Boku Turns $100 into $10,000 in 15 Days
Thomas Boku Boekhoff did what very few PocketFivers thought was possible: Playing a maximum of $16 sit and gos on PokerStars, he turned a measly $100 bankroll into a whopping $10,000. Oh, and it all happened in a span of 15 days. Technically, he accomplished the feat in just 14 days and garnered the acclaim of the entire online poker community in the process. The Boku Challengethread received well over 1,000 responses spanning more than 70 pages and a $10,000 freeroll was even held on PokerStars in his honor. PocketFives.com sat down with Boekhoff to learn more about his unique prop bet.
He started with $100 on Day 1, emptying his PokerStars account of all but his seed money. He played a total of 557 sit and gos on the first day of action and turned his bankroll into $322. It was the first of 15 days of grinding sit and gos around the clock. He told PocketFives.com where the idea for the prop bet came from: “A friend came over to watch me play and I did not want to wait ages for my normal stakes tables to load up. Instead, I randomly opened sit and gos in all stakes. I won basically every table. It was so easy to abuse the bubble because everyone was scared of not cashing that I thought no one would think it’s possible to win $10,000 at these stakes.”
His solution was to offer players 3:1 odds that he couldn’t do it. After all, there is no way someone could turn $100 into five-figures in a span of two weeks, right? On Day 2, he improved his bankroll to $1,153, which was enough, in his opinion, to start grinding out $12 and $16 sit and gos. On Day 3, he was nearly a quarter of the way to his goal. He started with just $1.10 sit and gos and moved up as quickly as his bankroll permitted. As you could imagine, the entire process was taxing on his mind. He explained, “It was really exhausting. In the end, I did not even think about the money or anything. I just wanted to finally stop playing poker every hour of the day.”
By the end of Day 8, he was at $5,000. Suddenly, doubt began arising for those who had taken Boekhoff up on his challenge. He told PocketFives.com that 40 players put up between $30 and $6,000 per person that he couldn’t accomplish his goal for a total of $35,000 in wagers. The money was sent to an account called P5contest. He explained, “PokerStars was the escrow and judge for this bet to make sure nobody would be scammed.”
While Boekhoff was playing 700 sit and gos in a day at one point, a number I can’t even begin to fathom, his bankroll was mushrooming. Despite his success, he elected to lower the number of sit and gos he played at a time from 50 to around 35, explaining in a post on his blog that he experienced a much higher win rate. On Day 11, he was up to a bankroll of $7,400 and had to average $650 per day to reach his goal. On how he handled the plethora of tables requiring action at the same time, he recalled, “I don’t really know. I just made my decisions quickly. I had played so many tournaments that everything seemed to be automatic. However, the blinking really messed me up after a while. I slept really badly after three or four days with all of those blinking tables for 12+ hours a day.”
PokerStars orchestrated a $10,000 freeroll for those who had taken up Boekhoff on his offer. He wound up with $10,042.98 in his PokerStars account, not a bad total for two weeks’ worth of work. His rise to the top began in 2006, when the PocketFiver from Germany saw poker on television and began hitting the felts with play money on the line. He then found a site which touted that it could turn you into a poker pro. Boekhoff commented, “It’s basically an affiliate that taught you how to play poker. If you signed up with their code, they received a percent of the rake you paid. They gave you $5 and taught you how to play in order to get much more money back in the end in rake.” Affiliate site or not, the gimmick worked to perfection. Here’s a look at his funds at the end of the day:
After turning $1 into $3 initially, he was hooked. He recalled, “I was searching for a way to make money for a long time. When I turned my $1 into $3, I just knew it was for me. I knew this is how I would earn my money from now on.” His “normal” sessions of poker consist of 40 tabling for six hours at a time. During the Challenge, his typical day consisted of two sessions, which he recalled hurt his back, but not his eyes or head.
His only rough spell came on Days 4 and 5, when he noted that his ROI was just 3% in the $16 sit and gos and a dismal -5% in the $12 versions. His solution: “I stole more blinds from late position with bad hands when I had about four to six big blinds. I realized most of the people at those stakes don’t understand they are committed to call in the blinds because of the huge pot odds.” He also told PocketFives.com that he tightened up the range of hands he pushed with.
You can relive all of the action on Boku’s blog, including a day to day bankroll update. Congratulations to Thomas BokuBoekhoff for his impressive feat.
