Full Tilt Poker Academy – Bankroll Management Challenge

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail, Full Tilt Poker Academy

It took me awhile to get back in the swing of things but I’ve finally completed my second challenge on the Full Tilt Poker Academy. My first was the Sit N’ Go By the Numbers Challenge which went rather quickly thanks to a sick run of cards. This time around I went with the Chris Ferguson Bank Management Challenge. Ferguson is famous for his prop bet where he ran his bankroll from $0 to $10,000 with solid bankroll management. After watching his instruction video, I accepted the challenge and began the grind.

The goals and tasks of the challenge are designed to build proper habits with your bankroll as you work to build it through responsible play in cash games, SNGs and large field tournaments. Games that you should be able to beat with your skill set without risking your entire roll on a bad run at the tables. These bad runs will happen, it’s a matter of when not if. Sitting down to cash games with no more than 5% of your roll or an even smaller percentage in tournaments. As you bankroll goes up, you gain valuable experience and prepare you for the move up in levels.

It’s a proven method to improve your game and a worthy Academy Challenge. Details and my experiences after the jump.

The challenge started with the following tasks to be completed in any order:

Play 2 cash game hold ‘em sessions of 30 hands or more where your buy-in is less than 5% of your Full Tilt bankroll.
Play 2 cash game sessions where you buy in for 5% or less of your bankroll and leave the table having realized a profit.
Play 5 9-handed S&Gs where you buy in for less than 5% of your Full Tilt bankroll. Buy-in amount includes the entry fee.
Play 1 MTT where your buy-in is no more than 2% of your bankroll. Buy-in amount includes the entry fee.
The Pro Play - Increase your Full Tilt Poker bankroll by 25%.

Obviously tasks 3 and 4 were the easiest to accomplish. All that was needed was to buyin to 5 SNGS and 1 MTT at those levels to be successful. The lower level Sit N Go’s went pretty much the same of my previous challenge although I popped out on the bubble but had a win and a third. Tasks 1 and 2 brought around a bit of the grind. Obviously it was possible to complete both tasks with winning sessions.

For the cash game portion, I picked good old fashioned limit hold’em as my game of choice for this challenge, basically because I did not feel like playing push monkey poker at the micro-level. Like most online players who have been around for a long time, I cut my teeth on straight up limit hold’em where the grind was the thing. Pot odds and implied odds and expected value were the keywords and David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker was every player’s first read. Mother Variance was a deity.

ABC Poker. ABC Poker. I forced myself to repeat those words often as the orbits piled up. There is little need for fancy play at these levels as none of your moves will be respected and the mortal nuts will generally get multiple callers all the way down. Boring poker but winning poker. I ran well with a decent strategy to come away as a winner in 3 out of my 4 cash game sessions, posting a respectable BB/hour rate. For the challenge I referred to some of the points in the Micro-limit strategy posts from Gracie and GCox.

I suppose the Pro Play is designed to be the toughest and meant to really make you move your bankroll up in the right direction using discipline. There was no huge amount of grinding necessary this time around, however, as I picked up a big win in the 84 player Mookie tournament to complete that task in one swoop.

With that my Full Tilt Poker Academy Bankroll Management Challenge was complete. I’ve begun looking over the lessons, sessions and challenge for my next step along in the academy. I’m leaning towards Pre-flop play or the Power of Position.

Other posts about the Full Tilt Poker Academy and challenges:

Full Tilt Poker Academy – A First Look
Full Tilt Poker Academy – First Challenge
Full Tilt Poker Academy – Pre-flop Play Challenge

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Tags: AlCantHang, Bankroll Managment, Bloggers on the Rail, Chris Ferguson, Full Tilt Poker Academy

Permalink | May 4th, 2009 Play Poker on Full Tilt Poker

One Response to “Full Tilt Poker Academy – Bankroll Management Challenge”

Susan Says:
September 14th, 2009 at 5:30 am
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.

Susan