Bankroll Spin-up

Challenges are starting to infect poker. I blame Jesus – the poker one. Chris Ferguson decided to try and turn $1 into $10,000, which he completed after 465,332 days of grinding pain. And recently there have been a whole slew of new challenges – ElkY broke the record for most sit-and-gos played in an hour, Boku87 turned $100 into $10,000 in 14 days, and ChicagoJoey played 600,000 hands of no-limit Hold’em cash in a month – mental!

Well, far be it from us to let a bandwagon go by without jumping on. So we’re proposing a challenge of our own for you poker nuts. Don’t worry, though, it won’t require you to Sellotape your eyes open in front of your monitor while 48 tables pop up for days on end. We’re aiming for something more modest – turning $50 into $500. Let’s begin…

Getting Started

There are a few different routes you can take to complete the challenge, which I’ll come to in a bit. First, however, it’s important to realise that there are pros and cons to committing to a challenge like this. One possible problem is that it’s an artificial construct.

After all, poker is one long lifetime session and you should always be trying to make money (i.e. win). If you put a time limit on it you may be creating artificial conditions that result in you playing less optimally. The benefit of committing to a bankroll challenge, however, is that it can focus your mind and give your poker some direction.

After all, it’s all too easy to sit down, log on and just click away, whereas a goal and a challenge can fire your competitive impulses – well, at least that’s the plan…So you’re going to try and turn $50 into $500 – how do you go about it? The main thing is to make sure you tailor the challenge to your own playing style and to the part poker plays in your life.

Decide whether you want to put a time limit on it or not, but make sure this is challenging yet achievable. You want to have a feeling of satisfaction when you get there, but not make it unrealistic or too much of a demand on your time – assuming you’re not a full-time player – to prevent getting discouraged.

Some Things To Consider

Whatever route you choose to take there are a couple of things to consider that may affect your success. The first is rakeback. This can make a huge difference to your results, especially if you play at low stakes.

In fact – particularly if you play cash – it can turn a marginal losing player into a winner, and you could complete your challenge on rakeback alone! It’s up to you whether you include it or not – on the one hand it’s not money won at the table, but on the other it’s still money generated playing and you can spend it! Second, you’ll have to decide whether to multi-table or not during the challenge.

Theoretically, the more tables you play, the more hands you can play and – if you have an edge in the game – you can complete the challenge quicker. However, it’s also true that after a certain point (x amount of tables) your edge will diminish. It’s important that you find the level for you – it might be one, four or even 12 tables. Whatever you do, don’t get so desperate to complete the challenge that you play too many tables and end up really diminishing, or even completely removing, your edge, or you’ll be destined to fail.

There are three main routes to completing this challenge. I’ll run through each of them and give a rating based on the chance of going busto (broke) or robusto (completing the challenge).

Cash Games

Playing cash games is a great way to grind up a roll because you can deliver a reasonably consistent return. You can also be very selective about the games you play in, targeting tables with soft spots. Cash is also the route that will enable you to generate rakeback with the greatest ease. And while most people coming into poker first learn and play tournament poker, this challenge may be an excellent way to either introduce yourself to cash play or to finally focus your skills on it.

One of the great benefits to cash play for recreational players on a challenge like this is that you can play whenever it suits you, whether it be 15 minutes while waiting for a meeting or 36 hours straight on a weekend. Cash also allows you to step in and out and pick your victims unlike other forms of the game. The big disadvantage is that it’s probably the easiest route to go on tilt and lose far more money than you should.

Sit-and-gos and tournaments can be frustrating, but you’re only in for your buy-in and can consider whether to play more or not. At the cash tables it’s easy to rebuy and lose three or four buy-ins in a few hands having done nothing wrong. If this affects you emotionally, that three or four buy-ins can quickly become eight or nine. So if you tilt easily or lack emotional control, cash may not be your best choice.

Low Risk

This route uses cash bankroll rules of always having at least 20 buy-ins at each level. Once you have enough buy-ins for the next level you move up. If you’re ever reduced to ten buy-ins at your current level you move down. If you have an edge on the game it’s difficult to go broke using this system.

So, for this challenge, you start at the $0.01/$0.02 level, which gives you 25 buy-ins. When your bankroll is up to $100 you can move up to $0.02/$0.05. Once you’re crushing that and are up to $200 you can play $0.05/$0.10. You can stay at this level until the challenge is completed or you could move up one last time when you have $400 in your roll.

The only danger of failure taking this route is in the first level. If you run badly initially there are no smaller games to go down to. But the games are so soft this shouldn’t be an issue.

High Risk

Instead of traditional bankroll management rules of having 20 buy-ins you’ll use ten as your guide, moving down if you halve your roll. So you’ll start the challenge by sitting down at the $0.02/$0.05 tables and move up to $0.05/$0.10 when you hit $100 – and so on as before.

As you can imagine, this route is much riskier as it’s very easy for you to do nothing wrong, but still go bust if the variance isn’t on your side in the initial stages. However, the games are very soft at these stakes and it’s possible to have a big edge, so you should still have a good chance of success.

Multi-table Tournaments

MTTs are probably the most volatile route, and therefore the least likely to succeed. Over time it’s possible to achieve a relatively stable win rate, or return on investment. A good return might be 30% but, because a big hit is possible, could be much higher.

It’s possible that playing MTTs is the toughest way to complete a challenge like this for two main reasons. First, MTTs take time and you can’t control that time. If you’re in an MTT you need to be in until the end, which can take several hours and may be tough if you’re a recreational player.

This disadvantage has a flip side, though, as it’s also possible to enter a tournament, finish in the top three in a big field, and complete the challenge in one fell swoop. The other big advantage in taking this route is that in the poker world the worst players and softest games are now in tournaments. You’ll find a much lower level of play in MTTs than you will in an equivalent level of cash game.

For the purposes of this challenge I’m going to define MTTs as tournaments with 45 players or more. Some sites run MTTs, which are described as sit-and-gos, that might have up to 180 players, but I’ll include them here. In fact these MTTs in sit-and-go format are a very good choice for your challenge as they present a good chance of cashing with their limited fields, and also take a limited amount of time.

Low Risk

You should try to use bankroll management as much as possible. Ideally you’d play MTTs for 2% of your bankroll, but with only $50 to start with this may be tricky as there are a limited amount of $1 tournaments. In this case you should play up to $2.50 MTTs and when your bankroll reaches $200 you can progress to $5 tourneys.

High Risk

Using this plan you’re going to play $5 tournaments for 10% of your bankroll. When you get to $100 you’ll play $10 tournaments, and so on. This is a good way to do the challenge if you have very little time to devote to playing, but your chance of success is very low. You only ever have ten buy-ins at each level and it’s easy to have a winless stretch. The standard of play will be very poor though, so you have a shot

Sit-and-gos

Sit-and-gos have long been the staple diet of players looking to start building a bankroll, and as such they’re a very good choice for this challenge. You’ll find that there are plenty of games at low limits and the play will be of a very low standard. Of course, there is variance in SNGs but it’s possible to obtain a pretty reliable win rate in them.

What’s more, they last a fixed, manageable amount of time, which is perfect if you’re trying to combine this challenge with an otherwise full life. Through studying correct strategy it’s also possible to make improvements in your game quickly at sit-and-gos – probably faster than the other two routes.

The big disadvantage of this route, however, is that sit-and-gos can be a grind. Although there is lower variance than the other two routes, top SNG players generally only achieve an ROI (over 1000s of games) of around 10% or less. So while they might be good for your emotional state it means your bankroll spin-up is going to be slow and steady. Turbo SNGs could help you complete the challenge quicker but be prepared for much higher variance.

If you take the low-risk option (see below) it’s probably going to take you longer to reach $500 than the other routes, but you also give yourself a great chance of success.

Low Risk

Welcome to the grind! You’re going to start out playing $1 sit-and-gos and steadily build up your bankroll. When you get to $100 you can move up to the $2 one-table tourneys.
For conservative sit-and-go bankroll management stick with a minimum of 50 buy-ins and wait until you get to $250 before entering $5 games. You can, of course, take the odd shot a bit sooner. But if you go on a losing run at any stage, you need to be prepared to drop down.

High risk

In this route you’re still looking to grind a little bit, but you’re going to play for 10% of your bankroll each time and start out at $5 sit-and-gos. It’s very easy for you to go on a losing run here, but if you’re willing to drop down if you lose half your $50 you can still resurrect the challenge. The play in these low stakes sit-and-gos is so poor that you will still have a decent shot at completing the challenge despite not playing under normal bankroll requirements.

Endgame

One final thing. As well as setting yourself this challenge, make sure you do two other things. First, give yourself an incentive – a prize at the end. This should involve taking some of the money out and buying something you want, like a poker book, training site membership, or a celebratory night out. Succeeding in challenges needs to be celebrated or life is just a grind. Second, make sure you write in and tell us about your success!