The grind is still the grind - still floating around $600 in bankroll, with the overall holding at about -$90 through 1550ish tourneys. I don't have all my data in front of me, so it's an estimate.

I've been able to play about 120 more tourneys at the $13 level, mixed in with about 30 lower level tournaments when I dipped below the self-imposed mendoza line. My ROI at the $6.50s has considerably improved - up to 6.85% over about 500 games, while my ROI has been about the same at the $13s, about -5%. One of these days I'll hit an upswing up there. For now, I'm still at about -0.5% ROI overall.

I also just crossed the 9,000 FPP threshold. I'm also on the verge of a cash bonus from Stars called a "Stellar Reward" - where they actually pay you money if you hit a yearly benchmark for VIP points. In this case, it will be 10,000 VIP points for $50. I'm probably between 5 and 10 days away from earning this. It will probably be my final Stellar Reward for this year. However, once they reset in January, I'll be able to hit a bunch of $10 bonuses, as well as a $50 bonus, within the first two months, which might really help to supplement my meager bankroll.

As for the FPPs... once I get to 13,500, I can elect to buy into a $215 tourney at the max value, something I'm actually toying with. I have a lot of documented success in MTT, even in a couple of bigger tourneys, but my mind has been so geared towards STT that I'm really out of recent practice and wary of switching it up. I'll have to think about it some more. However, if I were just to place in a tourney like this and unlock more bankroll, it could mean jumping up a lot earlier. Obviously, there is the lure of the Lottery Mindset as well.

The Lottery Mindset is one of the only things about MTT that I truly miss. Having had some success at a couple of big tournaments, it's not unrealistic to sit back and dream of what it would be like to take down $150,000k or so in one of the Sunday Millions. After all, I have placed 1st in a $300, as well as 11th in the Sunday Million before. In STT, you really don't have the opportunity to dream about a big cash - it's just grind, grind, grind, grind, grind. However, I really don't miss playing a single tournament for say, 11 hours, to bubble out in 85th place out of 500 entrants in deep stacks, nor do I miss spending all sunday to eke out a $4.00 profit with zero rakeback. Can you say "argh"?

I figured out today that if I were to just break even at $13s for 2011 playing 36 tourneys a day, I would still earn $800 in Stellar Rewards, and roughly $2,100 in FPPs by earning about 70k in VIP points. I would earn about $3,000 in total value. If I can just break even by mixing in 35% $25s, I can hit the PlatinumStar level monthly, and Supernova by year's end, multiplying my rewards considerably. This will require approximately a $1700 starting bankroll, but it would also mean that I would earn roughly $2,000 in Stellar Rewards and $3,040 in FPPs, a considerable jump up from $3,000 in rewards to $5,000...