Who says 10 is too many?

Pokerstars is running a promotion until the end of the year where VIP players can turn their FPP's directly into cash instead of the normal merchandise or tournament entries. You get a better conversion rate if you have higher VIP status, but you have to exchange in bigger blocks. For example, if you are a silverstar VIP you can get $285 in cash for 25,000 FPP's, but if you're a supernova (like me) you can get $1,500 for 100,000 points. One small downside of this promotion is not only do you have to spend your FPP's, but you have to earn a certain number of additional points in a given time period to actually get the money, just like a deposit bonus. But, since I'm going to be playing anyway, who cares.

In an effort to get as many $1,500 blocks as I can, I've been trying to play a little more than usual lately. A few days ago, I decided to increase my points per hour generation and jump into a few bigish SNG's. After playing mostly $55's for the past month or so, I've started to lose a little bit of my tolerance for big losses.

As it is, I am probably the most risk averse professional gambler that you'll ever meet. You'd think that after playing 25+ tournaments with buys in's over $1,000 including one with a $5,000 price tag and another with a $10,000 one, I'd be totally desensitized. But I'm not. While this caution makes it difficult for me to take full advantage of a few opportunities, it's also kept me out of trouble. If you talk to many poker pros, including many of the worlds best players, they'll tell you that they were frequently broke during the first few years of their career. I've never been within shouting distance of broke, and it's hard to imagine a scenario where I even get close. With that said, I wish I wasn't such a big pussy sometimes when it comes to playing for big dollars.

While it wasn't exactly big dollars, I did feel a little nervous the other day when I jumped into three $225 SNG's and two $114's. If I blanked on all of them I'd be out just over $900 in the span of about 45 minutes. I got off to a shaky start when I went broke early in one of the 100's with JJ vs AK. Then I went down the toilet in a $225 when I lost AA to 55. YUCK! I managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when I went down in 4th place in another $225. Sneaking through with a third in the remaining $100 and another dud in the remaining $225, I found myself stuck $714 for the set and close to $1,000 for the day (I'd lost a little over $250 over the course of about twenty five 55's earlier in the day).

While I was playing, I looked up every player in the $225's on sharkscope (there were a few players in more than one so it really wasn't that many unique players) and found a few players with really interesting stats. Surprisingly there were a bunch of BIG losers. There were 3 guys who had lost more than $50,000 (one of whom had an average buy in of $957 per SNG!) and quite a few more who were in the negative $10,000+ range.

Also, I was surprised by the lack of really strong players. There was one fellow who had an average buy in of $250 and was winning $20 a tournament, but most of the other players seemed pretty average or poor. But, the most shocking of all, was a player who had played 70 tournaments, had an average profit of $1 per tournament and an average buy in of $7! What made this guy decide to play in a $225 tournament? His total profit was only $70 and if you add up all the buy ins of all his previous experience it would only be enough for two buys ins at the $225 level.

Since I saw how shitty everyone's stats were, I decided to not give up and got back in the ring. I jumped into two $114's, two $225's and a $335. If I blanked, I'd be staring at a -$2,000 day and probably kick myself for being impatient and risking too much. On the other hand if I did well I could pick up some quick cash. After all winning the $335 alone would net me almost $1,100.

Happily, I doubled up early in one tournament of each buy in. I started to feel better about my chances of having a small losing day instead of a big one and thought that getting back to even was a possibility. We got down to 4 handed very quickly in the $335 and I told myself to stay patient and play it just how I normally do. After what seemed like an eternity we had a chance for someone to go broke when two players went all in before the flop. One had 4,000 chips and AK and the other had 2,000 chips and 10 10. I crossed my fingers and after an A and a K showed up on the flop I was a 10 to 1 favorite to make the money. A 6 on the turn made it 20 to 1 and...WHAT a 10 on the river! I told myself it didn't really matter and I still had a good chance to make the money. Meanwhile I'd gone broke in one $114 and one $225, but I'd managed to make the money and was still playing in the other two. I thought about how cool it would be to make the money in a $100, a $200 and a $300 SNG at the same time.

Play continued in the $335 and no one seemed to be getting any cards worth going all in with. Even though I was kicking ass in the other two, I really wanted to make the money in the $335 and that was where I directed my focus. I took 1st in the $114 when my 33 beat KQ and then I took 1st in the $225 when I beat AK with KJ (very lucky). Now all I needed was the almost $600 I would get for 3rd in the $335 to get even for the day and anything else would be gravy.

I was starting to get a little short on chips when the following hand came up. I had about 2,000 left (there were 13,500 chips in play) and found myself in the big blind with A4 and blinds of 100/200 with a 25 chip ante. The two other players folded to the small blind (he also had about 2,000 chips) who just called. This guy was a total nut job. He was raising a ton, so by just calling he was telling me he didn't like his hand very much. I decided to put him to the test and moved all in. He thought for a long time and then called me with K3. K3? You dumb shit! What are you doing calling me with K3 for all of your chips 4 handed in a $335 tournament? I was 60% to win, but I was thinking more about the 40% chance I had of losing. After a 3 came on the flop and no help materialized on the turn or river I was out in 4th and left thinking back on the earlier hand where the 10 killed my chances on the river and the dumbass who knocked me out.

Today I took a different approach to generating points quickly when I jumped into 10 $55's at the same time! Gasp! I'd never played more than 9 games at once before and the problem wasn't really managing the games, but rather getting them to all fit on my screen AND be big enough so I could easily read the text. Also, it's not exactly easy to resize and reposition 10 windows while playing in 10 games. Once I got it set up, everything worked pretty well. After dropping two duds, I had a little external drama when my wife blew a fuse while vacuuming and disabled our router thus disabling our internet access. Luckily, I was able to get back on after about 90 seconds. Maybe this interruption was good luck because I went on to make the money in 6 of the remaining 8 SNG's with FOUR 1sts and two 2nds.

Overall I ended up winning what felt like an easy $1,000 today in limited action. I still have to play about 300 SNG's in the next week to earn the points I need to buy another $1,500 FPP block so I'm sure I'll be ready for a vacation when I leave for Maryland next Wednesday.

Happy Holidays!