All the Americans are staying home to play terribly today! Get in there! Games are good!

BR @ $121.05.

I have a thing to go to at 4 so unless the freeroll moves _very_ fast I will be busting out early or folding out before the bubble.

GLGL!!!

What a relief! QQ < KK before the first break. Enjoy the freeroll, y'all!

It's been a while since I've updated in this thread. I haven't had too much time to play in the past weeks. I also ran my BR all the way down to ~$30 for a short while. I was able to put in some hours over the past weekend and did very well at the cash games.

BR now @$263.

I've come to realize that I do much better at the single table SNGs, but I like playing cash so much more. I'm going to try to stay away for the cash table for a while and see if my heavy swings in BR subside.

GL all!

Iam joining this challenge player name on merge=High_Set

I have had limited success on merge on ring games so Im deciding to go the tournament route this time with no bankroll. Without mentioning one time when I nearly won a sixth sense tournament and finished second. Currently I have about 22 2nd step tickets saved up. I will be donking all the 2 steps probally on Sunday when I have about 30-35 of them. In the past 2-3 times I have deposited 20$ and lost it all on ring tables I did have success in a couple fast fifty sng. I will be playing them late nite around 3-6am during the week with a few 30-50 cent mtt tournies during the weekend. ( I fare well in mtts ) wish they had more. If I manage to somehow get my balance over 30$ I will start doing 2$ bounty tournaments I belive with the occasional fast fifties if I'm running bad.

My question is how long would it take generally to build my account up to 4-5$ with fun step 3s? 3-4 weeks? Generally I get 3-6 fun steps 2s in a day.

Look forward to updating my progress along the way.

Wow! How long was your run from $30 to $263? I have been such a turtle in this challenge. Please come back and update us on your progress in the SNGS.

Welcome to the challenge, High_Set! It's not easy grinding up those first few $1 wins. I didn't keep accurate records, but I would estimate that at my peak (which was my second grind up from zero) I was binking 40 percent of my Step 2s and perhaps 15 percent of my Step 3s. So most weeks I was picking up $1-2.

If you like MTTs check out the 'Pocket Change' daily tournaments. There's one for .11 (with 1 rebuy and 1 addon). Fields are relatively small and you can do your initial buyin with points if you have any left over from your cash game days.

I had a great week! I lost a little this morning but ended my week at $125.03, up $19.36 from last week and less than $7 from my goal.

The Fast Fifty is still a good game for me, although I've noticed this game is starting to bubble later and later. There can be 5 or 6 players left when the antes start. I worry my edge is shrinking.

I've adjusted comfortably to the 9-player $2 Bounty. It's much easier to take the swings on a $100+ roll than on a $40 roll. I think I'm somewhere around breakeven and it wouldn't be hard to notch up a little if I took better notes and table selected. There's enough volume to be a little choosy.

I can usually play one Dolphin Room ($2.20, 9 players, 7 minute levels) game during my morning sessions - it fills more reliably than the Dollar Dazzler these days. This game plays much tighter than anything I've encountered to date. A lot of the regs seem to play a weak-tight style. I lost three or four of these (usually because I was a little too optimistic about opponents 3bet calling ranges) but managed to take one down and that was pretty cool. Overall this game is probably slowing my progress to $132, but it's fun so I will play more this week.

Keep grinding, everybody! GLGLGL!!!

It took a while to run it up. I started with the $2.20 9-man SNGs. Threw in a couple bounty tourney's as well. I remember doing pretty well in a $3.30 PLO MTT as well. Once I was above $100, played 25NL and did well. Over this past weekend, I sat a 2 tables of 25NL and ended the 12 hour session at $100 on one table and $85 on the other.

I've been very aggressive with my BR because I see it as a freeroll anyways. Now that I've built it up though, I might back off that speed.

Is anyone ITT using tracking software? I'm not and am thinking maybe I should start. I'm a rec. player with a full time job, but I'm interested in what a tracking software like HM2 would do for my game.

I get pissed off when Im playing 2nd steps and get bad luck when there are 4-5 people left. Like when I had kings vs k/j off with 2 hearts on the board but he wins cause the turn and river comes up hearts and he had the heart. Thats when my stretegy starts to go array. Had 22 2nd steps today used 9 or 10 and got one 3rd step from it. Im going to wait til I get more #3 steps and #2s. If my luck turns out good I may play out all my #2s. But I think Ill wait til I get about 8-10 #3s

OG-

I use HEM. I highly recommend using tracking software at NL10 and up. I like to use my notes to define a villians play by street and board texture and pair it with stats to make my decisions. It is also very useful in bounty sng's as well.

DoX

High_set - keep an eye on the expiration dates of your tickets. I think they all expire one week after you win them.

Also, I'm sure you know this, but don't forget that this challenge is partly about mastering your emotions. It's an ongoing process and you never have to stop working on it (I'm currently steaming after donking off a buyin at 1/2 live).

I try to be happy when they suck out on me, because they can only suck out when they get their money in bad. And I can't remember if it was DoX or n3phew or who that told me when you suck out on them, it's just revenge for every suckout you endured yourself.

If you can hold this double-standard together, it will get you through some rough times on the freerolls.

Everybody run better than me tonight! GLGL!

I don't use a HUD currently. It sucks because you can't really do any "homework" after a session to keep your thinker fresh. But honestly you don't really need it until NL10 maybe and probably not until beyond that. I used the HEM3 free trial on my old site and loved it. PT had a couple better features, but all in all I didn't like the format (plus black friday take two happened to everleaf in the middle of my trial, which was my fallback and only site where I had a roll). I personally will look into one once I have enough to comfortably play NL10, maybe like $200-$250. I just know my luck, this site will get shut down too the second I make the purchase.

yeah if you win on average 4.5 a day, that's about 5 days to get as many tickets as you say you have. So play them fast. I think having tickets expire tilts me more than playing and losing badly.

And good double standard, blob. I constantly use that, but never thought of it that way. That day when I got knocked out of 4 at once in a matter of 7 hands with AA,KK(quads),QQ,QQ, and AKs I felt so robbed. I was obviously too tilted to play any more that day, but the next 24 hours I kept telling myself I got it in good in all 5 of those hands and that it would even out. Since then I've been 75% at #1 and 60% at #2. Some of this is keeping the positive attitude and exerting effort, and some is my "justice suck outs".

Gl all, glad to see the conversation is growing some.

3 for 6 on step #2s today. Will start tackling some step #3s soon after. I've gotten 2nd place twice and no cashes in the last 5 #3s I've played. So hopefully I walk out of this next week at least $1 richer. Then on to the animal rooms...

BR $4

I hit the $300 mark over the weekend. I played mostly the $5.50 single table SNGs. I also played a few $11 single table SNGs and used some $1 Double Up coupons I received for leveling up.

GL all. Keep up the good work. This challenge is possible.

^^ Congrats!

I decided to stop lurking and finally register on this forum. This has been one of the main threads I've been watching. I started 2 days ago, Won my first dollar yesterday with my last step 3 coupon of the day. I've been doing the 11c sngs with varying levels of success. I've won 2 and pulled 2nd in one. balance is at 92 cents atm. Looking forward to building it up a bit so I can play the fast fifties rather than these shove fests.

congrats! If you get into a groove with these, let me know a tip or two. I'm about to shot take the fast fifties, but depending on where variance lands me after the first few, I may be in those 11c very soon.

Welcome to the thread!

Done it good. Won a #3. Took 40 #1, 21 #2, 4 #3, and a ton of bad luck to wade through to get there, but I got me a win. Got 5 more #3 tickets to hopefully turn into even another win, but even if not I've hit my goal.

BR $5

Question: who all plays the freerolls? which ones? The $200 is "worth" 4 cents a ticket, whereas the Step #1 tickets are 3/4 of a cent. But the time it takes to play either through are about 3.5 and 2-2.5 hours respectively. So they are "worth" 1c/hr and 1/3 c/hr respectively. So freeroll seems 3 times more worth it than the steps by the numbers, but I still feel like the fact that you can multi table and have pauses between games, and play whenever you feel like it steps are still the better option. But maybe I'm missing out on some easy money? Either way not too many days I can have a specific 4 hour block of time free for less than 1 in 200 shot at some money.