#232 - Chris Ferguson and the Art of Bankroll Maintenance, Part III

THE BRINK AND THE SUMMIT

At 6:56 PM, he’s got the perfect Ten Grand hand. He moves all-in with pocket aces on the turn with a board of Qs-5d-2s-6d. His opponent calls with Qd-8d, but the ten of diamonds comes on the river, making a flush. Instead of breaking the $10,000 barrier with the best starting hand in poker, he is nearly a thousand dollars away.

At 7:22 PM, he gets another chance, all-in with A-8 after a flop of K-K-8. But his opponent, with 7-7, catches a seven on the turn and the milestone again eludes his grasp.

We are both hanging in at Omaha and I juggle Ferguson-watching with my own play and keeping track of how the other pros are faring. At 8:50 PM, it is a disappointment, but also a relief, when I see that Chris has closed out all his cash-game tables. Is he done for the night, postponing the milestone for Thursday? I relax, build chips in the FTOPS, and enter a pair of sit-n-gos. I won nine seats into one of the FTOPS events over the weekend and am doing much better in turbo SnGs than multi-table tournaments, so I soon have two or three $110 and $220 SnGs going.

Chris calls me at 9:20 PM. “My balance is now $10,041.34.”

WHAT? I missed it? I thought he was done for the night.

For many reasons, the climactic moment was anti-climactic. Chris raised with As-Js and the big blind called. The flop came T-8-3, two spades. He bet and the big blind check-raised. But it was a small raise. Ferguson, most likely a favorite at this point, reraised for the rest of his stack. The big blind folded, and his bankroll, for the first time since he started in April 2006, was above $10,000.

FREEBIRD

Starting with zero in March 2006, Chris’s only way to build a bankroll was to play freerolls. He spent eight months between zero and $11.77, trying and failing to parlay occasional freeroll cashes into success at the lowest stakes cash games on Full Tilt.

On November 4, 2006, Full Tilt inaugurated a tournament to commemorate his low-stakes odyssey, a $1 buy-in event it dubbed “The Ferguson.” (I’m proud to say I joined Chris in the first running of The Ferguson” and finished in the money.) On November 26, he had his first breakthrough in this tournament, finishing second in the 683-player event and winning $104.

He played mostly single-table SnGs after this, and built slowly. By early April 2007, his bankroll was up as high as $470 when he had a second big multi-table cash. He was runner-up in a 478-player $5 + $.50 tournament, winning $370 and boosting his stake to $777.11. As late as July 10, 2007, his bankroll was below this level ($605.49 on July 10) but he started dedicating himself to the cash games and multi-tabling after he busted out of the Main Event.

I talked to Chris on July 17 before he appeared on the PPV coverage of the World Series Final Table. I was surprised to hear that his bankroll was above $2,200. When I asked him his plans for after the Series, he said, “I want to put in some serious time on Full Tilt to try to reach $10,000.” (If you want to consider this the equivalent of Babe Ruth calling his shot in the 1932 World Series [of Baseball], look at entry #217 – WSOP #66 – “Happily Ever After”, in which I described the conversation.)

His bankroll immediately soared. A few days before we spoke, he had made over a thousand dollars on July 12 in cash games. Aided by three consecutive final tables in his first $20 + $2 and $30 + $3 tournaments, his account was up to $2,756.84 by July 22.

He followed this with three remarkable days of bankroll building in multiple NLHE cash games:

7-23-07 $3,649.39

7-24-07 $4,748.79

7-26-07 $5,538.59

He lost over a thousand dollars on July 28 – “There is a lot of volatility in these no-limit hold ‘em games, especially when you are playing up to six at a time” – but experienced much more POSITIVE than negative volatility. He won more than $3,000 on July 30 and after winning sessions on July 31, August 1, and August 3, took his bankroll up to $9,576.34. He had taken some time off to travel from Las Vegas to L.A. and have some work done on his notebook computer. That was the approximate level of his bankroll when I started watching on August 14.

I bust out of Omaha short of the money, leaving only one pro left in the field: Chris Ferguson. At 10:20 PM, he goes back to work at $10-$20, trying to hit $10,584. He dips below $10,000, raising the question of whether his goal has been “achieved” when he first hits $10,000, or quits for the session/night above $10,000.

The point is academic. He is in the money in the FTOPS event and he quits the cash games for the night at 11:10 PM with a balance of $10,594.84, $10.84 above the threshold for entering a $200 + $16 tournament. And with 75 players to go, he has the chip lead.

We talk on the phone for more than an hour. As midnight nears and he continues to flirt with the chip lead, I confess that all this talk of poker excellence has me antsy to play. I enter the Turbo Hundo, the $100 + $9 NLHE tournament at midnight Pacific Time. When I or another red pro enter, they get about 200 players. I won this tournament two nights before playing in the Main Event, and made the final table in it a few days later.

Ferguson, not long removed from freerolls and $5-SnGs, didn’t know about the tournament, which he now has the bankroll to play. “I love turbo tournaments.” He signs up right after me, at three minutes to midnight.

He eventually finishes twentieth in the FTOPS Omaha tournament, earning $815.48. His total investment for FTOPS is $7.70, so it’s a phenomenal return. (Chris is not about the hourly rate, but I note here that one of the best poker players in the world had to soldier through three tournaments and finish at or near the top of each to get this result.)

His bankroll sits at $11,410.32. But it’s not really “sitting” because he has invested $109 in the Turbo Hundo.

In the maddening way you would think stereotypical of a pro – but rarely the case in real life, as I pointed out in entries #227 – “FTOPs-ing from the Bottom” and #229 – “FTOPS Hangover” – Chris Ferguson plows though the field in the Turbo Hundo. He finishes third, earning another $2,511.75.

Finally finished at the tables for the night, he retires more than ten hours after play began in the satellite. He has made $4,300 for the night, a 45% one-night return with very controlled risk. His bankroll (finally) rests at $13,813.07. He can now play any tournament with a buy-in of $276 and play any cash game with a buy-in of $690.

Two days later, Chris Ferguson is back in action on Full Tilt. He is going to set a new goal. It has not been formally announced but we both know where he is going.

“It’s gotta be a million.”