Carpe Datum

FTP

I've played enough ring games over the past couple of months that I built up a bunch of bonus "Full Tilt Points". The only problem is that these are almost exclusively used to enter tournaments or satellites to tournaments, and I really had to swear off tournaments. They just take too much of a consecutive-hours time commitment.

Ring games are much easier and better because I can get up or sit down at any time, at least if I'm willing to play hold 'em. Lately, I've been playing a lot of Omaha Hi/Lo, and that has actually been more profitable than Hold 'Em. Six weeks ago, my bankroll was at about $240 and slowly climbing, but I guess I changed the way I was playing or something because I started going down despite earning bonus money.

It is probably because I tried to multitable for a while to earn cash bonuses quickly within the three-week window they provided. I earned about $160 in cash bonuses over three weeks, but my bankroll actually went DOWN to about $200 in that time. It actually dipped as low as $120 before I seriously tightened up my game, and maybe now I've recovered a style of play that will let me slowly build up again. Playing only one or two tables at a time works best for me because I can take notes on others.

Or maybe I'm just on another lucky streak. Either way, thanks to Omaha and Hold 'Em (mostly Omaha), I'm up to around $170 again. I think the Omaha players are the weakest and easiest to exploit, but there is SO much luck involved that my bankroll will fluctuate wildly if I don't play super-tight (which means I miss lots of opportunities to draw). I've probably netted about $120 in profit from Omaha over the last month while losing at least that much in Hold 'Em.

I think I've figured out what was wrong with my Hold 'Em game, because I'm on a pretty good week-long positive streak now. In the meantime, I've been earning bonus points that you can either use to enter tournaments (for cash) or trade for merchandise. A year ago, I bought a regular deck of cards with my bonus points. This time, I spent a lot more points to buy a two-deck set of plastic cards. They just came yesterday and are very nice, definitely worth more than my $50 buy-in from a few years ago.

Posted by Observer at May 1, 2008 04:21 PM