The Jesus Experiment, Part II

I think Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is a genius. I generally try to follow his bankroll management guidelines of never put more than 5% of your bankroll on a table, and get up when you have 10% on the table, and never buy in to a MTT with more than 2% of your bankroll. It’s kept me from going broke. A couple years ago, he asked someone (I think it was Annie Duke) to give him a dollar online so he could turn it into $20000. He lost the first dollar, but he did it with the second dollar he was given.

More recently, he decided to try to do the same thing, but without getting a one dollar donation, he wanted to do it with no money, winning his first money playing freerolls, with the plan of turning his bankroll into $10000.

Anyway, check out this link –

I guess it took him a month to win a freeroll, then he immediately lost the money, then won another freeroll, and went on from there to turn it into 10k in about 16 months. The only time he broke his bankroll requirements was when he first one the freerolls, and didn’t didn’t have the max bankroll requirement to play in the lowest cash games. Once he got up to $50, he never deviated from his requirements.

I wish there was some info about how many hands he played, how many hands he played at each level before moving up, etc.

Anyway, it just goes to show that you can turn nothing into something playing online poker. I hope you and I can do the same.

Shortstack Shot

I’m going to give this a run. Instead of buying in for 2.5% of my BR at .01/.02 ($2.00), I’m going to play shortstacked at .05/.10 the next time I play, and buy in for 5% ($4.00). If I drop below $60, I’ll drop down to .01/.02.

What’s my reasoning? I think I can play reasonably ok with a semi-shortstack of 40BB. I won’t be making some of my looser plays (calling with baby pairs for a raise, or smaller suited connectors), and I’ll press some of my better hands. I probably won’t chase some of my higher implied odds hands – overcards and a gutshot without a deep stack, but I think I’ll be fine.

I was planning on waiting until I get to $100 and buying in for $5, but after reviewing my PT stats again, the boost from having the rake cut from 10% to 5% is probably worth the risk to take a couple shots and I should see some immediate impact on my PTBB/100. I’m giving myself a leeway of losing 5 buyins before dropping down, so I think it’s still pretty conservative, as long as I don’t get caught in the idea of chasing losses if I drop a couple buyins immediately. That’s what the ceiling of $60 is for.

Wish me luck.

Zero To Sixty In…

I know I’m stuck with .01/.02 for a few more months, but I want to complain about it. I guess something that’s bumming me out about it is that I don’t feel like I’m improving my game much playing it.

I feel like most of the players fall in to some basic categories, they’re easy to pigeonhole, and as long as I maintain my BR and starting hand selection discipline, I can’t be busted. I’m not perfect, so I still misplay a hand now and then, and I still take plenty of beats, which generally don’t bother me. I’ve got around 50k hands of .01/.02 between 2 sites, and my PTBB/100 is still in the 16.00 range. I’m crushing the game, which is great, but I’m mentally ready to move up, but there are no stakes that match my BR at UB.

If they had a $5 buyin .02/.05 game, that would be perfect, I’d be approaching it with my BR and have a short term goal to work toward. Instead, I’m going to be looking at playing $5 for .05/.10 on a shortstack at $100, or sticking it out at .01/.02 until I approach $180-$200, which seems ludicrous. Even at $.64/100, that’s another 23k hands before I’m in that range. At an hour a night, that ’s 4-5 months before I move up. Yikes.

I’m thinking about consolidating my three site BRs back to one, playing just Stars when the bonus is cleared and I qualify to transfer. I should be over $200 then, and I’d be fine to play .05/.10, or at least .02/.05. I have a positive PTBB/100 for each of those levels, but it’s not great, which I will attribute to some bad beats.

Then again, maybe I should quit complaining – I’ve gone $0-$60 in less than 3 weeks playing .01/.02 at UB.

I’ve Been Bad…

I broke my bankroll rule (never sit down with more than 5% of your bankroll) and sat at a single table of .05/.10 at UB with $10 (20%). This was after having a long discussion with a friend at work about sticking to the BR rule of 20 buyins (5%) for NL. I always go on about how poker is 90% discipline and 10% table skills, and here I am, breaking my rules. Shame on me.

Well, how did I do? I played ultra-tight (like 10% of hands). My first hand was AA in the BB, and EVERYONE FOLDED TO ME. I planned on pushing with it hoping for a caller, but no such luck. I played QQ for a raise, JJ for a raise, AK for a call and AK for a raise (I had a nice run of cards), won 3 out of the 4 hands. I doubled up after about 50 hands with KK vs. a nut flush draw and then quit for some family time (family always comes before poker).

I’m in a weird position with my BR, because I have 30 $2 buyins for .01/.02 but only 6 buyins for $10 at .05/.10, and there’s no .02/.05 at UB. I’m getting impatient, but I have to stick it out at .01/.02. I can’t reasonably expect my BR to survive with 6 full buyins at .05/.10, and I don’t like playing cash games with a short stack. I can’t imagine playing .05/.10 with a $3.00 starting stack. It’s too limiting. A raise preflop and 2 calls, and I might as well go all in on the flop with my top pair or fold. Unless I decide to exclusively play the under 2 dollar SNGs, I’m stuck at .01/.02 until I crack $200, which seems like it won’t be until next year.

I played some .01/.02 later in the evening and was slightly down but broke even for my session due to the bonus clearing. I don’t think I played too poorly, I just ran into some cards and lucky draws. I had KK cracked 2x, and got hit by a couple of 3 outers when I had people outkicked. All the more reason to stay at .01/.02 until my BR can handle .05/.10. I did make a dumb play one hand, but I didn’t have numbers on the guy.

UB – $60.03/25.23 pending bonus.
PS – same
FT – same

Free Money and Diversified Funds

There’s nothing better than free money, especially when it ends up in your online poker account. Ulitmate Bet must be getting desperate, because they put $10 in my account to get me to try the site again.

Now, I’m not a major fan of UB. Why? Because when I first started my online poker adventure, they were the first site I tried, at the request of a friend of mine. The first thing I noticed was the customer service was terrible. They were going through some kind of upgrade mishap, and I had a terrible time depositing any money there, or getting anyone to help me out. So, I said forget it and opened an acocunt on Pokerstars.

Well, that friend of mine continued to beg me to deposit some money there so we could play some SNGs together, so I finally did – $80. One nice thing about it was I got a matching deposit bonus, something Pokerstars never does. The SNG experiment didn’t go so well. I just didn’t have enough of a bankroll to handle the swings of $5 and $10 SNGs. I got down to $.07 and I never redeposited.

Three nice things about this tiny $10 in my UB account:
1) I know a lot more about BR management than I did when I started playing online.
2) I have $45 of uncleared bonus from my original deposit.
3) It appears it’s easier to clear your bonus than it used to be (I’m going to examine this in another post).

So, with those 3 things in mind, I’m on a new quest – clearing my bonus on UB at the .01/.02 tables. As long as I play a solid game, I don’t see any reason why I can’t do it. I was able to turn my last $3 on Pokerstars into usable money without a bonus, so I’m thinking this should be easy.

There are some differences between .01/.02 at PS and UB. Notably the buyin on UB – it’s a max of $2. This is good and bad. The good is that stack sizes will be relative to mine with the smaller buyin (although it’s a huge percentage still – I’m buying in for 20% of my BR, usually not recommended). When I started working my way back up on Stars, I was buying in for $1 with everyone else buying in for $5. People were less inclinded to let me draw. I was forced to play top pair very aggressively. The bad is that it’s that you’re buying in for a shorter stack – your implied odds are lower (which means my PTBB/100 will be lower). That means tightening up. Junk hands aren’t going to be profitable without all that money behind. PS allows a buyin of up to $5 (250BB) vs the $2 (100BB) on UB. 100BB isn’t exactly shortstack poker, but with most of the stacks between .80 and 2.00, there will be a lot of cases where playing small pairs after a raise probably just won’t be worth it, and that’s where a large portion of my profit comes from – stacking someone with a small set against a high pocket pair. If your opponent doesn’t have 10 times his preflop raise left in his stack (it’s really 8, but you have the rake and the times you will lose set over set to consider, so I like the overlay), it really isn’t worth it, especially in early position.

So, with all that it mind, I played my first 4 table session last night. I was a little brazen, and bought in for $2.00 on 4 tables – 80% of my new BR in play. I should have bought in for 4x$1. How did I do? Within the first 5 hands I was stacked – flopped a nut straight against a set, and the river paired giving the guy a boat (just bad luck, I would have played the hand the same way he did – he played it correctly). 5 hands later, I lost with KK vs. TT to a rivered T (I got it in on the flop). Down almost $4 dollars. I put the rest of my money on the table, and then came this hand:

Hand #42331xxxxx at Abdouramane (No Limit Hold’em)Started at 10/May/07 22:42:50
unknown is at seat 0 with $1.91.
ringaling is at seat 1 with $3.62.
unknown2 is at seat 2 with $2.02.
calling station is at seat 3 with $2.37.
crazy is at seat 4 with $8.58.
quiet is at seat 5 with $1.84.
me is at seat 6 with $2.33.
unknown3 is at seat 7 with $1.02.
justsatdown is at seat 8 with $2.
loose is at seat 9 with $1.91.
The button is at seat 5.
me posts the small blind of $.01.
unknown3 posts the big blind of $.02.

Pre-flop:
loose folds.
unknown folds.
ringaling calls.
unknown2 calls.
calling station calls.
crazy calls.
quiet folds.
me calls.
unknown3
checks.
Flop (board: 6c 5d Jc):
me checks.
unknown3 bets $.02.
ringaling calls.
unknown2 calls.
calling station calls.
crazy calls.
me calls. (loose call for me)
Turn (board: 6c 5d Jc 7s):
me checks.
unknown3 bets $.24.
ringaling folds.
unknown2 folds.
calling station folds.
crazy raises to $.96.
me goes all-in for $2.29. (Gotcha!)
unknown3 goes all-in for $.98.
crazy calls.
River (board: 6c 5d Jc 7s Js): (no action in this round)

Showdown:
me shows 7d 7h.
me has 7d 7h Jc 7s Js: full house, sevens full of jacks.
unknown3 shows 4c 5c.
unknown3 has 5c 5d Jc 7s Js: two pair, jacks and fives.
crazy mucks cards. (crazy has 6d 7c.)
Summary:
$.57 is raked from a total pot of $5.80. (yikes that’s a lot of rake – 10%)
$.31 is raked from the main pot of $3.18.
$.26 is raked from side pot #1 of $2.62.
me wins the main pot $2.87 with full house, sevens full of jacks.
me wins the side pot $2.36 with full house, sevens full of jacks.

I normally don’t make that flop call, but because everyone had called in front, my call ends the betting, and the board doesn’t look like it helped anyone, I may be able to take it away, or I may get lucky and catch a card for .02. I know I can get paid by crazy if I hit something – he was playing 85%/25%/8 and getting lucky. I hit the money card on the turn. I wasn’t afraid of a set of jacks, because the table was pretty crazy. If someone had JJ preflop, there would have been a raise. I was slightly afraid of a straight, but I had boat outs if I was behind.

I was up and down after fighting my way back at my other tables, but overall up 35% for the session. I think if I can just maintain my tight steady game that I have at Stars, I should be able to clear that bonus on UB. I’ll probably stop all play at Stars and FT until I clear it or bust out, whichever comes first.

BR
UB 13.53 (45.29 in pending bonus)
PS 77.47 (had another nasty session)
FT 28.75