The Marketers’ Senate

Back in the day Poker Pro Chris Ferguson took on the bankroll challenge of starting with no money, that’s right $0, and turning it into 10k. Ferguson succeeded, and has spawned many a player to want to walk in those same shoes, but I’d like to give some advice on this strategy and what may be a better alternative for beginning poker players.

In order to start from 0, you have to only play in freeroll tournaments. If you’ve ever played in a freeroll tournament, you realize that the variance is extremely high (even more so than MTTs where there is a buy in and a large player pool). The players at these freerolls are usually not of the “highest caliber,” so to speak, and a lot of the time it feels more like you’re playing Bingo rather than poker.

Imagine playing for months on end, freeroll after freeroll, until finally by some unknown miracle you end up cashing in a place where you get a substantial form of money. I say substantial, but in reality substantial here is uaually in the areas of 100 bucks.

Now think about it this way. Say you work for a month, have 100 dollars of discretionary income, and decide to invest it into a poker site of your choice. Does that not strike you as much easier than having to constantly play freerolls in order to get to the point you could be at in about a week?

My advice to new players who want to set up a bankroll challenge for themselves is simple: start with your initial hundred, and build your bankroll form there. With 100 in reserves, you can manage your bankroll properly knowing exactly what it is. If you choose to play in freerolls along side your normal play, I’m all for that, but please, please save yourself the headache of trying to build a bankroll from scratch. While it has been done, it’s occurrence is about as frequent as sighting the loch ness monster.