[x] Black Card

Today I achieved Black Card Status on Full Tilt. What does this get me, you ask? Not a whole lot....basically double rewards points which were previously nearly useless, and the ability to spend them on cash bonuses which are convenient but a slightly worse deal that tournament tickets if I'm not mistaken (that doesn't account for the time it takes to actually play a tournament, or the fact that I'd likely be a losing player in the ones I played, so actually I guess the bonii are somewhat useful). There has been a lot of hooting and hollering on the internet about this new way of doing things at Full Tilt, and my general research indicates the following. I could be wrong about all this, but I'd have to be off by a fair bit for it to be correct for me to switch over to Stars.

1. It's slightly easier to achieve Supernova on Stars than maintain Black Card status for a full year.

2. It's still a better deal to play on Full Tilt unless you can achieve Supnova Elite status on Stars, which takes a metric ass ton of hands (a million points in a year, and 6 points to the table for every dollar raked, so roughly speaking....I mean a lot of freaking hands).

In other news I am getting much better at internet poker. I realized I had been over adjusting and kind of tilting at the same time. Once I started to lose, I started making just absurd call downs, justifying them by saying "It's the internet everyone bluffs all the time!" That attitude isn't really accurate. Sure a lot of people bluff, but different player types do it in different (and fairly predictable) ways. Like if a loose passive fish does the old check/call check/raise he still usually has the nuts. Really the key is figuring out who you're dealing with and what his raise is likely to mean, then making a decision (this is super duper obvious I know but the salient point for me is that the array of player types I'm dealing with now is much larger than the one I had to contend with live....in live 20/40, basically everyone is loose/passive). My first week ended on a rough note, but so far in 12 days I have played 25K hands and am showing a total win rate of 1.05 big bets per 100. I'm back above water in 3/6, and am close to break even in 5/T, and am still obliterating the 2/4 games. It's actually a pretty simple way to make a not that great living so far, but if I can crank up the stakes and volume just a little over the coming weeks it will really make sense to make the switch permanently.

And finally, I'm actually "going out tonight", where "out" is "The Bike" and "tonight" is basically the middle of the afternoon. Maybe I'll see some of you there.