I was made an offer I couldn't refuse yesterday. This offer has in turn led to an experiment of sorts. Let me explain:
I've had an account on PokerStars for a year or so now, but I have never put any real money into the account. I've also rarely played there on the play-dough games. I'm not a huge fan of their user interface; I find it hard to read the table quickly and see who is and isn't in the hand. Also, some of the features I like on FullTilt (e.g., the graphical "last hand" button) are missing on 'Stars.
That said, I can't deny the fact that PokerStars has roughly twice the marketshare that FullTilt does. It also has micro-limit cash games and tourneys, some going as low as 1-cent for the buy-in to multi-table tourneys. They also have more tournaments running at any given time than FullTilt, many of them freerolls. And, their rake in the low-dollar SnGs and cash games is reportedly lower than FT. Some of my poker playing friends play exclusively on PokerStars and have been encouraging me for a while to give it a shot. Thus far, I've resisted.
So why do I mention this? Answer: because yesterday I received an email from PokerStars stating that they had put five bucks into my account for use on their site. The only catch was that I had to start using it within the next two weeks or else the $5 would be withdrawn. Serendipitously, I had just read another accounting of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson's amazing run of turning, literally, nothing into a $10K bankroll on FullTilt. Ferguson has stated that it took him many, many weeks just to build up to $5 from zero in the freerolls.
So.... this got me thinking. It felt like I had been given an opportunity to try the same thing on 'Stars, only with a $5 head start on Jesus. How much, I wondered, could I grow that seed money if I played solid, fundamental poker at the microstakes? I could apply the same basic rules of limit selection I adhere to now on FT, only I would scale it all down to the $5 bankroll level. In other words, I would be forced to play within the bounds of the $5 'roll... until, that is, I could (if I could) grow it to a large enough level to play at higher limits. What kind of ROI could I expect to earn in, say, 30 days of effort? Could I increase the $5 by a factor of 2, 10, or more? Or would I simply go broke, as Ferguson says he did a number of times before gaining enough bankroll traction to climb out of the micro limits and into the real money games?
Anyway, this all sounded like a fun experiment, so I updated the PokerStars software and configured PT to capture 'Stars data....and...the experiment was started! I played 100 hands of a $.02/.04 9-handed limit hold'em ring game and some stud hi and hi/lo. In the end, I made $.35 in profit. That's the good news. The bad news is that I really didn't play very well this first time at a 'Stars table. The hold'em game I was in was very loose, with very fishy players, but I started to loosen up too much myself, raising KJo UTG+1, playing AXs from early position, chasing some draws too far without getting the right odds, etc. In fact, about ten hands from quitting, I was down significantly and was about to post a loss for my first time playing, but right before quitting, I picked up 87 and hitting a board of 8-8-7 with two clubs. Even better, I got a LOT of action on the hand, winning a (relative) monster $1.10 pot when a guy with 77 hit the second-nut full house on the flop, and another guy with Ax of clubs chased and hit his flush on the turn. Life does not get much better than that on the felt, but I can't help but think that I lucked out there at the end of the session to make up for bad play earlier...
Don't get me wrong; I'm not really complaining, but I do need to improve my play and take the game as seriously at these micro-limits as I do when I play $1/2 on FT if I want the experiment to succeed. I still plan to play on FT for "real" stakes on a daily basis (mostly to work my way out of the current slump and try to build my bankroll back to where it was in December, but also to accumulate more "ironman" points that can get me into some more of their fishy freerolls).
Anyway, the experiment is off and running. My initial ground rules are that I'm going to curtail my limit cash games to the $0.02/0.04 level until (if) I get to $10. I might play some micro-limit NL cash games along the way, and if I'm feeling brave, I might even venture one of the $1+0.20 NL SnGs they spread. I'm probably going to steer clear of stud games on 'Stars in the future, though, as I am a newbie at best, and the experiment is to see how much I can grow a micro-bankroll the most efficient way I can. I also don't want to risk too large of a fraction of my 'roll in any given SnG or cash game until I build up a little cushion. It's way too easy to lose four SnGs in a row and then be, well, broke. Finally, I plan to limit my PokerStars play to 100-150 hands per day, max. Like I said, I want to play seriously on FT, too, to build that 'roll also.
Well, that's the plan anyway. First step is to try this for thirty days-- essentially play the game for the month of March and then reevaluate things. Hopefully, the micro-bankroll won't be so micro at that point. Chris Ferguson, look out! (yeah, right.)
All-in for now...
-Bug
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