Cruise Confirmed!!

[MicroBob]

Thanks again for the terrifc support everyone.


Dear Robert,


Congratulations to being amongst the first 20 people to qualify for this promotion! I have verified your Party Points and we are very pleased to offer you a PPM IV cruise package for 50,000 Party Points. I will take care of the necessary steps by Tuesday, and you will hear from us again shortly.

In the meantime, please continue to enjoy the Party!!!


Kind regards,


Irina Cornides

[itsmarty]

Way to go, MicroBob! I see there's a server upgrade scheduled tomorrow...is that in anticipation of your lengthy trip report? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Martin

[MicroBob]

Now that's pretty funny!!!

[Emmitt2222]

Haza! Congrats and enjoy, you definitly freakin earned that one and Im glad you didnt get sucked out by all those fish who tried to get 1million referals

[wuwei]

Congrats, man. Glad to see all those hands paid off /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Inthacup]

wow. congrats!

We'll have to meet up.

Cup

[gila]

congrats Bob!
Good luck

[lorinda]

Chalk one up for the good guys.

Nice one Bob, good luck.

Lori

[fluff]

Woohoo!

Congrats Bob! Well deserved.

[Zetack]

Congrats!

I personally doubted that you'd get frozen out by a bunch of teams. I was skeptical that there were very many guys out there who had another one or two guys that they would trust playing their account for relatively high stakes, that would also be willing to do it for somebody else to get the cruise.

And as far as the refer a friend...how many of us have 23 untapped buddies who we can hit up to join a poker site? If you were in a fraternity perhaps.

My biggest doubt was that you could hit the numbers. I seem to recall your own analysis before you started was that it was close to impossible. Though that turned out to be way wrong. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Excellent work.

--Zetack

[busguy]

NNNNNNNIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCEEEEEEE EEEEE


/images/graemlins/cool.gif busguy

[MicroBob]

Agree with much of what you say.

But the number of people saying they knew about it ahead of time or they could easily get 23 RAF's or whatever started to convince me differently.

Afterall...a lot of people were telling me I had no chance...and in my sleep-deprived state it was easy to convince me...in fact, you probably could have convinced me that aliens were watching me through my TV set.


The numbers did look bad when I first ran through them....but some of my calculations were on 5/10 6-max.

I moved up to 10/20 6-max and decided to stay there as long as I didn't get totally clobbered (I broke even).

And I got hands in MUCH faster than I had previously calculated.
Basically, if I just sit there without a break I was close to 100 hands/hr per table. I had originally guessed 75 hds/hr and never dreamed I was getting hands in that fast.

I would play almost 4k total hands during the 10-hour happy-hour period...and about 3,500 would be raked (no flop means no rake on 10/20).

Since it's double-points during the happy-hours that was almost 7k points during that 10-hour stretch alone.

So it was really much easier than I had originally thought it was going to be (although it was still pretty exhausting).

[RollaJ]

Awesome, Well Done

[TylerD]

Nice one Bob! Out of interest how much did you make over those 4 days?

[Dangergirl]

Congrats Bob,
And hope you have a great time on the cruise. It is well deserved /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[ddollevoet]

Very nice. Congrats.

[BottlesOf]

Congrats dude, have a great time.

[ipp147]

Congrats and good luck on the cruise

[MicroBob]

I lost $100 during my 4-day stretch over about 20k hands of 10/20 6-max.


My pokertracker shows a +$600 profit though which is how I thought I was doing....but my account balance is -$100 from where I started.

I think I got briefly disconnected on a bunch of hands where I had a few bets in the pot and ptracker failed to import them thus the discrepancy in the numbers.

There were a couple specific hands I remember where I had a brief connection issue and then would get back on just in time to see me get rivered in a huge pot.

[sublime]

hey bob-

congrads, enjoy the trip!

[Baulucky]

You 'da man!. Now, please win the cruise tourney. OK?.

[solucky]

well done BoB, cross my fingers and gl

[goodguy_1]

Your perseverence paid off Bob...good luck!Way to work your ass off for something you really wanted--you're like a fuggin pitbull--go get em.

[SteamTrain]

Awesome, I was rooting for you. you deserved it

[TheMetetron]

Postcard Confirmed!!

[groo]

Right Freakin' ON!!!!!!!

[Inthacup]

well, 1st is pretty much locked up, but Bob and Daryn are welcome to battle it out for 2nd /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[AAmaz0n]

Congrats Bob!

I have to admit, I thought that you might be drawing dead with the RAF and teams; glad that I was wrong.

Enjoy the cruise, best of luck.

Shauna

[MicroBob]

LOL....thanx goodguy (and everyone else too).


I just saw my cat laying on my Pokerstars t-shirt on the floor (the one they sent me for making the final-table of the zoo tsunami-relief tourney) and was thinking it would be kinda funny if I showed up on the boat wearing it.

I also have shirts from absolute and pokernow.


I probably won't do it because it really would be kinda rude and I certainly don't have anything against party these days.
But it would still be amusing if I somehow rotated shirts from different online-rooms while on the cruise.

[Tenacious A]

Congrats Bob. That is freaking sweet. I didn't see an update on the following...
[ QUOTE ]
and I will do some much deserved drinking and going out at that time

[/ QUOTE ]
How'd that work out?

While getting the 30k points in 4 days was impressive, it's inconceivable how you did it while making 200 daily posts and blogging at the same time. I'm picturing 7 year olds sitting by their computers hacking away on the keyboard while telling themselves "I AM MICROBOB" ala Nike's "I am Tiger Woods" commercials from a few years back.

[MicroBob]

you are SOOOO going down!!

I've got Harrington's book and I'm actually going to read it this month.

You have no chance.

[TomR]

Congratulations Bob!

It's nice to see when good things happen to good people.

Good luck on the cruise.

[B00T]

Congrats Bob, I was one of your doubters, with RAF's causing your demise.

[ QUOTE ]
I just saw my cat laying on my Pokerstars t-shirt on the floor (the one they sent me for making the final-table of the zoo tsunami-relief tourney) and was thinking it would be kinda funny if I showed up on the boat wearing it.


[/ QUOTE ]

When did you get this? Mine hasnt come yet...

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
and I will do some much deserved drinking and going out at that time


How'd that work out?

[/ QUOTE ]


I'll let you use your imagination.



[ QUOTE ]
it's inconceivable how you did it while making 200 daily posts and blogging at the same time.

[/ QUOTE ]


playing 4-tables at a time ALL freaking day and there's just no chance you will be to able spend it fully concentrating on the tables regardless of whether you are surfing/posting or not.

The posts and surfing, etc just keep me from getting quite as bored.


Not sure about the idea that a group of 7-year-olds would want to be anything like me. Sounds pretty demented.

[MicroBob]

got the shirt and hat probably 2 weeks ago.

if you haven't gotten yours yet I would write to stars.

[AAmaz0n]

[ QUOTE ]
I probably won't do it because it really would be kinda rude and I certainly don't have anything against party these days.
But it would still be amusing if I somehow rotated shirts from different online-rooms while on the cruise.

[/ QUOTE ]

You might want to take them with you. The Party folks are even more obnoxious in person and will likely irritate you to the point where you enjoy wearing other rooms shirts around them.

Don't get me wrong; the cruise is a blast. Linda Johnson and the CP cruise staff are first rate and I had a great time last year, but all of my interaction with the Party folks made me hate the site more than ever. If I ever go back, I'll make a point of wearing every item that has another rooms name on it.

Again, have a great time.

Shauna

[madmisha]

Congratulations. A very nicely done promo by Party, I am glad everything worked out for you, any update on the guy with RAF's?

[Adde]

Well done Bob! I didn't think you got it at first, when I woke up today and didn't find anything in the Zoo. Congrats.

Adde

[Rudbaeck]

I was sure you were drawing dead on this one, but I am very pleasantly surprised that you pulled through.

Maybe Party decided to quietly void those who got their points from TAF 'abuse', or the idea just didn't catch on? People not taking advantage of online offers seems unnatural in the extreme, I mean adults took vacations to play on big teams to get a char to the top of the Diablo 2 ladder for christs sakes!

[jasonHoldEm]

Nice! Congrats bob! You owe me a postcard.

J

[Bellagibro]

Good work Bob. Now you just need to win the whole darn thing.

[afk]

Bang up job, microbob. Keep it up and enjoy yourself on the cruise.

[liquidboss]

Right on man, glad to see all the time you spent paid off in the end.

[Shoe]

Congrats Bob!!! Good luck on the boat!

[gazarsgo]

[ QUOTE ]
I was sure you were drawing dead on this one, but I am very pleasantly surprised that you pulled through.

Maybe Party decided to quietly void those who got their points from TAF 'abuse', or the idea just didn't catch on? People not taking advantage of online offers seems unnatural in the extreme, I mean adults took vacations to play on big teams to get a char to the top of the Diablo 2 ladder for christs sakes!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the difference here is that degenerative gaming addicts are much more likely to go broke trying to get 50k party points vs leveling up a character in Diablo 2 /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I mean, think about it, there are probably dozens of people who went broke trying to get the 50k points at the high stakes 6max that the regulars just annihilated /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I haven't read MicroBob's journal of it yet, but I'd be interested to know how much rake you generated; can you discount rake against your taxes for the win? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[lastcoyote]

Awesome job!

[MicroBob]

I guess Diablo 2 is one of those games I don't know anything about like Halo or whatever.


I suspect the theory that many went broke when they tried it is partly correct.
You do have to be decent just to break-even when playing pretty much 'asleep at the wheel' half the time.


I played about 20k hands of 10/20 6-max over the 4 days.
My pokertracker lists the total-rake as $2906 FWIW but I'm told this is not an accurate representation in some ways. Don't know really.


Of my 20k hands I think about 17k were raked...minimum rake is $1.
So lets assume $2 rake average for 20k hands with an average of 5 players per hand (I don't know where to find avg # of players per hand on PT).

that means I'm contributing $0.40 X 17k hands = $6800


So I finished about even...Party probably made $6800 or so in rake off of my play....and I got a cruise.

I'm happy with the arrangement.
And they didn't do too badly on the deal either imo.

[IggyWH]

Nice work Bob!

They probably looked at your stats and said they had to give you a trip for all the damn rake you paid over those 4 days!

It's always a good day when you see the good guys win!

[Baulucky]

I hope you got rakeback!!

[Rudbaeck]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't read MicroBob's journal of it yet, but I'd be interested to know how much rake you generated; can you discount rake against your taxes for the win? /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

You've already discounted the rake from your winnings, so you can't expect a tax cut for it.

[Synergistic Explosions]

[ QUOTE ]
hat means I'm contributing $0.40 X 17k hands = $6800


So I finished about even...Party probably made $6800 or so in rake off of my play....and I got a cruise.

[/ QUOTE ]

Congrats on your well deserved reward.

I was thinking, you actually won $6700 from other players. That's not to bad at all for a few days work. This makes me wonder how much a player like you would win on a site that charged a small monthly fee instead of rake. If such a site existed with numerous players and games, you could easily make 400 grand a year doing what you just did. Making that much is awesome, considering you'd be losing 6k a year at Party.

So this means, someone who is losing 6k a year at Party could actually be a net 400k a year winner without any rake fees. Which means he's a pretty damn good player in actuality.

So in theory, the guy who just wrote about losing 5k in online poker over the last year, may have actually won 400k from other players during that time. He may have had to pay 405k in rakes though, which makes him think he's got a problem.

Very interesting.

GL and bring home the trophy!

[Uglyowl]

Congrats Bob! Are you sure you wouldn't want 100 beanies instead? I would think about this before redeeming your points. Anyhow very nice work, glad it paid off!

[daryn]

very nice

see u there /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[Losing all]

Fuggin a man. congrats

[Homer]

Great, Bob. Enjoy the cruise!

-- Homer

[mrjim]

I must admit, I was one of the skeptics, but great job and good luck!

[Sheriff Fatman]

[ QUOTE ]
you are SOOOO going down!!

I've got Harrington's book and I'm actually going to read it this month.

You have no chance.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting choice of reading for a Limit Hold 'Em tournament, Bob!

Congrats on the cruise - nice to see you didn't get screwed over for your efforts.

Sheriff

[pokerstudAA]

Thats great news Bob - congrats on winning the cruise. Now go win the tournament.

[Jim Kuhn]

Congrats Bob! I am glad to hear all of your hard work paid off. Also, it was very nice meeting and chatting with you a few weeks ago in Tunica.

Thank you,

Jim Kuhn
Catfish4u
/images/graemlins/spade.gif /images/graemlins/diamond.gif /images/graemlins/club.gif /images/graemlins/heart.gif

[4thstreetpete]

Congrats! you definately deserve it.

[r3vbr]

nicely done!

[AA suited]

i only needed to sign up 23 people to get into this cruise?!

geez.. i could have just pulled names and address from the phone book. wipe and re-install my WinXP image on a old laptop (15 min each time) and war drive to those open wireless internet spots to get different IPs.

oh wait..i dont have a poker face.. nevermind /images/graemlins/smile.gif

ps- bob, is that breakeven with or w/o the rakeback? and how much were you willing to lose b4 calling it quits? (ie: how much is this cruise worth to you?)

[detroitplayer]

[ QUOTE ]
(ie: how much is this cruise worth to you?)

[/ QUOTE ]

How much is the cruise worth to begin with? $10,000?

[chesTreasure]

Congratulations Bob! /images/graemlins/smile.gif Well deserved!

http://www.xcome.com/05899/res/file/V00003/Cheers_animated.gif

[chesTreasure]

Post deleted by chesTreasure

[lorinda]

Is "tapper" a phrase for someone who always borrows money in the usa as well as the uk?

Lori

[cigarzfan]

Glad you got it. You sure bitched enough.

[WackityWhiz]

Kinda interesting, a friend of mine played for 18 hrs the first day and got over 10k points... then quit because of all the TAF people making posts on here, whining about them not getting the trip right away. MAN HE WOULDA HAD IT... he's so bummed, sucks hardcore. newayz, just wanted to post that. He was 4-tabling 10/20 as well.

[lorinda]

He may not have got it.

It is entirely possible that Party have given 21 seats to avoid the publicity nightmare that not giving MB would have led to.

I don't really think this is the case, but nothing would surprise me.

Lori

[HesseJam]

Awsomesest!

I admit, I had you drawing pretty thin on that in my book. Good thing you did not listened to us doubters!

Now go, get'em!

[chesTreasure]

Don't know Lori. I thought a "tapper" was someone like little Shirley Temple. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

http://analogik.com/_images/pic_shirley_temple.jpg

[MicroBob]

I didn't see that it was a freaking limit hold-em tourney.

Are you serious??

I know the WPT had 1 limit-tourney each season but I wasn't aware that was it.

[MicroBob]

Unfortunately I don't get rake-back at party...thus my decision to actually go for this was even goofier than many of you would have originally thought.


I guess I would have made around $1500-$2k if I got rake-back.

I was very near closing my party account because it just isn't worth playing there....but then the promotion came up and I decided to give it a shot.

I figured that a 20% chance of winning this meant that playing for 4 days would give me roughly $2k in expected value....plus, the chance that I would actually win 1BB/100 or so on top of that.

I didn't anticipate how badly I would play when I was tired.
And I was brand new to 10/20 6-max so I had to adjust to that game a bit because it does play differently than 5/10 6-max.


If I had lost when I started I would have had to go back down to 5/10 6-max and I probably wouldn't have accumulated points fast enough and likely would have given up after a couple days.

Fortunately, I ran very hot when I first started at the 10/20 and built a nice cushion. kind of frustrating that I lost my initial winnings by chasing badly and getting tired...but I'm not really complaining about it.
I think I got a reasonably good deal for my time-invested and am really thankful that I ran so hot at the start allowing me to stay at 10/20 for the whole stretch.

[billyjex]

Yeah, it's a limit tourney - might want to start playing the Super Limit Wednesday's on Party until the cruise.

Congrats and GL.

[MicroBob]

[ QUOTE ]
It is entirely possible that Party have given 21 seats to avoid the publicity nightmare that not giving MB would have led to.

I don't really think this is the case, but nothing would surprise me.

[/ QUOTE ]


I think I agree with you.
I doubt they did this but do admit that I thought of this possibility.


Do we really think they pay attention to the sillyness on this forum that much?
I really doubt it but who knows?


i sure did pepper them with e-mails about this so maybe that helped.


I think they may have rejected a couple of the RAF types who went after it....and I also think it's possible that there just weren't as many people doing that as we thought.

One of the e-mails I got said that if someone really did have that many RAF's they would be scrutinized.

To that end, anyone trying for it via RAF got a pretty bad-beat..because while it looks kind of strange it is still entirely within the rules and I can easily see a dead-beat affiliate suddenly waking up and getting 23 legitimate new players.



Wonder how many claimed to go about it the RAF way on RGP (which I never read at all). I think we only had 1 guy make this claim on 2+2 to my knowledge.


As for the team-play...it occured to me that getting your frat-brothers, etc to play on your account 24/7 is a bit dangerous considering that most would probably get completely clobbered playing 10/20 6-max.
Plus, there's less incentive since only 1 guy gets the cruise. Sure...he can pay his team-members $1k each for their play or you can have a mini-tournament amongst the team to decide who gets to go...but it seems kind of complicated and I think incentive to stick with it would be less.


The key to actually pulling this off solo was being available to play the 4a-2p stretch of happy-hours which isn't exactly ideal even to many full-time internet-poker players.

I suspect that if they do something like this again it will be MUCH harder to pull it off because people are more aware of the RAF thing....and also more people who are aware of my success on this one will have incentive to stick with it.



To that end...if Party were smart they would do another one of these marathon things RIGHT AWAY (and make it just raked-hands only..no RAF's).
They would probably have dozens of 2+2'ers playing non-stop generating all kinds of crazy rake.

[ShipItToPapa]

Congratulations bob.

Can you tell me when they send you a second email? I got my 30k points after the third day and got the congratulations email on the 4th, but I still haven't received a second email.


grats again, see you on the cruise

[MicroBob]

I had 1130 hands against you during the marathon stretch.
Geez...I couldn't get away from you.
I suspected you were probably going for this thing also.


Getting it after 3 days is pretty impressive.

But I'm curious as to why they sent the initial 'congrats' e-mail to you on the 4th day...they kept telling me that they weren't notifying anyone until Feb 7.

They just told me that they would take care of the necessary steps by Tuesday and that I will hear from them again shortly.
If I get anything new I'll let you know.

[URMeowed]

Are you bringing your cat on the cruise? Are cats even allowed to cruise? Let me know so I can decide if I wanna pay the 12.6k to go. Meow.

[MicroBob]

I am only allowed to bring one companion.

I was going to arrange for my GF and my cat to arm-wrestle for it (cat's paws are weaker...but she has claws so I think it's pretty even) but then the cat said she gets sea-sick anyway and would rather stay home and watch Animal Planet all week (I tend to hog the remote and she's really sick of ESPN).

[MicroBob]

The Grand and Gold Strike in Tunica both have some weekly limit-rebuy tourneys.

I'll probably play a couple of those just to get used to live tourney play.

I've only played in 2 really small live tourneys in my poker-life.

One was a limit-rebuy with 27 players almost 2 years ago (3am tourney at the Gold Strike I think).
The other was a $120 single-table NLHE satellite during the WPO last month.

I need more live-tourney experience before I play in the 'big one'.

the Party Wednesday night limit is a good idea.
Might throw in whatever limit tourns I can find on Stars and maybe even a few limit SNG's.


It's microbob's 1-month crash-course in limit-tourneys!!
I'll spare you guys the updates. I think the zoo has put up with enough of my sillyness....and learning how to play limit-tourneys will be imminently less exciting than my 4-day marathon anyway.

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
I must admit, I was one of the skeptics, but great job and good luck!

[/ QUOTE ]

Same here. Didn't think it was worth it because there would be a 100 other people to beat you to the spots.

I am now jealous with rage.

Go bob!

[CCass]

Congrats Bob!!!

Do us proud.

[Jurollo]

Nice work bob! Remember sun tan lotion!!!
~Justin

[Lawrence Ng]

Congratulations to you Bob,

As a respected poster who has contributed a lot to this board in more ways than I count I am happy that you earned this trip. Best of luck to you on the cruise Bob. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

Lawrence