The Long Road to Zero

So, I don't know where to put this thread. Mods feel free to move it wherever you feel is appropriate.

I had an ugly experience with a bank error and an echeck on pokerstars about eight months ago. I made a fifty dollar deposit and then on a down day my bank refused to honor it due to a minimum balance requirement. As a result of this my pokerstars account ended up with a negative balance of $17.63.

I've been playing a LOT of freerolls to try and get back to zero as i just haven't had the funds to make up for this shortfall.

I've managed to build back up some over the last few days. And I thought I would keep a running thread of my progress so far:



PokerStars Tournament #300240285, No Limit Hold'em
Freeroll
4123 players
$10000.00 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $10000.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/15 18:00:00 CT [2010/08/15 19:00:00 ET]

Dear alluvit,
You finished the tournament in 1082nd place. A USD 5.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.



PokerStars Tournament #297758422, No Limit Hold'em
Freeroll
1068 players
$10.00 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $10.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/15 21:00:00 CT [2010/08/15 22:00:00 ET]

Dear alluvit,
You finished the tournament in 15th place. A USD 0.07 award has been credited to your Real Money account.



PokerStars Tournament #299979663, No Limit Hold'em
Freeroll
1087 players
$10.00 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $10.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/17 16:30:00 CT [2010/08/17 17:30:00 ET]

Dear alluvit,
You finished the tournament in 117th place. A USD 0.01 award has been credited to your Real Money account.




Hello alluvit,
We have transferred USD 1.10 to your account as requested by 'teambecks'.



PokerStars Tournament #301475767, No Limit Hold'em
Freeroll
9727 players
$500.06 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $500.06 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/19 19:00:00 CT [2010/08/19 20:00:00 ET]

Dear alluvit,
You finished the tournament in 37th place.
You have won an admission ticket to 'NAPL Division 2'.



PokerStars Tournament #301475802, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD
907 players
$93.00 USD added to the prize pool by PokerStars
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/21 19:30:00 CT [2010/08/21 20:30:00 ET]

Dear alluvit,
You finished the tournament in 37th place. A USD 3.40 award has been credited to your Real Money account.



Right now my balance is only (8.01)


I've come up more than nine dollars playing really low grade freerolls against some pretty good sized fields and I'm pleased with it. Any advice on what I can do or requests for more information that you could look at and help me out would be appreciated.

Thanks for running such a great forum for stupid fish like myself.

All I have to say is that you must really love Poker. There's only so much of freerolls I can stand before it drives me crazy ^^

Well done! Now step it up a notch - keeping Bankroll Management in mind - typically use 10-15% of your stash for entry into your next tourny. Good luck!

Best of luck with your bankroll! I'm seeing a slight one after only playing poker for a year now & it feels really good! Do as onebourbon says...always use good brm!

Good luck with it! I had a nice fat bankroll going and lost it when I let myself get tilted pretty badly. You will get back in the green soon enough.

Ouch, negative BR... I dunno why you feel like this might be removed, if anything it should be moved to the brag section, normal freerolls are not easy to play... good job dude.

thanks. i originally signed up for this forum to participate in the freerolls but then i found out about the post requirements and, rather than flood the boards with spam, i sat back for a little while.

i've been reading threads and stickies on these forums off and on for going on a year. i'm by no means a regular poster or contributer but...

i've learned a lot hanging out here and for that...
i'm grateful.

i'm going to post a thread somewhere in the learning poker section. I'm going to take my time and learn as much as I can in the process. i'm so glad for this friendly site and all of the insight it's had to offer.

I appreciate the well wishes folks. It's been a long road and i'm still on it. I may deposit from here but it's going to be a minnit.

Try the 360mans (turbo) on PokerStars for ten Cents buy-in, they are soft and with them you can build your bankroll very easily and safely, good luck !

long time no post...

had to take a vacation from the freerolls for a bit, and poker in general.

i'm back at it now and am only (6.63) in the hole. Playing a lot of the pso tourneys and napl ticket freerolls. i've been bubbling out a lot trying for a final table cause i'm sick of winning 3 cents.

I got a dollar donation from a guy i was playing a tourney with....
I told him how it happened and he felt really bad for me.
that made my day.

i'll try and keep this updated a little better.

please do would hope that after your vacation you could now throw $50 on there for real this time and play some buy in games . I'm very impressed by your record and know you would do well . good luck

I'd love to post 50 or so on there but the finances are not what they were. i'm going to have to settle for winning some tickets to real payout low buy in tourneys and hope for the best. there are some home game clubs i'm in that pay real money bountys in play money tourneys and i'm going to try and get a few extra pennies there. i play in the pso skill league but i keep trying for the final table too hard and wind up really fouling my scores on the leaderboard.

i've had a couple of buddies offer to ship me some cash to play with and i've been considering this for a while but i don't really have the extra jack.

Good luck, you have come a long way, I am sure you can do it.

it's just sooooooooo f;n boring... lol

when i finally get up though i'm going to play some of the 10 cent mtts.

they play just like a freeroll.

well if you're stuck with freerolls then you need to get qualified here to join our freerolls . they are a dramatic difference from the anyone can play freerolls out there . good luck

Is there some kind of work you can do to make some money so you can bankroll yourself? It seems we're not talking about much money, so it wouldn't take much time since anything is bound to pay much more than the typically tiny hourly win rate from playing freerolls.

Agree with this...I built my bankroll from nothing to $100 just from playing CC freerolls & then doing well on a couple of CC buy-ins. GL in whatever you decide to do!

CC freerolls would be great but i only play on pokerstars.
I've been a member here for awhile but i don't want to just spam the board and only be here after freeroll tourneys.

i'll get it up there.

it's kind of a self challenge.

I'm not doing all that bad.

[quote=onebourbon;1551907]- keeping Bankroll Management in mind - typically use 10-15% of your stash for entry into your next tourny. /quote]
this ^ is a recipe for a disaster!! (decent BRM would be using 2% max. of your roll for a tournament entry fee).

For sure you're getting alot of experience with patience. I'd go with the advice above by jaymfc, get onto Fulltilt & get into the CC Freerolls on there. Not only are they are decent oppurtunity to build up a small micro startup bankroll but you'll get some great experience in them too (there are some decent players in those freerolls!!!).

Also, look at getting registered for the OFC Events (reppin' CC of course, lol). They have some $1K freerolls held on a variety of sites (& then some $5 buyins with huge added cash to the prizepools, making them very well worth playing '&' the field of players in these are EXTREMELY WEAK/FISH). Maybe you won't have the $5 to play the buyins but by playing the Freeroll on the day before you might just win enough to gain an entry into the buyin on the following day! (BRM goes out the window when you can get an oppurtunity to play a tournament with such a large 'cash-added' prizepool).

GL & see you on the tables soon (CC Fulltilt freerolls that is.. soon to be followed with the buyins)