Starting a new bankroll from zero next weekend cos these challenges are kinda fun and also I've been steaming like fog over the last few months running like poop at NL25, so could do with the break to beat up some tadpoles for a few months

I'm a pretty aggressive player that likes to exploit any weakness going and playing on HUDless sites definitely gives an advantage to this kind of player imo, especially vs multitabling drones that don't stray too far from ABC and don't pay much attention to my 100% VPIP/3B.

Goal: Would like enough to take some shots in 1/2 live games before RTA bakes online poker through, so £2000 seems reasonable.

Plan:
- Start with the freebies at GGPoker + Coinpoker up to £10
- Grind the £1 + £2 SNGs + challenges at Unibet up to £40
- NL4 at Unibet + CoinPoker up to £200
- Grind cash tables at both sites using 30bi bankroll management

That's enough cooling off, let's play!

Hours: 2
Profit: nil points

Close to a $2 ticket but bubbled out of 315 ppl. Sites are way stingier with Freerolls than back in the day so going to open up my 888poker account too to get the volume up.

Any recommendations on good freeroll sites? (Google wasn't my friend)

Perhaps this information will help you
https://www.pokernews.com/freerolls/

GL!

Good luck. I've recently started playing on a HUDless site and it's definitely a change. One thing I've found that sort of works for me is to mix in some single tabling and really take some aggressive notes on players.

Found a lot of sites that seem to push their highest earning affiliates rather than scope out the best freerolls.

Did come across this little beauty though (https://freerollpass.com/#freeroll-schedule)

Thanks! I usually 4-table but I'm definitely miss a lot of key info doing this. My win-rate is still pretty high at NL4 (20bb/100), but might try cutting down to 1-2 tables at NL10+ and take detailed notes as you say, just to avoid brutal downswings that come with a lower winrate.

Hours: 3.5
Profit: £0.41 + $10 Supermoon ticket

It's a start!

Smoked the competition for a...
- 19th/949 finish for 47c
- 109th/2502 finish for 18c
- Spin n go win for 75c

Got some free 888 tickets coming in tomorrow so hoping to grind out a few pennies this weekend, also found the 25c 45-man SNGs on Pokerstars which are pretty spewy and reasonable rake.

Hours: 7.5
Profit: £0.88

Meanwhile at 888poker HQ...

"We had a massive early advantage in the online poker market, how can we ensure we don't overload our servers with too many customers?"

"Firstly let's offer a no deposit £20 bonus and bury the fact it is paid in mostly 10c MTT tickets that ALL expire within 24 hours in the T&Cs, you know, a real kick in the nuts once they've signed up"

"We could also make the tables portrait and the graphics low resolution so the suits blur, is it a spade, club, who knows?!"

"Yes and let's charge 15-20% rake at the micro levels, just to make sure no recreational players fall through the net up to the higher stakes"

"Brilliant!"

Started the day off well with a $3 win on GGPoker Spin n go win, took a few pot shots at $1 SNGs + Battle Royale and dumped it again. Still waiting on the 888 tickets so hopefully can register to a ton of free tournies tomorrow.

Hours: 11
Profit: £0.93

Couple of nice wins to finish off the day:

14th/2032 on Stars for 55c
11th/531 on 888 for $6.23

Hours: 15.5
Profit: £6.45

Reached a small milestone of £10, unfortunately Unibet bug means I can't play there for the foreseeable future, so will be focusing on 25c MTTs on GG + Stars.

Won a coinpoker freeroll for a $5 MTT ticket and stayed up until 01:30 on a school night only to bubble the f****r with 7 players left. Min-cash would have been $35, top prize $185. Would have been a nice boost.

Hours: 29.5
Profit £10

Here's a bit of background on my poker story:

Started playing NL10 on Pacific Poker in 2004ish with some kind of mad strategy of betting % of stack size according to my outs, so Id bet like 40% of my stack with a flush-draw whatever the pot size

....went on a mad heater with no bankroll management and ended up with $4200 playing on $10/$20...where they proceeded to butcher me for the lot haha!

Around 2006 a guy in a local poker tourny told me to buy Super-system and from there I ended up reading around 15-20 poker books from all the top pros at the time.

In 2008, credit-crunch hit and there were zero jobs, went to interviews for 3 months battling it out with everyone else just to clean toilets and decided, f*** it, might as well go broke chasing a dream! These were the FullTilt boom days when sbrugby, durrrr, OMGclayaiken, Gus, Ivy, Matusow etc. where battling it out at high stakes online every day and the sky was the limit of how much you could win.

I joined deuces-cracked training site and turned $10 into $12k in just over year with careful bankroll management. Got into my first and only $1000+ pot since going "lol pro" and my flopped set all-in got cracked by a flush draw!
NL200 then chewed me up some more so I decided to multi-table $20-$30 SNGs + MTTs for around 4-5 years making about $15k a year.

During that time I ran over 100 buyins under EV TWICE and both times went broke a few hundred hands away from reaching Platinum (Party) + Supernova (Stars) levels, the timing was so brutal, but this led me to watching Tommy Angelo, meditating + Buddhism which changed my life, so it really was a serendipity.

Eventually I realised on balance the stress was not worth the $15k a year so spent my bankroll on laser-eye surgery, a kick-ass 6 week holiday in Thailand and a home-learning degree in Computer Science. A few years later I worked my way up as a Software Engineer which I never would have got without Poker as it taught me how to focus + study.

2020, patient sodding zero, I got covid with horrific long-covid symptoms and got made redundant a month later and had to move back in with my folks. For the last 2 years I haven't been able to walk more than 10mins a day so I took up Poker again last year just to keep me sane through the pandemic and ran $5 up to $1400 in that time. Ran like **** since March so I just slung $1200 into my mortgage and started this challenge!

Massive improvements in health now (even got covid again and got no symptoms!), I used the last 2 years to study and get AWS certified and landed a better job with a 20% pay-rise



TL;DR:

- 2004 - Fish on heater, won + lost $4200 in a few days.
- 2008 - Tried going pro, turned $10 - $12k and ran like sh**, but still won about $15k/year.
- 2013 - Quit poker, got computing degree + software engineer job.
- 2020 - Got long covid, lost house/job/health.
- 2021 - Started poker again to keep me sane, ran $5-$1400, ran bad and stuck $1200 in mortgage.
- 2022 - Got AWS certified + new job with 20% payrise.

Found a soft-as-fook game and somehow lost 13 buyins at 25c getting it in as a 70-80% nearly every time, that's tough to do!

Also Unibet are coming under some kind of DDoS attack so can't play there for the foreseeable future.

Hours: 37.5
Profit: £9.01

Interesting poker history you've got there!

I'm doing a similar challenge to this right now and I've always liked the idea of starting with nothing (or a very low amount anyway). There must be something in it psychologically I'm reckoning, maybe that there's nothing really to lose if it does go wrong maybe?

Best of luck with the challenge, there's something very humbling about going on losing streaks at such low stakes (although the rake structures don't help with that as you've mentioned). I've been there before and all you can really do is laugh and accept the variance.

It's a great way to test your skill level + bankroll management cheaply as you rise up the stakes, and also pretty good for keeping your game flexible. Each stake has wildly different players and being able to capitalise on each style must be a good exercise.

Saying that, these freerolls + micro MTTs have been driving me nuts! Might take a few rest days in between sessions and work on my RNG rage.

Good luck with your bankroll challenge too! What are your targets?


Hours: 40.5
Profit: £14.67

I'm gonna try one of the great Mr Greenstein's old tilt-control tricks today and root for my opponents to outdraw me in all-in pots! The only reason fish come back is cos they get to outdraw you right sometimes right? Let's go!

This trick works like a charm, not sure why I ever stopped doing this. It really separates you from the anxiety of the all-ins as you emotionally hedge your bets and lets you just focus on the game-play. Another trick I used to use was to just cover the screen with my hand for all-ins but not nearly as effective.

Had a really fun session and I must say my opponents did very well I was like a clairvoyant calling out single cards from the deck haha.

Hours: 41.5
Profit: £15.09

2 back-to-back first places in 30-man tournies!

Hours: 42.5
Profit: £18.04

Holy bankroll-boost Batman! Stars gave me a free $5 Spin-n-go ticket and just took it down for $15!

Just gutted my go-to poker site (Unibet) is having a tech meltdown currently and looks like I'm not gonna be able to access it for a while, so the $1 SNG plan is out the window.

Sucks but I think I've got to grind it out on GGPoker until I've got enough to take some shots in the CoinPoker cash games (probably at around £90).

Hours: 42
Profit: £30.58

My main target is currently just trying to get a bankroll up to £1,000 so I can start playing at something of a significant level in cash games online.

I must admit when you've got such a small bankroll, the tokens add a lot of fun to journey! Not very often you get the opportunity to boost your bankroll by such a significant % from one game!

Keep grinding away, you'll be back playing cash games soon enough I'm sure.

Ye some sites are pretty good for low stake promos and with the level of play it's pretty tough to downswing. Best of luck with your bankroll goal.

I've got my Unibet account back and hit another small milestone today, £40! So going to be taking some shots at NL4 soon.

Here's a budding giraffe to celebrate!

Decided to wuss out and stick to $2 SNGs. I'm not really a shot-taker player, more a grind out 200k hands to get in the same postcode as my EV.

Had a fun swing, lost 5 SNGs in a row yesterday, followed by 4x 1st places in a row today

Hours: 52
Profit: £45.82

Another bankroll-boosting promo, this time from 888. Deposit $10 get 12x $5 Blast tickets!
The level of play was horrendous, probably pretty profitable for anyone mental enough to grind them out.

I think the worst I got it in was 65% fave

...needless to say I ran pretty shite and only picked up $35 profit, still a very welcome boost though!

Hours: 56.5
Profit: £85.96

Pokerstars back with another bankroll boost, deposit and get a $10 Spin n go ticket, binked it for $30!

Hours: 58.5
Profit: £96.01