Poker: 4/7

After post last night, I ponied up into a few SNGs and picked up a few bucks. Bankroll to start the day sat at $12.93 / $T9.00.

An aside on FT Bankrolls: FT pays out in 5 different currencies. Most people will play with "Play Money", which is just that: you bet play money, you win play money. On the real money side, the base currency is the standard US dollar ($), and you use them like you would cash in a casino. The rest are a bit more involved.
First you have Full Tilt Points (FTP). They're Full Tilt's version of a customer loyalty program. Garner enough and you can enter into points tournaments, or trade them in for prizes -- a range of things from branded apparel to instructional videos and courses to electronics to a car (a Mini Cooper S, only 6,000,000 FTP). You earn FTPs by playing real money games: 1 FTP for every dollar raked in a cash game you're involved in, and 7 FTP for every dollar in tournament entry fees you pay.
Then there's Satellite Tokens. Available in $26 and $75 denominations, these prizes are awarded for winning certain satellite or points tournaments. Tokens can be used to enter any $24+2 or $69+6 tournament (respectively). I don't have any of these. Mostly because I don't want any of these. Even if I won a $26 Token, it'd have to sit. There's no way I'm good enough right now to play in a $26 tournament. I'm doing good to place in the 1.25, 2.00 and 2.25 tournaments I play. Strange thing I've noticed though. I do better in the 2 and 2.25 tournaments than I do in the 1.25s. I think its because I've got enough theory under my belt that I start looking for my opponents to have recognizable betting patterns, or some logic to their play and starting hand range. I can't count the number of times in $1.25s I've reraised the flop with top trips only to be outdrawn by what at the time was a middle pair that turned into a boat.
Finally, there's tournament dollars ($T). Certain tournaments - notably points tourneys - pay out in $T instead of cash. You also get credited $T (instead of cash) for winning a satellite and then un-registering from the main tournament. $T can be used to enter any tournament, but $T can only be used to enter tournaments. If you want to play in a ring game, you'll need to exchange the $T for cash. The exchange rate is $T1 = $0.95; or rather, there's a 5% commission (rounded up) on a tournament dollar exchange.

I managed to bust out of the $100 US Freeroll really freaking early. Trip 10s vs. a board set to flush that I did not see until after I had pushed all-in.
The Daily Dollar isn't going nearly as well for me, either.
150/300/25, I'm sitting with 8350 chips, putting me in 849/(1418/5773)[1]. Good news is my chair position, most hands I'm acting directly after the high stack on the table - who's sitting in 7th place in the tournament.
200/400/50 Pocket Rockets just doubled me up. Button -3 I raise 3x bb with AA. Big Blind calls me off. Flop comes Q/rag/rag. She bets, I push, figuring she has top pair (to my over pair), she calls; showing Q5. Aces hold up, I double up and put her on tilt. She goes out the next hand on A-rag vs A-J to the big stack, and the table breaks up. I've bumped my position up to around 400/(1200/5773)
250/500/50 Less than 30 people below the bubble. The current bubble boy has 1340 in chips.
300/600/75 Woo! I'm In the Money! --470th currently, but the blinds keep getting bigger...
400/800/100 A tense double-up (KK vs AQ) vaulted me up near 200th position as another prize level falls. I'm at 29K, next prize bubble currently has 6.5K .
500/1000/125 As the blinds keep getting bigger, my stack is holding up fairly well. We're into the $3.00 prize level (720-541); I'm in 275th with a 25.5K stack. I haven't been able to play many hands because of a lack of cards; though it seems the 23o I was just holding would have been good against the pusher's A10. Right now the next prize bubble is around 10K.
600/1200/150 Another blind level, another prize level. 260/530, next cutoff is 360th. Again, need to make some moves if I want to stay in the competition -- I've only got 7K on the bubble boy.
600/1200/150 A8 in the big blind vs A4 in the small, A on flop, SB leads, I raise, he re-raises, I push, he calls. Safe river and turn mean I double up and bounce myself up to about 125th /460. Don't feel too bad for the SB though; he doubled up the next hand.
3rd Break (800/1600/200): 133/436. After a slow start, I'm doing much better than I had imagined I would be at this point. I've locked up $3.50 -- a 350% ROI -- and with 49K chips, look pretty good to make the next prize level (360th place, currently ~16K). And the best part is, I'm not doing anything special: I'm making good lay downs, playing position fairly well, and keeping a low profile.
1000/2000/250: Another run of dry cards. I'm still holding in with 40K, thanks to some timely folds; and I've made it to the next prize level (next cutoff: 270th, ~20K). Still, with 20BBs, I should probably think about loosening my starting hand requirements a bit.
1200/2400/300: Still on a dry run. Down to 30K, I'm well below the cutoff for the next prize level. So at the moment, it really doesn't matter if I bust out: I just don't have enough chips to stall through this prize level. So we up the agression a tad. Still not gonna play crap hands, but I'm gonna have to actually play.
I'm holding KQ off-suit UTG+2. Action folds to me, I raise 3 times the big blind, and everybody else folds. And that's how you steal the blinds.
**sigh** Got a little too anxious. Reraised all in from the big blind with AK. The board gives my one caller a pair of jacks. Oh well, I still upped my bankroll 5 bucks. Now, I need to scoot over to the ring tables to pick up a FTP, to qualify for the $5 bonus for the Take 2 promotion. I was dumb, didn't read the rules closely enough and pissed away my chance at the $25 bonus. Oh well.

06:32 am Quick update... over the past 24 hours, my bankroll has went from a combined 21.93 to a cash only $32.28. So, discounting the $5 for the Take 2 bonus and the $5 from the Daily Dollar tourney, I netted about 35c on SNGs and rings tonight. That's not as bad as it sounds, though. I'm not good at cash tables and the only reason I have been playing ring games at all was to pick up that Take 2 bonus. I even had to re-up on one table because of a misread (didn't notice that the board paired threes, so I didn't take into consideration the dude might have raised preflop with A-rag in early position). Cash games just play differently - and take a different set of assumptions - than tourney play. And I know that, I just failed to take it into account.

[1] That is, sitting in 849th place out of 1418 players remaining in the original field of 5,773.