Disappointment and Hope: The Jesus Challenge ends...for now.

A couple days ago I pissed away the last of the bankroll I had built off a $2 freeroll win. Hate to admit it. Since my last update I went on a great run, building my bankroll from $18 to $70 in two weeks. But the downfall was precipitous and this time I didn't find the discipline to reign myself in. A lesson learned - I'm not the dispassionate killer I thought I was.

And that's okay. In the end I just decided to have fun. I'm not entirely sure you can play like a pro and still have as much fun as you do as a recreational player. maybe I'm wrong.

The bright side is I get to play in my favourite charity tournament tonight and no matter what happens I know I'll have fun.

Quick Disaster and Slow Recovery: The Jesus Challenge, Day 45

I look back wistfully at my last JC post; day 18 when my bankroll was over $40. Sigh. Twice I managed to break up over $50 before, once again, things went terribly wrong. I went on a terrible run over a two week period where I lost money almost every single day. Usually the loses were small, but sometimes the loses were dramatic. When the two weeks were over my poor little bankroll was down to under $10.

I felt mentally broken. I had a great urge to just toss it all away and start again, going back to playing freerolls. Instead I decided I needed to play even more disciplined. My new plan was to aim for smaller targets- to break things into 50 session segments and to aim for coming out ahead in each segment. If I suffer a bad loss, I can usually recover that loss over the course of the segment. This new method has, so far, worked well. My gains have been modest, but consistent. I have taken some big losses (both by bad play and bad beats) but theses have been offset by my long-term positive play. My bankroll is just over $18 now.

Because I am taking this long term approach, I don't think I'll be giving you any bankroll updates for a while. It's just to boring to write and read about. I will write posts that I think might give you some insight into the game of poker (should I have any insights), but I'm going underground on the JC posts until I either break $100 or go bust.

How to Lose 45% of Your Bankroll in 2 Minutes - The Jesus Challenge, Day 18

Two weeks into my little personal challenge, things were going just swell. I had built my $2 up to over $36. I thought, Hey why not try a higher level? I'll play it super tight and if things don't go well I'll come back down to these 2 cent tables. I think you know where this is going. I took $5 to a table and waited for a good hand....and waited...and waited....finally I got dealt pocket sixes - the kind of hand I like to play. (If you want to know why I like these hands, read Small and Medium Pocket Pairs).  Someone raised ahead of me so I called and the flop could not have been better: Kd 6c Jd. I bet the pot and the other gut re-raised. I re-re-raised. He's all-in. I call. He turns over pocket aces. Ha! The fool! With only two outs he's up the creek! The turn is another king. And the river is an ace.

Well that sucks.

So. I go down to the level I belong at, right? Um, no. I go up another level, bringing $10 with me. I am determined to win that $5 back!

The very first hand I'm dealt QQ and some idiot makes a monster raise in front of me. Perfect! I re-raise. He goes all-in. I call. He shows....AA. Oh, damn. No miracle saves my from my foolishness, and my bankroll goes from $36 to $21 in two hands.

So. I go down to the bottom level again, and that's where I've been for the last four days, grinding it out. I'm happy to say I've got my bankroll back to $37. It's taken me about seven hours of poker over those four days - and I've had to play about 1,600 hands of poker to win back what I lost in only 2.

The question is - will I ever learn?

Don't Play at Too High a Level! - The Jesus Challenge, Day 12

A week into the "Jesus Challenge", I had built my original $2 up to just over $18, and in only three more days had nearly lost it all.

What happened? It was the usual story - I started out very disciplined, only playing 2 cent big blind ring games. For five days I kept to this level and was a consistent winner, growing my bankroll to over $12 in six days. In fact, winning was so easy that I didn't see the harm in stepping up to the 5 cent game. This seemed like a good move at first - day 7 saw me grow to over $19 before finishing near $18 - but I gave it all back the next day and finished my first week at $12.05.

I took the weekend off and started Monday with the intention of sticking to the 2 cent game, but I got off to a bad start and then, stupidly, moved back up to the higher level to try to quickly win back what I lost. A bad bankroll decision, followed by over-aggressive play and, in my own defense, some rather crappy luck, saw my losses spin out of control. I was in a complete nose-dive but somehow found the will to walk away before I lost it all. I had only $3.33 left.

It's really hard not to throw your whole bankroll away after losing 5/6th's of it in a single day. The downward momentum is just so great, and your attitude becomes so defeatist. I tried to tell my self that $3.33 was still more than the $2 I started with, but I still felt like a stupid donkey who deserved to lose. The one thing that kept me from crashing completely was the thought of having to write a blog about what an idiot I am.

So.

So, the next day I started grinding it out at the 2 cent tables, playing super-tight and folding a lot of hands that I called with the day before. That day I built the bankroll back up over $6.00

The next day a miracle happened. I played three tables (all 2cent BB's) simultaneously. My reasoning was that multi-tabling would keep me from losing my patience and playing too loose. It worked. After about 2 1/2 hours my bankroll had grown to an impressive $30.04.

So. Here I am, very lucky to tell you how my Jesus Challenge didn't end an embarrassing two weeks from the start. And I hope I can find the discipline to keep grinding at the 2cent level.

Wish me luck.

The Jesus Challenge

I haven't put any money into online poker for quite a while, but I do play occasional freerolls hoping to cash-in at long odds. Last Saturday I entered a freeroll with about 1,100 other players, with only the top 27 places getting paid. It took about five hours and all the skill, patience and luck I could muster, but when the smoke cleared I finished in 19th place and won myself $2.

This may not seem like a big deal, but cashing in one of these things is damn hard. A few years back Chris "Jesus" Ferguson announced that he was going to try to win $10, 000 playing poker online without depositing a penny - he would start by cashing in a freeroll. It took him about a year and a half but he did it*, and the hardest part was cashing in the freeroll to get started.

The Jesus Challenge is the goal I want to set for myself - except without the year and a half time line. I don't have that much time to play everyday. But if I can build this up to $10, 000 within, say, ten years I'll be pretty happy.

And what's more, if I achieve my goal  I'll do what Chris did and donate it all to charity.

I'm at almost $7 now. I'll keep you posted.

* - Given the fact that Chris seems to be somewhat deeply involved in the FullTilt legal problems, it is not unrealistic to doubt if he is telling the truth about this. Still whether or not he did it, I'm going to try.