Week 2

After 2 weeks I’ve played 4800 hands – my initial bankroll of $40 now stands at $93 with a win rate of something like 17BB/100.

Its not the end of January yet and I’ve already broken one of my New Year’s resolutions: I’ve been multi-tabling, 4 at a time in fact. I was looking at some monthly results posted on one of the forums and saw people playing 50K+ micro limit s hands a month and showing a healthy profit. So I’m going to give it a go and intend to multi table through the first few levels at least.

Level 1 is now almost complete - $7 more to go and then its upwards and onwards to 0.02/0.05. Win rate has dropped significantly from week 1 but is still above target. Over the last week I’ve tightened up a fair bit (20% VPIP) but I’m still rather passive (0.7 Total Agg. 5%PFR). As I move up a level I’m looking to tighten up further and to increase the number of raises preflop – call less hands. My briefcase disappeared in the week along with my copy of PNLHE. I definitely need to pick up another copy but in the meantime I’m reading NLHE Theory & Practice.

In the last week I’ve played a few STTs (8) as well. Although Absolute charge 20% at micro limits these games show an $8 profit or 40% ROI (over a tiny sample). At some point I will spend some time working out an STT strategy but at the moment I’m just keeping my hand in and recycling Absolute’s kind gift.

My main target for next week is to move up to Level 2. I’ll play at least a few hours at a single table to ease myself in and I’ll let you know how its going soon.

Week 1

After a week I’m showing some definite progress. I’ve just completed a thousand hands and I’m showing a profit of $20. I’m seeing 30% of flops and raising before the flop 7% of the time. After a few hundred hands I tightened up my starting hand requirements. In particular I stopped playing unsuited 2 card Jack or higher hands out of position, with the realisation that I’m not going to win very much money with top pair so-so kicker after the flop. I also stopped always completing the small blind in an unraised pot. Although the pot odds seem good you’re going to be out of position for the rest of the hand. I’ll only complete if my starting hand is in some way connected e.g. 2 gap connectors. I realise that seeing 30% of flops is quite loose but I’m comfortable playing that many hands at this level. I’ve been quite good at building big pots with good hands and by tightening up on starting hands I’ve minimized the number of loosing hands I play. The result has been a profit in the region of 50BB/100 hands, well above my target of 15BB/100.

Absolute Poker has very kindly put $10 into my account which I haven’t used in some time, as a means of luring me back to their poker room. With my cash game profits, this has taken my bankroll from an initial $40 to over $70 in the first week. My next target is $100, when I’ll be moving up a level to 0.02/0.05, $5 STTs and $1 MTTs. I haven’t played a single STT as part of the challenge – I’ve been concentrating on cash games, but I intend to play a few over the next week, using the cash Absolute have kindly contributed. I haven’t played MTTs either – I deliberately organised my bankroll strategy so that I needed to move up a level to play MTTs – I needed the break. But it’ll be nice to play the occasional big tournament (big as in field size, not buy-in).

The last week of playing cash games has returned me to basic, ABC poker, rarely bluffing and only building a big pot with good hands. Although the level is very low it’s reassuring to be showing a good profit. Long may it last!

Day 2

OK, two days into my new regime. So far I have played four 0.01/0.02 ring game sessions with a profit of around $4, over 250 hands. It does not sound like a lot of money but it represents a 10% increase in my bankroll, to the dizzy heights of $44. I am reading Professional No Limit Hold Em as a starting point to mastering ring games having read very little on the subject. I get the most of the fundamental concepts such as pot odds, implied odds etc. but some of the more advanced concepts will take a little work. I feel quite comfortable at this level, which is a good job and although I have had a number of bad beats, I am confident that I am playing more or less correctly (getting all in with trip 3s against a pair of kings on a rainbow board, only for the third king to come on the river) and that I will make money in the long run.

Introduction

I have been playing poker for a little over a year now, mainly MTTs but a few STTs and Ring Games thrown in for good measure. I read a fair bit for the first half of the year: Slansky, Harrington etc and in 2007 I show a profit of around $2500. Since the summer I had been playing large MTTs at Pokerstars with buy-ins typically between $20-50 and the occasional Sunday Warm Up, qualifying through satellites. I found the high variance in these large games hard work, a significant win every month or so with long lean spells, meant I had a hard time maintaining interest. I used no form of bankroll management and I do not think that helped either. I have brought myself a nice camera and had a lovely holiday with my poker winnings but started the New Year with any bankroll to speak of.

So, some New Year’s resolutions:

I will play strictly to a bankroll management strategy

I will never multi-table

I will read and re-read quality poker strategy books

I will master ring games and STTs

I will not cash out until the end of the year

My bankroll management strategy is quite simple: I will not invest more than 5% of my bankroll in any single ring game or STT and 1% of my bankroll in any single MTT. I have started from the very bottom of the poker pile with a $40 bankroll on Pokerstars. The idea is to build this up, stepping up through the levels and see where I end up in a year’s time. Will I make more money than I did last year and how high up the poker ladder will I climb? I guess the real question is how much can I turn my $40 investment into?