A bit of history for you......

I thought it best to start the blog off with a little bit about me, my poker background and reasons for undertaking the challenge, so here we go.........

I was introduced to No Limit Texas Hold 'em by my good friend and former colleague, Kev Shipsides, way back in the summer of 2006. I'd seen a bit on the telly previously, things like Late Night Poker (showing my age now) and Celebrity Poker Challenge, to name but two, and I was intrigued by the game. Kev invited me to his monthly home game (I now know the reasons why, hehe nh wp Kev), during which I had to be explained the finer points of the rules. Things like 'check', who was to act first after the flop and the fact that I couldn't raise less than double the current bet were completely alien to me, and suffice to say I must've come across as a complete knob. However, I was there more for the social side of things and I had a great time, almost begging to become a regular invitee. To his credit, Kev gave me a few lessons (at work!!), and by the 4th home game I had a fairly decent idea of how to play the game. This leads us to October 2006, when I opened my first online account. Kevin emailed me a referral code for Betfair, so it seemed the logical step to take......

I'll make no secret of the fact that during the 1st six months of my online career, I was most definitely a losing player. I was only playing for fun if the truth be told, knowing that I was no good but the game fascinated me. I was going out of $5 MTTs before the 1st break fairly regularly, I was playing super turbo STTs, I was basically the easy money. However what I learnt in these 6 months has stood me in good stead, and I can now take this experience and use it against my current opponents. Kevin lent me Harrington 1+2 when I first started playing online, and to say that 75% of it went over my head when I first read it would be an understatement. However, I soldiered on, and to be honest I wasn't overly bothered because it was, to me at the time, a relatively cheap hobby. This wasn't to say I lost every time I played, I did manage to luckbox a few results here and there (most notable one finishing 2nd of 1000 runners in the Poker Player Christmas Freeroll in December 2006 for $240, having lucked out with QJo (I know now......) vs AK + AA with about 300 left, and pushing all in with a flush draw on the flop only to hit runner runner straight vs a flopped set with about 90 left), but between October and March I donated a total of $490 to the other Betfair users, and Betfair themselves in the form of rake (I didn't even know what rakeback was at this point). Then, suddenly, on March 18th 2007, something clicked...........

At the time, I had just $11.57 in my account, and was starting to realise that poker possibly wasn't for me. I'd decided that once the $11 had gone, that would be my last deposit, and I'd uninstall the software and give up on what was clearly an unprofitable hobby (who was I trying to kid? It would've been re-installed inside a month, 1.01 NAP). I registered for 2 x 9 seat regular $5 STTs (hence where the $10 in the title comes from) in a final bid for stardom, and won them both. I don't remember exactly what happened from here, but I do remember thinking that maybe STTs were the way forward for my style of play. Spurred on by Kev, I managed to spin up to just over $300 by 1st May 2007. I was delighted, and more importantly, I was turning a steady profit. I managed to leave that account to rest in peace at $198 down, but the amount that I learnt during the period has been well worth the investment.

Rewinding a couple of months, I had been lucky enough to 'meet' the legend that is Highstack via the joys of email, when he helped me out with a password for one of the Poker Player Grand Prix events (I'd subscribed following my result in December, but had done it slightly too late and hence missed the password for the first tournament in late January). It was also Rob that helped to explain rakeback to me, when I saw a thread on it on the Betfair forum. He suggested that I email Betfair and enquire about it, which I duly did. Apparently, I didn't rake enough to qualify for a rakeback deal, and that would be the end of it, unlucky. Or so I thought...

In the April (I think) edition of Poker Player, there was an advert for RakeTheRake.com. Hmm, if Betfair won't give me rakeback, maybe these people will help me? Following the instructions on their website, I hatched a cunning plan. My debit card was due to expire at the end of April, so I would set up a brand new Betfair account via RTR, withdraw all the funds from my original BF account at the end of April onto the old card, and fund the new account at the beginning of May with my new card. It worked a treat, and what a revelation it was!! I was more than happy with $100-$150 a month profit back then, and suddenly I was being credited with a free $40 or so on the 1st of the month!! It has made a huge difference to my ROI, and I now believe that anyone that plays poker without a rakeback deal either doesn't know about it, or is very silly indeed. To quote Dealem, from his excellent DaVinch site, "Playing online poker without a rakeback deal is like leaving your change at the shops every time you buy your shopping or petrol". The positive of going through an affiliate such as RTR is that it doesn't matter how little you play, there is none of this 'You must rake $400 a month to qualify for rakeback' rubbish, along with all the RTR exclusive freerolls, bonuses and promotions that you're likely to encounter. This far outweighs the couple of dollars a month that RTR sweep off the top to pay their bills, if you like. I admit this was a slightly underhand way of obtaining a deal, but if Betfair had entitled the masses rather than just the big boys rakeback in the first place, I wouldn't have had to bother........
The team at RTR have been fantastic, I've now got all my poker accounts on rakeback deals under one roof (so to speak), free itemised personal rake tracker so I know what I'm due from each site each month, payments on time as stated each and every month, always on hand to answer any queries, and they were more than helpful when I requested some merchandise and leaflets to hand out at a recent local live event. To be honest, in a way I'm glad that I didn't get direct rakeback off Betfair, RTR have been that good. On top of that, from what I can gather when compared to my Betfair points statement, I'm receiving the full 30% net and BF must be paying RTR nearer 35%, thus keeping even less of my rake than if they had given it to me in the first place (cue satisfied chuckle). Bitter? Twisted? Me? The clues are in my email address.... Anyway, enough of the plug, let's get back to the bloggage shall we?

Anyways, back to the story. It's now May, and I have a new account. I'd decided previously, once I'd got my bankroll (I now had the sense to keep my poker money seperate from my 'real' money, not keep withdrawing/depositing all the time) up to $300, I was ready to take on the challenge of the mighty $11 STTs. I think I was still running at a loss in MTTs at the time, despite a few cashes and 2 smallish wins, but had STTs licked (or so I thought), so I bit the bullet and jumped up a level. I found the play tighter, but certainly not unbeatable, and was soon comfortable at $11. This may sound a bit lame to all the 'proper' players out there, but to someone that had less than 9 months online experience at the time and is tight as ar*eholes with money, I was (and still am) happy with becoming comfortable at a slightly higher level so quickly. I had my bankroll up to an almighty (for me, don't forget that up until March I was a losing player) $700 by June, and I was intrigued by the HeadHunter tournaments on Cryptologic, having read about them on the forum. I withdrew $50 from Betfair and promptly opened up an Interpoker account, again through RTR (I couldn't open a Hills account, as at the time I worked for them). I entered a $5 HeadHunter and enjoyed it immensely, I didn't quite make the prize money but had made my stake back plus maybe 75% in 'Heads' so I was instantly hooked. The following day, I got home from work at 9.50pm with the intention of breaking my 10pm Thunderrrrrrrr virginity so to speak, but missed registration by about 2 minutes. Not to worry I thought, I'll enter this 266 runner $10 HeadHunter at 10.14pm. At about 11pm, I suddenly realised it was in fact £10 and not $10, whoops, so much for bankroll management!! Anyway, to cut a long story short, I played exceptionally well, didn't get dramatically unlucky and ended up winning it for a total of £378.19 (close to $750), by far and away my biggest ever poker win at the time. Over the moon? You betcha!!

Dear SG,
Thank you for participating in the tournament "Head Hunter £10 4982726", on Jun 19 2007. Congratulations! You placed 1st and won 308.00 GBP standard prize and collected 70.19 GBP in Heads!
Ryan Hartley
Manager - InterPoker

Wow!! I couldn't quite believe it until the following day (which just happened to be an 8am open for Royal Ascot, D'OH!!), but when it finally sunk in it was an indescribable feeling, one that I knew I wanted to experience again.....
Forum star Chalfontfan then told me of a bad experience he had in the past with InterPoker, one that involved them suspending his account after a few days until he provided identification. I didn't fancy the idea of having nearly £400 hanging about in an account I couldn't access for weeks while ID was sorted out, so promptly withdrew the lot, leaving what can only be described as a monumental ROI for all the databases to contend with!! I've not played on crypto since, but Inter never suspended the account, so maybe a return will be on the cards in the near future....
I also withdrew $300 from Betfair, and used the money to treat my trusty old Mondeo to some new suspension and exhaust, along with a few treats for the family.

July was a fairly quiet month, I made a few bob on the $11 STTs, I dropped a few bob on satellites and MTTs, but finished $70 up so not a horrendous result. I qualified for the $16k 5 times and the $50k gtd twice, failing to cash in any of them. I think I played a little too reserved, not wanting to make a tit of myself in front of all these 'proper' players. If only I knew then, what I know now.....

August was somewhat better, having found a mahoooooosive cash machine that went on my 'stalk till they leave' list on the low stake cash tables. On top of this, a 4th in Betfair's EWS bumped my bankroll over $1000 for the first time, with just over $400 from a $7 satellite not to be sniffed at. I withdrew down to (I think) around $400 at the end of the month, leaving myself a decent buffer to carry on grinding at $11 STTs and using the profits from these to enter satellites to the big tournaments for a 'big score'.......

September saw by far and away my best month of poker, I played well and ran golden, for sure. The low stakes cash 'Golden Goose' was very active, the play was very loose from the whole table every time he was on, and most of the table was very deep stacked 90% of the time. I saw this as an opportunity to set mine and fish for monsters, knowing that the possibility of being paid off was huge. It's been said that playing on the same table as this well known fishy was 'cheating' by some of the miserable sods on the forum, however if truth be told, the best part of 70% of my income from cash in September came from 5 or 6 huge pots with the other players on the table when 2 big hands clashed, and at the end of the day, the money is in my account, not theirs, so I don't care where it came from!! Of course, with the play being looser than normal (and one occasion when I turned a 10 with 10 10 vs KK, phew!), I was always on the right side of it in the huge pots, which was niiiiiice!!! (Apart from the time when my 10 10 clashed with 7pm's QQ on a Q 10 4 flop, but tbh I don't think there was any way of getting away from it so all is good). There was one night in which I managed to amass a $256 stack on a 5c/10c table, and didn't go to bed until 10am the following morning when my stalkee had finally had enough, along with a couple of $100+ sessions as well. Suffice to say, with some shrewd (read as incredibly tight) play to gather the required number of hands to qualify, I managed to win Betfair's Low Stake No Limit/Pot Limit Cash leaderboard, an achievement that I am very proud of, and one that BF rewarded me with a bonus prize of $250. In between the cash table carnage, I also managed to cash 3 times in a row in the $55 buy in Eyes Wide Shut, all from $7 satellites, with the 3rd cash being a 2nd place finish for $1210. Ship it!! The end of month overview showed a +ve of $1,766, and a very happy SG!!

October was a strange one. I withdrew right down to something silly like $68 (I needed to ensure food on the table for my family when a job offer fell through after I'd already resigned from Hills, I had enough put by but wanted to be doubly sure for the coming months), with $55 of this already tied up for the Betfair Battle of the Forums. I went out of this when Betfair's Ruru pushed all his chips in on a 3 spade flop, out of the blinds with me raising pre with KK from mid position. He'd pulled this move earlier on in the tournament and showed nothing but 9 high on more than one occasion, and as I held the K of spades I thought it was worth the gamble. Ruru flipped a set of 7s which held up, and my roll was down to a somewhat battered $13. I was mildly irritated by the exit, and decided to bust my account by playing some $2.75 super turbos (1000 starting chips, 2 minute blinds) while railing the rest of the 'Your Comps' forum team, literally playing push or fold poker from level 1 to let off a bit of steam. Any A10+, KQ, KJ, or pair above 88 saw all my chips in the middle, as did flopped monsters from the BB. I soon found that people were happy to call off their whole stack pre with huge hands such as K7, Q9 soooooted, 33 and the like, and I soon developed a strategy that saw me playing odds rather than poker. I CAN BEAT ROULETTE!! If I can get them in as 50/50 or better, over time it will be profitable I thought, and profitable it was. Over a period of 2 weeks, I played close to 600 $2.75 super turbos in the same manner, and ended up with a roll of $149 and finished 11th on the 'Barcelona' (Low stake) STT leaderboard for the month (one off the money, boo!!). Bit a result for someone that was trying to bust his account, and the upside was that rakeback boosted it to close to $200 on the 1st of November. Shibby!!

On the downside, it really, really messed my game up, and November saw me playing very badly indeed, still in a super turbo frame of mind. My head was messed up from outside influences, my poker was terrible, and I played very little. What I did play was somewhat of a shambles, and I ended the month down by around $45. I was permanently angry/stressed/annoyed, no frame of mind to play poker in so......

I took a couple of weeks break to sort myself out, and resumed playing again on December 3rd, after getting some outside news that laid some ghosts to rest and took a big weight off my mind and allowed me to concentrate on playing well again. I decided to play $11 regular 9 seat STT's, as I know I can turn a decent ROI over time, I feel these are by far my most profitable form of poker at the moment, from a percentage/time point of view. My bankroll was only just enough to be able to do so comfortably, but a good start saw any worries alleviated and I managed to turn $138 into just over $500 before having a Christmas break from 20th December until 3rd Jan. The withdrawal monster came out to play again, dropping $450 into my bank account to ensure a good Christmas. A little stupid, as this has left me with just $74 to start the challenge, and I will be doing starting off at $11 so it could be a short one!! However, it ensured my family a great Christmas, and I always have a debit card if things get really desperate..........

On top of the above, I've also spun some freeroll winnings into $200 on iPoker and lost a few bucks on Stars, however as I mostly play on Betfair and intend to do (or at least start) the challenge on BF, I've left out the gory details of the other accounts. I've also won a few quid at live events and home games but keep my online money seperate from my live bankroll, whether this is a good idea or not, only time will tell.

So, there you go. That's the history of my short poker career so far, and some of the logic behind the challenge. I play poker for the love of the game (as much as it riles me sometimes) and would like nothing more than to play in the WSOP over the next few years, for the experience and the holiday of a lifetime more than anything else. By using poker to pay for it, I can't think of a better win/win situation, because I know for a fact that if I were to buy in direct with 'real' money, I'd always be thinking about what else I could've spent the money on, however if that money has come from poker, if I lose it all but have a great time, it'll still be the best thing I've ever done, much the same as the home games I went to back in the day. I didn't really know what was going on, but I had a pukka evening and that's all that mattered at the time. I imagine I'll be much the same in Vegas, but with the (very slim) chance of winning millions of dollars!! I could try to satellite in (in all honesty I'll very probably have a bash at a few cheap satellites along the way) and get in for less than $1k, but at the same time I could fail miserably and spunk the entire $10k with nothing to show for my efforts, so the aim is to spin up to $10k and buy in straight out of my poker account.

Between March 18th and December 20th last year, I managed to clear an online total of $4,028 net profit from a game that I'm still learning. I reckon, with some decent bankroll management and a whole bundle of determination, I can turn $10 into $10,000 by the time the WSOP comes around in 2010. I could include the $4k from this year by chucking it back into my poker account, but that wouldn't be much of a challenge would it? So, instead, I am going to attempt it from where I stand now ($74), but still deem it a $10 to $10k challenge as I theoretically haven't deposited any of my 'real life' money since that fateful day in March when I had $10 split between 2 STTs and not a bean to my name elsewhere. I'm pretty certain that I'll need to withdraw a bit in February for my MOT, but after that, I shall be attempting what dreams are made of. I'll detail the BRM 'rules', how I'm going to share the challenge love by offering percentages in the WSOP (if and when I finally complete the challenge) at cut rates to blog readers and how I intend to go about spanking a $10k profit in a little under 30 months on another post at some point over the next few days, but I think I've gone into a little too much detail in this one, waffled on a bit and it's dragged out so I'll leave it there for now. You'll also notice how I've tried not to include my private life too much, this is a challenge blog and I intend to keep it that way, rather than boring everyone to death with my mundane life. If you see me wittering on about how I went down the shops or something equally unrelated, please feel free to give me a dig via the comment section!!

Good luck at the tables, till next time........