Things Getting Better

I wish I could say I started really kicking ass recently, but I can't. I have however stopped flushing money faster than the US automakers and have actually won the past three days.

The day after my last post I dropped another $2,000 or so in the first few hours of play. At this point I was in a state of panic. I had about $2,000 left in my account and had been losing an average of $2,000 a day for the past 8 days. This was December 9th and I had to go all the way back to November 21st (three days before I left for vacation) to see a winning day in my records. I can tell you that from the day I was dealt my first hand of Texas Hold'em in August of 2000 until now I've never gone 19 days (I only played ten of those days) without a winning day.

In addition to all of the losing I was worried about keeping enough money in my account to keep playing. Pokerstars has 4 deposit methods that I can use: Instant E-checks (they take the money right out of your bank account), credit card, Western Union and Money Order. The first two have a limit of $600 a day and $1,000 in any 7 days. By the time I was down to $2,000 I'd already maxed those out.

So I asked my wife to read the 1,000 words of instructions on depositing via money order, get a money order for $5,000 and send it off to pokerstars ASAP. It turns out you have to send it registered mail and that takes 5 to 10 business days because it has to go all the way to the Isle of Mann which is in the UK. When I heard this news I had a medium sized freak out. I'd stared the day with $4,000 in my account, and I'd sent my wife out with instructions to pay whatever it cost to get that $5,000 to the Isle of Mann as fast as possible. At that point I was thinking my account would be back to $9,000 in 2 or 3 days and $4,000 would be more than enough to last me that long even if my bad luck kept up. By noon I had $2,000 with no prospects a big deposit for at least week and I was thinking $2,000 might not last the rest of the day.

This was a totally unforeseen set of difficulties!

The last despot option is western Union which while also limited has a more substantial $1,800 daily and $6,000 weekly maximum. This option also came with a full page of instructions including the name of a person in Costa Rica to whom I could send the money. Not a company, or an entity, but specifically "Greivin Navarro Segura." Right after "look both ways before you cross the street" and "don't take candy from strangers" I think every child should learn "don't send money via Western Union to Costa Rica!" Actually I had confidence in the validity of the transaction, but it was going to cost $100 to send $1,800 so I decided to wait until it was absolutely essential that I make a deposit.

Luckily, I told my good friend Matt about the conundrum and he offered to transfer $2,500 into my account until the Money order cleared. Happily that happened today and after a few wins and cashing in a few FPP blocks I'm back up to about $11,000 after transferring Matt back his $2,500.

So why am I going through all this trouble anyway? I think it's been a long time since I mentioned the benefits of Supernova Elite so briefly I want to remind you all (and remind myself) why I'm busting my ass playing for twenty 10+ hour days in a row.

Perhaps the least glamorous part is that instead of getting 3.5 FPPs for every base FPP I will get 5 FPPs for every base FPP. I'm sure the magnitude of that isn't clear to almost all of you so I'll try to explain. Every time you're dealt into a hand where pokerstars takes $1 out of the pot you get 1 base FPP (which for simplicity I refer to as points on this blog - I need 1,000,000 base FPPs in a year to be Supernova Elite). If they take $2 out of a pot you get 2 base FPPs which is the most you can earn on one hand. If they take no money because someone wins before you make it to the flop you get no points.

Playing $10/$20, on average, I make about 1.4 base FPPs per hand. That translates into 4.9 actual FPPs per hand this year as a supernova and will be 7 actual FPPs as a Supernova Elite. I can then trade in 250,000 actual FPPs for $4,000 cash.

To simplify, in order to make $4,000 in bonus cash it takes me 51,000 hands right now and next year it will only take me 35,700. That's a big deal.

The more glamorous part is the FREE tournament entries. I get entry into the WCOOP main event FREE which normally costs $5,200.

I get entry into the Main Event of the WSOP FREE which normally costs $10,000! Plus I get $2,500 in travel expenses, and 8 nights hotel in Vegas!

I get FREE entry into the Pokerstars Caribbean Adventure tournament which normally costs $10,000! Plus I get $2,500 in travel expenses and 7 nights at the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas!

That's some serious shit! And I'm going to get it all! And that's why I'm working so hard.

I've got about 48,000 points left to go. I'll let you know the next time I have some good news.