I’ve increased my bankroll 33 times over to, er, $100.
November 19, 2007
Over on the PartyPoker Blog, we’ve introduced a new feature called the PartyPoker Bankroll Challenge. It’s a take on Chris Ferguson’s epic roll heroics, except in our case we give our volunteer $25 and see how far they take it (using sensible bankroll management skills, of course).
Our first have-a-go-hero increased his roll to $33 in week one - then went busto in week two! Our second player is under way and will report back later this week.
Obviously I can’t play on PartyPoker’s software (as I work there!), so I began a little challenge of my own over on PokerStars. I decided to start there with a piddly $3 to see where I could take it, and I’m happy to say that after a few weeks I’m up to near enough $100. I’m pretty pleased with that, as I’m not getting much time to play and, needless to say, this is all on the micro limit tables.
Obviously starting with just $3 you have to forget standard bankroll rules of sitting with no more than 5% of your stack (you can’t sit down with 15 cents on the $0.02/$0.04 tables and expect to build!).
I’ve now moved up to the $0.05/$0.10 NL level (6-handed) and am now sitting with the max $10 starting stack when I play. OK, this is still twice too much for the 5% rule, but to be honest I think I can cope with that “risk” until I build up the roll to $200!
Although it is sort of frustrating to be playing for such small stakes, I am finding the whole exercise useful. It’s like going back to poker basics, really. You can’t run so many bluffs or be “creative” at these levels because most of the time you will get called down anyway. So it’s a question of waiting for a decent hand and playing it hard, only letting up if it is obvious another player really has hit big. Occasionally there are setbacks when an ‘ickle fishy catches his two outer on the river!
Needless to say players will, by and large, get better as I move up the levels, but the benefit for me will be adapting to this each time. At the end of the exercise, I should be better equipped at adapting to poker circumstances.
It’ll certainly be interesting to see when the game starts to get really hard. My discipline before was so bad that I knew I was a winner at some levels and a loser in others, but never really had a grasp of how much and where the “line in the sand” was. I also dotted around cash limit, then no limit, then STT and MTT without really ever concentrating on one aspect of my game.
As I no longer play poker for part of my income I can afford to take my time in this particular challenge, which is nice!
Have you tried something similar? I’d love to know how you got on.
Thanks for dropping by.
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