vinnie
Legend
Silver Level
I have been thinking about the Ferguson Challenge lately, thanks to another thread. I got a little long-winded in my response. If you want to skip all that, the last two paragraphs pretty much sum everything up.
Over the years, I have withdrawn several thousand dollars for various life-expenses. I guess what I am trying to say is that I have done the Ferguson Challenge. I have a lot of experience with starting the Ferguson Challenge. I do not recommend that other people replicate it. I did it out of necessity. Many people take a sense of pride in replicating it. If your goal in poker is to get a sense of accomplishment, to have something to be proud of, or to play with absolutely no risk then replicating his challenge is something you may be interested in trying. If your goal in poker is to make money and make good use of your time while improving, I would argue that replicating the challenge by starting from $0 is not the best choice.
I feel like I need to say the above, so I don't come off as a poor loser who can't cash a freeroll trying to justify depositing due to impatience. I am saying the following because I feel like my resistance to depositing has hindered and delayed my growth, both in money earned and in skill level attained.
I guess I don't really have a point to this. If anything, I would encourage new people who are serious about poker to be more willing to deposit. I would also try and make them understand that it's not a bad thing to deposit at the start. They should not feel ashamed for not wanting to start from $0.
What would I do if I was starting all over again? I would deposit. With my current experience, I would deposit up to the amount that gets me the maximum first deposit bonus or the amount I could reasonably put aside over a couple months. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for the newest players. I would recommend depositing enough for 20 full buy-ins at the lowest limit. That's usually around $100 (even at PS where $2nl allows $5 buy-ins). They will get all the advantages of depositing without jumping into games well above their skill level. They will be able to claim, with honesty, that they started at the bottom and built their way up. And, best of all, they shaved 7+ months of futile, soul-crushing freeroll grinding.
Some Background
I am a cash game player. Sure, I have played my fair share of tournament poker. Who hasn't? But, in my heart, I am a cash game kind of guy. I work a job that I love, but my job does not leave much money for entertainment expenses. For this reason, I have built my entire bankroll from freerolls. I've actually done this several times on different sites. I have made one deposit in my entire poker life. I deposited $50 on Absolute in order to rake some points to qualify for a high value freeroll. I managed to score $700 from that freeroll (did I mention it was high value) and took $650 back out. That left me with $100 on there to start with. I guess we could also say that my Full Tilt account wasn't truly run up from $0. I was bored with grinding freerolls on there and did a P2P transfer with someone I trusted from Merge to move some of my freeroll winnings from one site to seed the next. I don't count that as depositing.Over the years, I have withdrawn several thousand dollars for various life-expenses. I guess what I am trying to say is that I have done the Ferguson Challenge. I have a lot of experience with starting the Ferguson Challenge. I do not recommend that other people replicate it. I did it out of necessity. Many people take a sense of pride in replicating it. If your goal in poker is to get a sense of accomplishment, to have something to be proud of, or to play with absolutely no risk then replicating his challenge is something you may be interested in trying. If your goal in poker is to make money and make good use of your time while improving, I would argue that replicating the challenge by starting from $0 is not the best choice.
I feel like I need to say the above, so I don't come off as a poor loser who can't cash a freeroll trying to justify depositing due to impatience. I am saying the following because I feel like my resistance to depositing has hindered and delayed my growth, both in money earned and in skill level attained.
Why I believe replicating the exact conditions of the challenge is not ideal.
- The Majority of Ferguson Challenge attempts that start with freerolls are doomed to fail.
Freerolls are hard to cash. Unless you have access to a nice, small, private series of freerolls, you're going to spend months constantly dealing with the frustration of playing large fields for a few cents at a time. When you finally build up enough to sit at a cash table, you'll probably have around 20xbb for the lowest limit. You'll sit down with your entire bankroll at one time (because you're "allowed to" at the lowest limits) and you'll have one shot. One 20xbb shot. How much respect does a 20xbb stack at the micros garner? Hint, the answer is between slim and none. You might be able to get the money in good, but you'll probably have more than one caller more often than you like.
I guess the point is, it is very easy to lose all that money you've spent weeks and weeks accumulating. It takes a lot of heart, a lot of belief in your game, to go back and do it all again after going busto building from freerolls. I've been there. There were times when I thought about just giving up and not playing again. I pushed through all of those times and kept trying until I made it, but I would never blame someone who couldn't. I have a close friend who has tried to follow in my footsteps, he's never had more than $10 in his account. He's currently got $0.73 (too small to sit at any table or buy into any tournament on Bovada) and has given up. He's played with me for years and has still not made it. I think he only tries, once in a while, because I provide encouragement.
I could never fault him, if he decided to give up. I could never fault anybody who tried to start with freerolls and eventually got frustrated and gave up (either by depositing or not playing).
- If you're a cash game player, or want to be one, you're going to be spending the majority of time focusing on a game that is not what you want to play.
I don't like tournaments. I've played hundreds, probably even thousands. Some of them I played for social reasons. The majority of them I was playing for money. Most of those were freerolls I used to seed my bankroll. If you want to be a tournament player, this might not be a bad thing. Of course, freerolls play a little differently than the WSOP. Even the smaller buy-in tournaments play very differently from freerolls because people have something on the line.
- It can seriously delay progress
Chris Ferguson is a professional level player. It took him over seven months to get a stable bankroll of around $6.50. Seven months of grinding freerolls. Seven months of winning a few cents and either jumping back into the freerolls or hopping on the cash tables way under-rolled for the games. Seven months for less than $10. And, he was still not bankrolled for even the smallest games. For the $2nl games, Ferguson would need $40 by his own rules. That's more than six times the bankroll he built. Really, it was a tournament win around that time that propelled him over $100 that set him up to win.
When you are starting out, you really need all the help you can get. A new player should be focused on using all the promotions and benefits a site offers to help bolster their winrate at the start. Of course they need rakeback, if available. They also could benefit from first deposit bonuses, first depositor freerolls, and other incentives sites offer to get people to make an initial deposit. Clearing those bonuses or cashing in one of those freerolls will accelerate their progress.
- The point of the challenge was showing how bankroll management, with a focus on moving up and down, could allow a player to play even the big games.
The challenge was built around 3 rules:
- He never bought into a cash game or a sit-n-go with more than 5 percent of his total bankroll (there was an exception for the lowest limits: he was allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less).
- He didn't buy into a multi-table tournament for more than 2 percent of his total bankroll, but he was allowed to buy into any multi-table tournament that cost $1.
- If at any time during a No-Limit or Pot-Limit cash-game session the money on the table represented more than 10 percent of his total bankroll, he had to leave the game when the blinds reached him.
You might note that none of these rules require anyone to start from $0 and with freerolls. I really have trouble believing that Chris Ferguson believes it is beneficial for hundreds of players to try and replicate his attempt. Instead, I think he most likely did it as a proof-of-concept. It was an example of how his rules could work for any amount of money, even the most extreme case--$0. If it could work for someone who had no money, there's no reason to try and argue that it can't work for you because you only have $300 and can't imagine playing $10nl.
- It starts a player off on the wrong foot
The very worst thing a new player should do, when learning about bankroll management and discipline, is make a bunch of exceptions for why they should be allowed to play above what they know is a reasonable limit for the money they have. What happens to players who end up trying to build from $0. They spend their very first fledgling steps when a real bankroll (even if it's $3) making excuses to play above the 5% limit.
The hardest thing to do is not to teach someone a habit, it's trying to unteach one. I guess this is a small point. Someone who has the discipline to build from $0 and stick with it will probably find the discipline to stick to the upper limits later on. It might be a small thing, but I think it's important. When Chris Ferguson makes an exception for himself, we can assume he knows why it's fine to make the exceptions this time but not others.
So vinnie, what's your point?
I guess I don't really have a point to this. If anything, I would encourage new people who are serious about poker to be more willing to deposit. I would also try and make them understand that it's not a bad thing to deposit at the start. They should not feel ashamed for not wanting to start from $0.
What would I do if I was starting all over again? I would deposit. With my current experience, I would deposit up to the amount that gets me the maximum first deposit bonus or the amount I could reasonably put aside over a couple months. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that for the newest players. I would recommend depositing enough for 20 full buy-ins at the lowest limit. That's usually around $100 (even at PS where $2nl allows $5 buy-ins). They will get all the advantages of depositing without jumping into games well above their skill level. They will be able to claim, with honesty, that they started at the bottom and built their way up. And, best of all, they shaved 7+ months of futile, soul-crushing freeroll grinding.