Recently turned 18, I decided to put in the hours and start playing and studying poker seriously once and for all. I've been around the game for the last two-ish years but I've never really brought myself to work on my game. Yeah, I know a whole lot of things that the "average"/beginning player doesn't really know but, to be honest, I'm still a ****ing fish, and I have a pretty long way to go.

After watching/reading about some bankroll challenges in the last two/three months (Doug Polk, JCarver, Xflixx, Jesus "Where's my ****ing money" Ferguson, among others) and scrolling through some old school threads by 2+2ers that made their way up through the ranks while documenting their journey in the forums, I decided I would do embark on my own BR challenge and use it as an excuse to work on my game and put in some more volume.

I knew that I was definitely going to start with $0 (given I don't have a credit card or anything that I can deposit money into an account with) and that I would start playing on 888poker (pretty much the only site that I know off that will let you play without giving them any credit card or bank account information. It would really help if anyone knew of any other site) The real question was, what should my goal be? At first I thought about $10.000, how cool would that be? Weeeeeeell, yeah, it would.
Thing is, I don't think it's that achievable. "But studwickl, Jesus Ferguson did it" Yep, I get it but when he set out to do his BR challenge, he had a whole lot of poker experience on him. By the time he started with it, he had already won five WSOP bracelets (including the WSOP Main in 2000), made two WPT final tables and had around 7.5 million in cashes. Plus, there are only so many games running on 888 that I can play under my fairly strict (read: Nitty af) bankroll management rules.
So after pondering on it for a bit, I decided that maybe 5K was an alright goal to reach for. It might be semi-ambitious, but I think that with enough hard work I can get there by the end of the year.

My plan is to have around 12+hrs/studying and at least 18hrs/playing a week. I will play freerolls and pretty much anything I can afford under BR management, which goes as follows (mostly accounting for variance in each game type):

30 BI for NL 6max Cash
25 BI for NL FR Cash
40 BI for PLO(8) FR Cash
45 BI for PLO(8) 6max Cash
25 20bb BI for Limit games
35 BI for FR Sit N Goes
40 BI for 6max Sit N Goes
55 BI for MTT Sit N Goes
40 BI for HU SNG
35 Half buy ins of the Sit N Go I'm satteliting into for SNG sattelites
60 BI MTT's
60 Half buy ins of the MTT I'm sateliting into for MTT sattelites

(Stop Loss for a session: 20/25% of bankroll)

These are not set in stone, though, and could probably deviate a bit from them if I find some really soft games.

I will try and update you on the progress of the challenge either every 3/4 days or once a week, depending on how busy I am given the school year is already underway where I live. I'll post how much money I've earned/lost and post graphs, along with hand histories and some of my thought processes during them. I'm open to all and any constructive criticism you might have about my play (after all, I still have long ways to go) and will answer any questions regarding pretty much any topic .
As far as studying, I will use pretty much any trustworthy resources at reach, whether it be books, software (totally legit and not cracked ), training videos, discussing strat here on 2+2, etc. I would also love if any of you out there can give me any recommendations on resources to improve my game.

I already started the challenge three days ago. I first started by cashing in a couple freerolls for around 60 cents in the last two days and ended today on 80 after grinding multiple 1 cent Hyper Turbo 6Max MTT SNG. Pretty average (if not below average) results, but it's better than nothing at all. I would love to post some hand histories but I'm writing this from a friend's laptop.

I will post again as soon as I can, hopefully having achieved better results than this. I'll play the 3K GTD Jackpotland skills tournament in exactly an hour and a half, so gl me (Studwickl is my SN on 888 if you wanna sweat me).

Hope to have y'all hooked for the ride with this first post, and here's to 5K by the end of the year.

Cheers