My Best Online Tourney Finish

I'm primarily a full-table cash game player, but lately I've been trying to play some more tournaments. It's a nice change of pace from grinding it out at the ring games, but with two young kids to take care of, it's often difficult for me to set aside the time needed to play tourneys. I also don't want to invest a lot of money into tournaments right now 'cause I feel my game still needs a lot of improvement, so what I've been doing lately is playing in a lot of affiliate freerolls, tourneys where I can buy in with points, or sit-n-go's if a site happens to give me some free cash to lure me back.

A couple nights ago I had my best MTT finish to date. It was a VegasPokerPro Green Chip freeroll where I placed 2nd out of 95. The prize pool was pretty modest, but the players were fairly decent, definately better than your typical poker room freeroll where a lot of donks push with garbage. I managed to double up early with AA, but eventually started falling behind the blinds until I reached an M of about 5. I then was able to pick a few good hands to push, and managed to work myself back up to about an average stack. I only sucked out on someone once when I pushed with 44, got called by TT, and made my set on the flop. The rest of the tourney, I just played solid poker, and made it to heads up, where I was behind 2:1 in chips. My heads-up experience is very limited, so I'm sure I ended up playing too tight. My final hand I got sucked out on when I called all-in with K7s, opponent had 97o and made two-pair on the flop.

I also played in a PokerSavvy $1000 blogger freeroll at the same time, where I finished 7th out of 21. I was at the same table as Actyper for most of the tourney, so that was pretty interesting watching him play. He ended up finishing 5th. The players, as I expected, were pretty tough, but I think I managed to hold my own. Unfortunately, I got sucked out on pretty badly on my last hand, where I was way ahead on the flop with trip aces, but my opponent made runner-runner flush. It was a great experience, though, and I had a lot of fun and will be looking forward to the next one.

Tonight, I played in a $500K qualifier on Superior Poker where I bought in for 200 POP points. Only one seat was given for first place. Again, I made the final table, and finished 9th out of 151. Tomorrow night, I'm playing in a Paradise $10K invitational freeroll with about 350 players, so I'm hoping my luck and/or good play will continue.

On the negative side, I lost $149 a few days ago playing on PartyPoker. I had cashed in some PokerSavvy points for a $100 gift certificate, and I also wanted to withdraw some of my bankroll, so I had to do some cover play. I should have quit when I played enough hands and was down only about $5, but I continued playing and had a run of bad luck. For some reason, I just cannot do well on Party. Up until this point, I was break-even at the tables, now I'm in the red about $150. So from now on, I'm going to only play the bare minimum on Party when I need to clear a bonus or do any cover play for gift certificates or withdrawals to my bank account.

So, after winning $75 in the VPP freeroll, cashing in a $100 Party GC, and losing $149 at Party, I have a net profit of $26 to my bankroll. I withdrew $1483 from my bankroll, leaving myself $1275 online.

Earnings-to-date: $8571