A Splash of Glory at Full Tilt

I spent my day working on an old deposit bonus at FullTilt.com. About a month ago I deposited $1,000 and after I earn some number of points they'll give me $500. One nice thing about this bonus which is different from most deposit bonuses is they pay out in $20 increments. So rather than getting $500 or nothing, even if I didn't complete the bonus by the given deadline I'd get credit for whatever I'd earned up to that point. In practice it doesn't make much difference to someone like me because I'm going to get the max bonus every time, but for an average player this is greatly preferable.

I spent the day playing a mix of $60 and $119 SNG's and picked up what seemed like an easy $950 in about 4 hours of play. I get the feeling that for the most part the players on Fulltilt suck. I might have to spend a little more time playing there. I suspect that all of the best players have done the math on the pokerstars FPP program and choose to play there just like me. If that's the case then Fulltilt should be full of duds. I have to decide whether it's worth giving up the FPP benefits to play against the weaker competition.

Another interesting thing about Fulltilt is they have a few dozen of the world's best poker players who own a stake in the website (technically they own the software and marketing company, but in practice they own a piece of the website). Any time these players are in a game or registered for a tournament the listing shows up in red (as opposed to black) and instead of screen names they have their actual name and avatars that look like the real people. So if you're playing against a guy who's name is Phil Ivey, you know it's really him and not just someone with that screen name.

Today while I was playing 1996 WSOP main event champ Huck Seed was also playing. He was in a few $525 SNG's, but he was also in a bunch of $119's as well. I played in a few of the same tournaments as Huck and in one we got down to heads up. After three hands I won! Sure the blinds were huge and when we got heads up I had more chips than him, but now I can say I played a world champion heads up and I won! Take that suckers!

Tomorrow I'm going to shoot for 100 SNG's in one day. I hope my head doesn't explode in the process.

I'd also like to wish some congratulations to my brother in law Damian's brother Shawn and his wife Amanda. They had their first child today at 11:40 eastern. It was a little girl named Sydney and both baby and parents are doing fine. How am I related to my nephew's cousin, you might ask? I don't think I am at all, but I will claim that Sydney is my niece in law even though to my understanding there is no such thing.