Hi, I'm a 2nd year student at Warwick University studying Maths/Stats. I started playing online poker at the age of 15 (after reading many poker books on tournaments), only playing on skypoker and Full Tilt Poker. I used to only play MTTs, one or two-tabling. I gradually made just over £1k from a year of £2 MTTs on skypoker when I first started off (mainly due to the awful standard of the opponents). In the next year of my life, I moved to Full Tilt and made another $1.5k from $2-$11 MTTs. I then turned 18 and crushed my local casino, winning the £520 first prize in my first ever £33 freezeout, 3 days after my 18th birthday. I then came 2nd in the same tournament next week and went on to make about £1k from live tournaments that summer before the start of University.

Then I started Uni and met a bunch of great new people, being introduced to programs such as Holdem Manager and SitnGo Wizard. I started playing many different types of games such as SnGs and obviously cash. I also started multi-tabling to a fairly large scale, at one point 17-tabling $3.50 9-man SnGs. However I approximately broke even for the past year, due to a variety of factors. I was learning to play cash, which is an entirely different game and tbh I sucked at first. It didn't help losing $300 in my first 300 hands of 50NL running a good full house into quads twice!!!!! I was also learning to multi-table and kept setting myself different challenges at different types of games, which I never stuck to because I always stopped as soon as I got a little bit of run bad. I also played on various different sites for rakeback and bonus deals, which also didn't go too well.

So I have just started properly learning ICM, and I am making this thread mainly so that I can set myself a challenge and stick to it! Documenting every session I play, even if it results in me going busto. I have $300.01 in Stars currently and I cannot afford to re-deposit if I do go busto. I have spent most of my poker profit over the past 3 years, so all I really have in terms of money was dregs of money from some European poker sites and my student loan.

My goal is to start off 12-tabling (rolling as well, so as soon as I am out of one, I add another one) the $2.50 180-man MTTs on Pokerstars, and not play any other poker games while I am doing so, until I reach $1800.01. Also I will meticulously analyse most of my sessions using SnG Wizard. I am seeing this as a learning process as well as hopefully a way of making a little bit of money quick. If I make it to my goal of $1800.01 ($1500 profit), I will create some more, hopefully more interesting goals. In the meantime, I will update this thread after every session I play, with my thoughts on how it went and what I think I can learn from my analysis and maybe post some interesting hands. I will create a new holdem manager DB, so that I can post completely correct statistics and graphs. My first session will be now! Wish me luck!



The reason I have $300.01 is that I deposited in pounds and I couldn't get it to be exactly $300

Good luck! I would invest in Table Ninja as it helps with multi tabling -gives you more time to think about decisions!

Yeah I do know about TableNinja and plan to get it very soon. I don't have that much money at the moment and can't really justify spending the $60-90 on buying it. Let's hope I get off to a good start and I might get it

Just something I left out incase others were wondering: I played online since the age of 15 under my brother's and my dad's names because they let me use their cards and details etc etc...

First session will start in 5 minutes So update in about 4 hours

GL! will follow your progress

GL bazz!

Update 1

ROYAL FLUSH!!!!!!!!!



It's been a very good start! I hit my 4th ever royal flush (AA vs AJ all-in preflop) and then immediately after that happened, my fortunes started to change. I registered from 10pm (GMT) to 12:30am, always keeping 12 tables open, which resulted in me playing 37 $2.50 180-mans. I had lost about 20 games without any cashes, losing KK to AA in my first game I played, and outright bubbling a game KK vs KQ. I was starting to question whether this challenge was really a good idea. Maybe I'm just going to lose 120 games in a row and it's game over, leaving me with 1 cent in my account!

But NO! The royal flush saved the day. The next 17 games resulted in 6 cashes and 3 final tables: 15th,14th,12th,5th,2nd and a 1st! I'd like to thank my girlfriend for the 1st. She text me at quarter to 1 saying that she just searched me on stars and the next hand she watched was me winning heads up AK to K4. Therefore, it is clearly all down to her that I won.

So I was playing my final 7 games knowing that I had already banked a profit of at least $100 for the session. But I finished feeling pretty hard done by, throwing away a big chip lead in the final 6 of my last game to finish 5th. I ran AJ into KK against the 2nd chip leader (I shipped 80k from cutoff on 2500/5000+antes), knocking me down to 30k. Then I lost 20k JJ to 33, briefly doubled AK to K9, before losing J8 to 79 in a blind battle with 5 BBs.

But still, it has been an awesome start, and creates a nice cushion for me to fall back on, for when I inevitably have a bad run (as is the nature of a 180-man tournament) I feel like I played pretty well, but I am no ICM expert and I'm sure I made several mistakes at important points. I have uni 9-11 and 17-18 tomorrow, so seeing as it's getting late now, I will analyse my games using SnG Wizard in that break tomorrow. Night!

Profit for Session = $154.20
Overall Profit = $154.20
Bankroll = $454.21
Overall ROI = 166.7%
Overall $/hour = $38.87

Gl pm'd

StarsHotkeys - AHK almost like a free tableninja
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1035
Look also at the last page for some fixes

I haven't received a PM...

Thanks I'll give it a look.

Just about to run my session through SnG Wizard.

So I just analysed every single hand from my 3 final tables, which totaled about 130 hands, and I made 13 mistakes. I'm fairly happy with that considering I've only recently made a conscious effort to learn ICM and I'm not very good at naturally knowing the right decisions in situations.

The first 3 mistakes were made in the game where I ended up coming 5th, the next 3 were consecutive hands in the game where I finished 2nd. But ironically, the final table where I made the most mistakes (7) was the game that I actually won.

Feel free to say what you would do in all 13 of these situations. Only one of the mistakes I made was absolutely awful, as in it wasn't even close to being right.

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I'll say what I did and what SnG Wizard says is correct at some point in the future.

Sexy..

Good luck in your quest bazza

Okay so the way I used SitnGo Wizard may have been slightly incorrect, due to me just using the average default calling and opening ranges for all players. The defaults calling ranges seem reasonable when I am the first into the pot, but the defualt opening and calling ranges don't seem appropriate when it gets shorter handed and someone has already raised into me. In my hand #8 for example, SnG Wizard suggests that I fold the A7s there with the default ranges (which were the SB opening 27% and calling my push 26%). However these numbers seem way too low and I am perfectly happy with my shove with A7s.

Anyway, SnG Wizards answers from default average ranges were : 1. Fold 2. Fold 3. Push 4. Push 5. Fold 6. Push 7. Push 8. Fold 9. Push 10. Push 11. Push 12. Push 13. Push

I did the opposite in all situations (seeing as these were the only hands I made mistakes on). However, some may not actually be mistakes. Hopefully, I will learn to use SnG Wizard in a more effective way soon.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to best use SnG Wizard to review a session?

I'm just about to start session number 2 now. I expect it won't be regging very fast right now (mid-afternoon on a weekday), but hopefully that means that there are less regs so the fields are softer. I can only hope for a session as good as my first. Wish me luck!!

Good luck with your tourney bud. hopefully you do well the same as me see you on a few FT

Update 2

Well that went pretty awful. 44 games and 4 min cashes, no final tables. I expected a downswing after my fortunate excellent start, but such a large downswing is still hard to take. I near bubbled about 4 or 5 other games losing races for huge pots. I'm fairly happy how I played, but just couldn't win the crucial hands or running into players who have monsters in spots where they should never have hands. The amount of times I ran a correct ICM shove into Kings or Queens was getting quite annoying. But oh well that's poker...

I'm playing a £150 satellite (that I already satellited into during a £16.50 tournament) into the GUKPT £1000 Main Event tonight at G Casino, Coventry. Let's hope I have better luck there.

Games During Session = 44
Profit for Session = -$90.32
Overall Profit = $63.88
Bankroll = $363.89
Overall ROI = 31.5%
Overall $/hour = $8.67

Graph for Session:



Overall Graph:

40 games without making a final table is nowhere near a large downswing. These 180s have a ****load of variance, so better scope some of the regs in your game. You will see that 200 buyin downswings are common and should be expected. So 300$ is not enough to play these games if you're not willing to reload.

Hey op

Im playing a similar amount of 15$ single Table tournaments and am considering dabbling in mtts starting with 180 mans.
Didn't realise u could sng wizz with mtts ....... Such a fish haha.
Can u gt an ev adjusted figure fr them as well? Anyways I'm rambling.


Gl op, will be Keep tabs on this thread

Hey I'll be following this, gonna do a similar challenge $250 to $2.5k by the end of the year. Good luck!

EV doesnt work on MTT's

Yeh I only used SnG Wizard ICM for final tables. For any other table, you gotta use Chip EV, instead of ICM. SnG wizard has both settings.

Oh and I lost the GUKPT main event satellite QQ to KK, but won £35 on blackjack

Good luck!

Have a read through chilin_dude's thread in PG&C if you haven't already- he also is doing a challenge starting with a $300 deposit and trying to reach $100k by the start of 2012, and started solely grinding micro 180mans / 45mans. He's now up to somewhere in the region of $60k iirc.

Although definitely be willing to reload because $300 is a pretty small BR to be playing these variance-filled games with, and if you don't wanna reload probably better off playing a different game.

Yeah 'chilin_dude's thread is the only thread on this whole site that I have read every single post on! It kinda inspired me to try this myself, but on a less ambitious scale to start with.

I understand that $300 isn't quite the ideal bankroll to start off with, and even assuming that I am a long term profitable player at 180-mans, (which I'm fairly sure of but not entirely certain! ) there is a small possibility of me going bust anyway.

That said, My fortunate $150 start should have boosted me into a position where busting becomes very unlikely, and if I do bust, I don't mind. I'm seeing this as a learning experience and poker is just my main hobby. I love playing. It's not all about the money. If I make some, or a lot then great, but if not, oh well.

Session 3 about to start. Let's FT every single game!

Update 3

Wooooooop! Just had a better session than my first one. Only played 30 games because I didn't get knocked out of games as quick. Cashed in 7 with 3 final tables: 18th, 18th, 16th, 11th, 8th, 2nd and a 1st!!!

Not gonna lie and say that I played amazingly though. I have no shame in saying that I got pretty lucky. I won a big triple way all-in A3 vs AJ vs JJ . Generally, I just seemed to win my races and even 40:60s. The only hand I remember where I got outdrawn was losing KK to A4, but that was heads up in the game I came 2nd, so it's all good .

However, my proudest game was one where I came 18th. I lost a big pot leaving me with half a small blind on the bubble and on the button. At this point I figured it's more +EV for me to fold a few hands in the hope that someone gets knocked out rather than just calling all-in with any two for 2 or 3 hands in a row. Seeing as the average stack is about 7 BBs at this point, it seems fairly likely to happen, and it did, making me an extra $4.92 I'm quite nitty lol

Games During Session = 30
Profit for Session = $160.62

Overall Profit = $224.50
Bankroll = $524.51
Overall ROI = 80.9%
Overall $/hour = $21.97

Graph for Session:



Overall Graph:



Probably going to play another session in 2 hours or so. Let's hope this big upswing isn't followed by another bad one!

I'll analyse some play tomorrow, but I've noticed that the rough situations where I'm never sure what my shoving range should be is when I have 4-8 BBs UTG. Short-stacked, 8 players to get past, BB on me next.... so many different variables and I'm pretty sure I'm making some awful shoves or folds in these situations.

Nice wp bazz.