The challenge that I'm making to myself is to play 500 MTT's before August 1st. I thought of this a few days ago and started a few days ago and have debated on posting it here, but here I am. Two days ago, I decided that I'm not just playing 500 MTT's, I'm not just winning, it's the start of becoming one of the very best midstake+ MTT players online.

A bit of background: I started playing poker after seeing Chris Moneymaker win the WSOP main event. I said to myself, "I can do that". Deposited on Stars and Pacific a few times and lost each time. This was a big deal to me as I only earned an extra $200/month at my job to play with. I read anything I could get my hands on, I found 2p2 in the early fall of 03 and started posting in the limit forums and have been on here ever since. I quit my job in January 2005 to becoming a professional poker player.

I started as a limit pro and then turned to NL around a year later. In 2007 I quickly went from 25 in July to 200nl crusher in early 2008 which continued until Black Friday. Made some wrong decisions after that and here I am, nearly busto but ready to work my ass off.

What drove me to do this: I'm only going to play on Bovada and you can't make any real money in any other format there except MTT's. When I was playing cash and moved to $100nl in 2007, I told myself that I didn't want to just win, I wanted to destroy it, and I did. Same for $200nl. Why not $400? I was a nit and didn't move up despite a very high wr there when I did play. I know damn well that I can be one of the very best MTT players up to at least the $55's (hopefully higher) if I put the effort in that I did for cash. I do have $125kish in cashes in not many MTTs at all on Stars with my biggest cash only $5.4k.

The now: The past few days I've been reading books I've found online, I joined RunItOnce and watched a bunch of videos. I've thought about theory. Wrote down what I think are the most important things in a tournament. I'm also going to mix in some SNG's since I believe they're vital to get practice with ICM and final table situations. I've been playing a lot, not playing too many tables, and thinking through ranges (I'll admit I was quite a hudbot for cash games and even tournaments when I played them).

As I've mentioned, I've already started this 500 MTT challenge. I've played 34 over the past 4 days. I've been pretty sick the last 3 days which has contributed to not as much playing and not being on my A-game at all times like I should be. My results so far:

Tournaments: 34
Average Buy-In: $8.11
Total: -$40.26

Tourney win goal: 5
Currently: 0

Bankroll Goal at the end of this: $3,000
Bankroll right now: $1079.99

I'm making my bankroll goal low because this challenge is not about the money. The money will come as I gain the skill and use it to crush tournaments. I want to win tournaments, not 2nd, not 3rd. I'm going to win them. The only person that can possibly stop me from doing so, is me.

A hand that would've never happened a week ago:

$5 $4k guaranteed, 105 left, 47k average with 48k effective stacks (forget blind levels sadly but think we were around 35bbs deep)

I open KJo for a minr at MP1, fold, fold (only reshovable stack at table), fold, sb and bb call

flop is 9 9 7 (I have a bdfd)
check, check, i bet 2/5 pot, sb calls, bb folds

turn is 7
check, i bet 1/3 pot knowing that this tight guy over only 14 hands likely has counterfeited pairs, a hand like QJ or AQ. He might c/r his draws so those are somewhat discounted so he's left with rubbish pairs and ace-high. Pairs are folding and ace-high is folding to two barrels a ton of the time so I bet and he folds but I left around an 80% bet otr in case he called.

Despite playing professionally for nearly 7 years, I consider myself a damn noob at range construction so this is good for me. I'm open to any criticism about my thought, this play, or any play that I post in the future.