At the end of July I decided that I wanted to qualify for Full Tilt Poker (FTP) Iron Man promotion. The goal was bronze or better. As I started to play I limited myself to the happy hour promotion that FTP is running. During these certain hours the frequent player points you earn are doubled. Since the Iron Man promotion is based on the amount of player points you earn it makes sense to play when you will get the most points for your effort and money.


It quickly became apparent that the bronze level can easily be obtained by playing on four tables during happy hour. The first few days of the month were fantastic. I was making money hand over fist and it seemed like all my hands held up. Over the last few days however I hit a nasty downswing. Most of the profit I initially made has been wiped out. After multi-tabling between four and six tables for an average of three hours I am essentially back to where I started. Of course some of this is due to simply running bad, some is also based on poor play. Playing so many tables is not something I normally do and I found it hard to keep track of all of the play. On occasion two or more tables would start to time down while I tended to another table. The games I have been playing are also 6 max as opposed to full ring so the action is quicker between every hand. I found that I relied heavily on Poker Tracker to let me know if I could steal people’s blinds or what an opening position raise meant from a particular player. As much statistical help as it provided, it is still no substitute for fully concentrating on one or two tables.


I am easily on pace to meet the silver or gold standard for the Iron Man promotion and will likely scale back how many tables I play simultaneously. Somewhere I am leaking money and I will need to fix those if I want to stop running in place and start to move forward again. There is nothing more frustrating than continuous play with nothing to show for it. I plan on using some data from Poker Tracker to figure out why I am losing money and to whom. After playing so much over the last six days I have a fairly good idea of who the regular players are and which players to avoid. I do not want to continue on this path of being a break-even player and hopefully soon I will be able to say I am a winning player once again. Continuous improvement and the ability to be honest with your own play is critical if you want to win at poker. If you have not yet signed up for rakeback make sure you do that first before you play. If you get yourself a decent rakeback deal, at least you will be earning a portion of your money back which can help a break even player.

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