Friday, March 3, 2017

Road To High Stakes Poker

Hello everyone, and welcome to my brand new blog called Road To High Stakes Poker.  In this series, we will be going on a journey to reach high stakes limits on Ignition's poker (formerly known as Bovada), playing no limit Texas Hold'em.

How it's going to work:


  • I have deposited the minimum amount aloud by Ignition, which is $20.  Following a strict set of guidelines, we are going to see just how much we can make those twenty bucks grow.  
  • We will be starting at the lowest stakes, $0.02/$0.05, and make our way to the highest stakes, $10/$20.  
  • Playing four cash game tables at a time, and occasionally alongside a tournament table as well, we are going to rise and fall through the many different blind levels as we build our bankroll higher and higher.  
  • I will make posts with videos once a week of the most significant hands that were played within that past week, and explain what happened, my thought process, what I should or shouldn't have done, and even analyze my opponents' actions throughout the hand.  
  • Also, I will add a full session video of one of the sessions that was played in that past month.  If it was a profitable month, I will post a video of the session that made the most big blinds/hour.  If it was a losing month, I will post a video of the session that lost the most big blinds/hour.  That way you get the most action packed session of the month to watch.
  • I'm going to try to get 20 hours of play in per week.
  • I will be posting daily and monthly stats of our progress along with my play style stats with the help of my HUD, Hold'em Indicator.
  • $20 is low enough to have a risk of the bankroll getting wiped out.  If that happens, another $20 will be deposited.


Guidelines we will be following:

  • We will be buying in for table max whenever possible.  So to start, it won't be possible.  We are actually going to have to go table minimum.  But if we have $3,500 in our bankroll, we are going to play $0.50/$1 for table maximum of $100 rather than $1/$2 for $175, when that table maximum is $200.
  • For cash games, we will be buying in for 5% of our bankroll. (Exception:  When our bankroll is under $30, we will have no choice but to put in more, as the minimum buy-in is $1.50.
  • For tournaments, we will be buying in for 2% of our bankroll.
  • Money will be withdrawn based on what blind level I am currently at.

$10/$20: $46,000+ (100%)
$5/$10: $23,000-$46,000 (90%)
$3/$6: $13,800-$23,000 (80%)
$2/$4: $9,200-$13,800 (70%)
$1/$2: $4,600-$9,200 (60%)
$0.50/$1: $2,300-$4,600 (50%)
$0.25/$0.50: $1,150-$2,300 (40%)
$0.10/$0.25: $575-$1,150 (30%)
$0.05/$0.10: $230-$575 (20%)
$0.02/$0.05: $115-$230 (10%)
Below: $0-$115 (0%)

These are the minimum amounts needed to play each blind level.  Why does it look like they're less than 5%?  Because we will be playing on not one table, but four at a time.  So if you were playing just one $1/$2 game, you would need a minimum of $4,000 in your bankroll to satisfy the 5% rule.  But if you're playing two games, you need $4,200 minimum because after you've bought into the first table for the max of $200, you need $4,000 to buy in to the next table.  So with three tables, it's $4,400, and four (which is what we'll be playing) would be $4,600.

The percentages in parenthesis is how much of the profit I will withdraw.  So if I start a month with $3,500 and increase it to $5,500 ($2,000 profit) by the end of four months (four months because that's how often Ignition allows free withdrawals), then I will take out 60% of $2,000 ($1,200).  So the higher we get, the more difficult it will be to move to the next level as more and more of the profit is withdrawn. 

Background:

I started playing no limit Texas Hold'em at around age 18.  After a few years, I started playing a lot more seriously and decided to become a poker dealer.  I dealt for a few casinos in Southern California for three years and stopped dealing about a year and a half ago.  

Since then, I've spent a lot of time playing online.  I deposited $100 and managed to turn it into $1,250 with the help of a $5 entry, $4,000 guarantee tournament in which I finished 1st out of 877 players, which paid out over $900.  

I'm a very methodical player and I've spent a lot of time working on my strategy for poker.  My strategy has evolved quite a bit.  Many changes, some small, some very radical, have been made to it until it's reached the point where I haven't needed to make any significant changes in a long time.  But of course, it's not perfect, and no strategy will ever be.  I never stop learning more and more about the game, and I'm sure even the pros learn something new in almost every session they play.  

I like to play an aggressive style; tight-aggressive in cash games, and loose-aggressive in tournaments.  I treat a tournament like a cash game until the antes have arrived.  That's when I kick the aggression up a notch because that's when it becomes worth stealing to me.  I play as balanced as possible as that's the key to staying unreadable to my opponents.  I'm not afraid to triple-barrel bluff every now and then, given the right board.

YouTube:

Subscribe to my YouTube for videos I will be posting here.

No comments:

Post a Comment