The Quest continues ...

My quest to become a good online tournament player continues as the first month of 2009 comes to a close. I've been playing mostly MTTs the whole of January with buy-ins ranging from $10 to about $30. My schedule would usually look like this. Work from 8:30 AM to 5:30PM, come home, have dinner, play with the kids for a little bit. Then fire up the old PC and start playing. I'm averaging about 2 to 3 MTTs per night played simultaneously from about 9PM to whenever I bust out.

So far, the results have been encouraging. My ITM rate has gone down since my playing rate has gone up. But my overall profit has been on the upswing. Recent notable events include a 3rd place finish in a JBET 1.5k Guaranteed. 2nd place in a 3K Rebuy Tourney at Cake. And just last night, I took down 2nd in a 5.5K FTP Tourney. Didn't really have time to take screenshots so just take my word for it. Heheh

The JBET account was newly registered in light of the recent APT, but I never did get around to playing any of the qualifying freerolls. I do want to wish good luck to every Pinoy who qualified especially fellow PM members. Since this is the first time I played in JBET, I wanted to comment a bit on the experience. First off, the software is buggy. The software would usually stop and hang if you play too many tables or sometimes for no reason at all. This also happens to other sites which I think is caused by the fluctuating speeds of the DSL connection. But the other sites recover automatically. JBET does not. It just stays in that "stop" position unless you close all the open windows and restart the software which is quite troublesome. This is also the first site I have ever encountered which does not seem to have an automatic tracking facility for bonuses. For some weird reason, they are requiring you to email them to inform them that you have already achieved your bonus.

On the positive side, it is absolutely filled with donkey players. I have never seen so many illogical moves in a money tournament than the ones I played in at JBET. It's like people are willing to gamble with junk all throughout the tourney. Normally this kind of reckless playing happens at the start of the tourneys. But once all the fishes are weeded out, then it becomes quite serious and you can usually expect good play. Not in JBET though. Even as we were already nearing ITM, people were still getting caught with weird plays that spewed chips left and right.

Finally, and I don't know if this is a good thing or not. Once you reach the final table, you have the option of offering chop deals with fellow players. They have a nifty module where you indicate the deal and if everyone clicks that they agree, it automatically ends the tourney and distributes out the pot as per agreed. I have seen chop deals happen in Pokerstars but it would usually entail some manual intervention by a PS staff. I guess it's good in the sense that it shortens up some play and you can even out the distribution of prizes automatically. But I'm used to playing for top 3 and it sort of jars your train of thought on how you approach an MTT. I'm still on the fence on this feature, but I would think its something that most poker players would appreciate.

And that's what's happening so far. See you next time !!