Starting with $0 so there's nowhere to go but up
08-14-2022
, 10:13 PM
Hello, and welcome to what will most likely be one of the lamest PB&G blogs there ever was.
Our goal here today is to take a $0 balance on GG and build a bankroll with it. What will you, the reader, get for following along these shenanigans? Why, the promise of daily updates, of course! And since it's coming from yet another upcoming PB&G poster, you already know that there's a 50/50 chance of me fulfilling that very promise! I either will or I won't!
A little bit about me to start. I'm an insurance agent living away from what used to be home while my Fiancée goes to grad school to look at bugs. I've been playing poker for about 10 years and have played stakes from $2 all the way up to $500 games online, and dabbled in live play up to 2/5 NL and 2/2 PLO. Primarily a cash game player. I am the definition of a Bad Reg. I even have a t-shirt that says so!
To get this challenge off the ground, we will have to start with some freerolls. Thankfully, GG is kind enough to offer us a daily free tourney ticket to either one of their Spin and Gold tournaments or their patented, ever exciting, Battle Royal format. We are going to take full advantage of these to get our first real dollars to gambool with. With any luck, we will then take these dollars and play the lowest stakes tournaments until we build up enough of a roll to play some cash games. From there, who knows???
The sky is the limit 
The beginning of this challenge will almost certainly be very boring, as in all likelihood I will only have one tournament to post about each day because we won't have any funds outside of GG's oh so generous daily tickets. I will do my best to write up fun, entertaining blog posts to cover this lull in the action. I will talk with you about whatever you would like, and fill you in about daily life events, my past, my hopes/dreams/aspirations for the future, and whatever else may come to mind! I'm sure it will be fun and exciting.
The challenge starts tomorrow (I may or may not have already used todays free ticket....) and we shall see where this rollercoaster takes us. Wish me luck 2+2!
Our goal here today is to take a $0 balance on GG and build a bankroll with it. What will you, the reader, get for following along these shenanigans? Why, the promise of daily updates, of course! And since it's coming from yet another upcoming PB&G poster, you already know that there's a 50/50 chance of me fulfilling that very promise! I either will or I won't!
A little bit about me to start. I'm an insurance agent living away from what used to be home while my Fiancée goes to grad school to look at bugs. I've been playing poker for about 10 years and have played stakes from $2 all the way up to $500 games online, and dabbled in live play up to 2/5 NL and 2/2 PLO. Primarily a cash game player. I am the definition of a Bad Reg. I even have a t-shirt that says so!
To get this challenge off the ground, we will have to start with some freerolls. Thankfully, GG is kind enough to offer us a daily free tourney ticket to either one of their Spin and Gold tournaments or their patented, ever exciting, Battle Royal format. We are going to take full advantage of these to get our first real dollars to gambool with. With any luck, we will then take these dollars and play the lowest stakes tournaments until we build up enough of a roll to play some cash games. From there, who knows???
The sky is the limit The beginning of this challenge will almost certainly be very boring, as in all likelihood I will only have one tournament to post about each day because we won't have any funds outside of GG's oh so generous daily tickets. I will do my best to write up fun, entertaining blog posts to cover this lull in the action. I will talk with you about whatever you would like, and fill you in about daily life events, my past, my hopes/dreams/aspirations for the future, and whatever else may come to mind! I'm sure it will be fun and exciting.
The challenge starts tomorrow (I may or may not have already used todays free ticket....) and we shall see where this rollercoaster takes us. Wish me luck 2+2!
08-15-2022
, 07:30 AM
Hi!
So, what is your plan?
As I understood you will play freerolls to get some start money and then you will start playing cash.
What BR do you need to start playing cash?
And what is the end goal of the challenge?
So let's start with your past 
How did you get into the game? What have been your successes online and live?
Good luck with your challenge!
So, what is your plan?
As I understood you will play freerolls to get some start money and then you will start playing cash.
What BR do you need to start playing cash?
And what is the end goal of the challenge?
Quote:
I will talk with you about whatever you would like, and fill you in about daily life events, my past, my hopes/dreams/aspirations for the future, and whatever else may come to mind!
How did you get into the game? What have been your successes online and live?
Good luck with your challenge!
08-15-2022
, 01:49 PM
Hey Slyless, great question, and thank you for the well wishes!
My plan for this challenge is to learn solid fundamentals of different game types while also having a lot of fun. I have always had a very theory based mindset when it comes to any strategy game, and I plan on treating poker no different. Especially at the start when I am only going to be able to play a couple of games a day since, in all likelyhood, we will be busting out many times before we really get going. I plan to spend the extra time I have dissecting each hand played.
__________________________________________________
Bankroll Management
The bankroll management portion is going to be interesting. For the very start, we are going to be pretty much only playing Spin and Golds with any winnings we get from our tickets. We will do this because they are the lowest buyins available on GG at .25 each. I plan on doing this for some time, maybe until we run good into $20. That will give us 10 buyins for 2NL and a chance to start running up the stakes from there. After giving it some thought this morning, our overall BR Strat will be something like this:
Tickets/S&G from $0 up to $40
NL2 + Spins from $20 either to bustville or $100.
At the $100 mark I plan on starting to make things interesting. At that point we will have 100 buyins for $1 tourneys so we will start mixing those into our strategy. I also want to incorporate PLO and Short Deck into our game selection for some fun. I think that when we reach this point, certain days of the week will be assigned certain game types. E.G, Monday for spins, Tuesday for NL, etc. The most amount of my study time in the past has been devoted to PLO so it will be fun to be involved in those games. I also enjoy the gambool nature of shortdeck but want 100 buyins before we start messing around with that so we won't be playing any of that until a bit later in the challenge.
So what we will end up doing is this. For NL, we will have a BR strategy of shot taking at 20buyins and moving back down to the prior stake if we lose 10 buyins. For PLO, we will shot take at 50 buyins for the next stake and move down after losing 25 buyins. For short deck, there will be no shot taking as I am not good at the format (yet) so we will have a strict 100 buyin bankroll requirement and move down after losing 25 buyins.
__________________________________________________
About Me & Past Successes
Phew! Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, let's get back to talking about me! I've been playing some variation of poker all my life. My Uncle taught me how to play 5card draw and 7card stud in the mountains of Western Massachusetts when I was barely old enough to hold cards in my hand. My family has always hosted small NL tournaments for fun, and card games have always been a pastime of ours. I started playing "seriously" in college when I discovered BlackRain79 before moving on to UpSwing, which is where 99% of my poker study has been.
In terms of big successes in poker so far, I haven't played much live but I have won enough from casino games to pay for all of the training materials and software that I use for my poker hobby. After we subtract those expenses out I'm about breakeven. As for online I have not faired so well I had a heater on Ignition when I was still living in Massachusetts and ran up about $6,000 playing the 1/2 Full Ring games over the course of a month. But I quickly gave it back trying to play zone and 500NL. Aside from that most of my online play has been micro stakes studying and just trying to become a better player.
__________________________________________________
Signing off
Let me know if anyone has any ideas for the Bankroll challenge, games you'd like to see me play, ideas for Bankroll management, etc. If we really pick up traction I may consider starting a discord/YouTube channel and uploading some of my play.
You guys are in for a treat today, you're getting two, yes, TWO posts! We have our Spin and Gold ticket for this afternoon, once I am off of work I will be starting the challenge off and getting the first few hands in. We will discuss what was done and how I could've potentially played my hands better than I did.
Thanks again for the good luck Slyless, hope to see you around!
My plan for this challenge is to learn solid fundamentals of different game types while also having a lot of fun. I have always had a very theory based mindset when it comes to any strategy game, and I plan on treating poker no different. Especially at the start when I am only going to be able to play a couple of games a day since, in all likelyhood, we will be busting out many times before we really get going. I plan to spend the extra time I have dissecting each hand played.
__________________________________________________
Bankroll Management
The bankroll management portion is going to be interesting. For the very start, we are going to be pretty much only playing Spin and Golds with any winnings we get from our tickets. We will do this because they are the lowest buyins available on GG at .25 each. I plan on doing this for some time, maybe until we run good into $20. That will give us 10 buyins for 2NL and a chance to start running up the stakes from there. After giving it some thought this morning, our overall BR Strat will be something like this:
Tickets/S&G from $0 up to $40
NL2 + Spins from $20 either to bustville or $100.
At the $100 mark I plan on starting to make things interesting. At that point we will have 100 buyins for $1 tourneys so we will start mixing those into our strategy. I also want to incorporate PLO and Short Deck into our game selection for some fun. I think that when we reach this point, certain days of the week will be assigned certain game types. E.G, Monday for spins, Tuesday for NL, etc. The most amount of my study time in the past has been devoted to PLO so it will be fun to be involved in those games. I also enjoy the gambool nature of shortdeck but want 100 buyins before we start messing around with that so we won't be playing any of that until a bit later in the challenge.
So what we will end up doing is this. For NL, we will have a BR strategy of shot taking at 20buyins and moving back down to the prior stake if we lose 10 buyins. For PLO, we will shot take at 50 buyins for the next stake and move down after losing 25 buyins. For short deck, there will be no shot taking as I am not good at the format (yet
) so we will have a strict 100 buyin bankroll requirement and move down after losing 25 buyins.__________________________________________________
About Me & Past Successes
Phew! Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, let's get back to talking about me! I've been playing some variation of poker all my life. My Uncle taught me how to play 5card draw and 7card stud in the mountains of Western Massachusetts when I was barely old enough to hold cards in my hand. My family has always hosted small NL tournaments for fun, and card games have always been a pastime of ours. I started playing "seriously" in college when I discovered BlackRain79 before moving on to UpSwing, which is where 99% of my poker study has been.
In terms of big successes in poker so far, I haven't played much live but I have won enough from casino games to pay for all of the training materials and software that I use for my poker hobby. After we subtract those expenses out I'm about breakeven. As for online I have not faired so well
I had a heater on Ignition when I was still living in Massachusetts and ran up about $6,000 playing the 1/2 Full Ring games over the course of a month. But I quickly gave it back trying to play zone and 500NL. Aside from that most of my online play has been micro stakes studying and just trying to become a better player.__________________________________________________
Signing off
Let me know if anyone has any ideas for the Bankroll challenge, games you'd like to see me play, ideas for Bankroll management, etc. If we really pick up traction I may consider starting a discord/YouTube channel and uploading some of my play.
You guys are in for a treat today, you're getting two, yes, TWO posts! We have our Spin and Gold ticket for this afternoon, once I am off of work I will be starting the challenge off and getting the first few hands in. We will discuss what was done and how I could've potentially played my hands better than I did.
Thanks again for the good luck Slyless, hope to see you around!
08-15-2022
, 06:33 PM
Well my friends, we started our challenge off with a bit of good luck, followed by a bit of bad luck. Unfortunately, the bad luck has reigned supreme on this blistering hot day.
We began our challenge with a 5x multiplier, only to be knocked out in third place! We played a total of 18 hands, after I have time to go through the solver I will post if we made any interesting mistakes. I will say that tournaments are a much different beast compared to cash and I have a lot of learning to do.
On a side note, does anyone know if there’s a way to mark that a tournament was entered with a ticket rather than a buyin on PT4? I would like to not have the buyin subtracted from our winnings since GG is footing the bill
Regardless, it’s not the end of the world either way. We’ll get some graphs up in the group after a few weeks of playing. Basically once there’s actually a sample to show there 😊
As always, if you guys have any questions, send them my way, would be happy to look at anything. See you tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be able to get this challenge off the ground with a Battle Royale bink!
We began our challenge with a 5x multiplier, only to be knocked out in third place! We played a total of 18 hands, after I have time to go through the solver I will post if we made any interesting mistakes. I will say that tournaments are a much different beast compared to cash and I have a lot of learning to do.
On a side note, does anyone know if there’s a way to mark that a tournament was entered with a ticket rather than a buyin on PT4? I would like to not have the buyin subtracted from our winnings since GG is footing the bill
Regardless, it’s not the end of the world either way. We’ll get some graphs up in the group after a few weeks of playing. Basically once there’s actually a sample to show there 😊
As always, if you guys have any questions, send them my way, would be happy to look at anything. See you tomorrow, hopefully we’ll be able to get this challenge off the ground with a Battle Royale bink!
08-17-2022
, 10:00 AM
Focusing on one discipline may be more rational than studying four at once.
At the micro stakes, this approach may be successful, but at higher stakes, it will be tough for us.
Either way, it's interesting to see your successes and failures along the way.
At the micro stakes, this approach may be successful, but at higher stakes, it will be tough for us.
Either way, it's interesting to see your successes and failures along the way
.
08-17-2022
, 10:19 PM
Thanks man! Yeah I agree that I certainly would progress faster focusing on one game but this is more of a “fun” challenge so I’m not that worried about skill progression. Building a base knowledge of multiple games is enough to keep me happy for now.
I am sad to report that the bankroll is still at $0
came in third again today in our spin and gold. We will keep taking our lumps and eventually get a cash though!
As always if you guys have any questions just let me know I would be happy to dive in I’m a decent plo player so discussions on the topic are always enjoyable.
I am sad to report that the bankroll is still at $0
came in third again today in our spin and gold. We will keep taking our lumps and eventually get a cash though!As always if you guys have any questions just let me know I would be happy to dive in
I’m a decent plo player so discussions on the topic are always enjoyable.
08-18-2022
, 08:56 PM
Hey thanks for the advice Global! I'm going to keep this strategy strictly GG for now but may open up the possibility down the line if we can't get off the ground here. I also have poker money in other places so it's not a huge deal if I really want to play some I can open up an app or whatever.
We have fired up another Battle Royale tonight so we're gonna give that a shot while I type this up and enjoy a Heineken. Tomorrow is Friday my dudes and dudettes! We have a long day at work tomorrow starting at 6:30 but getting out bright and early at 3:30 to enjoy the day. I think I will spend at least a couple hours doing some PLO study. It really is my passion and I hope to incorporate some Omaha into this challenge. It'll be fun posting and showing some spots where we get to bring the ruckus. I've been playing on a small club on ClubGG that is mostly NL players but some of them have caught the Omaha itch and I am trying to convert them
I think I enjoy being able to appreciate poker and treat it as a hobby. I wanted to play poker professionally for a couple of years and I think starting over at this nanostakes challenge is my way of divorcing myself from that dream. It is to remind myself that poker is for fun and not everything we do for fun has to be to make money. That doesn't mean I can't take it seriously and try to be the best player I can be, but it does mean I don't have to stress about not grinding out 200z+ for hours and hours to make what I can make at my day job anyway, ya know?
So I will continue to enjoy this challenge and work on becoming the best player I can be without any unnecessary pressure I have a habit of placing on myself. The Battle Royale has commenced, wish me luck, and I will post an update once I have one!
We have fired up another Battle Royale tonight so we're gonna give that a shot while I type this up and enjoy a Heineken. Tomorrow is Friday my dudes and dudettes! We have a long day at work tomorrow starting at 6:30 but getting out bright and early at 3:30 to enjoy the day. I think I will spend at least a couple hours doing some PLO study. It really is my passion and I hope to incorporate some Omaha into this challenge. It'll be fun posting and showing some spots where we get to bring the ruckus. I've been playing on a small club on ClubGG that is mostly NL players but some of them have caught the Omaha itch and I am trying to convert them
I think I enjoy being able to appreciate poker and treat it as a hobby. I wanted to play poker professionally for a couple of years and I think starting over at this nanostakes challenge is my way of divorcing myself from that dream. It is to remind myself that poker is for fun and not everything we do for fun has to be to make money. That doesn't mean I can't take it seriously and try to be the best player I can be, but it does mean I don't have to stress about not grinding out 200z+ for hours and hours to make what I can make at my day job anyway, ya know?
So I will continue to enjoy this challenge and work on becoming the best player I can be without any unnecessary pressure I have a habit of placing on myself. The Battle Royale has commenced, wish me luck, and I will post an update once I have one!
08-19-2022
, 07:46 PM
Hey Stripps thanks man! Good to see ya Hopefully we can get some hands in at some point.
We took our Spin and Gold ticket and binked a 3x multiplier for .75 so we're now at $1.67 for the challenge. Haven't played any spins for cash yet, will probably play a few either tonight or tomorrow, we will see. We are getting a $1 spin ticket tomorrow so it would be a good boost to win that even if it's just a 2 or 3x multiplier.
I did hit another milestone today too which is exciting. I finally got back into weightlifting and so I finished my first month of StrongLifts. I lifted a lot back in college and have really fell off the wagon the last few years. I'm looking to get fit again. 5'6 140lbs and weak AF right now lol. I haven't tested one rep maxes or anything like that but I'm guessing I could probably squat around 175, deadlift around 225, and bench maybe 125. In threeish months I should be back up to my old working weights of squatting in the mid 200s, deadlifting in the low 300s, and benching around 150 for 5x5. I didn't realize how much I missed picking things up and putting them down until I started again
Short post today, so I'm gonna go play some video games, maybe play a few spins because we have almost 2 whole dollars for them, and just kick back for a bit. As always let me know if you guys have anything you want me to write about!
Hopefully we can get some hands in at some point.We took our Spin and Gold ticket and binked a 3x multiplier for .75 so we're now at $1.67 for the challenge.
Haven't played any spins for cash yet, will probably play a few either tonight or tomorrow, we will see. We are getting a $1 spin ticket tomorrow so it would be a good boost to win that even if it's just a 2 or 3x multiplier.I did hit another milestone today too which is exciting. I finally got back into weightlifting and so I finished my first month of StrongLifts. I lifted a lot back in college and have really fell off the wagon the last few years. I'm looking to get fit again. 5'6 140lbs and weak AF right now lol. I haven't tested one rep maxes or anything like that but I'm guessing I could probably squat around 175, deadlift around 225, and bench maybe 125. In threeish months I should be back up to my old working weights of squatting in the mid 200s, deadlifting in the low 300s, and benching around 150 for 5x5. I didn't realize how much I missed picking things up and putting them down until I started again
Short post today, so I'm gonna go play some video games, maybe play a few spins because we have almost 2 whole dollars for them, and just kick back for a bit. As always let me know if you guys have anything you want me to write about!
08-31-2022
, 11:24 AM