Hello 2+2,

I've been a member for a while, but I've always been too passive so I hope this blog keeps me motivated on being more active in this community. In this challenge I'll tell you how I'm trying to turn something out of a small $25 bank so keep reading if it interests you. I actually started this in August, however only now I decided to make my challenge public.

BUILDING THE INITIAL ROLL
I deposited $25 on PokerStars in order to have 100 BI for the $0,25 45s games. I could deposit more but wanted to make the smaller investment possible, so the lowest stake at the 45s seemed to me to be a good place to start. After almost 1k games my bank reached $108,50.



I cashed out $58,50 (thus doubling up my initial investment), leaving me with a new starting bank of $50. I see this new bank as a "free bank", thus I don't mind taking a riskier shot with this money. Assuming that risk, with $50 I started grinding the $1,50 18-mans turbo and after 250 games here's where I am. I didn't play continuously since the end of August, I was away from the tables for one month and a half when my classes started.



WHAT AM I DOING NOW?
Right now I'm still grinding the $1,5 18-mans and I plan on playing the 18-man SnGs with a 100 BI BRM guideline (of course, I'm only not doing 100BI for the $1,50, like I said, I played the $50 bank with more risk). However, if I hit 150 BI at the current level (that is, $225) I might start mixing up some $3,50 games (at a 5:1 ratio) just to get my feet wet before I completely move to the that stake, at the required bankroll. Analogous BRM will be used in further stakes (that is, if I ever reach them…)

CASHOUT STRATEGY
I'm making a separate topic on cashing out strategy, as this is something I want to start doing from the start. I will cash out the following:
- every bonus (currently I only have stellar rewards, I'm just some FPPs away from a $50 bonus)
- FPP-earned money (whenever I have 2350 FPPs I will play 10x Sunday Storm sats, unregister if I win and insta cash it out)
- any other form of bonus (ticket promotions, reload bonus, etc…)
- and, most importantly, at the end of every 1k games, I will cashout between 2 to 5% of my total buy-in (that is, if I play 1k games at $1,50 I will have to cashout between $30 to $75).

OTHER RANDOM STUFF:
I was liking the 45s but they became too time-consuming when I started my classes at college. Therefore, the 18-mans fit my schedule better. I have HEM and TableNinja and I usually play in sets of 10 games. On average I play 1 to 2 sessions per day, hopefully I'll improve volume on holidays.

CURRENT STATS (updated 31/10/2011):
This is the short description of my status, I'll update it whenever I post in my thread. My current bank is what I have online to play, but I will also mention what I cashed out already (including bonuses).




With all the most important stuff being said, let's get this challenge started. Hopefully, I'll meet people interested in this thread who are probably doing similar grinds, I hope I can follow your progress as well.

Another 18 man grinder im going to be following, gl!

Ola,

we have similar goals, ATM, im playing 45s $0.5 and sometimes 45s $1.5,
Wanna sweat each other sometimes?
Falo portugues tambem, manda me o teu skype. fika

Hey man :-) Similar goals too. Will be following this too. IMO, you can play the 45's as they don't last longer than 90 minutes. If you play in Europe, at about 8.00 CET tables fill up very fast. I usually finish a 20 sng session in about 100 minutes, so definitely possible to play in tight spots. I feel that to make the jump to the 180's (which I assume you will play in the future) 45's are the closest thing out there. Feel free to talk strategy if you want man. My SN is steve_fenech89

Goodluck! As my motto says, Let's get out of these cheeseburger stakes lol :-p

Gonna take a lOooooooong time to move up withdrawing at these levels but if you have the patience go for it good luck!

A session of 45-man SnG takes around 2,5hrs, although each game is kinda of short, the problem is when I load 20 tourneys I have to wait 2min between tourneys, waiting for them to fill up, so that means that since the first one started until the last one starts there's a time gap of about 40min. Now, if you run deep in the last tourneys, your session will be as long as 2,5hrs. Of course, the opposite can occur, that is, you run deep in the first ones and bust early in the last loaded SnGs, which can make your session as short as 1,5hr.

On the other hand, loading 10x 18mans takes 10minutes, so the time gap between the 1st and 10th SnG is just 10 min tops. This means that a 18man session lasts 1h +/- 10 minutes. So, basically, considering that I play 20x 45s in 2,5hrs, in the same period of time I can get 20 to 25 18mans. This is just some crappy math, but I took this into consideration when I realized that for me it's easier to get 1hr to play rather than 2,5hrs, for me it has pretty good advantages considering my current available schedule to play.

Considering the 180s SnGs, I agree that playing the 45s (or the 90s man) gives you a better foundation for the 180s but, again, I won't worry about the 180s: first, because I'm not rolled and secondly, even if I was rolled I couldn't fit them in my schedule. However, I'm keeping an eye on this game, perhaps it's something to grind in the future.


Patience is my middle name! I have no hurry to move up and, besides, one thing I want to demonstrate with this blog is, if you put a goal (a realistic one) in your head, with time and patience you can achieve it. Besides, I believe that cashing out is a good move nowadays, one of the reasons my BR survided BF and FTP collapse was because I was too nitty managing my money, I never kept all my BR in the same site and with today's uncertainty relating poker sites I think we should always have a decent amount in our ewallet, just in case...


Would love to follow your challenge thread, why don't you make one?

I made one already :0
btw, why don't you play turbos?

Alcorel, nice thread. Best of luck in your journeys... I like your goals. My only recommendation would to mix the 45s back in as time permits since they are very profitable.

I'm playing turbos, non-turbos last too long and, although you might get a higher ROI in these, the hourly will surely suffer.

Relating mixing some 45s, I know they're profitable considering that I played already 1k of them but, again, I have to compare hourlys. When I reach 1k 18mans I'll extrapolate potential hourlys in 45s vs 18s

So, the big news of the day is the release of HEM2 and I have a nice discount of $29,70. HEM2 PRO would just cost me $60,29 (or $30,29 for the small stakes version).

As HEM2 has a 30-day free trial I might instal it today and play around with it until I'm sure HEM2 works fine on my games. Then, I'm buying it with my bonus money earned so far (have only $44 but I'm less than 100FPP from clearing another $50 stellar reward).

If any of you following this thread are already trying HEM2 I would love to hear your impressions!

Hey man, I am too considering buying HEM2. I have poker tracker right now, but I feel HEM is better suited for tournaments and sngs. I am not going to buy it now though, first I have to see some reviews and advice from other players. I might do like you though and try the 30 day free trial. gl man

I'm still using HEM1 because the first time I tried to import everything to HEM2 all the data got screwed so I have to dedicate more time on subject to see what's going wrong. HEM2 is extremely fast important HHs, however I think HEM1 runs smoother than HEM2 and as I play in a WinXP virtual machine I still have to see if it's worth it or not...

U have both now, but sadly many people including me have problem importing HHs from HM1 to HM2 as same of the hands goes missing!
And even though I have a gaming pc with 8Gb, it still lags sometimes!
Do I think it would br better to wait for the update!

The same with me, like I said, I've had issues importing hands from HM1 to HM2, honestly considering it's the same db I don't understand why HM2 messes up importing HHs. I also notice that lag you mention, so until HM2 performs as well as HM1 I might stick with HM1.

Gonna deposit a small amount of my redeemed bonus into PS to get the PCA weekly finals ticket (not sure though how I'm gonna find time to play it) and in 48hrs I'm insta cashing out that amount.

I haven't been putting a lot of volume, I've been busy at college, but I'll do a small update in the first post soon for you guys to see where I stand right now.

GL to your games

Also trying a similar challenge, like your strategy . GL Man .

Keywords: 50BI @ $1,50 18s; $50 stellar reward; PokerStars 10th anniversary



It's time for a quick update in my challenge. Although I haven't been able to put a decent volume lately due to lot of work at my university, I was able to grind enough games to reach, for the first time in this challenge, the mark of 50 BI profit ($75) at the $1,5 18-man SnGs. I'm pretty happy that I've been through 360 games with no major swings, except that 25BI downer around the 100th game. My ITM is definitely stabilizing just a bit above 30% and my ROI has been jumping between 12 and 17%, I still have a small sample size to accurately find out where my true ROI stands but I guess I can be pretty confident about my ITM finishes already. I have no major remarks on the way I've been playing lately, I've just noticed that I've been a bit unlucky in HU, loosing many flips and being sucked often, so I honestly believe that, with time, my 1st place finishes shall improve. However, this isn't reflecting much in my ROI as the jump from 2nd to 1st is just 10% of the prize pool (this is a good thing about the 18s SnGs).

In the meanwhile I also reached my yearly 10k VPPs, which allowed me to redeem my second $50 stellar reward. I instantly cashed it out, following my rules for this challenges, which increased my total cashouts to $94. I won't be cashing out soon, at least for what concerns to bonuses, as this was surely the last stellar reward for me in 2011.

I'm paying a close attention to PokerStars 10th anniversary promotion, I already have my ticket to play the PCA weekly final (awarded by depositing using a promo code; the deposited ammount was later cashed out) but I'm not sure whether I'll find time to play the donkament.

To sum it up, check the numbers below. My online bank is reaching the comfort zone of having 100BI for my current stakes, then I'll need to make another 100BI to jump into the $3,5 SnGs. Given my current ROI, I might need just more 1k games at the current stake before moving up so, with patience, I'll be there soon.

Thanks for following...



CURRENT BANK: $132,82
CASHED OUT: $94

$100 MILESTONE: 29/10/2011
$150 MILESTONE: ?

Nice to see that we are both making progress,
I have some questions,
Is there a lot of differences between 45s turbo and 18s?
You are playing regulars right?
will there be a lot to adjust from 45s Turbo?

No, I'm playing the turbos. ROI won't be massive as in regulars but the hourly should compensate.

When you ask about differences about these games, you need to be more specific, like whether you're interested in knowing about the structure, the player's pool tendencies, or some other thing, maybe??

If you're a winning player in the 45s with a decent push-fold game I think you'll do fine, You'll probably need some time too adjust (like shoving a bit tighter as in the 18s the blind pressure ain't the same as in the 45s, therefore not requiring that many -EV pushes) but I'm sure with time you'll make it...

Also, the 18s give you a good shot to fight for the Battle of the Planet (BOP) prizepool. Actually, I didn't cash a single money place as you'll need to run extremely hot, but BOP's can be viewed as a nice rakeback income.

Keywords: 500 games @ $1,5 SnG; increasing volume



It's been a while since my last update but, due to some non-poker related issues, I haven't been able to put that much volume. First, I've been extremely busy at university with evaluations almost every week, which by itself is limiting my playing time to an average of 1 session every two day. Then, my computer was starting to lag and to do other stupid stuff that is clearly -EV for grinding, asking for a "clean up", so it took me about 3 days to backup up everything and do a clean instal. And, in the meanwhile, my DVD superdrive just died on me, which put me away from the tables for some more days. That is, all this together forced me to play no games at all for 10 days.

Now, concerning my games, I'm doing this update just to sum up my 500-game breakthrough. My ROI as has been suffering in the last 250 games, standing now at 11,5%. I think I must be happy with any ROI above 10%, but considering that in October I did a +15% ROI in these games it kind of hurts to see a ~7%ROI in November. Nevertheless, although my earnings have slowed down, the graph is keeping an upwards trend and I'll just have to put more volume to see where I'll stand in the next games. I still didn't reach the $150 milestone (the closer I got was $149 and some cents, but didn't hit it though) but soon I'll hit this milestone.

So far I've been playing 10 games per session and for the next games I'll do 12 games instead. I'm doing this for two reasons: first, I have a more comfortable BR for these games, so I can definitely start trying to put some more games; second, I've been profitable for 500 games, I believe I can play profitably another 500 games adding just a couple of more tables to my current sessions. Besides, adding two more tables actually represents an extra 20% in volume, which will increase my hourly in case my ROI doesn't suffer with it.

At last, just wanted to mention that I cashed out the $10 from the "massive" 10% Stars reload bonus. It's just $10, but free money is always welcome, specially when I just needed to play a single session to redeem all the VPPs required to clear the bonus. This amount is updated in my cash outs already.

It's all for now, I'll see ya in the next update.

CURRENT BANK: $135,87
CASHED OUT: $104

$100 MILESTONE: 29/10/2011
$150 MILESTONE: ?

Keywords: $150 milestone reached; December forecast

December 1st, time for a quick review on how November was at the tables. Although I managed to hit my $150 bank milestone, November itself was a roller-caster (due to a 6,1% ROI) and only managed to be 20BI positive. Of course any positive ROI is a good ROI, but this slowed my progress after an excellent October in terms of ROI. Anyway, I won't complain much because my sample size is too small yet to know where my true ROI really is, the most important thing is that now I'm pretty comfortable with 100BI for the $1.5 games, which is a good enough buffer to cover any nasty swing I might get in the future games.


November-only SnGs: 312 games at the $1,5 stakes


October and November results side-by-side.

For December I think I'll manage to put at least 500 games, this won't be done in the first fortnight due to three exams I'll have at college, but mainly after the 17th December, when I'll be officially on vacation. So, I hope I can put up this volume as I can't wait to reach the $200 mark in my bankroll, where I'll start mixing up some $3.5 games in my sets. Not sure yet if I'll be able to reach this bank in December, I surely won't if I do a poor ROI like this month, but I'm already planning ahead: at $200 I can safely mix up 3 $3.5 games and 9 $1.5 games, for an average buy-in of $2, which is exactly 1/100th of my bank. I'll drop the $3.5 games in case a swing hits me all the way down to $150 again.
Still, $200 is just a reference for starting mixing up some $3.5 games, the key milestone will be $250, this will be an important milestone as it will correspond to 10x my initial investment. However, that milestone is still a few hundred games away.
Just a final note on adding 2 extra tables to my sets after my last update. I can easily manage 12 tables at once, as expected (remember I did 20 games at once on the 45-mans). I'll keep playing 12 games until I notice any significant drop in ROI.

CURRENT BANK: $149,99
CASHED OUT: $104

$100 MILESTONE: 29/10/2011
$150 MILESTONE: 28/11/2011
$250 MILESTONE: ?

Looks like your crushing these. Won't be long until your in the 180s.
Gl with the rest of your challenge.