F is for frustration

What a month this April has been. I have played the most poker for a long time, with me beating the volume for last month and points collected by at least double, and I thought March was a good month. There have been high and lows, there has been tears of joy, and also tears of sadness with frustration as well. I have played the $1 STT and I have played the hyper $100 HU to. I have played free-rolls and I have played $210 tournaments. I have played HU cash and I have played the $100 NL cash tables. So you can see I have played a wide range, and thus I have collected loads of points, which means loads of rake-back next month. But I really want to make the next level on the VIP ladder and that means I have about 700 to go, but 2 days later sadly I did not make the points. To be honest I think I may of been worn out and could not find the motivation to carry me for the last couple of days, but hey not to worry, it just gives me something to aim for in May. Carrying on from last month, and I played loads of heads up on the $28 STT, but did not quite run as good as the previous month. Maybe peeps did a bit of homework on my plays via there trackers, but even the fish I played found triple barreling in there arsenal this month, which of course makes it harder to fathom out. Overall I was still a winning player at those levels, but nothing like the last month. I also found it a tad hard trying to find games later on in the night, so found myself playing 14's but also the 54's though not many, but also had a session in the 100's. Under the rules of the challenge, I could not use more than 2% of my bankroll, which for the 100's was $5000. I did come close to hitting that figure but overall I stayed 3 buy ins above it. But the reason for the higher buy in was to play a guy I use to crush on the 28's, he was after 1st place in the monthly point race for the $10k first place cash, hence why he was playing that high. But overall I ended the session 2 games up over roughly 17 games, but of course when your rake is $5.00 per game it worked out at just over the one buy in up, but great for rake-back I didn't feel to confident towards the end of the month playing the HU, so I fell back a bit. Like I said the players must of done there homework on me, but meh. I mention F is for frustration, and if I tell you that I was just 1 card away from completing my Jesus challenge, you sort of get an idea why I am a bit gutted.... One card ffs. It's fair knowledge I like to play the all in coin flip sats, and in order for me to play the $200+ buy in tournaments I have to win some of these, or play the normal speed sats which after you've played hyper, just don't cut it anymore. Anyways, after failing for something like 30 odd $14-70 all in sats just to get a $210 ticket to be able to play the final flip tournament was proving to be so frustrating and expensive as well of course, but like all good things, when you hit one, you hit another straight after, so I ended up with 2 final tickets, and the prize was a $3k package to Malta in September this year. Sunday arrived, and not like the week before when I missed it..... Waited until the last seconds to reg. I don't know if it makes any difference or not, but I have won twice by being the last to reg. Cards are dealt and I have AJ suited, pretty good starting hand, and I avoid the river outs and with just 30 entrants on 10 seater tables that means 3 players reach the final table with 2 packages worth 3k. So I was confused when there were just 2 of us there and the cards where dealt again, with my J4 off v 10 3 off. Now with me saying I was 1 card away from finishing this, you can guess I was ahead until the river came, and of course the 10 hit and I was out, but then the other player turned up and he did not even have to play the last hand because I was out now. I could not understand it, I should not of played the hand until 3 of us where sat down, and I feel I was cheated somehat. Everything was equal, the runners on the same tables, the amount of time to deal the cards. Even if it was a chopped pot, they would still be moved to the next table, but with just there chopped pots, but that didn't even happen, with the guy sitting down with the full 10 chips. So one card from winning fair and square..... I have wrote to support who then forwarded the complaint from me to OnGame and I still wait there response. I very much doubt there going to give me the prize, because I was still only 66% to win even with 3 of us playing the final hand. But I wait and see, and knowing my luck nothing will come off it. I do have another chance with another ticket this Sunday but of course it's all luck with these, but this last thing I keep doing is proving a good thing, I have now bubbled twice and won twice, and I bet I have only played 7 of these final flip tournaments. I did however decide to upgrade my tracker to the latest poker tracker 4, but it seems like that was a mistake as well. It should of been a simple transfer over from poker tracker 3, but for some reason, most of my hands and results are nowhere to be seen. I have tried everything, and support want to do a remote session, so they can see what's going on. I will but I have a lot going on at the moment, so there going to have to wait. But I have noticed, it doesn't even collect all the data from the tournaments I have just played. The above coin flip for the package shows just one hand and thats the first hand, nothing about the second hand at all. I guess because its new there are going to be bugs that need fixing, but its defo wrecking my database for sure. The one good thing about all this play in April is the free-rolls that you are eligible for. If you hit 200 points from Sunday to Sunday you get into a $1k free-roll with about 120 runners in, and if you manage 500 points in a week, you get into the VIP free-roll which is top 3 win a $525 tournament ticket. I can not recall if I wrote in the last blog, but I managed to both in one week, and that's not to play both by the way, but managed to finish 3rd in the cash free-roll for $130 and then finished in the top 3 for the $525 ticket. Not bad for nothing. The VIP normally gets on average 30 runners or so, but of course it takes some doing to get to the 500 points in a week, so there not numpties, so it felt extra good that I could play and beat these players. But, only last week I managed to win my 2nd VIP $525 ticket, and so I now have 2. There is only one tournament a week that has that price ticket, and that is the Tuesday high roller. Unless there is some series going on and then they add extra $525 tournaments, but they have none running at the moment. Also they don't have a long shelf live, with just 4 weeks from the time you win to actually playing. With the lesser value tickets, you normally get 90 days from the time you win the ticket. I also managed to win a $165 Grand Prix ticket. I was watching the lobby and there was a freeze out $22 hyper sat into the said tournament, and with just 1 minute left to reg, there was just 1 player sat in. I waited and waited, and you normally get 2 or 3 jumping in the last seconds, but nothing. Just as long as more than 1 enter, the sat will still play, so of course with the last second on me and still just 1 player I registered and was chuffed when it was just me and him. Within the first 2 hands I knew he wasn't all that just by him limping HU. And within 2 minutes it was all over and thank you very much. To top it off, I played a hyper $5 rebuy Sat to win a $320 live event tournament ticket. I like OnGame because they do not offer late reg, so once it starts you know exactly how many you need to beat, and on this time it was about 15 or so. I re bought twice and took the add on and with just the 1 winner being paid it was all out attack when it was needed. All my hands held up, and went to HU even in chips. He folded to many of my button raises, so when I took a gamble and lost it, all it did was put us even again. Only the second time I actually hit my ace on the turn to cripple his hand of 66 I think it was and that was that, happy days. I have in tournament tickets alone $1750 worth, and with $5550 in cash it's way over the 7.3k, but could be over that if I knew the exact figures. So it's just 2.7k left to go, which is why F is for frustration....... This first week of May has been slow for me. I have hardly played and its now the 5th. I have not been to well, and have really struggled to sleep recently since the change of one of my meds. On top of that I have been getting prepared for my back op which is in a weeks time, and no doubt that will cause me more set back in volume, but to be honest, with the volume I played in April I guess it's not that bad an idea. Below is a screenshot of my account page, and you can see the tickets I have, combined with the cash and you can see I just need to convert those tickets into some sort of cash via the tournaments, and fingers crossed, my Jesus $10k challenge will be done and dusted. Please please please let it happen !!!