Backstory

Like many of you, my poker journey began in the early 2000's watching ESPN's coverage of WSOP, High Stakes Poker, and Poker After Dark. I was only 13-14 when I first saw the likes of Tom Dwan, Doyle Brunson, Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu (among many other old school pros) beating up on the rich business men for piles of chips and massive stacks of cold hard American dollars. Growing up under a single mom who worked 70 hours a week to keep the lights on and food on our table, the amount of money these guys were throwing around at a game of cards blew me away. I was hooked instantly.

After watching countless hours of televised poker and seeing all the Pokerstars and Party Poker advertisements I decided it was time to try my luck at the tables. That's right, Zynga poker. I crushed zynga poker. I was raking in millions of fake dollars on Facebook every night. Beating up the old Indian guys and random Malaysian moms for high stacks of zynga coins. I felt on top the world. Surely if poker is this easy on Zynga I can jump right into playing for real money, right?

So I downloaded Pokerstars *cough* underage *cough* (If you didn't start playing underage online did you really grow up loving the game of poker?) and instantly started grinding the daily Pokerstars Hubble freerolls trying my hardest to earn a few pennies to get into the 2nl streets. If I could just ship one of those 15k player freerolls I thought I would be made in the shade!

After trying for weeks to win anything in those freerolls it quickly became apparent that this method of freeroll grinding was far too slow for my liking. So I did what any rational, intelligent 16 year old does, grabs his mothers credit card. At 1:00AM I deposited $50 into my stars account, with the intention of quickly winning it back and withdrawing $50 back into her account and she'd never even know, right? Well by 2:00AM I had quickly lost $150 of my mothers hard earned money. Remember when I said she was a single mom who worked 70 hours a week to support me and my siblings? Yea... she needed that $150.

Couple days went by and I felt terrible. I couldn't show my face around the house, I was gutted. I didn't have the money to repay her, and when she found out a few days later I was in the doghouse. I swore I'd never do it again, I apologized profusely and was made to delete Pokerstars and promised I'd never play poker again. A few years go by and I was still grinding the occasional freeroll for fun but never deposited money to a poker site again.

Fast forward a few years and now I'm in college and rarely play poker anymore, just the occasional 2-5nl on pokerstars and a few microstakes tournaments here and there. I had deposited $50 a couple times and was playing the game strictly for fun to unwind after studying all day. I found Jaime Staples on twitch and was trying my luck at a few tournaments here and there, and span up a $500 bankroll playing micro tournaments and cash games. The end of the semester rolled around and I was having trouble finding a summer job so I withdrew my poker bankroll to help cover a few bills in between jobs.

Since then I've been doing the same thing across Pokerstars, GG, & 888. Deposit $50, grind it up to ~$500 and withdraw the winnings. In total I've won about $2k playing micros casually over the past 3 years.

The Challenge
Grind up a life roll starting with $30 at 2nl zoom, without withdrawing funds, re-invest my winnings into climbing the stakes, paying for coaching, and funding my poker life into the future.

Goals:
-Play 1,000,000 hands of zoom on Pokerstars in 12 months
-Reach 100nl zoom on Pokerstars
-Reach $50,000 Poker Bankroll
-Play the biggest game in my local card room (5/5 $1,000max)
-Take my Mom on a trip to Vegas to repay her for all those years ago

I'll be posting graphs of my progress on a regular basis to show my progression and my journey through the stakes.

First two days of the challenge have been going pretty smoothly. Up $29.54 at 2nl zoom so far after 12.5k hands. I'm cashing out rewards chests as they come in for free tickets and cash. I'll be saving my StarsCoins to redeem for cash rewards of $10 each for 1k points as I accumulate more through playing.





Current Stars BR is $59.58 (slightly higher than total winnings due to instant reward cash back through chests).

My rules for BR management for this challenge are going to be as follows: Play current stake until I have 50 buy-ins for current stake, at which point I will shot take next stake up when I have enough for at least 1 full buy-in. If the BR goes below 50 buy-ins (i.e. I lose the 1 buy-in shot) I will move back down to the lower stake until I have enough to shot take again.

For example: I will shot take 5nl at $105 BR ($100 for 50 buy-ins at 2nl and $5 for 1 buy-in shot at 5nl). If I lose the $5 shot I will move down to 2nl to grind up another $5 for another shot. Then repeat as needed until the shot sticks.

The same will be true for 10nl, I will shot take at $260 ($250 for 50 buy-ins at 5nl and $10 for 1 buy-in shot at 10nl). And will move down to 5nl if I lose the buy-in.

My girlfriend is going to be visiting her friend tonight and will be away for the night. So I will be putting in a marathon session today. Will update tomorrow on the session!

Good luck mate! There is a few teams of Cash games that helps players in Micro Stakes, did you ever consider studying with them ?

Current Stars BR is $53.91



The Friday night marathon turned into a full weekend spree. Played nearly 37k hands over 3 nights. Played what I'll call my C game this weekend. Lots of room to improve. I feel like I started to get into the groove of things a bit more towards the end of the weekend and I am starting to really get a better understanding of the pool's ranges in a lot of different situations. If I could give my self one piece of advice into the future it's to fold more rivers. I'll be working on improving this into my play.

Overall we lost ~3 buyins over the weekend (ran 19 buyins below all-in ev).

-Currently my focus is on putting in good volume as I build this roll. I am using my volume to analyze the pool's play and make adjustments based on actual results of the pool I am in at the time of play. I will be looking for coaching/study groups in the future as I grind a bigger roll. But for now I am confident my game will be strong enough to grind up to at least 25nl at it's current level. My biggest leak is playing too much at what I described as my C level of play. I'll be working on my mental in this regard the most as sessions can get long and tiring. More coffee is needed.

37k hands in 3 days on nl2
holy f*, I would go insane

Seeing this graph, I assume you're playing really aggressive and shove a lot?

Current Stars BR is $83.32




Made some adjustments to my play after the getting in some volume and seeing how the pool is playing. Put the adjustments into practice yesterday and today and played 14k hands over the last 2 days.

Good start to the week. Played well, ran well, not much to complain about. Fairly smooth sailing upwards.



Nearly hit the coveted 1000bb stack, was so close at one point (955.5bb) but had to end the session to go to bed.

I was taking really aggressive lines and I have adjusted some things after reviewing some hands and looking at volume stats of the pool overall. Hopefully these adjustments I'm making continue to be fruitful.

Current Stars BR is $105.24



The adjustments I made to my game have been paying off. I stopped resetting stacks like I was in the beginning and as a result have had some good success in deep stacked pots.

Not much to say about the past 2 days, have just been executing my strategy and seeing good results. We hit our first BR threshold of $105 as such I will begin mixing in a table of 5nl zoom to my 4 zoom tables (other 3 will stay 2nl until I get to $150 BR).



Here's a graph of the overall results thus far all of which is played at 2nl zoom.

Onwards and upwards. Lets get it.

Current Stars BR is $131.74



Didn't put in a ton of volume over the weekend, had some things to take care of outside of poker. Will be getting back on the grind this week.

Our shot at 5nl has been going well. Running above EV when shot taking always helps. Currently up ~6 buy-ins at 5nl since shotting the stake.

Will look to solidify our shot this week and look to push to 10nl as soon as possible. I also reached chest rewards level 3 which means I have now unlocked the 40% rakeback reward challenge. I'll be doing my best to grind out those bonus rewards as well to help our BR.