushed up my possibilities as far as bankroll management. I've always been content to grind at the lower levels, but I've always known I've been playing well under even uber-conservative bankroll restrictions (i.e. playing in the Daily Dollar, which is just ridiculous value). Do I loosen that up and play a little bit higher now just with a restriction on how much I could lose before I return to the lower levels again?

It's always hard to want to change something that is working so well. And I'm not sure I would be ready for the jump in play level from freerolls, $1-$2 MTTs and SNGs, occasionally $4 after rebuys are considered, to say $8-$10 MTTs and/or $5 SNGs.

Also, something I found hilarious... I follow my progress on sharkscope often... and my ROI graph always used to go from the lower left corner to the upper right corner in a straight line from my $1 ROI to my $2 ROI. I haven't played at enough other levels to have them on there... and now this morning, it goes from the upper left corner to the lower right! Just interesting to look at.

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