I have been something of a poker slacker so far this shiny new year. My only play has been on Full Contact (a PokerRoom skin), chasing a $400 bonus. The clearance rate isn’t nearly as good as the previous PokerRoom romps I did, but it is going well enough. I’ve been really concentrating on my multi-tabling and have been running 4 tables of full-ring 5/10 whenever there is enough action to justify it. I’m up $318 on the chase so far, which is not bad but pales next to the $1,068 I was up before I got savaged on the 25/50 tables. I normally eat the 25/50 tables up and this was a typical soft lineup, but everything seemed to go the wrong way. C’est la vie!
I’m paying some attention to the protégé promotion. The method of deciding who will get to be the protégé is the most Byzantine arrangement you ever saw (1,500 years later and those guys still get credit for being schemers — they must have been something!) The intermediate target is to qualify for a seat in a 10 person sit-n-go on some all-expenses paid casino boondoggle. It seems like the easiest seats to get are the ones that limit the field to a small number. I’m currently looking to qualify for the top 100 on the points leaderboard seat. The points are earned per dollar paid in rake and I’m currently sitting in 39th position. I have another 700 points or so that they haven’t given me credit for yet so I’m almost 4,000 points above the 100th person. I intend to complete the bonus chase tonight and have enough points to stay in the top 100 by the end of this period (January 15th).
I’ve been following the Negreanu/Dreamclown heads-up matches on fullcontact and he doesn’t seem like the same affable goof in the chat there he does on TV. He’s clearly a very ego-driven, competitive guy and he gives at least as good as he gets in the chat. Some of the chest-thumping is clearly silly, but it does show another side to the guy. However, I’ve played in a few ring games and SNGs with him and he was just as friendly and laid back as he could be.
If I won, I don’t know how much the interaction with Daniel is worth, but having someone pick up $40,000 in buy-ins and possibly getting staked to some higher limit games seems pretty cool. I’m probably more likely to become an astronaut, but the odds have got to better than the lottery.
Once I wrap this chase up, I’ll have to decide what I’m doing poker-wise. I may just go back to looting and sacking the Party 15/30 and 30/60 tables. I’m pretty sure nothing else I do is as lucrative in terms of dollars per hour.