Without going any further you're probably already thinking I'm a bit crazy and you definitely wouldn't be wrong. After being made redundant from my job a few months ago I have been unsuccessful in finding another job but my real passion has always lay with poker. I'm 24, from the UK and living in a flat with my gf who has told me she will support me short-term if I want to give poker a go as a career (she knows how sick I am at being messed around with jobs/working for other people). It all sounds pretty great but the big issue is I am literally penniless and have nothing valuable I am willing to sell. So what do I do? Borrow $50 from a friend obviously, what can go wrong?

Ok so this was actually what happened 2-3 weeks ago and I started out at the micros in an attempt to build a roll of my own in order to eventually start making some decent money. I am grinding MTTs, HUSNGs, 6 max SNGs and would like to eventually transition into the live game where I feel the edge is higher. I've always struggled with BRM so one of the big must do's of the challenge is having limits on my accounts and treating this like a proper business. Regular sleeping pattern, eat better, hydrated etc etc. My goal will be to eventually make a few thousand dollars a month but whether I get to that point or not remains to be seen.

Fast forward a few weeks and I've have a good start. I managed to come 2nd in a $10 KO HUMTT early on and I've been putting in some good volume playing hyper turbo HUSNGs. I was sceptical to make this thread from the outset as no doubt everyone would read and just tell me to get a job but the time has come...

I will be updating regularly and will answer any questions along the journey.



Here's my graph for hyper turbo HUSNG's (my main game) in both $ and buy ins:





My bankroll is currently split over PS and FTP. I've withdrawn about $100 so far (trying to keep this to a minimum for now) but I still have a little over $1700 to work with at the moment.



Thanks for reading, run good!

Thats pretty cool, glgl

Thanks. Here's my favourite hand from my last session:

Regs love spewing when you c/r flops you're not supposed to hit. I would normally just call the flop here with my SD value but I'd been check raising him a fair bit so I figured he would go crazy.



Another non-believing reg vs relentless check raising:

sounds like a plan

Been pretty busy the last few days and also played quite a few SCOOP events (which have been a big drain on the roll). I have had to withdraw a couple of hundred as well but had a good couple of days playing HUSNGs to maintain the bankroll. Unfortunately FTP is closing on the 17th May so going to have to move all of my action to Stars. Hoping to get a good few days of proper grinding in before that. Still got a roll of $1400 to play with and hopefully no need to withdraw for a while!

This can't end poorly. Although surprisingly good start OP good luck.

Thanks. It's relatively risk free in the sense that I won't be losing anything I haven't made and I'm hoping that I can pull some miracle out the bag and start a decent roll from it (so far so good!). Unfortunately the grind is pretty boring at the moment but will start transitioning into live mtts/cash games and hopefully have some more exciting things to talk about.

I'm in a very similar situation to you and I am trying to do the same sort of challenge. Well done so far. I know grinding can get boring but just think it's a lot better than having to work for someone else.

Cheers mate, gl to you, which games are you playing?

Fairly decent day on FTP but ended up about $170 down on Stars, sattied into the $109 scoop and didn't get above starting stack, couldn't find any good jamming spots so ended up jamming Q4 into AT bvb. Will probably play the $27 and $215 SCOOP 6 max shootouts tomorrow which will leave me with a $1.5k roll and will focus on building the roll before playing any more MTTs.

Today's graph:



Here's MTD HUSNG graph (volume has been a lot lower than usual due to MTTs/family member being in hospital):



Even though I'm crushing recently I've been looking at the leaderboards and I'm worried that there are fewer and fewer regs making decent money from poker these days. Maybe I'll need to transition into MTTs full time in the future but it appears Stars is trying to kill those off as well.

Crushing the HUSNGS mate, subbed, glgl!

Thanks mate. Just woken up after a decent night's sleep for the first time in god knows how long, feeling fresh for the SCOOP's today.

The SCOOP can FO for now.

Wow, what a day.

After busting the SCOOPs I ended up playing some higher buy in SNGs and MTTs running absolutely terrible in all of them. Played some satellites to some SCOOPs as well without any success and actually ended up busting the bankroll. I was pretty dejected and had started looking at jobs I can get while I was eating dinner. I had a quick look at my emails and noticed I had a free $5 spin and go ticket on PP so decided to play that.

For those of you that don't know, PP spins are 4 players with the winner getting 75% of the prize pool and 25% of the prize pool going on a random player's head. I was pretty tilted by this point so didn't really care about the $20 prize pool after having a -$1.5k day but ended up knocking the bounty out QQ vs AT when the board ran KJ3T4 and got HU with about 750 chips vs 1250. I then open Qs8x and get called, flop is AK4sss and villian leads for pot. I jam, he has A7 and I get instant service on the turn before finishing the game off with Q6 vs T9 on 763T6.

Roll back a few hours and I was chatting on skype with a good friend of mine and bemoaning my luck that despite playing thousands of MTTs with lots of $100+ BIs (and some $1k+) I'd never had a 5 figure score (ran like aids late in MTTs - don't underestimate variance until you've lived it!). It seemed like today was not going to be the day to change that. I had regretted the decisions I'd made earlier in the day but it's hard to explain how years of frustrations and an overbearing sense of entitlement can wear you down over time. I was all but ready to give up on Pokerstars (and probably poker) once and for all. I chatted with my gf and decided that I needed to get a job, I told her that I can't sustain a poker bankroll with FTP closing and running like I do in tournaments.

Anyway, I decided to chuck the $20 winnings on a $20 Spin on PP and I'm watching the software decide on an amount. I've played thousands of spins on Stars and FTP, I know how these things work (the highest spin I've ever had was a 200x which I lost). As the software is doing it's thing it hovers onto $20,000 and it's still moving fairly fast so I'm fully expecting it to move onto $40 as it would do on Stars but before I know it, it hasn't moved. **** the bed, this isn't real.

I check and double check the prizes, I call my gf in from the bedroom, I pace around like I'm training for an indoor marathon and then it's time to get down to business. $12k for first, $1.5k for 2nd and 3rd, nothing for 4th and $5k on the head of the guy directly to my left.

No number of discussions can prepare you for this moment. I'd always said that I would try to be the aggressor, take an early lead and put the pressure on from there. Just one catch here though, my roll is $0 and busting 4th would simply leave it that way. I'm not normally one for nerves at the poker table but this meant everything. I try and see flops cheaply, the guy to my right is a fish and before I know it there is a player all in against the bounty with 99 vs A8. The JT9 flop is pretty disgusting and unfortunately for me he holds. I look for spots to chip up but there's a surprising number of players wanting to see flops in such a large multiplier. However, the fish having QQ against the 66 of the player that had doubled with 99 was lovely and we were fairly quickly down to 3. $1.5k locked up and I was already relieved.

It became tough at this point. I was desperate to knock out the bounty but I was also aware of the large prize for first and getting bullied by the large stack as a result. I managed to stay afloat before:



Boom, $5k in the bag and a shot at the $12k first prize. The big stack tanked for ages and I feared that he would call purely because he could.

The very next hand was pretty crazy. I wouldn't normally play it like this but the board was wet and he was bad.



I managed to blind him down a bit more and made a questionable limp/call at the end. I limped because he'd loved limping and didn't seem to understand stack sizes, the call was purely adrenaline!



I was shaking, I was breathing heavy, none of it felt real and it still doesn't. I rang my mate and he promptly told me "There's your 5 figure score". Mental doesn't even begin to describe it.

For now, I am going to withdraw it all and pay off some bank overdrafts, money that I owe family and put the rest towards a roll. Will probably have a roll of about $7-8k left.

The bottom two are the $15 and $5 bounty wins with the top 2 the $12k and $5k:

Can confirm OP's story.

Can also confirm it's not his most degen story.

Easy game.

Oh wow.. this is pretty epic.

I knew this thread couldn't go in a bad direction. Congratz!

Thanks, going to take a day or two off while waiting for the withdrawal and get back to the grind. I would like to grind HUSNG's on PP but unfortunately their rake is far too high for hypers (something like 7-8% for 100s and below which even if beatable will put a massive dent in profits).

whatever you do with the roll.. dont play scoop

I know right! Far too draining on the bankroll

Probably going to play some live cash games/MTTs with HUSNGs on the side.

Subbed for degen stories, spill

Can't give away all my stories just yet! Thanks for the sub.

holy **** - Brit degen hits it big. Keep running goot Sir!

Wow, you're in the UK. If you were in Cambodia or something i'd figure you might have a chance with 1.6k but living expenses are going to be a bitch if you don't want to be a burden on your gf. Yes, that still applies with a 10k roll, that's relatively low to play poker with professionally in a first world country. Run good one time? Oh wait, you already did. Hope it goes well for you but you need strict BRM to have any chance at all.

GL!

Epic first page. Epic.