Absolute O
A goal I've been pursuing for a few months has been to accumulate 10,000 Absolute Rewards Points at Absolute Poker so that I can attain "VIP" status and host private single-table tournaments there.

This is hard to do when you're as a cheap as I am. I was playing cheap sit-n-gos for a while, earning no points at all, then I played a few thousands hands of .25/.50 -- where I racked up an 11.5 BB/100 hands win rate but only cleared a few hundred ARPs. AP rarely has .50/$1games that aren't 6-max, so I am currently playing $1/$2 (866 hands so far) and am at about 3,000 points.

I had discussed the private tourney thing with my good buddy Odog, and we agreed it would be a cool way to keep our regular poker game going in the online world (Odog recently moved from Boston to DC). I warned him, however, that it might take me the whole summer to get to 10,000-point VIP status.

Silly me--last week Odog became a VIP. He's been playing $2/$4 and $3/$6, and lots of it, earning points at at least 4 times my rate. Right now we're recruiting all our home-game buddies, trying to convince them to buy-in at AP for real money just so we can do a weekly, cheap-buy-in, single-table tourney and talk trash with one another. (As long as you have one person who's a VIP, they can set up the tourney and invite non-VIPs.)

Anyway, here is the official Cheap Thrills JD Congratulations and Thank You to Odog :) I am over my initial jealousy and am now looking forward to taking your $2 on a weekly basis!!

In other cool Odog news, the man is getting married and it looks like his bachelor party is going to be in Las Vegas this September! B and I already have our late-August Las vegas trip scheduled, so this means two trips to Vegas in two months for yours truly. Cheap Thrills will be entering serious trip report territory. Woo-hoo!
posted by James at 12:16 PM