Weekly Bankroll Update 9/17-9/23

This week on Global Poker was another big one. I played 13 tournaments and cashed in six of them. An 18th place finish Sunday night, a 31st place finish Tuesday night, a huge double cash Wednesday night finishing 24th and 3rd, a 20th place finish Thursday night, and a 12th place finish Friday night. I have definitely elevated my game over the past month, and cashing seems to be the new norm. As a result, I am adding a $3.30 tourney to the mix and I'm hopeful I'll be able to play 21 tourneys this week. This will result in an investment of $24.64 (14 x $0.11 tourneys, and 7 x $3.30 tourneys). It's gonna be tough with schoolwork piling up, but I think I can get it done. If I happen to run bad, I have no problem dropping back down and dropping the $3.30 tourney, but I'm hoping it doesn't come to that. Here's where I stand:

Play Money: 826k Down 4k.

Real Money: $241.45 Up $36.17.

Target for next MTT level: $275 ($5.50)

Target for next Cash Game level: $400 ($20)

Target for next SnG level: $440 ($22)

Weekly Bankroll Update 9/10-9/16

Another monster week on Global as I played just 10 tourneys, but cashed in five of them. An 8th place finish Sunday night, a double cash Monday night finishing 9th and 13th, a 20th place finish Tuesday night, and a 22nd place finish Wednesday night capping off seven straight nights of cashing dating back to last week. In that time I cashed 9/14 tourneys and appeared at three final tables. The bankroll has finally cracked $200 and soon I'll be playing tourneys with larger buy ins. Likely $3.30. Here's where I'm at:

Play Money: 830k Up 44k.

Real Money: $205.28 Up $19.08.

Target for next SnG level: $220 ($11)

Target for next MTT level: $275 ($5.50)

Target for next Cash Game level: $400 ($20)

Weekly Bankroll Update 9/3-9/9

It was another wildly successful week at Global Poker and the bankroll continues its push to $200. I played 14 tournaments again this week and cashed in five of them. An 8th place finish Sunday night, a double cash Thursday finishing 15th and 10th, a 7th place finish Friday night, and a 35th place finish for a min cash on Saturday. No big cashes, but a couple of final table runs was not too shabby. Here's where I stand:

Play Money: 786k Up 35k.

Real Money: $186.14 Up $26.23.

Target for next Cash Game level: $200 ($10)

Target for next SnG level: $220 ($11)

Target for next MTT level: $275 ($5.50)

Weekly Bankroll Update 8/27-9/2

    Well it was back  to work this week, and I was able to have a lot of success on the virtual felt coming fresh off my staycation. It was back to playing two $.11 tourneys per night. I played 14 tourneys in all this week and cashed in four of them. A 12th place finish Monday night, a double cash Wednesday night finishing 4th and 11th, and a 21st place finish Friday night. This was one of my best weeks on Global Poker, and the bankroll is at its all-time high. It's now been exactly four months and I'm averaging $40 per month over that span. Here's where I stand:

Play Money: 751k Up 25k.

Real Money: $159.91 Up $25.76.

Target for next MTT level: $165 ($3.30)

Target for next Cash Game level: $200 ($10)

Target for next SnG level: $220 ($11)

Weekly Bankroll Update 8/20-8/26

Well, this week was a relatively slow one as far as earnings. I was on a staycation from work, and chose to focus on my play money balance to keep my game sharp. Having all this extra time I felt could be dangerous for the roll where it is right now, so I played six $.11 tourneys this week and cashed in one. The play money roll was up quite a bit and it was nice to be able to play without a sweat. Here's where I'm at:

Play Money: 726k Up 214k for the week.

Real Money: $134.15 Up $1.14 for the week.

Target for next MTT level: $165 ($3.30)

Target for next cash game level: $200 ($10)

Target for next SnG level: $220 ($11)

This week should be a bit more eventful, but I'm still going to be rather conservative until I get to $200. The closer I get, the more active I'll be to try and take shots to get there, but for now, slow and steady wins the race.

Back in the Saddle

  Hello again readers. It has been quite some time since I've written to you and for that, I apologize. This has been a crazy year so far. My daughter turned three years old last month, both of my parents turned 70, my stepmom turns 60 this week, my girlfriend's parents are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary next month, I have a family reunion in New Jersey next month, and my girlfriend herself turns 40 in November. Not to mention I'm beginning the pursuit of my Master's degree in the fall. Yup. That's 2017 in a nutshell. "Milestone Year."

  Despite all these big events taking place, I have somehow been able to carve out some time to play online poker. Back on May 2nd, I set up an account at a site called Global Poker. It's a legal site for U.S. players, and they use a sweepstakes model that they've patented in order to exist in an environment that outlaws online poker. I won't go into specifics about exactly how it works (you can visit their website at globalpoker.com for details), but you can cash out through PayPal. Global gives you 10,000 Gold Coins (aka "play money"), and $2 cash for signing up. I took the 10,000 Gold Coins and the $2 and as of the date of this post, my bankroll currently sits at over 500,000 Gold Coins, and $133.01 in cash without me putting in any of my own money. Just three and a half months in, and suddenly I've found myself grinding it out again nearly every night with a bankroll that is growing at a rate of $40/month. I'd be lying if I said I saw this coming.

  So now that I'm back to playing online poker again, it's become apparent that I better start setting some goals for myself. I never expected to have over $130 in my roll this quickly. When Chris "Jesus" Ferguson started his $0 to $10,000 challenge back in 2006, it took him nine months to break $100. Nine months after that he cracked $10,000 adhering to strict bankroll management rules. In the spirit of Ferguson's accomplishment, I have hereby decided to start my own challenge. I'm calling it the $2 to $40,000 challenge. The reason I'm setting the bar at $40,000 as opposed to $10,000 is because the highest cash game limit on Global Poker at the moment is $10/$20. That means you can buy in for a max of $2,000. Following the same bankroll rules Ferguson set for himself would mean I would need $40,000 in my bankroll in order to play those stakes. I will be tracking my progress on a weekly basis and will be posting my results on this blog. I am not giving myself a time limit as I believe it's unrealistic to do so. I am confident it will happen, and it doesn't really matter to me how long it takes.

  Here are the bankroll management rules I will follow (please note: they are basically the same ones as Ferguson's).

1. No more than 5% of the bankroll will be used for cash games or SnGs (single table tournaments).

2. No more than 2% of the bankroll will be used for MTTs (multi table tournaments). If it's a re-buy tourney, I'll re-buy as many times as is necessary as long as the total amount spent is 2% of the bankroll or less.

3. If my winnings in a cash game ever exceed 10% of the bankroll, I must leave the table before the blinds reach me.

4. Satellite tournaments are currently not offered on Global Poker so no worries there.

  Since my bankroll currently sits at $133 and change, I can play cash games at the $.02/$.04 level buying in for the maximum of $4. The next level up from that is $.05/$.10 for $10. I need $200 or more for that. Until I get to $200, I am going to be extremely cautious because there is no level for me to drop down to if I run bad.

Short-term goals are as follows:

Current bankroll: $133.01

Target for next MTT level: $165 ($3.30)

Target for the next cash game level: $200 ($10)

Target for the next SnG level: $220 ($11)

Again, please stay tuned to this blog for my progress updates which will be posted every Sunday.

Building a Poker Bankroll From Scratch

   Since the poker boom of 2003, I have developed a strong love for the game. I love everything about it. The numbers and statistics, the psychology, meeting people from all walks of life, the rush of winning a big hand, or cashing in a tournament, the fact that the house has no say in who wins or loses, the freedom afforded to professional players, and even the disguising and deception. The high-stakes players on TV always seemed larger than life. They would play stakes that just seemed astronomical to me. The blind levels were more than a year’s salary. The pot sizes were more than what most people retire on. I remember thinking to myself, “how the hell can they afford to play for those kinds of dollar amounts?” They would bet tens of thousands of dollars on a bluff without even batting an eyelash. It was incomprehensible. It wasn’t long before I discovered online poker, and it all started to make sense.

   Shortly after poker’s explosion in popularity, many online sites began popping up. It allowed players that didn’t have a lot of money (or in some cases, ANY money) the opportunity to be able to play in their pajamas without having to leave their homes, and with little or no investment. Many of these sites would run free tournaments. At Full Tilt Poker, for instance, the tournaments would run every six hours or so and would max out at 2,700 players paying out the top 27 spots. If you were lucky enough to cash, you might make $2, and if you made the final table (top 9), you might get anywhere between $3 and $15 depending on what place you finished. You could then take that money and play low-stakes tourneys and cash games in order to start building up a small bankroll. Many players who didn’t have the patience for that kind of grind would simply deposit small amounts of money into the site hoping to parle it into something bigger.

   The first site I played on was called Poker Room. I knew nothing about bankroll management, and knew very little about how to play. As a result, I quickly lost the $600 I had put into it. I was playing tournaments for $20 or more, and buying into cash games for $50 or more. I had no clue what I was doing, so I went out and purchased some books to hone my skills. The first book I picked up was called “Ace on the River” by Barry Greenstein. I couldn’t have made a better choice. Not only did it teach me a little about how to play, but it taught me how to manage a bankroll as well. I had no idea how important bankroll management was until I read that book. That’s when I realized how these high-stakes players were able to do it. It was poker’s best kept secret. Many books taught you how to actually play the games (“Super System” by the great Doyle Brunson comes to mind), but few mentioned bankroll management.

   Basically, the rule of thumb was: no more than 2% of your bankroll should be used for tournaments, and no more than 5% for cash games. Shortly after my Poker Room debacle, I started playing on Full Tilt Poker. My initial investment into the site was $40. In two years’ time, I had made it into over $1,300. I had to replenish it once or twice along the way due to some unwise violations of the 2%/5% rule, but I pretty much stuck to the plan. My big score came in March 2011, less than one month before the government shut them down. It was for $650. I did it by playing single-table tournaments called Sit N’ Go’s. Full Tilt had a version of these that were called STEP tournaments. Step 1 was $1 to enter and there were 9 players. If you finished 4^th-9^th, you got nothing. If you finished in the top 3, instead of receiving cash, you received a buy-in to Step 2 which was $3. The same basic rules applied. 1^st and 2^nd got Step 3 tickets worth $10. 3^rd and 4^th place got their money back in the form of a Step 2 ticket, and 5^th place received a Step 1 ticket. There were seven steps in all. Step 4 was worth $26, Step 5 was worth $75, Step 6 was $200, and Step 7 was $500. I might be wrong on the exact amounts, but you get the picture. Basically, you didn’t have to get 1^st place every time in order to move up. I would play tons of these. My bankroll at the time was around $400, so I would buy in at Step 2 and work my way up from there. $3 was a relatively small dollar amount as far as my bankroll was concerned. At one point I had 10 Step 4 tickets, and a few Step 5 tickets. The higher up you got, the more difficult it was to advance because the competition was fierce at those levels. So one day I decided to use one of my Step 5 tickets to enter a $75 tournament. The tournament was the main event of the very popular Mini FTOPS which stood for Full Tilt Online Poker Series. The tourney was huge. One person was allowed to buy in up to four times, and as a result, it drew over 45,000 entries. I only used one ticket and I ended up finishing in 645^th place which paid out a little over $650. My bankroll had gone from $400 to over $1,000 in one day, and I didn’t even have to put any actual money at risk. The ticket had really only cost me $3. One month later, the government forced the shutdown of all the major online poker sites, and my run was over.

   Despite my initial disappointment, I had a lot to be thankful for. I had learned how to play virtually every version of poker imaginable, I had built up my confidence, and most importantly, I had learned how to build and manage a bankroll. Over the past five years or so I have not played much other than a couple of small home games, one trip to Atlantic City that was unsuccessful, and a couple of local tournaments with no cashes. The itch to play has never really left me, and although I have no bankroll currently, I know it can be built back up, even though playing online is no longer an option. I just have two rules that I must follow at all times.

   First, any money I win, I save. Whether it’s a scratch ticket someone gave me for Christmas that I win $2 on (I NEVER buy scratch tickets. EVER.), or a cash in a home game, or a win in a March Madness or Super Bowl pool, or a win in fantasy sports, I save it. Just this week I hosted a small poker game at my house and won $6. So, my current bankroll is $6. (Side note: I will be updating my progress on this blog so stay tuned!)

   Second, any time I buy into anything for $100 or less, I use my own hard-earned money, not my bankroll. So, for instance, if the buy-in to a tournament or a cash game is 50, it comes out of my paycheck, or my savings, etc. I never use my bankroll to buy in to a game I can afford myself. This way it never goes down. When you have a small bankroll (and I’ve had many), it’s not worth risking until it gets to a point where it can work for itself. The way I’m treating it is as soon as I get to $100 I will open a savings account and keep it in there. When it reaches $1,000 it goes into a CD so it can earn a small amount of interest. When it gets to $6,000 (hopefully before I’m of “retirement age”) it starts getting interesting. $6,000 is the minimum number of buy-ins required to play tournaments of $120 or less (remember the 2%/5% rule?). $120 is too much for me to justify pulling money out of my savings account, or my paycheck, so the bankroll now becomes my main source for tournaments. I’m not comfortable putting more than $100 on any poker game in which I have to use my personal funds to cover the buy in. Your comfort zone might be different depending on your financial situation, but that’s just my own preference. When the bankroll reaches $10,000, I can start using it to buy in to cash games of $500 or less. I prefer to play Pot-Limit Omaha for cash rather than No-Limit Hold ‘Em, but that’s just me. If the buy-in to a game is $100 or less, I will continue to use my own money as always. I usually start with $40 at my home game, and with a buy-in that small, it isn’t necessary to use the bankroll, but any game where the buy-in is over $100 comes out of it as long as the 2%/5% rule applies.

   I believe there are two kinds of money. Money you earn, and money you win. Earned money comes from the work you do. It’s your weekly paycheck, or your tips, or what you made from mowing someone’s lawn, or maybe even money you received as a gift. You use it to pay your bills, or to go on vacation, or to buy Christmas presents, or to go grocery shopping, or to buy clothes, etc. It can also be used to make more money by investing it. Some people buy stocks, some buy property, and some start businesses. Since I look at poker as an investment, I can justify using my earned money to buy into games as long as the amount isn’t so large that I feel uncomfortable playing. I have my limit set at $100 as I just mentioned, so anything $100 or less can come out of my earned money. Won money (bankroll) should only be used if the buy-in exceeds my earned money limit ($100) and the amount of the buy-in doesn’t exceed my 2%/5% rule. That’s why the $6,000 and $10,000 plateaus are so important to me. At those dollar amounts, I can start using my won money to play. Now, this is subject to change if I can earn more from working which is why I am pursuing my Master’s degree next fall. The main goal is to be able to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas someday. Until then, stay tuned to my blog to find out how things are progressing.