So following on from this thread, I said that I would log my progress on building a bankroll from Zero. As I might have said before I was a "player" for some time before I decided to go back to college. I also spent most of the last two year in the middle east where online poker isn't accessible. Essentially I've been off the poker radar for three years and haven't played at all over that period.
I'm in Ireland for the last year of my degree and decided to try and get back on the horse in the hopes of leaving college with something of a windfall payment from on-line poker. I won't have as much time to play as I'd like as my college work takes priority. I'm also starting training soon for the first ever Kerry marathon (and I'm overweight). So there are plenty of distractions. To top it all off I wanted to do this the hardest way possible; starting from absolute zero.
A couple of weeks ago I would have agreed with what some were saying; that I should just bite the bullet and deposit. That's what I had planned. However after looking around I managed to find I could get "rolled" at least a small amount on a lot of sites. So far I accessed to the following.
Poker770 - $7.70
Gala - $7.99
Terminal - €5
Yachting - €5
Unibet - €19
The rolls are so small that it's simply not possible to have a bankroll management strategy other than to play the smallest stakes possible. For cash this might be one or two buy-ins for the lowest stakes. For STTs the low stakes often have ridiculous rake of 12-20% so they have to be avoided. I figured the best strategy would be to play the $1 buy in tournaments and take shots as well as play some micros stakes heads up cash.
In the case of Poker770 and Gala I played both bankrolls down on the micro stakes tables.
Terminal and Yachting are tiny poker networks with almost no active tables but the tables were a lot softer. (which I need as my game is rusty). I had the Terminal Poker bankroll up to €17 but got very unlucky in a few all in pots and played that roll down too.
On Yachting however I had a lot of success and played the €5 up to €40 in less than 48 hours without too much difficulty. The T&Cs of the deal were very good. You had to earn 1500 FPP which I was very close to. You did also have to make a deposit of €25 but I just withdraw the full again €65 a few days later. So this was defectively €40 I built up from nothing.
I deposited the same €40 on Pokerstars, which gave me a roll of almost exactly $50. I tinkered around with a few different types of STTs initially but finally settled on the $1.50 STTs. I'm ten tabling the 9 player regular STTs only, no turbos as I'm not rolled for high variance. After a wobbly start I've played about 150 of these STTs this week and I have the bankroll up to $68.09. I'm on a nice little run of scores at the moment with the potential of getting into the Mercury high orbit leader board also. The volume I have to play at this level to get pokerstars’ form of rakeback is huge but as I climb the levels it should come into play quite a bit.
I'm not going to move up to the $3.50 STTs until I have over $150 and I will drop down again if I go below this so there is still a long way to go before I begin to see the fruits of my labour. It will take a hell of a lot of patience. Aside from this on stars, there is only the potential for long shots with FPP buy-in tournaments.
Then there is still the €19 I had on Unibet. I felt there would be little point in investing time there on microstakes when I already have the roll I wanted on stars so today I played a tournament. It paid 5 places with €100 for dirst and at one point I was first in chips on the final table but ended up bubbling. Damage was done with QQ v KK then I ran AA into K7 and went out 6th.
There are also other free bankrolls on the way, for different sites where I can take shots again. If I'm lucky and spin it up there, I can move the money to Stars where the real bankroll building can be done.
I'll post some graphs and stats from my STT play next week.
I'm in Ireland for the last year of my degree and decided to try and get back on the horse in the hopes of leaving college with something of a windfall payment from on-line poker. I won't have as much time to play as I'd like as my college work takes priority. I'm also starting training soon for the first ever Kerry marathon (and I'm overweight). So there are plenty of distractions. To top it all off I wanted to do this the hardest way possible; starting from absolute zero.
A couple of weeks ago I would have agreed with what some were saying; that I should just bite the bullet and deposit. That's what I had planned. However after looking around I managed to find I could get "rolled" at least a small amount on a lot of sites. So far I accessed to the following.
Poker770 - $7.70
Gala - $7.99
Terminal - €5
Yachting - €5
Unibet - €19
The rolls are so small that it's simply not possible to have a bankroll management strategy other than to play the smallest stakes possible. For cash this might be one or two buy-ins for the lowest stakes. For STTs the low stakes often have ridiculous rake of 12-20% so they have to be avoided. I figured the best strategy would be to play the $1 buy in tournaments and take shots as well as play some micros stakes heads up cash.
In the case of Poker770 and Gala I played both bankrolls down on the micro stakes tables.
Terminal and Yachting are tiny poker networks with almost no active tables but the tables were a lot softer. (which I need as my game is rusty). I had the Terminal Poker bankroll up to €17 but got very unlucky in a few all in pots and played that roll down too.
On Yachting however I had a lot of success and played the €5 up to €40 in less than 48 hours without too much difficulty. The T&Cs of the deal were very good. You had to earn 1500 FPP which I was very close to. You did also have to make a deposit of €25 but I just withdraw the full again €65 a few days later. So this was defectively €40 I built up from nothing.
I deposited the same €40 on Pokerstars, which gave me a roll of almost exactly $50. I tinkered around with a few different types of STTs initially but finally settled on the $1.50 STTs. I'm ten tabling the 9 player regular STTs only, no turbos as I'm not rolled for high variance. After a wobbly start I've played about 150 of these STTs this week and I have the bankroll up to $68.09. I'm on a nice little run of scores at the moment with the potential of getting into the Mercury high orbit leader board also. The volume I have to play at this level to get pokerstars’ form of rakeback is huge but as I climb the levels it should come into play quite a bit.
I'm not going to move up to the $3.50 STTs until I have over $150 and I will drop down again if I go below this so there is still a long way to go before I begin to see the fruits of my labour. It will take a hell of a lot of patience. Aside from this on stars, there is only the potential for long shots with FPP buy-in tournaments.
Then there is still the €19 I had on Unibet. I felt there would be little point in investing time there on microstakes when I already have the roll I wanted on stars so today I played a tournament. It paid 5 places with €100 for dirst and at one point I was first in chips on the final table but ended up bubbling. Damage was done with QQ v KK then I ran AA into K7 and went out 6th.
There are also other free bankrolls on the way, for different sites where I can take shots again. If I'm lucky and spin it up there, I can move the money to Stars where the real bankroll building can be done.
I'll post some graphs and stats from my STT play next week.
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