Bankroll from nothing week 2

[Alon Ipser]

Well, I’ve had a pretty good week IMO. I managed to place in the money in 4 freerolls not counting my best finish which was at Stars. After almost 6 hours I managed to place 5th out of 5887 players for which I earned the opportunity to play in another 2600+ tournament which you have probably guessed I didn’t fair so well in. I was really hoping to get a small stake going at Stars but looks like I will have to find another way as their freeroll system is damn tough.

As for my other wins I placed 15th out of 120 in a PLO freeroll at Noble and just finished 12th out of 260, also at Noble. I received $5 and $1 respectively. Both tournaments were qualified for by playing a specified number of hands at Noble. For those of you that like Omaha, Noble, Titan and their sister skins have a nice little $500 freeroll that goes every Saturday that you qualify for by playing 50 raked hands of Omaha. That is the one I placed 15th in, and if I can do it, it can’t be that hard.

My last 2 wins came at Party and I was playing both at the same time as they started an half an hour apart. I placed 90th and 67th both out of 3000 players for a total of $1.65. I have placed in 3 out of 5 of Party’s freerolls. I don’t think it because of my playing but has more to do with the number of sit outs. I think I said last week that their registration starts like 7 hours (maybe 8) before the tournament starts so there is an unbelievable amount of sit outs. The first game I was seated to the left of the only other player not a sit out. If he folded, I bet and took the blinds. If he bet, I folded and he took the blinds. We cleaned out the table and were pretty even at the end because neither one of us got too greedy.

After my wins at Party I had $2.50 still not enough to play in any of their ring games so I entered one of their $1 tournaments and placed 39th out of 1892 players for $7.56 bringing my total to $9.06. I am thinking my best chances to win at party is at the SnG’s but if I lose the first one I am back down to trying to win in another $1 tourney so I played a .10/.25 NL table (their cheapest, limit starts at .25/.50). I managed to pick up a King high straight flush the first hand, all in, won. I hung around to see if my luck was going to stay but didn’t pick another hand by the time the blinds came around so I left the table. The idea was to get enough money to play the SnG and still have some if I lost which I did lose.

So this is where I sit after 2 weeks

Party $8.46
Noble $42.53

 

[Alon Ipser]

always at the cheap tables

 

[ChuckTs]

keep it up AI...those PS freerolls are no joke. I have no idea how you are actually making $$ on party - that sounds insanely hard...
i personally have brought my $25 MOM money at PS down to about $6 but am bringing it back up slowly but surely
and my Titan account got a little boost back up to $700 after placing 3rd in a rebuy a few days back
I'm thinking if I can bring my BR at Titan up to 2K (a longshot, but very possible) then i might withdraw it all except for a few dollars for CC events, and start a brick and mortar bankroll.
I've found a few places in my area, and hopefully they'll have soft players there and i can make a little extra pocket change every week or so

 

[JessieBear15331]

GREAT JOB! It's an accomplishment just to PLACE in a Stars FR, they're always crazy full, and so difficult when you get down to the last 500! I wish I was as advanced at poker as most of the players here, I have 0 bankroll! I hear about players' awesome wins, and building their bankrolls,but that doesn't exist for me!

 

[zinzan1000]

Well done alon, its obvious that you are playing a very disciplined strategy.
What you are striving to achieve is very difficult indeed, but you seem to be on the right track.
Its a tough road, but a road i believe you will pass through in good sted.
Keep up the good work.
Chuck, that titan BR of yours is a great achievement also, and i see no reason it wont balloon into $2k.
In my opinion your game is up to the task, no problem.
Jessie, time and effort will allow you to reach these goals also, and i am confident you will get there.

zinzan1000

 

[buckster436]

Well done Alon, it is possible to start from nothing and get a bankroll, i did it when i started, its not easy though, them tourneys where you have to beat 5,000 players or more and then play another one with loads of players are tough, real tough, your doing a great job, now just win the second tourney, its a snap, Ya Rite,LOL,LOL we all know you can do it, best of luck.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>buck:hello:

 

[millarski]

Well done Alon.

After reading this i was keen to try it for myself.

I was going to do it on Titan but an incident on my regular poker site earlier today changed my mind. i withdrew practically all of my bankroll, $95, and left myself around $1.50 to work with.

The freerolls on this site, Bet365(i think its called Prima in the USA) are pretty wild. if you enter the 01:30(UK) or the 09:45(UK) freerolls you'll be up against approx 5000 people, during the day the number can reach 10,000+. I'm not the best at freerolls, i've only ever placed in the money once and that was yesterday, a pretty tasty 3rd place.

there are a number of things you can do with $1.50 on Bet365, $1 MTT's, $1 + $0.20 heads up or the $0.05/$0.10 NLHE tables. i decided i'd start in the cash tables because if i didn't do well in the other 2 i'd be stuck with just freerolls. after about half an hour i was still around $1.50, i'd won a few pots but i'd been seeing a lot of flops so i hadn't really made any profit. i picked up KK in the SB and was thinking about going all in when someone did it before me. everybody folded but there was no way i wasn't going to call. this guy had had a few strong hands busted by very little and was getting frustrated, instead of raising normally he was just going all in every hand. i knew he wasn't going to wait for an A to raise so i put him on 2 face cards and if i called him i'd be ahead. when it was my turn to act i was in there like a dirty shirt. the few remaining players folded so it was just him and me. i was right about what he was holding, he turned over Q 10 off suit. he caught a 10 on the flop but the turn and river were rags so my kings held up. i played for about 10 more hands but got nothing decent so when i left the table i had around $2.90.

i decided to call it quits for the day there as i had been playing poker for about 3 days solid. its a sunday so there aint much to do and after an hour and a half i was bored outta my mind. i was soon logged back on and searching for a better way of building my bankroll. i decided to enter a $2.50 + $0.25 5 seater SnG as i'm pretty good at these wee tourneys. they can be quite exciting becuase the blinds double every 10 hands, so if no-one gets knocked out early they become more about luck than good poker. the key is to get stuck in early because you can't sit around and wait for people to be knocked out. the weird thing about these SnG's is that there are 3 paid places, with only 5 seats and a prize pool of $12.50 i thought 2 paid places would be about right. 3rd gets you $2.50, 2nd gets you $3.75 and 1st gets you $6.75. I wont go into details but i played 3 of these in a row, finishing 2nd, 1st and 2nd, taking my bankroll up to approx $8.25.

i have more options with $8.25 than i did with $1.50 but i'm gonna stick with the $2.50 SnG's and the freerolls for now and try and build it up more.

 

[titans4ever]

Alon, you inspired me to do this with what I had left in poker stars. I did two of our $10 buy-in on fridays with the money from member of the month and had about $1.50 left. Could never catch cards at these.

I figured PLOH8 was a safer way to try and build with split pots and poorer play than in Holdem. Week one was a see saw between $5 and $10. Started good to get up to $5 but every time I got over $10 I would have two horrible sessions in a row and be back down to about $6.

I finally broke through with avengance this week and got to over $20. I decided to gamble some and play a 27 person NLHE SnG for $5 (yes, poor bankroll management) and took first to boost me to $65. I moved up levels in PLOH8 to 2c/5c and today broke to $73. Helps that I have focused on one site and game to do most of my bankroll runs.

 

[Alon Ipser]

Alon, you inspired me to do this with what I had left in Poker Stars. I did two of our $10 buy-in on fridays with the money from member of the month and had about $1.50 left. Could never catch cards at these.

I figured PLOH8 was a safer way to try and build with split pots and poorer play than in Holdem. Week one was a see saw between $5 and $10. Started good to get up to $5 but every time I got over $10 I would have two horrible sessions in a row and be back down to about $6.

I finally broke through with avengance this week and got to over $20. I decided to gamble some and play a 27 person NLHE SnG for $5 (yes, poor bankroll management) and took first to boost me to $65. I moved up levels in PLOH8 to 2c/5c and today broke to $73. Helps that I have focused on one site and game to do most of my bankroll runs.

It is very rewarding to start from nothing (or almost nothing) and build a bankroll. It can be boring at times and sometimes aggrevating. Good luck and hope you keep winning.