Poker after six months (part 2)

After reading more, and looking into forums I realized players could get reasonable rakeback at NL10 and deposited another $200 on Ultimate Bet (UB) due to it's generous rakeback and bonus. It's a good site for ring games, but was lacking for SNG's, so I kept my money on PS for the tournaments and SNG's. I did very well at NL10 on UB, and found myself up a little bit of money from games and rakeback after a month.

In the meantime my SNG and tournaments were bleeding money big time on PS. My bankroll had dropped to $30 when I tried one of the $11 $100,000 tournaments (and failed), and dropped to $15 when I realised I was only 16 points from making my $25 deposit bonus. I played only SNG's realising I just needed to cash in one of them to clear the bonus, but failed to the point where I had only $2 left and 4 points to clear. I came first in the last SNG I could afford to play in and played a couple more SNG's to clear my bonus, to get my BR back to $30, woohoo!!! I read up on SNG's at sitandgoplanet.com, which really showed me some stuff. My account boomed from $2 to $170 in a matter of 2 weeks, playing mostly SNG's, up to $6 ones by that point. I felt like it had really clicked, and was profitable finally in SNG's.

Another turning point, is my bankroll booster, the RakeTheRake freeroll. Basically I'd joined UB through RakeTheRake.com to get rakeback while playing, plus entry into a monthly freeroll worth $10,000. The first month went well, and I was invited to play the tournament. About 170 real players turned up, 50 got paid at least $40, so it was a great chance to add money to your account.

Well, I played fairly poorly at parts, and was lucky to make it to the bubble (just outside the money), ranked 51 of 55 left. I had to double up to stand a chance and went all in with AQ to do just that. Once I got in the money (ITM, bubble lasted forever) I threw in a few looser bets with strong hands, and found myself in the top 40. Then 20, then 10. Final table again, in fact coming 3rd at one point. A couple of high pressure situations where I folded saw me coming 4th out of the last 6, and then 6th, and then busted. I was the first player to bust in about 40 minutes of play, as it had just literally tightened up into a blind stealing match. Still I cashed $600 prize money, woohoo!!!