Starting the Blog Back Up!

Hey all, by my estimation it's been almost 4 years since I stopped blogging about poker. This blog will be dedicated to my online poker experiences at Full Tilt Poker (FTP). I will try to begin each entry with my current online balance, whose value is currently split into real money, and a Full Tilt Points.

Real Money: $53.05
FTP Points: 33855.91 (worth $169.28)
TOTAL BANKROLL: $222.33

How I got there:

Started with 12,000 FTP points last fall (worth about $60), played mostly satellite tournaments with a buy-in of 600-1200 points. Whenever I qualified for whatever tournament the satellite got me into, I unregistered from that tournament and got a point refund. Built up to 50,000 points this way.

I won three $26 satellite tokens along the way, which meant I could play $24 real money tournaments (plus a $2 tournament fee). In one of these recently, I won about $45 by placing in the top 100 of about 1200 players. Rough ending to that one, I had 5-5 and flopped a set of 5's, only to lose to a straight on the river.

After that tournament about a month ago, I had a horrible run of cards. Fortunately, my bankroll management is better than it was 2-3 years ago (I'll write about my new philosophy which was brought about by a computer simulation I created). I dropped from a total bankroll value of about $290 down to about $200. Lost just about every tourney I entered, and this downturn represented about 16 tournament buy-ins at the stakes I was playing. Not unheard of, but a very rough streak nonetheless...

Last night, I discovered the $3.50 (+$0.30) SUPER TURBO! Everyone starts with only 10 big blinds, and the blinds go up every 3 minutes. I thought this would be a very frustrating format, but there's really no time to get emotionally invested in any one tournament. Between last night and tonight, I managed to play 20 of these (2 at a time, they last an average of less than 15 minutes).

The results (finish position by game): 8-7-4-3-8-3-1-4-1-5-3-4-2-5-1-1-5-5-4-3.

The 9 "in the money" finishes gave me a net profit of $21.65, bringing me to where I am right now! So my $60 from last fall now sits at about $222. I know this is a relatively piddly amount, but I'm hoping to report steady growth in the coming posts!