Cashier - Starting Soon!

Well, in only 4 short hours the challenge will be officially beginning.  I have purchased SNG Wiz with what winnings I had and disposed of the remainder of what I had left over to leave myself with a paltry $10.00.  Additionally I disposed of my 615 FPPs that I had accumulated in 2010 so that I can start 2011 completely fresh.

Here's a screen shot of the cashier, beginning the challenge in 4 hours.  Best of luck at the tables in 2011 everyone!

2011 SNG Challenge

Happy New Years everyone! I'm writing this to officially launch into a personal challenge my brother and I are partaking in for the entire year of 2011. It's going to be a long and bumpy road, but with perseverance and determination we will see ourselves through it.

Challenge: Turn $20 into $100K

The challenge is quite lofty, but with hard work and dedication I feel as though it is definitely attainable. Our strategy will revolve around a ton of volume, a lot of self and team review of our play, and a very aggressive bankroll strategy at the early stages of the challenge.

We will be playing exclusively on PokerStars, and will both be beginning with a bankroll of $10.00. At the onset of our challenge, our VIP level will be Bronze and we hope to quickly rise through the VIP ranks so that our effective rakeback % increases quickly.

Our $20 bankroll will be split between the two of us at the onset of the challenge. So as to reduce variance we will be sharing our rolls and moving through the SNG stakes according to our combined roll and not just our individual roll. This will serve the purpose of allowing us to be very aggressive, but also reduce some variance as we're able to level each other out a bit.

Poker Background

I began playing poker in March of 2010 after returning from a trip to Vegas with some friends where I spent a night at the Luxor at a $1/$2 cash table. Since then I've dabbled in various SNG structures along with cash games. Additionally I've had (in the past) subscriptions to Card Runners, DeucesCracked, and was a part of Nick Rainey's RainmanPoker training site for a few months. I currently have no subscriptions to any training sites.

My brother began dabbling in poker in May of 2010 and didn't take it very seriously until more recently. He played around 100 HUSNGs on a different poker room before we decided to take on this challenge in 2011. Since then he has been practicing his MTT-SNG game at the PokerStars Play Money tables. I'm happy to say that he's grown quite frustrated only being able to 3 table the SNGs, as volume will be one of the most critical factors to completing this challenge successfully. As of the beginning of this challenge my brother has played no real money games at PokerStars.

Here is my lifetime PokerStars graph to date, it will change a bit in the next couple days leading up to the 1st as I'm grinding some DONs but there shouldn't be any big swings.

PokerStars Overall

Full Time Jobs

One of our major obstacles to completing this challenge is going to be that we both have full time jobs. This will be a direct hindrance on our daily volume along with study time. One perk, however, is that we are not dependent on the money made from poker; and as a result we will be able to use very aggressive bankroll management to help grow our bankrolls very quickly at the beginning of the challenge.

Progress Updates

I'll be updating my personal blog regularly throughout the challenge. Additionally I will keep my twoplustwo thread updated regularly with our overall BR progress. Please see my profile for a direct link to my blog.

Let's Do This

We'll be starting this challenge at 12:00AM EST on 1/1/11. I'll be playing under the screen name “yomatta”; I won't out my brother's screen name but rather will let him do so if he chooses.

Best of luck at the tables in 2011.

Mini December/2010 Challenge

So I'm trying to give myself some motivation for grinding out the games here over the next week.  I think my muse is in the form of my first $10 stellar bonus.  To achieve this initial bonus at PokerStars you have to earn 750 VIP Player Points (VPPs).  VPPs are awarded based on rake at a set conversion rate depending on the type of game that you are playing.  The SNGs (and all tournaments) award VPPs at a rate of 5.5 VPPs per $1 in rake paid.

Currently I have 585.37 VPPs for 2010 (they reset at the beginning of next year) meaning I need to earn 165 more VPPs this year to earn this award.  At a conversion rate of 5.5 this turns out to be roughly $30 of rake paid; and being that the $1.10 DONs I've been playing are .10 of rake per game, I need to grind 300 of them over the next few days to earn the reward.

Double or Nothings

My last few sessions of DONs have been loaded/handled primarily by TableNinja.  I basically set it to load 10 tables at at time and keep them going for 60 minutes.  By doing this I've been able to load about 22 games in that 60 minute time frame.  I'd like to up my continuous table count to about 15 or perhaps even 20 and I'd also like to play for longer sessions, perhaps initially by upping it to 120 minutes.  One drawback of the DONs as compared to the 45 mans is that they don't get the once an hour break that I actually really enjoy.  That break allows me to get up and clear my head for 5 minutes, and also allows me to grab a snack or take a bathroom break.  Regardless, I think that only given a few days I'm going to have to do 20 tables for 120 minutes or something so that I can hit the 300 mark.

If I continue to have good results I will up my table count even higher.  I don't want to go too high right now given bankroll limitations.  My BR currently stands at $82.13, so when I'm 20 tabling I have roughly 1/4 of my entire roll on the table.  I'm confident that I'm profitable at these games but I still don't want to lose 1/4 of my roll in one session of running bad!

In any case, it's time to stop blogging and start grinding.  Best of luck at the tables for the remainder of 2010! :)

Merry Christmas!! (Happy Holidays =P)

Played a quickish session last night of 33 games.  Went back to the .10 360s and .25 45s in preparation of the beginning challenge with my bro next week.  Hopefully I'm not stealing all of our run good this week to only leave us running bad next week.

I think that I'm going to try to push my BR up over $100 this week and use that money to purchase SNG Wiz.  It would be a very nice treat as my bro and I are about to begin our challenge.

In any case, I'm off to do some stuff and will be back on the grind later.  BR is at $71.63.

Quick Update

Played a set of 20 DONs tonight.  I've been laying off the tables trying to get some other things done before restarting my challenge with my brother.  Session went quite well :)

BR up to $55.86

Graph:

Flying Home

Currently sitting on a cramped flight from Houston to Phoenix. Got to spend the last 24 hours in Houston visiting family it was a tremendously good time. Friends have always asked if making these short type trips to visit family are worth the time spent traveling and I always confirm that it is. To break it down a bit, for this current trip I will have spent roughly 6-7 hours of “traveling” (between flight times, getting to the airport early, etc) and was only actually in Houston for 24 hours total. It's all good in the end, I love being able to see everyone.

I've been thinking recently about the commencement of my $10 challenge that my brother and I will be partaking in. I think that it is going to be quite thrilling and am hoping to see great progress right from the beginning. I'm hoping that with some initial success and constant blogging / sharing of results that I will amass a bit of a support group from the poker community, which will obviously help to motivate throughout the challenge.

Ideally I'd like to be able to initially grind very hard to build the bankroll up and then take it to a comfortable spot to be able to 40+ table without really paying attention to results on a day to day basis. I'm going to focus on getting solid games in and not really check results unless I have to. My poker time when not spent on the tables will be spent in reviewing my play.

Today I spent some quality off-table time with updating some player notes. Once I realized I could just edit the notes file for Pokerstars without actually being logged into the client it has made it quite easy to review some hand histories and make player notes from my laptop while on the plane flying back to Phoenix. It's frustrating how limiting it can be to not have an active internet connectiion.

Some other off-table things I accomplished today were to setup my TableNinja on my laptop to completely exclude the use of the mouse. I usually play with the mouse and use it to affect bet sizing along with active table selection. With the move to just using the keyboard on my laptop I think that I will be able to put in longer sessions while being able to move around a bit. Additionally it means I will have a bit more freedom when it comes to traveling and grinding. Unlike mass tabling cash tables, an SNG grinder doesn't need to tile the tables out, especially at the micro-turbo tables. Stack away and play a solid push/fold strategy and print the monies. At least that's my plan!

To test out and get used to my new TN setup I went ahead and played a quick 10 table session of $1.10 DONs and ended up profiting $1 (6/10 wins). This brings my DONs history up to 9/15 total since starting with my $20 roll. I hope to use the $1.10 DONs during my challenge in the new year to boost my roll up to a spot where playing the $1.10 turbo 45s will be possible.

Well, the plane has begun its descent and this entry has grown exceedingly long. Best of luck at the tables!

Life Update

So haven't been able to play much poker this week, definitely not getting near that 500 mark by the end of day tomorrow, but hopefully will be putting in a solid session tomorrow morning if not tonight.

I'm blogging from Tucson right now where I'm visiting some friends (I live in Phoenix, about 120 miles northwest of Tucson).  Had to get away for a night as I got the wonderful joy of having to deal with some identity theft issues yesterday.  Getting that email from Bank of America that states that there is "irregular activity" on my card is always a pleasant thing.

That aside, I've been plotting out my strategy for the challenge my brother and I will be undergoing starting on 1/1/11.  It's definitely going to be a challenge beginning with a $10 roll and trying to run it up to $50,000 (which is what each of us will be doing for a combined $100,000).  What will make it a bit easier will be the fact that we're going to be sharing/splitting our bank rolls so it should help even out some of the variance that will greatly impact the microest of stakes.

My current thought process with regards to BR management is going to be something as follows:

As you can see, the strategy I'm thinking about using is going to be fairly aggressive in the early stages.  I'm defining early as <$100 more or less.  I feel like getting over the $100 is going to be one of the milestone goals of this challenge and once past there the rest of the puzzle will hopefully begin to fall into place.  I haven't detailed out what my strategy is going to be beyond around the $150 mark as I'd like to put in a fair amount of review of my game play and review of results prior to that to get a feel on where I want to be focusing my time (whether it be the 9 mans, 18 mans, or 45+).  I think that for this type of challenge the larger field games (45-180s) are going to be mandatory, though seeing someone grind out $100 - $50K playing nothing but 9 mans in a year would be kind of exciting I suppose.

As always, I'm very open to suggestions from any readers of this blog.

My next objective prior to beginning this challenge is going to be to figure out the best way to go about reviewing my play and improving on a regular basis.  When I first started playing poker back in March of this year I was grinding the cash games for a couple months.  The review there seemed to make a bit more sense: I would review largest hands won/lost for whatever period of time my review was covering.  Additionally I would review positional stats along with some random hands just to make sure I didn't find any potential leaks in various other forms (raise sizes, developing reads on players, etc).

With SNGs it's a bit different as I need to dedicate more time learning ICM, putting regs on ranges in different spots, and generally beefing up my pre-flop play by quite a bit.  There is little to no serious post flop play when reg'ing 40+ tables and that is going to be my goal during this challenge.

OK, I think that this post is quite long enough.  I look forward to the coming weeks and look forward to any feedback you provide :).  Cheers!