New Life!

Well, as some of you know there was a huge Chinese cheating ring terrorizing the double or nothing SNGs in early 2010 (and much of 2009 as well). This caused many of the regulars in those games to suffer terrible results and wonder what the hell was going. See my earlier posts in this blog to get into my mind before I knew about the cheating. It seemed like I was playing well enough to be at least a slight winner in those games, but I was losing my ass and couldn't figure out why. When the cheating scandal was revealed, it finally made more sense.

I had planned on making Supernova Elite before the year began and at the end of January, I was well on my way and ahead of SNE pace, but I was getting killed in the unfair Double or Nothings. My pace started to slow way down in February, until I basically gave up on SNE b/c I didn't think the double or nothings were beatable in that climate. Unfortunately for me, I quit at about the time the cheaters were banned and the games became much easier. So I e-mailed PokerStars about the situation explaining my goal of SNE and the extent to which the cheating scandal affected it and asked for a 200k VPP goodwill credit to repair the damage caused by the cheaters.

To my surprise, PokerStars accepted my proposal and my VPP instantly doubled from 193k to 393k! This gave me a second life, and with the cheating scandal done with and out of my mind I felt reinvigorated and ready to work towards achieving my goal of SNE. That was 2 days ago and after a little under 9 hours of testing out the $52 and $104 double or nothings I find myself at 400k VPPs. It is pretty clear that I will have to focus on the $104s if I want to earn the remaining 600k VPPs by 12/31. I can earn about 700-800 VPPs an hour depending on time of day which means I'll only need a little over 5 hours a day from here on out to achieve SNE.

I have no doubt I'll be able to put in the necessary hours, but for now the main concern is whether or not the $104s are beatable. There have been many players sighted from areas near Wenzhou, China, the site of the first cheating scandal and many of those accounts popped up soon after the first wave of cheaters were banned. I think it's likely that there are still a couple groups attempting to cheat in these games, but the main question is whether or not it will approach the scale of the first cheating ring. With this format there will probably always be at least a bit of cheating, but I hope that Stars is able to keep it in check enough that players who are skilled at this format are at least able to earn a decent profit per game.

So today I sit at 400k VPPs, 4/10ths of the way to my goal with a little under half the year left. I am ready and willing to put in the requisite work, but I am not ready to lose a lot of money in order to do it. The next week or two will give me a better idea of my winrate might be going forward, and I hope the games have been cleaned up enough and that my game is still sharp enough to at least breakeven in the $104s and win moderately in the $52s. The benefits of Supernova Elite are so huge to me that I would be willing to breakeven in profit the rest of the year in order to make it, so I guess time will tell if that's even possible.