I've been out of the poker loop for a while. I have been playing since I was about 16 years old or so and in honor of being 21, I decided to give it a real shot to come out ahead with playing some poker.

I always use to play before online but my play was always sporadic at best. I would play NL, FL, Omaha, SNG's, MTT, etc. I had no bankroll management whatsoever. Anytime I'd get ahead, I'd instantly try and move up to the next level just to give it a shot. Well no

I just deposited $50 into my PokerStars account and am looking to try and turn that into $500 for my first goal.

Most importantly I am going to follow some guidelines:

• Single Table SNGs only (this is where I feel I am the strongest)
• $1 SNGs until I have appropriate BR to move up.
• Make an active effort to track my stats and use a HUD to work on my skills.

I've never set a goal for myself in particular when playing and being out of school for the summer, I figure this would be a good time to give it a go. What do you guys think would be an appropriate time frame to meet this $500 goal? 1-2 months perhaps?

Depends greatly on how much time you plan to play per day/how many tables

I'd say about 4 hours a day at least. 2-4 SNGs at a time.

Are you playing the $1+.20s? The rake is pretty sick. There are 1+.15 normal speed euro STT (or a 1+.10 euro turbo if that's your thing) which would be a more rake efficient choice.

Yeah the rake is pretty bad. Played 12 $1 Sng's for my first night. Did a few Double or Nothing, a couple of Fixed Limit, and the rest were normal 9 seats. I placed in the money in 6 of 12 of them and am only $0.55 ahead.

DON rake is pretty awful also.
Multitable SNG seem to have much better rake % there's a standard speed $2.20 90-man, then $3.25 for a 45-man vs $3.40 for an 18-man. Flipside is you can lose a lot of buyins in a short space of time without doing much wrong

Rake is a huge deal though. I messed around with my 45-man results (8.3% rake yay) at 10% rake I would lose ~10% of my winnings. At 20% rake I lose more than two thirds. 17% roi becomes 5.7% (and running a single-digit roi also puts you in for massively choppy times)

$1.15 DON might be OK if you can cash 65%+, 60% gets you 5 cents a tourney and hopefully you can beat something else for more than that. If not, I'm sure you can learn to fairly quickly (and Stars has 25c normal speed rake free tourneys which are a bargain if you're looking for experience and review material)

Yeah I'm not really trying to play the Double or Nothing. They didn't offer those the last time I was playing on PokerStars so I just thought I'd give them a shot.

I think I am a slightly better FL player than a NL player but I will have to keep playing to see if that is true or not. I'm not sure if I want to throw in some MTT into my game or not. Perhaps I'll add some additional guidelines to allow me to.

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New guidelines:

• Play Allowed In:
  • Any STT with buy-in of 2.5% of my BR or less
  • Any MTT with buy-in of 1% of my BR or less
• No Cash Games Allowed
• Holdem Only (FL or NL)

I figure this will give me roughly 40 buy-ins for STTs and 100 buy-ins for MTTs.

Been playing quite a few SNG's today. Down about $10 because of constant losses like this
I'm thinking I might have to branch out to Cash games...


Poker Stars $1.00+$0.20 Limit Hold'em Tournament - t100/t200 Limit - 7 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BTN: t6507 M = 43.38
SB: t600 M = 4
BB: t1140 M = 7.60
UTG: t3173 M = 21.15
UTG+1: t1180 M = 7.87
MP: t245 M = 1.63
Hero (CO): t655 M = 4.37

Pre Flop: (1.5 SB) Hero is CO with T A
3 folds, Hero raises, 2 folds, BB calls

Flop: (4.5 SB) T A J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB calls

Turn: (3.25 BB) 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, BB calls

River: (5.25 BB) J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets all in, BB calls

Final Pot: 6.8 BB
BB shows 6 J (three of a kind, Jacks)
Hero shows T A (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
BB wins 6.8 BB

classic stuff keep it up though! once you move up and see it grow, you'll have fun with it

I am revising my rules once again...

New guidelines:

• Play Allowed In:
  • Any STT with buy-in of 2.5% of my BR or less
  • Any MTT with buy-in of 1% of my BR or less
  • Cash games with buy-in of 2% of my BR or less
• Holdem Only (FL or NL)

I think cash games will be easier to make a profit early on as I can get ahead from some of the fish at tables and get out while I'm ahead. Then once I can move up, I can play the higher level tournaments where the players are less crazy and are getting lucky on me.

Quick summary of my SnG play for my first two days. Not much to go by but I figure I should keep this as updated as possible.

Had I not played that 18-max SnG I'd be just over breaking even. At this point it seems that I am cashing in just about 50% of my SnG games. I need to work on getting into 2nd and 1st more often as you can see.

Also some of the Double or Nothings are thrown in under the SnG NLs and I filed those wins under 3rd place since it is only a $2 winning among 5 people.

Well you got your grind on and are not losing money which is good, you might want to try to focus on just one style of game (1table) or (3 table) or DON etc, until you're beating that, and then introduce more. Here's to an uphill climb over the next 100 games gl!

Jesus, 20% rake on LIMIT sng? That is horrible enough to completely avoid. I'm not saying they are unbeatable just the skill advantage required to just break even is pretty huge (and a limit betting structure puts a lower ceiling on teh advantage you can get from individual plays)

This 'getting lucky on me' stuff is not a good mindset. If they would do better by folding than by calling and sucking out as often as they should do then generally you benefit from them trying to suck out on you and someone who correctly folds is someone you will win less money from.

In cash games 'getting out while you are ahead' makes little sense especially playing limit. You would also be better off with a 'number of big blinds' rule for limit cash than a specified buyin.

If you can it would be much better to keep records of the DONs separate from normal SNG.

Had you paid 10% rake on those limit sng you would be up Ten extra cents a tourney is a huge millstone.

gl

I have turned $50 into $500 innumerate times by:

a) reading doyle brunsons super system II cover to cover, twice
b) depositing $50
c) grinding $2-$5 8-game and horse sng's and mtt's

If you follow the book, then at these levels it literally is free money. Takes me about 2 months to grind up to $500, though on an upswing I have done it in less than a fortnight.

preflop AI or fold lol, but with AT its def shove with 3bb

Hey thanks for the input everyone, much appreciated!

I think I am going to stick with the DoN's until I can move up.

The way I figure it, if I lose a DoN at a $1 + .15 buy-in, to cover that loss, I'd have to place in two more tournaments making for a $.55 profit. ($4 -(3 x $1.15)).

If I were to lose a standard $1 +.20 NL or FL, to cover that loss, I'd also have to place in two tournaments, but making for only an exact break even if I only come in third. ($3.60 - (3 x $1.20)).

From the looks of it, rake will be beating me at the standard 9-max SnGs until I can get to the $5 SnGs where the rake is lower at 10%.

Time to begin my 3rd day

Considering this my halfway point for today's play so far. Time for a little food/relaxation break.

I am sticking purely to FL 6-max cash games and $1 turbo DoN's since they have the lowest rake.

You can see how me making the switch really paid off so far after my losses from yesterday.

Seems to me that my player per table values are opposite between cash and tournament games. 6-max fits me well for cash, and 9-10 works for tournaments.

I also separated my DoN tournament stats under Table Type -> SnG.
The normal 9-max games are still SnG(1 Table).

Tournament Stats
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Cash Stats
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Around hand 400 is where I started playing 6-max games only.

its crazy how you look enough at the hand to critique/know how many "bbs" he has yet not look at the game, or the fact that if it were nlhe it would be impossible to raise pre then bet flop and turn w/ 3bb...

oh and do work op...googogog

Very interesting so far. The constant changing of your challenge rules doesn't bode well for you.

As afforementioned, you're best to stick to one game type (experiment until you find out what you're best at), and learn to get better at beating that game type.

You seem to be running good at the moment, and I really hope you continue to! It's too early to tell your true winrate, but keep playing well, and focus on the endgame, sir! Best of luck!

I agree, when I changed my rules a few times I was thinking to myself "well what is the point of these rules if I just keep changing them to allow me to play what I want?"

The most important thing I have kept in mind thus far is BRM. Had this been one of my other $50 deposits in the past, I would have already been fed up with breaking even and would have tried $2-$5 SnGs and probably would be down to $20.

As you have said, at this point I am more or less experimenting different games and types to see what I am best at in the micro limits. Day 1 I was all over the place. Now it is Day 4 and I plan to play a good 50+ DoN's as I seem to be at about a 75-80% winrate over 30 games so far. Of course that is a small sample size so I could easily be worse then that.

I just wish there was a way to test out these different games without having to risk my BR. Play money offers no view into that and I am already at the smallest limits.

On the bright side, I contacted PS support because I forgot apparently this was my first deposit on my account, and they were more than happy to apply a first time deposit bonus to my account. I have 6 months I believe to make 2 more deposits that will add up to the $600 bonus. Hopefully I can make it to my $500 goal by then, withdraw most of if, then put it right back to get the bonus on it.

Yes it is indeed best to capitalize on that first time deposit bonus; it's free money! I believe you have that timeframe to both activate AND redeem the bonus, though I'm not sure on that.

Looking forward to your end of day graph

Make sure you can withdraw before redepositing and still get the bonus, I'm not sure you can.

You are right, once I withdraw any money, the rest of my bonus is forfeited.

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My goal was to play 50+ DoN's today but I got extremely busy and was only able to play maybe 15 tournaments or so.

I also am taking the time to watch some Deuces Cracked videos. I figure if i am on break from school, and am serious about trying to make this $50 into something, I will take the few extra days to study up and watch some videos.

Anywho, here is my graph for tonight, I might be getting a few more SnGs in before the night is over.

Took the time to split up my DoN's into the turbos and normal games as well.

Can you even beat STTs with a 20% rake?

This isnt meant to discourage you, but you might consider moving to the $5 level and pray that you don't run bad and lose the initial roll. Statistically if you're a 5% ROI player then going bust at any time is under 5% if you start with 10 BIs. Even if you do run bad it's still only $50. Good luck!