NBA's Mini-Steps Quest (Day 1)

So I successfully played 7 mini-step 1s today. Well, I shouldn't use the word "successfully"...

The good news:

My average finishing place is 4.14. Not surprisingly, that is better than my 4.22 average in real money single table SNGs (of course the sample size is extremely small).

I have one 1st place finish (14.3%)

I have finished in the top two 3 times (42.8%)

I have finished in 3rd place or better 4 times (57.1%)


The not-so-good news:

I have only one 1st place finish (14.3%)

I have been eliminated in 6th place or lower 3 times (42.9%)

I will never be able to recover the $18 I'm already down after the first day.


My thoughts after day 1:

So far, I have been almost dead-on with my predictions on my performance. I did play stupid in one tourney as I started it only 40 minutes before I had to walk out the door to work and was sitting 7-handed when I needed to leave. I contemplated just walking out and leaving myself to be blinded out but I was still 2 places from getting a rebuy and didn't have many chips. I tried to bluff a PF raiser when I was in the BB with 6-2 os and moved all-in for my entire stack and to my surprise, he quickly called with pocket 7s and proceeded to river QUADS. Oh well... lesson learned.

Although I only have 1 step 2 entry after 7 step 1 attempts, I feel good that I will get to the originally predicted 19 step 2 entries after all my buy-ins and re-steps have been used.

I've played 7 step 1s, having advanced to 1 step 2 and have 3 step 1s to replay. So, essentially, I have used 7 buy-ins to step 1s but including my re-steps I have earned, I still have at least 46 chances to advance to step 2.

I should be able to complete all my step 1 buy-ins and re-steps after 14 more days of play. This means unless the condo in Vegas has wireless interenet access, I won't be done with my step 1s until mid-July, putting the completion of the quest sometime in mid-August.

But I must admit, I am having a lot of fun. This really was a great way to get some last-minute SNG practice in before the WSOP and it puts a little excitement back into poker (I was - BUT JUST FOR A MINUTE - getting a bit bored grinding out $22 tourneys only to be beat down by bad luck). The way I look at it is my wins in the mini-steps do not = $$, just another opportunity. I know... I must be crazy.

I really hope my fellow bloggers will follow in my footsteps and begin "quests" of their own. Hell, RiverRat will have enough time while the other 3 of us are in Vegas next week!