Operation: $50 to $1250 by January '09 (updated w/ new goal)

Current Bankroll (10/30): $610.96
Current projected total (just for fun): $599,700
UPDATE (10/23): Since I am well ahead of schedule right now, I have set a loftier goal for myself, detailed in the followup post to this one.

Weekly Milestones
Oct 16: $67
Oct 23: $87
Oct 30: $113
Nov 06: $147
Nov 13: $191
Nov 20: $249
Nov 27: $323
Dec 04: $420
Dec 11: $546
Dec 18: $710
Dec 25: $923
Jan 01: $1200

I have determined that I can live frugally on about $500 per month. I have enough money in the bank right now to last me until some time in January, so if I can make enough to start withdrawing $500 every month (hopefully more as time goes on), I figure that will be enough to live on. Of course, I want to win more than that per month so that I can continue to build by bankroll as well.

In order to accomplish my goals, I would like to be netting $800 or so per month by January. I play sit-and-go tournaments, so at an 8% return on investment (a conservative estimate), that means that I will need to play $10000 worth of games per month. Assuming 180 hours of play per month (right around 40 hrs/wk) and two games per hour, that means that I will need to be playing at the $50+5 buy-in level. Proper bankroll management calls for having at least 15 buy-ins, but I would be more comfortable with more. I am thus going to shoot for $1250 by January (nearly 23 buy-ins).

At the top of this post I will be tracking my progress. The projected total will be based on the exponential function for continuous compounding:

amount = principle X e^(rate X time)

Using this equation, I have calculated the bankroll I should have every Thursday in order to be on pace to hit $1200 by January 1 (adding the $50 deposit bonus brings the total to $1250). Those milestones are the ones listed at the top of this post. In my replies to this thread, I will track my progress in relation to those milestone totals, updating it every week.

NEW GOAL: From $166.20 on Oct 23 to $2400 on Jan 1, with a $500 withdrawal on Dec 18

Weekly Milestones
Oct 30: $223
Nov 06: $300
Nov 13: $404
Nov 20: $543
Nov 27: $731
Dec 04: $983
Dec 11: $1321
Dec 18: $1777 (before withdrawal)
Dec 25: $1784
Jan 01: $2400

Since my original goal is going so well at the moment (as of 10/23), I have decided to set a tougher, loftier one. I will not be all that disappointed if I don't reach this one, but I think it's a nice one to shoot for.

Instead of making $800 per month by January, I am going to instead try for $1200, with the goal of withdrawing $600 each month and adding another $600 to my bankroll. Again assuming an 8% ROI, that means that I will need to invest $15,000 per month. Playing 272 games per month (about 32 hours per week assuming 2 games per hour) at the $55 stakes on PokerStars results in about $15,000, so that is what I'm aiming for.

I was previously set on having "nearly 23 buy-ins" by January, but after reading Spenda's BR management article at GrinderSchool.com, having 45 buy-ins seems like a much safer way to play. On the surface this seems like a bit much, but if I'm going to try living off my poker winnings, it would be nice to have a little extra cushioning in the event of a dry spell. Thus instead of shooting for $1250 by January, I am instead aiming for $2400.

But I am adding another wrinkle. If I'm going to be winning all this money, it would be nice to be able to take some out before Christmas to be able to buy some gifts for friends and family. For this reason, I am also going to aim to withdraw $500 (including my deposit bonus) on December 18.

Putting all these numbers together, I have created a new set of milestones to reach in order to meet this more difficult goal. Looking at the numbers, I will need to increase my bankroll by 35% every week, undoubtedly quite a challenge. If I don't quite make it, at least I had something lofty to shoot for, and I will still be well on my way towards meeting my original goal.

Milestone 1 (Oct 16, $67)
10/17 @ 17:43 - $89.60 ($7550 projected). So far I am quite happy with my progress, and I'm well on my way towards my goal. In the 10 days since my initial deposit, I got down to a low of $35 a few days ago before building it back up mainly through $2.20 satellites to the Sunday $200,000 and $1.15 Double or Nothing SNGs. I feel like these games really improved my chip stack management, short stacked play, and bubble play while being a pretty safe way to rebuild a hurting bankroll. I'm currently 2-tabling on one $3.40 1-table SNG and one $5.40 DoN. Surely I can expect my projected total to come down from its currently ridiculous high, but I am quite optimistic about the potential to hit $1250 by January.

Edit: I just did the milestone calculations today (10/18), so this post wasn't actually on a milestone day, and it doesn't really talk about my progress in relation to the $67 milestone. Future Milestone posts will be formatted slightly differently and will comment on my milestone progress. As it stands now, it looks like I'm nearly a week ahead of schedule, so I'm happy with the way things are going.

Well good luck to you sir

as long as you use proper bankroll management and all of the resources available to you here at FTR I'm sure you'll reach your goal easily.

Thank you for the encouragement, and also a huge thanks for your work in creating some very good videos. You have contributed a lot to my development as a poker player. You and the other experts of FTR are a huge part of the reason that I can even consider the possibility of making a decent living playing poker.

Weekend update

Great news! PokerStars held a "Million Dollar Man" tournament today where the top 100 finishers get a 0.01% share of Ylon Schwartz' winnings at the final table of the WSOP Main Event. Using deposit bonus "MDM", I got free tickets to these tournaments each Sunday, so I gave it a shot. I didn't make the top 100 (although I was briefly the chip leader near the beginning of the second hour), but there were nearly 12,000 entrants and I finished 356th, good for $31.50. That put my bankroll up to $113.30, enough to warrant moving up to the $5.50 SNGs.

In my first $5.50, the 6th hand went like this:

Hero's M = 45.33
PokerStars Game #21337048231: Tournament #115258746, $5.00+$0.50 Hold'em No Limit - Level I (10/20) - 2008/10/19 21:52:55 ET
Condensed history provided by the Tournament Trimmer (v1.1.4w) from http://www.FlopTurnRiver.com
Table '115258746 1' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Mader74 (1520 in chips)
Seat 2: DoanDiggy (1360 in chips)
Seat 3: watdog1969 (1380 in chips)
Seat 4: braguss (1260 in chips)
Seat 5: chirolicious (1940 in chips)
Seat 6: The Null Set (1170 in chips)
Seat 7: SouthPaw_982 (1870 in chips)
Seat 8: KALISPELL1 (1500 in chips)
Seat 9: radman84 (1500 in chips)
SouthPaw_982: posts small blind 10
KALISPELL1: posts big blind 20
Preflop: DoanDiggy dealt J K
radman84: folds
Mader74: folds
DoanDiggy: raises 40 to 60
watdog1969: folds
braguss: raises 60 to 120
chirolicious: folds
The Null Set: folds
SouthPaw_982: folds
KALISPELL1: folds
DoanDiggy: calls 60
Flop: 3 2 6
DoanDiggy: bets 180
braguss: raises 180 to 360
DoanDiggy: raises 880 to 1240 and is all-in
braguss: calls 780 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (100) returned to DoanDiggy
Turn: 7
River: A
Showdown:
DoanDiggy: shows J K (a flush, Ace high)
braguss: shows 6 A (two pair, Aces and Sixes)
DoanDiggy collected 2550 from pot


Once I started to get a feel for the table, I noticed that the play was very tight. I was able to use aggression effectively and remain chip leader or close to it for the rest of the match, and I pulled down first place in my first-ever $5.50, netting me a $17 profit.

Taking into account a $5.40 double-or-nothing that I lost while playing that match, my bankroll is now up to $124.90, meaning that I'm about two weeks ahead of schedule.

I'm sure that I'm in for a run of bad finishes before too long -- my current projected total of $35,400 is certainly not going to hold up. But at least for now, things are looking up!

you cant just project your poker winnings and be hiv positive you are going to win that amount. what if you max out your potential at some low buy in amount, or just dont improve?

however, gl with your goals.

Originally Posted by will641

you cant just project your poker winnings and be hiv positive you are going to win that amount.

Obviously. The "Current projected total" is mostly for fun -- sorry if it seemed to be anything otherwise. I have edited that line so that it is clear that I'm not serious about that being a realistic projection. Of course I'm not going to have a $35K bankroll by January . The milestones are the things I'm really focused on meeting, and as long as I can continue to stay ahead of my targets, I'll be able to reach my goal of $1250 by January.

Originally Posted by will641

however, gl with your goals.

Thanks for the support and thanks for checking out my operation .

Milestone 2 (Oct 23, $87)
Actual bankroll: $166.20

I have continued to build my bankroll at a nice, steady rate. I am still playing the PokerStars 5.50 SNGs, at the same time multi-tabling on the 5.40 Double-or-Nothings. This works out nicely because I find myself winning at least 70-80% of the DoN matches without paying too much attention to them. This allows me to miss the money on a few of the SNGs without losing too much cash, and when I do hit one, I see a nice boost in my bankroll.

As I noted in my "Weekend update" post above, I got a huge boost from an MDM tourney, allowing me to move up to my current stakes. I expected a bit of a setback as I moved up, but it has actually been the exact opposite. In the three full days since that tourney upped my bankroll, I've managed to increase my 'roll another 33%.

I'm a little bit hesitant to place a lot of stock in my results at this point, though. I have given too many bad beats to be comfortable with how I'm playing, although to be fair, a large number of them have been while I was the big stack, shoving over smaller stacks. At the same time, I also was making the mistake early on of calling tight players' all-in shoves with hands that are likely ahead of a 3.40 player's range, but not a tight 5.50 player's range. After making a big note to myself -- "Don't call tight players all-in!!" -- I have been much better about this.

As far as my milestones go, I'm currently more than two weeks ahead of schedule. That is much better than I expected and I can be nothing but happy with my progress, but being so far ahead of my goal isn't exactly motivating. I would like to have something to keep me coming back to the tables, a new set of milestones that will really push me to keep improving and increasing my bankroll. For that reason, I am creating a new "best case scenario" goal, along with a new set of milestones, and I have detailed it in the second post of this thread.

Weekend update 2

For the second weekend in a row, a big win has given me a nice leap forward in my goals, but it wasn't all fun and games. The weekend started bad when I got drunk Thursday night and decided to play some at lower stakes. This was all well and good except that I was actually winning. I won a 45-player $1.20 SNG and placed in the money on a big $1.10 tourney, but for all that time spent, I only made about $15 profit. This took my bankroll up near $200, and in my clear-headed state, I told myself, "It turns out you're even a good player drunk. I'm now bankrolled well enough for the $10.80 DoNs."

Needless to say, I lost $22 really quick. This led to me saying, "Oh crap, that was a bad idea. I better go back down to the $5.40 DoNs, I pwn those." I spent the rest of the night losing about $50 more. It didn't help that I lasted for a long time in a huge MTT and I was playing 2 DoNs at the same time to stay occupied. I definitely would have quit much sooner otherwise.

Regardless, I ended up getting my bankroll down around $120 or $130. After getting a good night's rest and coming back semi-refreshed, I proceeded to run horrible for two days. I would get my money in good and then get cracked at least 75% of the time. It was just the most frustrating experience, my first time seeing the wrath of negative variance. As much as I want to say it didn't put me on tilt, I definitely started seeing more flops than I should have and getting in tough spots. By the time I stopped playing on Saturday, I was down around $100 or so, basically losing $100 in two days.

After taking a break from poker on Saturday night to hang out with my roommates, I got back to it today. I was finally in the right frame of mind again, playing one $5.50 SNG while playing 2 or 3 $5.40 DoNs (starting up a new one after getting the first pretty much locked up). I probably won 80% of the DoNs I played, but I didn't get ITM on any of the 9-player SNGs. Still, I built my bankroll back up to $115 or so.

At this point, I decided to give the 180-player $4.40 SNG a shot. Although I am slightly under-rolled to exclusively play these $4.40 (probably 50 buy-ins or so would be good), I was also playing the $5.40 DoNs, so winning just one of those (very easy for me at this point) is enough to pay my way into the big tournament, so I basically treat it as a satellite match.

I can honestly say that I played the match pretty much mistake-free. I gave one bad beat (2-to-1 or so after I had shoved a small stack) that wasn't for my tournament life, I took a few bad beats from shorter stacks, I won a (slightly ahead) coin flip at the final table when I was the short stack, and I played my good cards well. I took first place, good for $216.

My bankroll is now a very healthy $341.26. I am vowing to continue playing the way I played today, and especially not to play when I'm drunk, upset, tired, or non-clearheaded in any other way. This game is fun when you're playing well, but it's a good way to ruin an otherwise good night when you're not.

Milestone 3 (Oct 30, $223)
Actual bankroll: $519.06

As long as I am staying close to my more difficult milestones, I will be referring to them in my milestone updates. After winning the $4.40 180-player SNG on PokerStars for the second time in a 3-day period, I am nearly 3 weeks ahead of schedule for attaining even my tougher goal, and more than a month ahead of schedule on my original goal.

I keep saying that I'm expecting negative variance to sneak up on me, and I did experience that somewhat last weekend as I lost nearly half of my bankroll, but I came back with a vengeance on Sunday and Wednesday to get my $100 over $500, without even playing all that much poker.

One thing that worries me is that with my quick rise to first $330 and now $520, I didn't spend much time at the $10+1 SNGs. I did notice that the $10.80 DoNs were much more difficult than the $5.40 ones, so that is one thing to keep in mind if you are considering playing the DoNs. As you move up in stakes and the play becomes stronger, the ROI simply drops too low for them to really be worth it. When winning the DoNs, I'm hardly ever finishing 5th, and rarely 4th. Since the typical SNGs pay 3rd place $18 and 1st has the possibility of $45 (remember also that there are 9 players in these instead of 10), the standard 9-player SNG seems to be a better -- and certainly more fun -- way to spend your time.

As I was saying, though, I only played a few $10 SNGs. I believe I placed second in one and out of the money on the rest. I really find myself gravitating more towards the MTTs. I think that my ability to change gears and modify my playing style to fit the situation at hand really helps me in these tournaments. I follow "tight is right" early on, play aggressively when my stack is short, and generally try to survive until the final few tables. Once I reach this point, I feel like I have as good of a chance as anyone. In both of my wins, I was in the middle of the pack when it got down to twenty-some people left, and I basically "decided" that I was going to win. I didn't enter any other games, I increased the table's window to fill most of my monitor, and I was focused 100% on the game at hand. In both cases I got a little luck, but most importantly I didn't make any big mistakes, and I won 1st place both times. I'm confident that any FTR member is capable of doing the same. So basically, survive the first 90% of the field however you can, and from then on, give the game all of your attention and don't make any foolish mistakes. And it doesn't hurt to get a little lucky in key situations .

Looking back at what I've done, increasing my bankroll tenfold in three weeks while practicing good bankroll management is more than I ever expected. I have a lawyer friend who chats with me online during the day, and towards the beginning she was ribbing me, asking me how much I had made that day. At first it was $2, or $10, and she would make fun of me. Now that $200+ every few days isn't out of the question, we're both starting to realize that the idea of me making a living playing poker is very realistic.

Don't assume that just because you won two 180 man today that you'll continue to win one a day. I would guess a 50% ROI to be possible at the $4, which would require playing 100 for a $200/day return.

Good luck, but it's very easy to project forward when you're running well, and it will hit you 5x harder when you're running bad.

Also, (and I think you're getting it), but just because you win a MTT and have a bigger roll, doesn't mean you should be playing the max stakes for your roll.

I actually won one on Sunday and one today, not two today. And I agree, I'm definitely not expecting to consistently do so well. As I have said in the past, my "Current projected total" is just for fun, not something I'm taking seriously at all. The important thing for me is to meet my milestones every Thursday.

That said, I think this $4.40, 180-player SNG has to have a better than 50% ROI. The play is so terrible, and the final table play is even worse. I seem to run into either extremely nitty players who are willing to fold off their giant stacks, or players who don't tighten back up after getting used to playing at 5- and 6-player tables. Make it to the last 10% and you're guaranteed a 100% ROI. The final table is better, and first place is good for $216. And I'm telling you, just make it to the final 30 or so with at least 15-20 BBs, and you have a pretty good shot at the final table with reasonable play.

As far as moving up in stakes, I'm definitely very hesitant to move to the $22 SNGs, especially since I haven't yet had success at the $11 ones. Since I have nearly 50 buy-ins to the $11 MTTs (27- and 45-player and 180-player), I am trying those out to see how I do. So far, the play seems fishier here than in the $11 9-player SNGs, which is what I would expect since "gamblers" would probably tend to go for the bigger reward of the MTTs. I am also mixing in some of the bigger $3.30 tourneys, and I'm looking forward to playing some rebuy tournaments, but I definitely want to get my bankroll higher ($600-700) before trying the $3+Rs.

And hey, thanks a lot for checking out my operation and giving me some good advice.