End of week 2- nice gains (after some sad losses)

The second week of the frugal poker journey started off pretty well, doing decently still playing at the micro stakes tables. I was somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 about 5 days ago, but then I started playing some $1 45 person sit-and-go (SNG) tournaments, which technically break the Chris Ferguson approved buy in maximums for proper bankroll management. Oops... Anyways, I played a number of these, ending up at the final table in most cases, but with only the top 6 being paid out, it actually is a little difficult to end up in the money. I had two 6th place finishes and this morning, at about 2:30 AM, I ended up winning a tournament and taking home the grand prize of $17.10. Man was I excited.

So here is the bankroll heading into the start of week 3:

End of week 1- a good week all in all

Starting today, I think I might change it up to be weekly updates, instead of daily, unless something of profound interest happens. This week ended up on a good run at the table and I stepped away after losing a pot I should have won. However, for the week and my $2 investment, playing the micro stakes tables treated me kindly for the most part, and I am sitting with over $10 in the account right now. Hopefully I can continue this run and not lose too heavily in the coming days/weeks.

Day six- back into the positive... thankfully!

After playing again with ohcaptain and being called "aggressive" by pokertracker, I ended up being in the positive for the night again, and recouped all the loses from yesterday. Yippee! That's all I can really hope for on a night like tonight I guess.

Day five- going in the wrong direction...

Due to disappointment, this will be a short update. About the only thing good during tonight's game was being able to play with my good friend ohcaptain . I guess I must not have been on my "A" game at the micro tables tonight.

Day four- a slight gain... and a new goal!

Tonights game play was pretty mediocre, with what should have ended up well above the initial bankroll, but hit a bad string of luck and ended up only up a little for the day. At least it is going in the right direction though, right?


What I did find out though is that now I have started to accumulate "Fell Tilt Points", which can apparently be used at the store to get Full Tilt related gear, anything from shirts to hats and jackets and plasma TV's... My new goal is to get a hat...


4000 points?!?! At my current pace, it is going to take 800 sessions, probably over 2 years in the end.

I wonder if I'll make it to $100 or 4000 points first...

Day three- a little better night

Again, went into tonight's tables with about $0.60 worth of bankroll. Lost a little bit to get going, ended up playing quite a while, and ended up over $2 for the night!

Day two- continuing the run at micro stakes

Taking my huge bankroll into tonight's tables looked like a super swell idea. Unfortunately I hit some bad luck and ended up losing in $0.40 increments until I was eventually all in, for my entire stash.





Thankfully, I went in at the right time, doubled up, starting hitting some hands and ended up in the positive for the day, which I am quite happy about. I would have even been content just breaking even after nearly needing to head back to the freeroll circuit. Here stands the bankroll after 2 days...

Day one- micro stakes pot-limit. You have GOT to love this game.

So I decide to sit down at the real money micro tables at Full Tilt, but I don't put my whole $2 bankroll on the table. I sit with $0.40, so that I can bust out theoretically 5 times before I have to play another freeroll (because although it is free, that was a TON of time and lost sleep). I think I played reasonably well, and increased my overall bankroll by about 25%, which if I can keep this up, I'll be quite happy. Here is the bankroll when I hit the hay.

Freerollin' is the best way to roll...

So, the first step in making something out of nothing is of course the freeroll. For those of you not familiar with poker, various sites (including Full Tilt which is where I play at) allows individuals to enroll in tournaments called "freerolls" which allow you to win actual money without putting any in.

So it's a Saturday night (sorry, this post is a few days late) and I came across a freeroll for no-limit texas hold-em at Full Tilt starting at 10:40 pm, which opens for registration at 10:00 and closes because 2700 players enter and fill the tournament in about 15 seconds. The prize structure is:

After registering for this, my first freeroll, and then waiting around for 40 minutes for the tourney to start, I started playing relatively well and was feeling good about the style of play I was working. Got through the first break (1 hr), and several more breaks at 1 hr intervals. I started playing pretty conservatively and miraculously ended up still in the mix when we went to break with 22 players left, meaning that I was in the money.




I played a few more hands, felt good about a hand and got sucked out on and ended up in 20th place, meaning that I still made the money! $2 in the bank baby!



Now it's off to the cashier to confirm the money was there...


Thankfully, Full Tilt has the "micro" stakes tables, where you can play $0.01/$0.02 blinds with pot-limit hold-em. Here we go. Wish me luck! (of course it will have to wait a bit, as this tourney didn't end up wrapping up until 4:14 am. Eek!) The amount of work put into this $2 makes me appreciate the child laborers working for less overseas...

The purpose... to win money without spending any!

All of us have heard the old adage, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Well, I would be up for free lunches, but what I would really like to do is get into either the WSOP or a WPT tournament without spending any of my own hard earned cash, especially in today's economy. What this blog is going to do is track my progress going from a novice poker player into the poker elite (yeah, right!).

The rationale behind this process is quite simple actually, and has been employed by one of my favorite "Poker Stars", Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. (For some really cool card throwing tricks check out some of his youtube stuff).



Now, I am nowhere near the level of Chris, but I want to give it a shot and see how far I get. Chris does have some guidelines that he used to make $10,000 out of nothing but hard work, and can be found here.