Sixty Day Challenge

For those of you who read 2+2 on a regular basis there have been several threads started over there by people who have set a goal and document their progress. The one I have followed for quite some time is David Ross’ attempt to make a living playing poker while he waits for job opportunities to become available. Well, why be original when you can copy the success of others?

Here is my sixty day challenge for myself:

Playing a modest ~250 hands a day at $2/$4, generate $2000 in profit over the next sixty days.

I know it doesn’t sound exciting but I started out with $100 in my account and playing .50/$1 and $1/$2 games built that up to $600 or so over several months playing here and there when I got a chance. Sure, I could have given myself a bigger initial bankroll and started out at $2/4 or even $3/$6 (I play $2/$4 and $3/$6 at B&M casinos) but I’m not sure I would have learned as much. Scratching and clawing to turn $100 into a bankroll that you can play higher limits with brings a certain degree of personal achievment.

That sort of brings me to the self-challenge. Although there’s a certain degree of satisfaction to scratching and clawing, I’m looking for something to inspire me to get in front of the screen and play. Something that makes me get serious about taking my game up a notch. I’ve reached that point where it’s starting to feel a bit like a grind.

I picked $2000 because that’s a nice starting bankroll for moving up to $3/$6 and . . . it’s a nice round number. I picked sixty days because I think averaging 250 hands a day is a pretty good pace. Anything more aggressive and I risk going off track the first day I slip and have to make up a previous day’s worth of playing. Here’s how I figure it: $2000 / 60 days is $33.33 a day profit. $33.33/$4 (size of the big bet) = 8.33BB a day. If I can average 3.5BB per 100 hands for sixty days that’s about 238 hands a day. Averaging 3.5BB per 100 hands over 15,000 hands might sound low to some and high to others but with the right tables I don’t think it will be that difficult. Besides, since my goal is not BB/HR based I can always crank up the number of games if I start to fall behind.

So with that . . . here’s the first night’s results:

I played two tables for the first 150 hands and then played three tables for the last 100 or so hands.

Table 1: +$76.25

Table 2: -$25.00

Table 3: +$2.00

Total: +$53.25

That puts me $19.92 ahead of pace. Not spectacular but a nice start.

I guess the funny part was that Table 1 was probably the toughest of the three tables. There were some good players and I had to really keep on my toes and ram and jam the good hands. Table 2 I never seemed to show any good starting hands and I got involved in a few draws that never panned out. Table 3 was just up and down the entire session. Up $20, down $10, etc. The table was a little too tight to make any real money off of.

Well, I’ll keep plugging away. . .

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