10K Sure Win Cup Tournament - October 2017.
After a return to winning ways in April's tournament, I sat out July's tournament.
I would return for October's tournament, making this the 12th Sure Win Cup where I would spend money in Round 4.
Of the previous 11, 7 resulted in an overall profit and 4 results in an overall loss.
I ended up making a profit for the 8th time, but only just. My Top 100 finishes in reverse order...
Grand Mondial account. 86th place. Used 1 continue play in Round 1 and another in Round 3, so only had 3 continue plays available in Round 4.
But I managed to get 3 FS rounds, the last of them coming on the 5th to last spin of my final continue play.
I scored nearly 35,000 points from that FS round and it was enough to get me across the line.
This is the second tournament in a row I have finished in the Top 100 on this account and the second time overall.
Spin Casino account. 70th place. Had the maximum of 5 continue plays available in Round 4.
I only managed to get 1 FS round, but I scored over 70,000 points from it.
Climbed into the Top 100 with 2 continue plays still to be used. My first Top 100 finish on this account.
Challenge Casino account. 69th place. And a case of what might have been. I had the maximum of 5 continue plays available in Round 4.
I got 2 FS rounds, which both came during the initial entry game.
During the first FS round, I got a double 4OAK of blue jockey (1 with wild, 1 without), but I narrowly missed out on the double 5OAK of blue jockey
as the blue jockey landed on the middle row of Reel 5 instead of the top row.
That near miss cost me 224,000 points (the double 4OAK did pay 32k, but a double 5OAK would have paid 256k).
And with it, the tournament win.
The consolation was that I scored 84k on that initial entry, and was a shoe in for the Top 100 already.
I got into the Top 100 during my first continue play, but the combined scores from the 5 continue plays were so poor that it cost me what should have been
a fairly easy Top 50 finish. This was my third Top 100 finish on this account.
Music Hall account. And my biggest single spin win in Round 4 for this tournament. The missing symbol was a blue jockey.
Double 4OAK of blue jockey paid 48,000. And the multiple 3OAK wins bumped the total win up to 114x. The total win from the FS round was 154x.
Music Hall account. 48th place. Used 1 continue play in Rounds 1, 2 and 3, so only had 2 continue plays available in Round 4.
Got nowhere with them, so I re-bought with a maximum of 5 continue plays available. Got the big win shown above during the first continue play
of my rebuy and finished that continue play inside the Top 100. Unfortunately, that was to be my only FS round.
My first Top 100 finish on this account.
UK Casino Club account. For the second tournament in a row, I land a 5 scatter hit during round 4.
The FS round that followed it would add another 13,000 points for a total win of 126x.
UK Casino Club account. 15th place. Had the maximum of 5 continue plays available in Round 4.
I managed to get 3 FS rounds, with the last of those three coming from the 5 scatter hit shown above.
That came during my second continue play and locked up a Top 30 finish with three continues still to be used.
But those last three continue games were poor. As a result, it cost me a Top 10 finish and with it, the top paying prize.
This was my second Top 100 finish on this account.
Total spend: 428 USD (14 rebuys, 193 continues)
Total winnings: 450 USD
Total net profit: 22 USD - in other words, a whole lot of huffing and puffing, without actually getting anywhere.
NUMBER NERD CORNER
Thanks to narrowly missing out on another two Top 100 finishes (I finished 103rd and 104th on two other accounts),
I failed to equal my PB for the most money finishes from a single Sure Win Cup tournament (7 in April 2016 and 7 in April 2017).
From 12 Sure Win Cup tournaments played, I have had 8 where I made a profit against 4 where I made a loss.
In this tournament, I got 46 FS rounds from 5,195 total spins played in Round 4, an average of 1 FS round per 113 spins.
My overall RTP in Round 4 was 94.007%.
But thanks to another significantly lower turnout in October's tournament (only 10,101 entrants - it used to have the maximum allowed of 15,000 - until MG decided to double the cost of the continue plays), my below average RTP did not result in a loss-making tournament.
But it was the least profitable out of the 8 tournaments where profit was achieved.
So that makes my overall Sure Win Cup results look like this....
July 2014 - Total profit: 130 euro (Prizes: 175 euro, Spend: 45 euro)
October 2014 - Total profit: 276 euro (Prizes: 500 euro, Spend: 224 euro)
January 2015 - Total profit: 431 euro (Prizes: 625 euro, Spend: 194 euro)
April 2015 - Total losses: 5 euro (Prizes: 300 euro, Spend: 305 euro)
July 2015 - Total profit: 376 euro (Prizes: 660 euro, Spend: 284 euro)
October 2015 - Total profit: 39 euro (Prizes: 380 euro, Spend: 341 euro)
January 2016 - Total losses: 76 euro (Prizes: 240 euro, Spend: 316 euro)
April 2016 - Total profit: 145 euro (Prizes: 500 euro, Spend: 355 euro)
July 2016 - Total losses: 70 euro (Prizes: 100 euro, Spend: 170 euro)
October 2016 - Total losses: 218 euro (Prizes: 200 euro, Spend: 418 euro)
January 2017 - DID NOT PARTICIPATE
April 2017 - Total profit: 296 euro (Prizes: 675 euro, Spend: 379 euro)
July 2017 - DID NOT PARTICIPATE
October 2017 - Total profit: 22 USD (Prizes: 450 USD, Spend: 428 USD)
Total profit (from a total of 12 tournaments): 1,324 euro (Prizes: 4,355 euro, Spend: 3,031 euro) plus 22 USD (Prizes: 450 USD, Spend: 428 USD)
Sadly (for me anyway), it looks like this will be the last time I get to play the Sure Win Cup. Thanks to yet another significant drop in participants
for the October tournament, there was no tournament held in January 2018.
It looks like MG may have decided to remove this quarterly tournament from their schedules on a permanent basis.