2010 Iron Man

You can find me on the digital felt at Full Tilt poker. Full Tilt has an Iron Man promotion that goes on year after year. In the second half of the calendar year, players can earn one of four levels of Iron Man status each month (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Iron Man). Each status is associated with a cash bonus level. You earn the status levels based on the Full Tilt Points (FTP) that you earn. FTP's are based on the rake that you generate. The bonuses available by status level are below.

Bronze - $25
Silver - $50
Gold - $75
Iron Man - $100

Since I started my recent stint of online poker in November, I could only qualify for an Iron Man bonus in two of the six months from 2010. I acheived the Bronze and Silver levels for November and December, respectively. Once you achieve the status, you have to release your bonus over the first six weeks of the new year. I had $75 in bonuses to clear to start the year. To clear the bonus, all you have to do is play and earn FTP's. Clearing my Iron Man bonus was ridiculously easy. I accomplished it in the first 3 days of 2011. My goal for the Iron Man bonus is the full $600 in 2011, which will mean achieving Iron Man status in every month from July through December. This will be easy if I move up in stakes before then.

Also part of the Iron Man promotion is a series of tournaments associated with your Iron Man status in the month of December. Since I achieved silver status in December, I received a free tournament entry for a $15,000 purse tourney that played this past weekend. I'm generally a cash game player, so my tournament skills need some work, but I did very well in this tournament. I took 23rd place out of 1,973 entrants. The purse for the tournament was pretty small, so I only won $40 for my efforts, but the important thing to note is that I did well in the tournament. As time goes on, I'd like to play in some more tournaments because the potential for big payouts exists if you can manage to play well. But for now, I'm going to continue to play mostly in cash games.