I am Iron Man

Last night I finally completed enough games to achieve Iron Man status on Full Tilt poker.

The challenge involved collecting at least 50 iron man points per day for at least 20 days during February. Each $10 Sit and Go that I played equated to 7 points so I effectively had to play 8 x $ 10 Sit & Goes each day.

So what do I get in return for this relentless grinding, well I get a nice little Iron Man icon next to my avatar when I sit down at the virtual felt and I can spend my Iron Man medals on tournament entries or exchange them for free stuff in the Iron Man store.

More importantly though the Iron Man challenge has driven me to play a higher volume of games than I would have normally, and this in turn has led to more profit.... muhahahhaaa.

As is always the case, when I blog about completing a challenge my results go into freefall and last night was no exception. The old bankroll took a bit of a knock and I'm back down to $517. I'm not mad about it though, I made the correct plays and was just the victim of some nasty bad beats. It must be someting like the dreaded cash-out curse that I'm experiencing, lets call it the bloggers curse.

With a bit of luck my new Iron Man status will result in the bullets just bouncing off me and my opponents folding in fear of my elevated status.

Full Tilt Poker - Bankroll Challenge 1 completed

It's been a while since I last posted but I haven't given up on my bankroll building challenge. Since my last post at the beginning of January I played a few more games on Party Poker with little success so my Party bankroll is currently sitting between $500 & $600.

I then discovered I had an unclaimed deposit bonus sitting on Poker Stars so I played a bunch of games over there with mixed results and cleared my bonus. account on Stars is now sitting at just over $100 so it's ripe for a bit of bankroll building in the future.

The good news is that during February I really skrewed the nut and got back to some serious bankroll building activities. I had been itching to get building on my Full Tilt account as my initial impressions of the site were good and the competition reasonably easy. So when I discovered at the begining of February that my initial deposit bonus was due to expire at the end of February I descided it was time to really start busting a gut on Full Tilt. Around this time I also found out about there Ironman challenge and it has proved another good incentive to make sure I play a reasonable number of games each day.

It's been a busy and successfull month. I have had a few ups and downs but have been running really hot recently as you'll see from the graph. At the start of the month I was playing mainly $5 games with the odd $10 mixed in but recently it has been all $10 SNG's with the odd $20 mixed in for good measure.




Running Total: Played 252 / ITM 41% / ROI 17% / Profit $413

That means I've managed to complete my Full Tilt challenge in 65 games less than it took me to achieve the same on Party, and I've done it much more quickly, less than a month this time.

The stats I've just quoted are slightly out because there is $80 of deposit bonuses in there, but there is also a loss of $55 from a player transfer to a friend that I was staking, so the bonuses and the stake almost cancel each other out.

I can thank the Ironman challenge for helping achieve my goal so much more quickly this time as it has forced me to play 8 x $10 SNG's each day. There have been a few missing days when I have had other commitments but I've never managed a month with more than 250 SNG's before. At the start of February I was multi tabling with two tables reasonably comfortably but things tended to take a nosedive when I increased beyond that. Now I am happily multi tabling three tables and the lovely steep section at the end of the graph was achieved running three tables.

What comes next is more work on Full Tilt. I still have one more day of playing to get under my belt before I get my February Iron man medal . My target for March is to go for Iron Man again but by the end of the month to be running $20 tables as the norm and dipping my toe into the odd £30. My bankroll target is to be up to $1,200 by then. And.... I'm going to try and get back into the habit of blogging a bit more regularly again.