Anyone who’s been keeping up with this blog will know that I haven’t said boo about poker (with the exception of announcing the winner of the World Series) since I lost my bankroll back in April and May.

In case you’ve been wondering, I haven’t played a single ring game for a month. I did play a few freeroll tourneys on PokerStars, and actually came in second in the qualifier and the weekly, netting me $50. That went straight into my Neteller account. And while that was fine and all, it took about ten hours of play for me to get that $50, which really wasn’t worth my time.

The other day I got an email from EmpirePoker alerting me to the fact that I had $10 sitting in my account. All I had to do was play 300 raked hands to claim it. Given my experience in April, I wasn’t sure I was going to last an entire session. But free money is free money, so I played it. Now I’m up $20 after 102 minutes of play, 119 hands, at a rate of 16.81BB/100 hands. Got another 251 raked hands to go before I can cash out the whole thing.

This is nowhere near recovery of my bankroll. I’m hoping, however, that I’ll be able to cash out another $50 and then rebuy for $100 when they send me a 50% deposit bonus. $150 should be enough to give me a fighting chance.