Day O' Empire

Here's the thing with tournaments.

Played 10, cashed once.  Net profit $386.

A terrible record, but a nice result.  I ran sooooo cold to start and wasn't getting anywhere.  I'd already given up - for the second time today.  The first time saw me heading down to McDonalds to be comforted by a Big Tasty and a BLT Deli Sandwich. The diet resumes tomorrow in theory, so I'm allowed a little something with my burger....

I'd decided that the $10 rebuy would be the last I'd play, even though I'd planned on doing a whole lot more (because of the way bonus VIP points are given on Empire, they increase exponentially the more tournaments you play in a single day).  I'd also been playing a few $6.50 turbos on PokerStars, backed into 4th place (4 get paid) once and came nowhere near on the rest of them.  Nothing had gone my way.

I was in this rebuy for $40 - two goes at the rebuy bug to top up my stack without going broke and an add on after the first hour.  That gave me a little bit less than an average stack at the break, but it was plenty to play with.  The top 20 from 190 were getting at least $70 back, but I was over $300 in the hole and really needed 7th place to get even on the day.  It's a funny old game - I ended up outlasting 187 non-Americans before busting out 3rd.

For a $40 investment, not bad at all.  It only takes one good hit to swing you back into profit in multi-table tournaments, which of course I already knew it's just nice to see it happen once in a while.  And I should be a hundred or so VIP points closer to being able to get some Empire Poker junk too.

Party Poker have cancelled virtually all of their guaranteed prize pool tournaments.  That includes the Sunday Million, which tonight was replaced by a $530 tournament with no guaratee.  The actual prize pool was $85,000.  They had 170 players.  The $215 Sunday event on PokerStars, on the other hand, is still going strong.  6157 players turned up, putting over $1.2m in the pot - I think this is a record!

The Party Poker lobby stopped reporting their total number of players connected after they shut down for the big American boot-off on Friday. PokerSiteScout says Stars has about three times as many players right now though.