Reader's Digest - Rghy2 edition

[rghy2]

I've been running a personal challenge since April 2013, and I think it's time to start a thread to explain where I've been and give me one place to consolidate all of my thoughts and brags. I didn't start a thread before because I expected to either have mediocre results where I wasn't making much progress, or even worse, have absolutely no success and I don't really want to broadcast my failures. Poker is a competitive game, and poker players can be very judgmental of each other. If I have a bad run, I probably won't share much until I start to recover from it. If I win, then I get to celebrate with my fellow POers!! And I'm starting this thread because I've had a very good run the last couple of weeks...

I found PO September 2012 and messed around with the site off and on for a few months. Then I wound up moving from Missouri to California in April 2013. Missouri has a ban on online gaming, so most sites block Missouri players, I of course ignored those bans but wasn't very confident in my ability to cashout if the time ever came. California is poker friendly, and will hopefully at least get some state poker soon. So when I found out I was moving I started cranking out the crowdflower to save up points so that when I got to Cali I could hit the ground running with some legit accounts I could get BR boost with.

This is when I started my personal zero to hero challenge. The rules are simple. Even with the smallest amount of money, I follow my BRM rules. A BI can't be more than 5% of my BR. Re-buys get multiplied by 5 and re-entries get multiplied by 3 for the 5% rule. An example would be a $1 re-buy would count as a total of $5 buy in as far as BRM goes, so I would need a BR of $100 to play instead of a BR of $20. I won't play in MTTs/SNGs where first is less than 5% of my BR. I also decided I would cashout 10% of all winnings, therefore I need to have more than a 10% ROI to move up in stakes.

I was floundering around for a a few months until someone told me to check out the Gripsed's tournament series on YouTube. That pushed me into the +ROI% and I've had a +ROI each month since September (knock on wood and hope I don't jinx myself now). I made my first min cashout on Carbon in December.

In January I finally read Harrington on Holdem, and I've had a crazy run the last couple of weeks on Carbon. My BR went from $100 to $285. I've had multiple first and second place wins in MTTs. I've become much looser with my short stack shoving range, which works well with the re-entry structures on Carbon. I may have to re-enter a few times, but I can go on a run and build up a decent stack that can get me deep.

I haven't been able to build anything up on Bovada, and I usually miss the freerolls because of the short registration time.

SWC I built a BR up from freerolls back when btc was much cheaper, so I've got about 500 chips there. As soon as I cash, I'll sell off 10% of the win for points and sell the points for amazon. I will also put aside 10% of my LLB wins for amazon. I made $175 amazon last year on top of the Carbon check.

After I made my cashout, I went ahead and made a min deposit on Carbon on Bovada to take advantage of the deposit bonuses. I only have a BR of $20 on Bovada right now, so I'm not playing anything there right now and haven't checked on the bonus. Carbon's bonus takes a ridiculous amount of VIP points to clear. I made a $25 deposit and am trying to clear a $50 bonus from it. It will take 7500 VIP points ($750 in rake) to clear the bonus. They will release it in $10 increments, and I believe I have 90 days to clear as much of it as I can. It's 13% cleared right now at around 45 days in. Once the bonus is cleared or expires I will request my next check, since a withdrawal cancels the bonus.

I'm starting this thread now, because I've tripled my BR in the last month. I want to brag!!! At the same time, I want one place where I can come to celebrate any more progress I make. My BR is growing enough that I am having larger wins then I'm used to, and whenever I have a new "biggest win" I'll post it here. I'll also post here if I have any more major milestones. Updating will be sporadic, but hopefully I'll continue to have wins to brag about!

[DocHo11idaze]

tl;dr
Can i get cliff notes?

EDIT* That was a joke, you write with with perfect grammar so I actually read it and usually do read most of your things. BTW not sure who was in chat the other night when i was drunk and blabbing about it, but you *win* 150 po points for me making my 777th post in your thread. Set it up in market place! and keep the run good up!

[WECpoker]

Wish you the best!!!! Glad that you are a member here.

[eqgh5uea]

Great read!!!

[Joe]

I don't like to post my bad runs either but after I do I think it helps motivate me.

[jczecho2]

good luck buddy. try to avoid those steep declines! gotta manage it well.

[rghy2]

Well, I definitely had a bad run afterwards. Lost half my BR and wound up at $150, and I've pulled it back up to $200. I think it's stabilized, and I'm taking things a little slower right now.

[rghy2]

Update: My Bovada bonus expired and I didn't rake anything worth mentioning, so I went ahead and cashed out my 10% winning of $23.52 which left me a whole .64 in my account!! Bovada then gave me a bonus $5, so I have $5.64. I'm disappointed, because I had deposited $20, so I didn't really make anything. Time to grind my BR back up. Most of the time $1.10 is the cheapest BI on Bovada, so I'll have to get my BR back up to $22 before I'll play anything but the freerolls. I was just accepted to CC FR club, so now I won't just have to rely on PO freerolls.

Merge is right at $200 and I have a $22 coupon sitting on my account. I made this thread right after an unbelievable run, so I knew there would a downswing. It was disappointing, but things seem to have stabilized and I'm back to my normal results. SWC is sitting at 373. However, I've sold some swc, so it's not a total loss there. I've used points from SWC, BR Boost, and LLB to buy $95 in amazon so far this year.

My only tough decision is regarding live play. With the exception of one private tournament in May, I was not going to play live again until I paid off my credit card. I'm nowhere close to paying off my credit card, but there's a ladies tournament about an hour away from me this Saturday, and I've really wanted to play more ladies tournaments. I think they could be very lucrative with the soft play. I played in my first ladies tournament a couple of months ago and got taken out set over set before I could get something going. I have until Saturday to decide, the smart move would be stay home and work on building my online rolls.

[greengiant]

Funny because I recently discovered the gripsed poker training on youtube alsoand I have to say that it has helped my game. Hope you win the 22$ merge tourney that you play

[ShipItSA1]

good luck solid play and consistence and dicipline stick to it man