While at first glance this may sound more like a PGC thread, please hear me out first. I may have gotten myself into quite a pickle, and it's too late to back out, so... yeah. I have committed myself to the following prop bet, starting tomorrow:

-I have 120 consecutive days, of which I can play a maximum of 100
-I need to turn 500€ into 10k€ playing MTTs
-I need to also make at least 1000 buyins in the process, so no shot-taking will save me
-I need to stream 16 days+ of the challenge, which will probably mean 4-tabling sessions --> I have more like 84 days to do this plus the stream days. I also have no idea about this whole streaming technology so I'll probably just be tilted and lose INF on those 16 days. And those 84 days will include Christmas, NYE, my birthday etc, plus I think I'll miss another 10 or say because of off-bet live poker trips

(a couple of other clauses I will not bore you with, but which make it impossible for me to have any short cuts in any way, I will need to follow conservative BRM etc, live poker doesn't count. I can also play anything outside the bankroll if I want, so if you see me playing the SM or something then I'm doing it outside the challenge. I'm not intending to do much stuff off-challenge, but I gotta YOLO a couple of HS birds before I quit for old times' sake)

The monetary wagers I can't disclose (stupid Finnish legislation) but let's say that if I lose, two things will happen

1) I will go somewhat bankrupt
2) One of the terms of the bet is that I'll have to quit poker and related posting/blogging forever and get a 9-5 job, so if I fail this will be end of my 10-year poker career.

(I will be allowed to post/tweet about my book specifically, since it would be quite suicidal to not be allowed to do that)


---


As for background, I've played poker for ~10 years, but I've shared my time 50-50 between writing and poker in the last 2 years or so. I've made less than 10k in this entire year playing poker, and over the last two months I've booked like 95% losing sessions making 30 deposits without a withdrawal. I'm feeling washed up as ****, I haven't studied in forever and when asked what the correct unexploitable 10BB BTN pushing range is I'm pretty sure I'd miss by 5-10%. I haven't really won anything remotely respectable at poker in about 2 years (although I haven't really devoted myself to it either). I'm 30, I can't physically take massive grinds anymore, and honestly don't have a whole lot going for myself poker-wise.

I'm not posting this to book any more action, I'm fully booked at 1:1. It's also way too late for me to back down, but out of curiosity I'd love to hear what people think my chances are. I think of myself as something like 20ABI, 40% ROI type reg but who the hell knows, I might be deluded. And obviously for this challenge I'll have to play like 1.5 ABI at first etc.

The reason why this isn't a PGC is because I committed myself to live blogging/streaming this for a Finnish poker website (in Finnish, sry) and you can't bite the hand that feeds you so this isn't something I can blog regularly about. But I can give quick updates about approach/results every now and then I guess if people want. Also MTTc has been super slow lately so perhaps an oldschool prop bet thread will spice things up a bit!

I personally think I'm something like 50% to do this but people seem to disagree...







It goes on and on, I'd post more if I wasn't too old to know how to embed tweets.


I guess my main motivation for creating this thread is to use this as what will possibly/likely be my last chance to actually post on these forums assuming I'll lose the bet and won't be allowed to post ever again. I always thought I'd do a well-type thing before I step out of the game, but the truth is I never achieved *that* much and don't feel entitled to have my own well I guess. But this seems like a good way to say my goodbyes and answer any questions people may have. I guess most new-school posters don't know me, but I was extremely prominent around 2009-2013 and I assume the spazzy Bass will ring a bell for some people. If not for anything else, then for the following quote:

"I'd rather be a losing LAG than a winning nit"

Oh boy were those THE days. I'm glad to say I no longer have that approach tho.

Anyway, I'll update this every 1-2 weeks or something, I'll be happy to answer any questions, and I'll be even happier to reminisce the old times once more before my career is (possibly) over. I'll be giving this challenge my best shot though. I've been a pretty prominent 2p2 poster for close to a decade now, and I feel incredibly privileged to have gotten to know/meet so many of you. I've met some people who I truly hope will end up as lifelong friends regardless of how this bet goes, and I have some pretty sick memories from the past decade that I'll never forget. So just in case I'll bust my roll tomorrow and won't be able to post ever again, I just thought I'd thank everyone already. You know who you are


Ok, wish me luck! I'm off to find out what the correct 10% BTN pushing range is

Whoa dude, GL! I think you will need it but i think you can do it

And if you fail it and "have to get a job" you can still play as rec

"I'd rather be a losing LAG than a winning nit"

Pretty much sums up MTTc and is by far my favorite quote of yours. The way you have this structured I can't see you being a dog. Good luck!

haha that quote is indeed of the GOAT of mttc <3

I wish you all the luck.

I gotta ask though, how wasted were you when you made this bet initially?

Think I was pretty wasted when I got the idea, was completely sober when things started moving forward tho.

Honestly, this is slightly less YOLO of me than it may seem in the sense that I don't mind the idea of quitting poker as much as you might think. I'm generally a pretty ambitious person, and I still have the drive to (try to) achieve great things in life (however unlikely they may be). But poker is pretty consuming in various ways, and I feel like there's a realistic chance it's stopping me from moving on and achieving certain things. This may also not be the case, idk. But I'm definitely also using this bet as a way to get some guidance from the universe; I've always believed that no matter how grim things may seem* things will work out when you let the universe help you, but if you fight back and desperately hold onto things that aren't meant to be you'll just become stagnant. When I made the bet, I thought it was somewhat close to 50-50 with variance also playing a role (especially how I run in the first month and how quickly I get to move up will affect my chances a LOT). Coinflipping with the universe about what I should pursue seems like as good of a way to figure out my life as any. Now it turns out that people seem to think that I'm less than 50%... but I've always been more of an underdog type of guy anyway so I kinda like it!

*I've been in some pretty dire situation including living on park benches and things have always worked out in the end

I always enjoyed your PGC threads so excited to follow this. I guess I'll start off with a few questions:

What is your general approach going into this? I know you were a 24+ tabling guy, but with a conservative bankroll how will this change things?

What sites do you plan on starting with?

will you be using Twitch for your stream days?


Hope you pull out an english stream one time for the fans. Best of luck

Thanks!

I'm planning to play on the following sites, ranked in the amount of expected volume:

1) Winamax
2) Unibet
3) Microgaming
4) Party
5) Finnish network you won't know
6-7) 888/Stars
8) Possibly something else if I find leaderboards or something, I don't even have an account on ACR etc.

That's partially based on what software I enjoy and also field size / game softness management.

I've been thinking about the table capping question a ton and honestly I don't have a good idea how to start this. Should I play 12 tables of 2s or 24 tables of 1s? No idea. When I get to 5s and above I think I should really reduce tables to max 15 or something tho. I think that for starters I'll play less tables than I've used to and see how it goes. Seems smart to not burn out etc as well. If I don't progress as fast as I'd like, I'll probably throw in a masstable grind and see how that goes. I don't really have experience playing below 5s so I have no idea about how to approach the super-micros.

Yeah using Twitch, but only streaming in Finnish unfortunately. If I win I can throw a celebratory English twitch at some point tho where I just get drunk and tell stories from back in the day while mashing buttons.

You sound like you've just turned 50 rather then 30. The reasons you can't do massive grinds is more the timezone your in requires you to play all night. If you switched to starting your sessions at 8am you would find you prob still have a fair bit of grind left in you, (although u have had some bad health problems so idk how that affects you compared to the normal grinder)

having this time frame and starting roll makes u a dog and it s no longer a coinflip and tbh kinda weird "guidance from the universe" haha

i think doing micro ipoker wina with priority and maybe finding some others goodies on 888/party with low to mid sized fields will win u the bet. dont think u have to open stars to win this bet
obv will not have to mass table since u ll have a decent amount of deepish runs in those smaller fields that will require ur attention.

also there are softwares called ipoker tools and mpn tools ( for micro and ipoker obv ) wich allow you to transform amounts and stacks in BBs and also use hotkeys. they also have 30 days free trials.

i think a good structured plan/approach can win u the bet but it feels from your post that u kinda want to end it with pokers

gl

Are the articles on the upswing site written from your knowledge for the MTT strategy or guided from above ?

Yeah I kinda wanna try the early zone too. But the truth is I kinda want to go on one last super sick degen unhealthy mega grind. I can't quite explain it but I still just LOVE doing all-nighters and waking up at 8PM and feeling like a total degen. I don't want that lifestyle long-term, but I'm actually weirdly looking forward to living that for the next few months. It's going to be super dark and cold and depressing here in Finland too, and I likely won't see sunlight for like 2 months in November/December, which will just add to the degeneracy. I know this isn't very smart or healthy but that's what I wanna do. If my body malfunctions quitting at least will be even easier


Underdog works for me! Yeah I don't intend to open Stars unless it's a weird hour and there's not much going on elsewhere. I haven't played on ipoker in forever, I should probably take a look though. Never was a fan of that software. Winamax alone will probably make for 40%ish of my volume. Great site. I love MPN too, really wish they had more MTTs. Super awesome software and sooooo degen, the action is way faster than anywhere else. You can just MASH MASH MASH 3bet 5bet 7bet allin before you'd have had time to 3bet on Stars. They've had the exact same software since like 2005 too. Legendary. I think that network will almost certainly die within a year or two and just the thought of that makes me very sad.

I didn't mean to sound like I want to end it with pokers, I mean losing this bet would be pretty expensive in itself. I just wanted to express that making this bet isn't *as* crazy as it may seem at first because I feel like calling it a day wouldn't be the end of the world. If I felt like I was an up and coming future superstar I don't think I would've made the bet because I'd feel like I have a lot more to lose in terms of a future career.

Not interested in those scripts or whatever they are called. I like my tables in a beautiful mess with a bunch of overlap, no tableninjas or pre-programmed betsizes or stacks in BBs. I want to type in every single number and enjoy the process!

All Upswing strat is 100% mine. I'm glad if it sounds like I know my **** They make some edits but it's mainly just to commercialize the articles by adding headlines and cutting out some of my rambles. They generally order articles about specific things but sometimes I also suggest them something and they generally say yes. I think I have 4 more done at the moment that will probably be up quite soon.

Since we're discussing Microgaming I'll share a story from like 2011. This is in the top5 most unbelievable things to ever happen to me at the pokers. Back then Microgaming was pretty much my favorite site and I especially loved the tournament that is nowadays the 20€ rebuy mosh pit. It was called something else back then and I think it was a 25€+rebuy 25k or 30k guaranteed.

I was at the final table one weekday with 6,5k€ first. I was pretty short and got it in completely dead, like flush over flush so that I only had a backdoor gutter to a straight flush. I was 20tabling so I left it open just in case and to my surprise I saw myself having doubled up. Back then you couldn't look up the last hand so easily so I just figured I must have binked it. I kept playing and got it in with AQ vs AK against the chipleader, king on the flop, and I look away again. I can't believe it when a few seconds later I notice I've doubled up again. This keeps on happening and at some point I really start paying attention. Turns out that somehow I can not lose an allin as long as I'm the shorter stack. Whatever happens, I always double up as the shorter stack, and if I'm the bigger stack the hand plays out normally. I literally have the cape of invincibility on me and I just can not bust. So I keep playing as normal and obviously end up winning. To this day I have no idea wtf happened, it wasn't happening to anyone else and it wasn't happening to me before the ft either. The guy who got 2nd was a friend of mine and he got reimbursed for first place, I assume others did too. They never deducted anything from my balance or sent me an email. I think the ICM value of my stack before the ft was like 1,5k so that was the easiest 5k euros I ever made lol.

Like I said; legendary site. They also had Antonius, Ziigmund, Lodden and others playing 200/400 NL when Stars was capped at 10/20 or something. It's the OG high stakes mecca and I'll be so sad when they close it down.

hahaha wow that's actually a sick story lmao

I only got into MPN the last year before unibet split from them but oh boy what a **** goldmine that still was <3 Can only imagine what it must have been before that. 16r Mosh pit, 109fo big in, 55r & that beautiful 22r 6max were so sexy <3

They had a 275€/250k guaranteed and some sort of rebuy with like a 400k guarantee on Sundays back in the day too, haha. Oooohhh that 22r 6max was so sick. I think that and mosh pit /whatever it was called before are the MTTs I'm up the most from lifetime. I only ever played like 4 tournaments a night on Microgaming and I'm up like 150k€ from that site haha.

I mean, THIS is how epic it was even at nosebleeds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMqCEbuxJFI

That's Lodden vs Antonius playing 200/400 back in the day. They fold 80% of buttons and when they play they go 5x-6,5x with a PSB cbet on pretty much every flop. It was a different time, these were the two best players in the world by a mile. Just imagine being able to teleport back to 2006 with today's knowledge.

edit: I just remembered another funny story. They had some sort of Easter MTT series one year that they 1) completely forgot to advertise, and 2) programmed wrong so that it didn't show up in the lobby, but only under "special" or something. So if you opened the MTT client you had no idea about a series going on. Everything overlayed like 400%. The best part was that the series had a 5,200€ buyin highroller with either a 100k or 200k guarantee and it got 3 players. They had no late reg. Trololol

I won a WSOP package from them once too where the guarantee was two packages with ~9k value (was for 5k WSOP, spending money and 10 nights at the Wynn iirc) and it got 4 players total. Again no late reg and the buyin was 750€. It had 3 people until the last second when some brave soul decided to commit his 750 euros for 600% overlay.


Anyway -- the bet starts when I wake up tomorrow, I'll update the thread about how it's going after a week or two or something. Meanwhile I'll still be happy to answer any questions / possibly share random stories from back in the day. I obviously won't be reading this 24/7 because of the bet and the massive grind so please don't get mad if I take a while to respond

If you believe in guidance from the universe than it is for sure time to quite poker.

gl

if this were in 2010 I got the other package and bougt in last the last minutes, the subsats for it were only flipsats and I thought the finale would be that aswell, one of the four players were sitting out all of the tournament.¨

the package was for a 2.5k though so either you remember wrong or they overlayed multiple times.

gl with the bet!

Sick bet if losing will actually bankrupt you.

I don't think it will be overly difficult if you're really good and able to put some serious volume in without feeling the pressure of the bet or suffering from fatigue. That said, if variance frowns on you severely then RIP. Not sure how good you are at poker but if you're a higher end reg then I'd say you're probably favourite to do this.

Good luck!

PS, definitely don't start the bet with ultra nitty bankroll management. If you aren't flicking in some small field $5 and $10 mtts at the start (along with the super micros) then You're probably making a big mistake.

Edit, just saw the 1000 buy in requirement and You're definitely not a favourite now. Still doable. gl

For this challenge your best bet might be to aggressively tackle the party poker leaderboards running atm. Few hundred in ev every week and if you bink 1st you'll be able to move up. Same goes for winamax obv.

Does winning a live package count toward the $10,000 even if it isn't sellable?

I don't mind you putting it all on the line but once you decided to do so you could've at least asked for better odds lol.

Will def be following, glgl!

As an on-and-off microfish with delusions I've always really enjoyed your postings.

How would the quitting requirements work? Would it be some penalties, or is that something you're not discussing here?

Seems like a good start is super important here.

Glgl sir.

This

If you want to quit poker just quit. Sounds like you're over it tbh. Why try and bankrupt yourself

Going to be tough, gl

I knew you were crazy, because I've read your books, but this sounds completely nuts. I hope you get something out of it. Good luck!

How do rebuy's count toward the 1,000 buy ins?

Chuck I like you and I respect you. You're one of the few people on this site with influence who are willing to call a spade a spade even if it could hurt you personally. I always liked that about you.

Here's the truth. You're Done. You know it and this talk of the universe is like hoping that the Universe will interrupt the logical way this is supposed to play out and somehow give you a huge score. In old boxers last few fights they take more damage than they did in their entire careers and they do it for less pay. Don't have the game retire you Chuck. Retire on your own terms.

Here's the good news. You're only 30. I reached this decision when I was 37. What you should strongly consider doing is working for an operator. You'd still be involved with Poker but from the business side of it. Your reputation as a straight shooter which you've built over the past 10 years will be a huge asset to a site that is trying to recruit players. Within the site you have the skills to work in numerous departments. I don't suggest working for a site like Stars but an upstart company or a company like Unibet that is actively trying to grow while taking care of the players.

I really with you good luck in this challenge and treat it like a last hurrah but announce your retirement now, win or lose, and get on with life. I've met you and you're a smart guy with integrity. You will be fine in other pursuits in life.

Jesus when you put it like that.....