The $10k Bankroll Challenge

Further Observations

freeroller — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 22:32:04 +0000

Back in 2003 when I first started playing poker the chat window was used solely to acknowledge a hand well played, to wish someone good luck or for a bit of friendly banter. Since I have been starting playing again it has astounded me how deeply unpleasant people are to each other. It is seemingly acceptable to question someone’s parentage over a pair of cracked aces, or to fly into a Hellmuth style rant about the crazy call a player made on the turn before making their hand on the river and knocking the guy out. This is particularly startling because they are making these judgements on other player’s decisions in a freeroll tournament. Why, if you are such a great and wise player are you playing in a freeroll tournament? A warm-up for the World Series perhaps? Unlikely.

I take some consolation in the fact that these hostile players seem to fade out early on, although it is disappointing that a game that throughout its history has placed a great deal of emphasis on respect between its players has been brought down to the level of personal attacks. Hopefully this is just a characteristic of low stakes poker and that the traditions of old haven’t been completely worn down by the online game where a person can hide behind a monitor and keyboard.

Off and Running…well almost

freeroller — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 18:20:50 +0000

The $1000 freeroll over at Bodog had been going well from the first round, after 15 minutes I was the chip leader having won a series on big pots, and I found myself moved to a table of fairly loose, timid players and went to work on their stacks. I was still in the top 5 overall at the 3 hour break with only 160 players remaining (99 get paid) when I was dealt 9s 9c in late position. I raised to 3 times the big blind and had two callers, the flop came down 7s 8c 9d. Fantastic! I had flopped top set, and had one hand on the chips already, but I was wary of the straight draw, if a 5, 6, 10 or J fell on the turn I would be in trouble, so I stuck my chips all-in expecting my opponents to fold their cards. The player on the Big blind called, he had a sizable stack – about 80% of mine and I couldn’t help smile at the thought of him turning over 88 or 77. He flipped over J 10. My heart sank into my shoes. He had flopped the nut straight, I had never even considered the possibility. I held my breath as the turn and river were dealt but the board didn’t pair up. Damn! I had lost most of my stack and had gone from a chip leader to a short stack in the space of one hand and I was now staring down the barrell of another non paying finish, but I dug in and managed to steal a couple of blinds with some well timed raises and staggered over the bubble, eventually being eliminated in 97th place at 6:20am. I had won $2 and was finally off the mark. That $2 had taken almost 4 hours of play to win and had been preceded by almost 30 other freerolls but I was delighted all the same.

The next day I put my winnings into a 5c/10c No limit Hold’em ring game on Bodog, hoping to maybe pick up $1 extra to enable me to enter one of the Single Table Sit and Go’s. Within 20 minutes that $2 was gone, bled away by a series of missed flops and poor betting decisions. Back to the freerolls I go, but at least now I know it can be done.

BANKROLL – $0.00

A chance to do things right

freeroller — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:29:02 +0000

One of the main reasons why I wanted to attempt this challenge, apart from the fact that it offers an unbeatable risk/potential reward ratio is that it is a chance to do things properly. The bankroll management rules set out in ‘The Challenge’ not only protect your bankroll from damaging losing streaks, but they also facilitate the study of the game at an appropriate pace and prevent the player from moving up to a higher level prematurely.

I have effectively started learning the game again, assuming little or no previous knowledge (not so difficult after two and a half years out). I already have a copy of Doyle Brunson’s Super System and have been re-reading it for inspiration and even though the general consensus is that its contents are largely obsolete I still think that for the beginning player it provides more than its share of good advice. I have also been making use of the large article collection on The Hendon Mob’s website and the Tips from the Full Tilt Poker website. There are hundreds of websites out there offering advice on poker and Texas Hold’em in particular but these two sites have a huge amount of information from many of the world’s best poker players and it doesn’t cost a penny.

Bubble Trouble

freeroller — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:52:42 +0000

I thought last night would be the first breakthrough on my quest to create a bankroll from nothing. I was playing in three freeroll tournaments simultaneously, one on Full Tilt Poker and two on Bodog.

I was going well in all three tournaments, well above the average chip counts and in the zone. This Full Tilt tournament has the toughest payout ratio I have seen yet, 27 paying positions for 2700 entrants. All was well until the number of remaining entrants hit 50 and as is common when you are so close to the bubble everyone tightened up, I was fine with this, I had a comfortable stack and was willing to be patient, however with the ever increasing blinds and antes it wasn’t too long until my stack was looking slightly precarious and with 10 more players needing to be eliminated before a payout was guaranteed I decided I place needed to try to steal some blinds just to hang on. The first couple of times it went fine, my opponents dutifully folded their cards against my big raise and then as hand for hand play came into effect on the bubble I was dealt AsJs on the button. The table folded around to me and I raised to twice the big blind ($12,000) and was expecting to pick up the blinds and antes again when the big blind re-raised me all-in. The player on the big blind was one of the chip leaders and covered me easily, he had been playing quite loose, stealing blinds and the like, and I thought that maybe he had noticed me steal a couple of times in the last 5 minutes and was trying to play the Sheriff, so I called and he flipped over A-K. It held up and I was out in 28^th. Looking back, calling probably wasn’t the right move, especially at that stage of the tournament when my main aim was just to pick up $2 so I could get away from the freeroll crap-shoots for a while.

I tried to turn my concentration to the two Bodog tournaments which were both now coming up to the paying positions, but I was tired (it was 5:30am) and my elimination from the Full Tilt tournament had me distracted and I found myself eliminated from both tournaments within half an hour.

Full Tilt Poker indeed.

BANKROLL – $0.00

Freerolls

freeroller — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:42:02 +0000

The first step in my quest to turn $0.00 into $10,000 by playing online poker is to turn $0.00 into anything at all and that means playing in freeroll tournaments. For the uninitiated, freeroll tournaments are multi-table tournaments that cost nothing to enter but have a small prize pool that has been put up by the organiser. Some freeroll tournaments offer non-cash prizes to the winners and others act as satellites to bigger tournaments.

Freeroll tournaments differ from regular ‘pay tournaments’ in several important ways. The first thing you may notice when you enter a freeroll tournament is that the entrant fields are large, sometimes absolutely enormous. The largest fields I have seen so far have had 12,000 players all fighting for a $500 prize pool split into 260 paying positions. That’s 2.2% of the field, which is tiny when compared to most pay tournaments.

Once the tournament begins another feature of the freeroll No-Limit Hold’em tournament comes to light, people will move all-in pre-flop with any 2 cards. On the first hand at the table it is not uncommon to see 3 or more players going all-in and then turning over absolute trash. This will happen often during the tournament, but particularly during the first hour of play and I have found that it is better to play ultra-tight during first few levels and try to avoid the lunatics until they quieten down or (more often) get eliminated. So many people play recklessly during this opening period that losing up to 2/3 of the field in the first hour is normal. Of those players remaining, a good percentage of them will be absent – they never showed up for the tournament. This is both a blessing and a curse, by those players not showing up they have slimmed the field but it can make tournaments quite dull if you find yourself on a table with several ‘no-shows’.

To win a multi-table tournament at any level you need to get lucky, but with freerolls you need Lady Luck sitting on your lap just to make the paying positions, the large fields combined with the reckless ‘nothing to lose, everything to gain’ contingent makes these tournaments very slippery indeed and even when you do get lucky and make the paying positions you may only find yourself $0.30 richer after 3 hours of play, but from the thrifty beginner to those on a quest to make as much money as they can from nothing, these tournaments do provide the ultimate value for money if you have the patience and the discipline to see them through.

In the 2 days since I began this challenge I have played in a total of 8 freerolls across 3 poker sites and finished in the money exactly 0 times. The road ahead is long indeed.

BANKROLL – $0.00

The Challenge

freeroller — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:59:11 +0000

Like many of the new crowd, I first started playing poker in 2003 after catching a few of the WPT highlight shows on TV. All small stakes stuff of course, the £2 + £0.25 No Limit Hold’Em multi-table tournaments hosted on William Hill were my game of choice back then, cheap enough for learning and with fields often exceeding 300 entrants the prize pots weren’t too shabby either, certainly enough to keep tempting a 19 year old student back to the tables time and time again.

After about 6 months I started to do pretty well, made it to the final table frequently, occasionally found myself in the top 3, so I took my tournament winnings and dived into the £0.50/£1 NLHE cash rooms, and more often than not, lost my £20 buy in within an hour. It took me another 6 months before I could hold my own and occasionally beat this small stakes game so I did what any stupid, arrogant 20 year old would do, I moved up to a bigger game and bigger tournaments. It made sense at the time of course, bigger risks meant bigger rewards and I wanted bigger rewards. It didn’t go according to plan and before I knew it I was playing an awful lot of poker, neglecting my studies and losing what little money I had to live on. So after a particularly bad beat in March 2004, costing me a £500 pot (a fortune for a student) I decided it was time to step back from poker, mainly because I couldn’t afford to buy food never mind tournament fees. It was with this dilemma that I reluctantly went cap in hand to the folks.

They did not take it well.

Following the most uncomfortable conversation I’ve ever had, and the subsequent, equally uncomfortable inspection of my bank statements, I returned to University, well chastened but relatively solvent.

My poker ‘career’, however, was over, as well as being part of the aforementioned parental relief agreement, I no longer wanted to play, in the end it had cost me more than a few hundred £s, it had taken a significant portion of my self respect along with it.

Ok, enough of this ‘poker nearly sent me broke’ sermon and onto the reason why I spent 5 minutes setting up this blog.

I’m playing poker again.

Yes, time does indeed heal all wounds, but this time I’m doing it differently. Never again will I risk having to ask for a handout in order to feed myself, so I decided to stick to the Freeroll tournaments that most online poker rooms seem to host these days. Freerolls have come a long way since I left poker two and a half years ago. Back then the only Freeroll I can remember was a weekly one on Party Poker which had an impossibly large field for an incredibly small prize pool. The fields are still pretty huge, 12,000 being the largest I have seen so far, and the prize pools vary from $5 to $1500 and they are a lot more common that they were 2 years ago.

I’ve been playing again for a couple of weeks with very little success, but I’ve been enjoying it, which is arguably the most important thing. Along with my recaptured enthusiasm for playing poker, I have begun to read about the game again, and my God how it has grown. It was during my browsing of all these new poker websites that I found a reference to a challenge Chris ‘Jesus’ Ferguson set himself. The basic premise was to start with a bankroll of $0.00 and by starting with Freerolls, build up a bankroll of $10,000. You can read about Chris’ challenge here.

Basically I am going to recreate this challenge to see if it can be done by a mere mortal like myself and I will be documenting it here, for, at the very least, my own amusement in a years time if I am still playing the 0130hr $500 Freeroll on Bet365, but if anyone stumbles on this blog by accident and wants to offer their support or to throw abuse at me, then great.

I am going to use the same basic rules of Bankroll management that Chris Ferguson laid down in his challenge with a couple of alterations, namely

Maximum buy in for a Cash Game or Sit & Go Tournament is 5% of total bankroll (is bankroll <$75, maximum buy in is $3.75)
Maximum buy in for a multi-table tournament is 2% of total bankroll (if bankroll <$75, maximum buy in is $1.50)
If, during a cash game the money on the table accounts for more than 10% of total bankroll, I must leave the game before the blinds reach me.
Use of sign-up bonuses as part of bankroll is forbidden

It took Chris Ferguson 16 months to complete this challenge, so I am not expecting this to be quick or easy, indeed I may never build-up a bankroll of $100, never mind $10,000, however I find that it always helps to have a goal to reach for, no matter how lofty that goal happens to be.

Wish me luck!