Hello everyone, my name's Sean, and I live in Mississauga, Ontario. I'm 18 years old, turning 19 in almost exactly a month. That for me, being Canadian, means I'll finally be allowed to go to the casino...which is one of the reasons I decided to start the SNG MONSTER CHALLENGE!!

A little background on myself. I am a former Major Junior A hockey player, but I was sucker punched in practice last March. I have permanent double vision in my right eye. I won't get into the details, but suffice to say I am unable to play hockey or work at all for that matter. However, I will be recieving an insurance package, which will be nice . <READMORE>

That being said, I decided to switch my focus to my second love, poker. I had played pretty seriously up until the incident but decided to try to take my game to a new level just recently. I have always been a winning or break even player, but no major cashes to speak of. I was down to my last $6.04 in my Stars account and I thought to myself "I could blow this on one hand like I normally would, or I can try to finally build a friggin' roll. But how?" So I came up the MONSTER SNG CHALLENGE!! - How to build a bankroll strictly through Sit N Go's. I played 100 of them, made a few hundred but lost a bunch in cash games and MTT buy-ins. So I took a day off and had $200.18 left in my account, and I began to wonder.

In my experience, SNG's prove to be fairly constant over the long run. No limit cash games tend to have bigger swings, which I personally can't handle emotionally yet. Limit cash games are too monotonous for my liking, and MTT's are frustrating as hell...(you can only bubble so many times before you lose your sanity!) I figured that I could make at least a bit of money, as my ITM hovered around 43%, and my ROI was about 50% through the course of about 300 past SNG's.

Here is the breakdown of my challenge. Play 150 SNG's at the $10+1 level in Week 1. Then, play 150 SNG's each week at $20+2, 30+3, $50+5...and I feel up to it, close it off with $100+9's.

If I keep up a ROI of 50% as I have been doing, I should be able to make some good money. My goal is to make enough money by my 19th birthday, September 21 to have the bankroll I've always dreamed of.

Anyways, hope you guys have fun following my progress in my MONSTER SNG CHALLENGE!! Expect to see my blog on Tuesday mornings for a few weeks, and feel free to drop to search me on Stars and say hi...I'll be the one grindin' it out, hour by hour, table by table...and throwing out the occasional "bink" to the monkeys who call my all in with ace high and take me out.

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This past week has been absolutely phenominal. I played the 150 SNG's quite easily (even had 2 days off!) and had some pretty good success. I was able to successfully 4-Table with some overlap, and even did some 6-Tabling near the end of the challenge.

At the $10+1 level on Stars, I found that most of the players are very easy to play against. Heres a list of things that I think make them generally easier to play against.

1. Checking big hands early on. I rarely saw anyone (maybe once) bet out trips, bet out the nut flush, or lead with a made hand. It was almost as if they always wanted to "trap" their opponents into betting for them, just so they could check-raise like they saw on T.V. or something.

2. Almost zero defense of their blinds, even at the 75/150 and 100/200 levels. If they didn't have a hand, they were not calling and trying to outplay me. This made it really easy to steal their blinds with the correct timing.

3. Almost never got reraised preflop. If I was the table commander, no one would step up and reraise me to play a big pot against me. Even if we showed down, and they had AQs or AJo or something decent, they would see a flop and try to hit it, making their post flop play very predictable.

4. Was able to work the Squeeze Play very successfully 4 and 5 Handed, with any reasonable size stack. No one seemed to notice what I was doing, and it helped me gain a lot of chips and the image of a maniac, who was liable to raise all in at any time.

5. Was able to work the Stop N' Go play very successfully 2 and 3 Handed. People were just not willing to call an all in without a big draw, or at least middle pair. This play helped me take control of the Heads Up match, and win more often than 2nd.

6. Pulling off the Steam Raise was very easy. If I lost a pot due to a beat, and picked up a monster the next hand - I was able to push all in quickly and get calls from very mediocre holdings, who presumably thought I was on tilt and just pissing away my remaining chips.

7. Four handed play was so timid from my opponents, who all wanted to cash, that I was almost always able to build a chip lead that carried over into heads up play. Lots of squeezes pulled off, and many times I would call in the BB with weaker hands, because I knew they wouldn't bluff the flop. This also allowed me to pull off the Stop N' Go play with their timidness.

8. Impatient heads up play. Numerous times I was able to come back from 7 to 1 deficits (or worse), just because I was patient. I also noticed a decline in play after the cut line. It was almost as if to say, "I'm so glad to make the money, I dont' care where I finish!"

9. Lots of fear betting heads up, going all in preflop with dead even chips over and over again with blinds at 100-200. They were basically saying, "I don't think I'm going to win post flop, hopefully I'll get lucky in a race like I saw on T.V."

10. People saying, "river." As if this accomplished something. Again, added to me believing that most of these players saw the WPT and thought Ace Rag was a good hand at a full table too.

As for multi-tabling, I found it a lot easier than I thought I would. I was able to successfully play 4 tables at once and still surf pocketfives.com!! I started each table one after another, as I didn't find it that hard to play 4 tables 3-handed or less. All my decisions were made instantaneously, so it was just a matter of clicking from table to table.

I kind of missed the MTT grind, but after each day of pulling in a tidy profit, I was able to stay away from that scene and remember my focus - to make as much money as possible, directly through SNG's. I will get back to MTT's after this journey, but I think I will always continue to play a few hundred SNG's a month, as I can see that it is my most successful part of my poker game.

I am feeling very confident as I move into the $20's. I don't expect my competition to be much different than the $10's, and I feel like I am running really well. I'm not sure if my numbers can remain as high as they are, but we will see during this next week.

On another note, I was able to help a few fellow pocketfivers with some SNG strategy over MSN. They have all had some great success so far, so I continue to wish them good luck.

Anyways, here are my final statistics from Week 1. Thanks for all the support, and a special thanks to Adam who allowed me to post on pocketfives in the first place.

ROLLING STATISTICS - AFTER 150
Starting Roll: $200.18
Total Time: 35 Hours
SNG Played: 150
Ending Roll: $1,124.18

1st - 39
2nd - 19
3rd - 17
XXX - 75

ITM - 50.00%
ROI - 56.00%
BUY - $1650
RET - $2574
TOT - $924
$/H - $26.40
W/L - 21/6

-gidders
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