After withdrawing the majority of my PokerStars bankroll on 3/29 and leaving myself only $25.00 in my account, this is an update on my bankroll progress.

Starting out small again has seemed alot easier this time around. It is difficult to manage my play and game selection given the small amount I have at my disposal, but I have really started to enjoy the challenge. My primary focus is on small stakes Sit and gos, I am choosing to avoid cash games during this experiment. My target games have been the 5 table $1.10 Turbo Sit and gos & the $1.75 2 table Sit and gos as mentioned in my previous blog. I am attempting to replicate the success that I started only 8 weeks ago. In the past two days I have played several of these Sit and gos with decent results. I cashed a few of them, won a few of them, and took some standard beats along the way. But the last two days have been profitable for me, and I have doubled my bankroll to $50.00 grinding these out. These lowest limit Sit and gos are the first phase in my bankroll building process. I have reached my initial goal of doubling my $25.00 stake and now my plan is to play alot of the $2.20 100k satelittes mixed in with the aforementioned Sit and gos. I plan on leveling out my play in these games until I reach $100.00 in my account (either real money or PokerStars tournament dollars).

I want to blog my progress with bankroll management to help myself graduate to higher levels and better myself as an online poker player. Technically, I have learned a tremendous amount of strategy and gameplay from the Pocketfives website and its members. I am lucky enough to get to talk to fantastic online poker players daily and bounce ideas off of them. I usually get different approaches and points of view from different people, and I find this invaluable.

Hopefully I can progress with steady bankroll management and solid poker and take it to the next level and beyond...

Until next time....

This is my first blog entry on the new pocketfives website, and I'd like to talk about my bankroll & recent play. I made a deposit on Pokerstars on February 11th of this year for $25.00. From the start I decided to finally implement some long overdue bankroll management guidelines for my play. I modeled these bankroll principles on both Chris Ferguson's outline & a slightly modified version used by my roomate and fellow P5'er SickTight311. Basically allowing myself between 3% and 5% of my bankroll for my Multi-table tournament & Sit and Go buy-ins. This is a relatively conservative approach, but I decided to use discretion and judgement as well. Starting from $25.00 I was pretty limited as to what tournaments I could enter according to the bankroll management. I primarily played $1.10 5 table Sit and Gos, and $1.75 2 table Sit and gos to begin building up my bankroll. After I reached around fifty dollars in my account (approximately 5 days after deposit) I began playing the $2.20 Sunday 100k Sattelites. This proved to be a wise decision, and a surefire bankroll builder very quickly. The fields in these Sattelites are very soft and the pay structure is beneficial to a player such as myself that can accumulate chips early. With an $11.00 prize for winning each "seat" through the sattelite, the profit for each was $8.80 and could be used as PokerStars tournament dollars as well. Between February 22nd and March 14th I won approximately 22 seats for the Sunday 100k. Once I had reached $100.00 in my bankroll I began playing $3.25 5 table & $3.40 2 table sit and gos, and continued playing the Sattelites to the 100k. I won four of these $3.25 5 table sit and gos and placed in the money in several others. I played in several Multi-table tournaments as well. The Multi-table tournaments I played at this point were $1.00/$2.00 Buyins in various games (NLH,Omaha,H.O.R.S.E). I had minimal success with the Multi-table tournaments, so I continued with what was working which was the Sit and gos & the Sattelites. Eventually my bankroll climbed to $200.00 and then to $300.00. I hovered around $300.00 for quite a while and noticed I was having trouble progressing. I stayed the course and did very little different from a game selection standpoint. I did enter $3.00 Multi-table tournaments though, and had a few good results.

On one of these occasions I placed 10th in a field of over 1400 people. It was arguably the best tournament I have ever played online and I was the chipleader from 150 players down. When we got down to 35 players I was 3rd in chips and I began experiencing internet difficulties. These difficulties continued and worsened and I was unable to finish the tournament at all. I did not play one hand from 35 players down and blinded off in tenth position. It was very frustrating to say the least, but I tried to put it behind me and keep playing great poker.

Recently I made my third and fourth final tables in H.O.R.S.E & Razz respectively. The $3.00 H.O.R.S.E tournament drew 496 people and I finished 6th earning just over $60.00, while the $1.00 razz tournament had a considerably smaller sized field of 232, but I did manage to place 7th for $8.00. With these final tables and steady play in the sit and gos, I pushed my bankroll over $400.00. I moved my chips, played solid poker, and didn't win a big tournament or anything to increase my bankroll by more than 1600%. I stuck to the bankroll management priciples that I mentioned above and moved up to the proper levels and buyins.

Now i fast forward to the present day, and I find myself thrust into a new challenge. I recently withdrew a large portion of my bankroll. What remained was only a small percentage, similar to my original stake of $25.00. I am curious to see what I can do with it. If these ideas I applied successfully only weeks ago will prove favorable once again. I believe they will, and that good solid poker and excellent bankroll management will prevail in the long run.

These two links will provide you with additional bankroll advice as well...

http://www.sicktight311.blogspot.com/

http://www.chrisferguson.com/