Duplicating Chris Ferguson's $0 - $10,000 Challenge

Alright, I have decided to try duplicating Chris Ferguson's $0 - $10,000 Challenge. I have started playing freerolls on Full Tilt, and intent to obey his rules on bankroll management. I will try to update this thread with my progress every time I reach a milestone, or every week or two, whichever comes first. In addition I will add a mostly current bankroll statement to my signature.

I will decide later what are the milestones.

Any suggestions other than what is posted on Full Tilt?

Yes. Deposit $5 and save yourself a few weeks/months of work.
Chris Ferguson started with nada to make a point. Everybody else should only start with nothing if they live under a bridge imo

I am doing the same thing right now. I Started with a $50 deposit on Jan 13th. In that time I have made it up to my curent bankroll with $487. I would probably be much higher except for the fact that I went on tilt a couple of times and ignored the rules and played in some games over my limit and lost 25% of my roll in one night. Ah well good luck!

I started doing it a month ago and went from 0 to $50 on Bodog. However I got bored with the quality of play. I kept on my Full Tilt account as I enjoyed playing certain tournaments. It became too much of the drudgery of work. I would play in Bodog's freeroll which is very good at $500 but the maniacal play was just tiring of wading through. All I would be doing is playing real tight and inching up every day. This takes a lot of concentration and effort. I play poker to get away from work and realize I like the challenge of the variance of tougher games. I like to take a chance every now and then.

I would start with at least $50. You will feel less pressure with more money and be less likely to go broke. Also I can tell you it will be difficult. I started with $50 blew out and reloaded with another $50 and down to $30.

ive tried and have yet to do any good

I can make one suggestion: if you're a ring game player, do this on Stars and not Full Tilt.

Full Tilt's lowest ring games are 5-10c, so you won't be rolled to play them for ages - theoretically, until you've got a bankroll somewhere around $200 or more.

Stars, on the other hand, offers 1-2c, so you can get into ring games much earlier.

I think Stars also charge slightly lower rake on their $1 SnGs. The $1 games on Full Tilt are ridiculously crush-able even with 25% rake, but if the standard is the same on Stars then you'll still be crushing the game and getting to your goal that little bit faster.

Thanks for all the input everyone. I am also looking to make a point, as well as to test myself.

Also, I am doing this at fulltilt partly because of the fact that that is where Chris did his run, meaning that there are enough freerolls, and partly because I prefer the fulltilt software to other software I have tried (party poker being the specific one I am thinking of). I like the software for doyles room a little better on the playing side, but the game finding part of that is by far worse, and there are no good regular smaller(under 10k people) freerolls.

For those of you taking "short-cuts" to the goal is zero to 10K. Personally, I understand the impatience some have ... but one must question his/her own skills if they skip forward [grin]. Food for thought.

So, tonight I placed 5th in a HORSE freeroll, and won $1.15. This gives me a whopping bankroll of $1.32. And I have to decide what to do. I am considering playing "The Ferguson" $1 tournament in about an hour. It pays out to 81st place, and there are currently only 287 people registered for it. Alternatively, I could take a go at a $1 + $0.25 SnG. I am currently leaning toward "The Ferguson" tournament.

The Ferguson is not that easy when alls you got is that. People are swinging with anything and expect to get sucked out on. Keep playing those freerolls. Try to get on Chat line freerolls as well. They pay better than the $100 free roll that FT offers. The SNG might be better at least they pay 3 out of 9 places. Thats 33 1/3% of the field.

BRM

actually i have already done this, on 2nd or 3rd day i took 3rd in horse free roll, won some fr on pokerstars trade $ with a friend and then builded up...easy as 1,2,3

There was this 60c Omaha tourny I played in 2 days ago with only like 110 people, it was my last 60c on FT and I entered but got my full house counterfeited by an overfull and lost. Then yesterday I placed 6th in the ixgames Freeroll and got $2.25, not gonna waste it just yet, gonna try and win a few more FRs. I would have won, I had the chip lead 4:1, but donked out, I was dealt 58 in the blind, flop came 285, I went all in, guy called, he had 22, and he won with trips. then I became Shortstack and got AQ, went all in, got called by 55, and lost.

While the FT freerolls are good, the take a lot longer with 2700 people, just look for a lot of private freerolls, they have smaller people limits. When I get at least $10 from Freerolls, I'll enter an Omaha 1.25 SNG or 5/10c HA table.

I am playing by the BRM rules of The Chris Ferguson $0-$10,000 Challenge. I will not break them.

• He never buys into a cash game or a Sit & Go with more than 5 percent of his total bankroll (there is an exception for the lowest limits: he is allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less).
• He doesn’t buy into a multi-table tournament for more than 2 percent of his total bankroll, but he’s allowed to buy into any multi-table tournament that costs $1.
• If at any time during a No-Limit or Pot-Limit cash-game session the money on the table represents more than 10 percent of his total bankroll, he must leave the game when the blinds reach him.

As a side note: I did play in The Ferguson and placed 74th to win $2.38

I don't have much to add, but good luck and I hope you succeed.

Erm... FT don't offer $1.25 Omaha SnGs. Unless they've added them in the past couple of days.

If I can give one piece of advice to people trying this, it's to get very good at $1.25 single-table turbos as they'll pretty much be your bread and butter until you get a decent bankroll up (remembering that, even following Ferguson's rules, you need to have $200 in your account before you can sit down at $10NL, which is the lowest cash game FT offer).

So as the $1.25 SnGs go, yes, the rake is high. But they're hilariously easy to beat. Just don't succumb to 'turbo fever' and think you've gotta get all your chips in quick because the blinds are going up. Play solid hands, pay attention to who you can and can't bluff and steal from, and you should achieve a decent cash rate pretty quickly.

Concur on the private freerolls, BTW - my bankroll got started from Cardschat ones. Only ever cashed in one of FT's 2700 open events once.

Thanks for the advice. I like playing the Ferguson tournament, but it is so late at night that I can only play it a couple times a week, so I will have to improve my SnG play. I played a few, but eventually lost my BR. So back to Freerolls... and perhaps some play money SnGs for practice.

Ironically, I have never done well in a CC freeroll. My winnings have mostly come from public FT freerolls so far. Limit HORSE was my best one, got 6th.

As an additional note, for anyone who has trouble with BRM in deciding what games to join, try using the custom filter on FT to enforce your BRM rules upon yourself. That way, you won't even see the games outside of your BRM rules.

using BRM, you should be playing at most $.00001 tournaments

Silly man, all good rules have an exception. Can't forget the "you are always allowed to play a $1 game" rule, it is my favorite.

Well, I cheated some I suppose. I didn't play any FT freerolls, I played the CC freerolls as well as some other private ones with less people. I have gone from zero to $35 but I really dislike the look and feel of FT, so I don't play there hardly ever, except freerolls.

I think I've played 1 Sng and placed 2nd and one of the $1 tournaments with no rake and didn't place.

That is ironic, as I tried out ultimate bet today, and cant stand the interface of that one, and have tried a few others and overall I like FT the best. To each their own.

Interface aside though, Full Tilt really is about the worst place to be trying this: like I said above, following the Ferguson guidelines you've gotta have a bankroll of $200 or more before you're able to play ring games there.

On other sites that offer $2NL, you can start playing ring games at a bankroll of $40 or above.

(I've got nothing against FT, by the way - it's the only site I play, and I've built my bankroll from $0 there myself. It does have its flaws though, and the above is the biggest one)

Meant to say HORSE, had Omaha on my mind all day.

i decided to save some time and just start with 5 dollars. As of now, i am at 37.50. So far I have been playing 3.40 9mans, and I think on pokerstars these are really soft

I'm trying the same idea on FT, as an exercise, freerolls only, got my BR up to about $5.50 and then spewed it all away at $1 SnGs, on tilt, but not poker related tilt.

Anyhow it's fun, it's time spent at the tables, hopefully learning and it's FREE.
Current FT BR $0.31

Good luck

isnt their 0.10c SNG's for the real grinders? you can be fully rolled to play with as little as $4-$5

Not on Full Tilt. They have a rebuy MTT that's only 10c to enter, but they rebuys are 50c, the fields are huge and I think they're only held once a day.

Correct, it is a 1000 Guarantee Tournament though, so, I have entered it twice. I also haven't been far enough from cashing on it to not play it again occasionally, no rebuys though.


As a not related to this reply update:
Cashed in an Omaha freeroll, so now I have 2.20 to work with. Time to see if I can win a SnG now that I have worked on my SnG game in play money.

Good luck and keep grinding.

Went to a local bookstore and picked up Phil Gordon's Little Green Book and Little Blue Book. I believe that reading what I have of these has improved my game significantly. I suggest these books to anyone who hasn't read them.

An update:
I won 3.25 by placing 5th in a ~700 person $50 freeroll.
I then played 5 $1.00 + $0.25 9 person NL HE SitnGos.
In those I placed 4th , 3rd, 1st, 6th, and 1st. In either the 4th place finish or the 6th place finish I had a series of plays where I lost all of my chips in 2 hands where my opponents had 5 and 6 outs. It happens, but it sucks when it takes a good chunk out of your bankroll.

hey congrats on the win, but I have a suggestion for you. Two month ago I did something exactly like this and I wrote about it in my blog bobtigersadventure.blogspot.com. I was very serious about it and I had steps and everything for myself, so there was no way of me failing with the rules I set up.

Well believe it or not it didn't take me very long to hit that 1k task but thats not the point the point is I never came close to ever going broke, and those first two steps are always tough. Sorry, back to my suggestion, I suggest you play nothing but freerolls until you are at 25$, I have calculated everything back then and when i started playing 1$ 9 mans I never even though of being broke but yea check out my blog and pm me if you have any questions.

And one last thing over the years I have came up with a stradegy for these 9 mans that works like magic, during my challenge after i hit 35$ i was 9 tabling 1$ sngs since i was playing with profit and in this thread is the video of how i play if you care to watch it.

Bob_Tiger's SNG video

Thanks, bob, for the advice. I hear what you are saying. However, I don't find that my play differs based upon my bankroll. That is one thing I think I have a relatively easy time doing. In addition, I don't see a difference between playing only freerolls until I get $25 and playing those freerolls and SnG games in between. After all, I am still playing the freerolls. There just may be more time between the SnGs if I run my br down on that.

Well, I managed to go "broke." Good for me that's where I started. Back to freerolls exclusively for me it is. Ill keep things updated as I crawl my way up.