Sit and Go articles

How to Build a Bankroll from Zero Dollars

Although this was written for a website dedicated to sit and go tournaments, there just aren't enough ways to build a bankroll from zero if you restrict yourself to playing only sit and goes.

Building a bankroll from scratch can be a fun and challenging endeavor. Chris Ferguson did a challenge in 2007 in which he started with nothing but a FullTilt poker account and within 9 months he had run it up to $10,000. He began by playing nothing but freerolls. After winning cash in a few freerolls, he moved to real money games and with very conservative bankroll management he was able to make the steady climb up in limits. Later in this article, I'll be telling you about the bankroll management strategy he used to accomplish his impressive feat.

Chris was definitely limiting himself by only playing on FullTilt. There are many other sites to play on, a few of which offer more and better freerolls than FullTilt. There are also a few other methods to start a bankroll from scratch than just playing freerolls. Here I will offer you a simple step-by-step guide for starting your online poker career from scratch, never having to deposit a single dollar.

Step 1: Sign up and play freerolls

Sign up for every poker site that offers freerolls and start playing them ASAP. If this were any other poker strategy guide, step 1 would most definitely be to read and study every piece of information you can get your hands on. But, since you can't lose anything by playing freerolls, there is no reason not to play them. So, sign up for every site and go to their tournament tab, find the freerolls, and learn their schedules so you can decide which ones you will be able to play.


Before I go on... If by chance though you happen to win some money in the first few you play: DON'T PLAY WITH IT. Just leave the money there. It's not going anywhere. You have a lot to learn before you start playing with it. Trust me when I say you were lucky to win it and it won't always be that easy. If you take it to the real money tables before you are ready and you lose it, it may be a long while before you happen to win any more cash in a freeroll. If you are lucky enough to win one early on, don't waste such good fortune by playing cash games before you have 100 hours of freeroll gameplay experience and 50 hours of study under your belt. I can't stress this enough.

Here is a list of the sites I suggest you sign up for in order of importance. The sites with the most freerolls are listed first. It's a mistake to think that the most popular sites like Pokertars and FullTilt offer the best ways to build a bankroll from scratch. Sites like that have no problem recruiting players. It's the smaller, lesser-known sites that offer the best incentives in order to drag players away from the mega sites. Also, all of these sites accept U.S. players and none of these sites require you to make a real money deposit to be eligible for the freerolls.

Intertops
Intertops has some of the largest freerolls and they run fairly often. Several times a day they will be running $200 and $500 freerolls. They draw a field of between 1000-2000 players and pay almost half the field.

Pokerstars
Pokerstars has several daily "Astronomer" freerolls. They run throughout the day every 2-4 hours. You can find them under the Tourney tab, then the Freeroll tab. They will have names such as "Copernicus", "Hawking", "Newton", etc. There will be several thousand people entered in each of these tournaments and the top 88 win seats into a weekly Round 2 tournament with a $2,000 prize pool that pays about 20% of the field.

FullTilt Poker
You'll find the FullTilt freerolls in the playmoney section, under the Tournament tab, the All tab. They run every few hours and usually have several thousand people in them. Some of the freerolls pay Tournament Dollars, T$, which can be used to buy-in to any tournament, but not to buy-in to a cash game.

Absolute Poker
Absolute Poker runs $50 freerolls every few hours with between 1500-3000 entrants. The top 30 places get an entry into a weekly $1000 freeroll and the top 18 places get paid cash to go along with the entry.

UltimateBet
Ultimate bet runs the same type of $50 freerolls that Absolute Poker runs, complete with the $1000 weekly freeroll, but ultimate bet seems to get a few more entrants.

Carbon Poker
Carbon Poker runs a $50 freeroll every 4 hours. They usually hit their max of 1500 entries. They pay the top 10 places, first place getting $15 and 10th place getting $1.

Cake Poker
Cake Poker doesn't run many freerolls that pay cash directly, but every few hours they'll have satellite freerolls or "Gold Chip" freerolls. The satellite freerolls are to a $1000 freeroll tournametn every Saturday that pays the top 60 places, $120 for first. The gold chip freerolls are tournaments that award gold chips for the to places. Those gold chips can be used to enter other tournaments, or used to buy items in the Cake Shop.

Now that you're registered for every site, start signing up for their freerolls. You should be logged in to every site playing every freeroll that's available. The more tables you play at a time, the more money you'll make per hour on your computer. Since you'll likely be playing more than 1 table at a time, you may want to increase your screen resolution so the tables will fit on your screen with less overlapping. One thing that advanced players will do is have multiple monitors on a single computer so they can play 8+ tables at a single time without having any of the tables overlap.

Once you've signed up for all the sites and have started playing freerolls, it's time to work on improving your game. The sooner you become a winning player, the sooner you'll be winning freerolls, and the sooner you'll be playing cash games for big bucks.

Step 2: Learn Optimal All-in Strategy

For simplicity, I'm going to divide the stages of the tournament into 2 stages. The first stage I consider "early", and the second stage is "late". "Early" would be any time your stack size is 20 times the big blind. "Late" would be any time your stack size is less than 15 times the big blind. If the tournament has just started and the blinds are 15/30, and you start with 1500 chips, then your stack size is 1500 divided by the 30 big blind, or 50 times the big blind. If the tournament has been running for a while and the blinds are 50/100 and you are down to 1000 in chips, then you have 1000 divided by the 100 big blind, or 10 times the big blind, and you are in the "late" stages of the tournament. In the early stages of a tournament, or when you have more than 20 times the big blind, you will want to play according to the strategy guide found here: Early Tournament Play Strategy Guide

The blinds in most freerolls rise fairly quick. This means you don't have a very large stack in relation to the size of the blinds for very long. Most of the play in a freeroll will be when you're stack size is about 10 times the size of the big blind. At that level, even the minimum raise preflop will have you putting in 20% of your entire stack. If someone raises and you have to fold, you've practically thrown away 20% of your chances of winning. Even if someone just calls, you still have to hit at least a pair on the flop to be able to bet or call. A better option is to wait for a premium hand and push all-in. An all-in push is less likely to get called than a small raise, and at this level you don't want to be called. If everyone folds and you win the blinds, you've just increased your stack by 15%, without even having to see a showdown. On the rare occasion you do get called, you will likely have a better hand than your opponent and will double your stack more than half the time. This may seem like a wild/maniac strategy, but it is very hard to counter, because anyone that might want to play back at you will have to risk a lot of chips to do it, and they won't be able to bluff you off you're hand because you are simply all-in.

This type of play is often referred to as "Pushbotting" and there have been charts made that show close to optimal play. One such chart is linked as a .pdf file here at ProPoker Pushbot Chart

Read that chart cover to cover. Read it slowly. Read it again. Make sure you understand how to use it. Familiarize yourself with common hands and common situations so you don't need to look at it for every decision. Print it out and keep a copy nearby so you can quickly reference it when a situation comes up you aren't sure on. If you don't have time to look up the correct play before it's your turn to act, save the hand history and look it up later so you'll know what to do next time the situation arises.

Step 3: Bubble Play

The "bubble" of a tournament refers to the stage just before the money. In a tournament with 1500 entries that pays out 200 places, the bubble would be when there are 201 players left. As soon the number of players left = the number of places paid, the bubble is said to have "burst", and normal play resumes. Play changes more and more as you get closer and closer to the bubble.

Correct play near the bubble is much different than correct play at every other stage of the tournament. And the closer you get to the I'll give you an extreme example to demonstrate. Say you are playing a satellite tournament and there are 51 people left in a tournament and 50 places pay. The top 50 places all get a seat into the Pokerstars Sunday Million, and 51 on down gets nothing. Pretend you are in this tournament and have a 25,000 stack with blinds at 250/500. The average stack in the tournament is 12,000, and the several short stacks in the tournament with between 100 and 700 in chips. At your table, there is only one person that has more chips than you and he is sitting directly to your right. He has been going all-in every hand for the past 10 hands and you know he's doing it with any two cards. The next hand, you pick up pocket aces and he pushes all-in just like the 10 hands before. You should FOLD! You should be folding EVERY hand. Yes you have the best hand, but if you fold, you are practically guaranteed to make the top 50 and win a seat. Even if your opponent has 27offsuit, AA only has about an 88% chance to win (check this for yourself at www.twodimes.net). So 88% of the time you'll double up and have 50,000 in chips, and 12% of the time you'll bust out in 51st place and get nothing. With the blinds so small, being 250/500, the difference in going from 25,000 to a stack of 50,000 is insignificant since you only have to get 50th place to win. As soon as one of the short stacks has to post a blind, they will be all-in with whatever two cards they are dealt, and one of them is very likely to bust within the next 2 to 3 rounds. You have enough chips with 25,000 to play 30 more rounds! (note: this changes slightly since the blinds go up with time, but generally the increase isn't fast enough to make a difference, since everyone else has to pay the same blinds).

Now, if you aren't playing a satellite, play doesn't change quite as much. Since in the example I just gave, 50th place got paid the same as 1st, it was very important to squeek into 50th place. If there is a structured payout like most cash or freeroll tournaments, then 50th place might pay $1 while 1st pays $150. In a situation like that it is usually much more important to take any advantage you have early on to increase your chances of winning first.

In general though, when you get near the bubble, it is very important to keep an eye on the tournament lobby to check what the average stack is, what the shortest stacks are, and how your stack matches up with those.

Step 4: Read the Early Stage Tournament Guide

The Early Stage Tournament Strategy Guide will give you enough of a foundation to start playing a few hands earlier in the tournament, before the blinds get so large that you are in push or fold territory. Poker is a very complex game though and there is no single guide that can tell you how to play from start to finish, so it is important that you keep learning.

Step 5: Read the 2+2 forums

Go to the twoplustwo.com tournament forums and read the MTT FAQ sticky at the top of the page. After you are done reading that, read every post on the first 5 pages. After you are done doing that, register and post replies. Ask questions about hands you don't understand. Post your thoughts on how hands should have been played. Post hands that you have played and are confused about. This may seem like a lot of work for little reward since at this point, even if you win a freeroll after doing all this work, it will probably be less than $15. But, what you are learning now will stay with you forever. When you start playing real money games and move up in limits, it will be much easier and you will experience much less headaches if you not only learned how to play correctly, but learned how to learn how to play correctly. Practice good study habits early and often.

Step 6: Learn How to Analyze Hands On Your Own

You won't always have someone there that can give you correct advice. It's important to be able to look at a hand you've played and analyze it on your own and determine the correct play. A good way to do this is to use the REM method described in Ed Miller's book. REM stands for Range, Equity, Maximize. Equity is simply the chance you have of winning. You can figure out correct play of almost any poker hand by putting your opponent on a Range of hands, determining your Equity against that range, and Maximizing your expected winnings based off of those.
Being able to put people on a range of hands is a skill best learned by playing. Pay attention to how people play. Is you've played 50 hands with someone and they've never raised before the flop, then when they do raise, you can expect them to have a premium hand. You can narrow their range down to maybe AA-JJ, or AK-AJ. If someone has pushed all-in every hand for 6 hands in a row, you can narrow their range down to any 2 cards :). Either way, once you determine their range, you can put that range into a software program that will run simulations and tell you how much equity your hand has against their range. One such software program that is available for free is PokerStove. Download this program and learn how to use it.
You can also visit www.propokertools.com. They have web-based simulators that you don't have to download. They also work for holdem, along with other poker games, like omaha and stud.

Step 7: Bankroll Management

If you don't have a bankroll to be managing yet, don't worry, it shouldn't take long. If you are trying to make serious money playing poker then it is important to move beyond freerolls as soon as possible. As long as you think you are a winning player, move up to real money games as soon as you win a freeroll. There is no point in saving up freeroll wins untill you have a large enough bankroll to not go broke at real money games. By waiting, you are passing up chances to run good with that money and be done with freerolls forever.

A decent ROI (return on investment - what percentage of your buy-in you profit per tournament you enter) for a good winning player can be expected to be around 50-100% for a large multi-table tournament. So if you have a 60% ROI and you are playing a $10 buy-in tournament, you're expected profit would be $6 (your total expected win would be $16, minus your $10 entry fee). A decent ROI for one table sit and goes is about 10%, or $1 per $10 buy-in tournament.

You may be thinking, "But what if I run bad, then I'll be right back to playing freerolls, whereas if I had waited till I had a little bit more money I could have withstood the downswing." Well, let me give you an example.

Let's say that on average you win one freeroll a week for $2. To play the $1 sit and goes on FullTilt, a reasonable sized bankroll that would have a small risk of ruin would be about $10. Let's say you decide to keep playing freerolls untill you have a $10 bankroll, then move to sit and goes. Then, on average, in 5 weeks, you will have the $10 you need to start playing sit and goes.

On the other hand, let's say you play sit and goes as soon as you win any cash at all. So the first week, you win your $2 in a freeroll and go play cash. If you win, you keep playing cash. If you lose, you go back to freerolls. Let's say you lose it right off the bat. Then you go back to playing freerolls and don't win any the 2nd week. The third week you do really well and win $4, keeping with you're $2 a week average. You go play sit and goes. If you win, you keep playing. If you lose, go back. By the end of 5 weeks, you'll have played on the same $10 that you would have had in the first scenario, but you have given yourself a chance to jump out of the freerolls early and given your self a much higher expected hourly rate.

For a $200 freeroll that has 2,400 entrants, you can imagine that as an $0.08 tournament, since if 2,400 people each put up $0.08, then there would be $200 in the prize pool. If you have a 60% ROI, that's an average of about $0.13 profit per tournament (you might notice, 60% of $0.08 is $0.05, but since you didn't pay $0.08 to get in, the entire $0.13 is profit), and an average multi-table tournament might last 3 horus. At the $1+$.25 sit and goes, if you're ROI is 10%, then you are averaging about $0.12 per tournament, and the tournaments usually last well under an hour. So, you can see why it is so important to move to real money games as soon as possible, rather than saving up your freeroll winnings. You practically triple your hourly rate!

However, don't move up from the lowest stakes real money games before you have a long history of winning and are sure you can beat the game long term. At one table sit and goes, you should wait untill you have played at least 200 of them and have a good positive ROI of 10% or more. You can check your tournament statistics and your ROI at a tracking site like www.officialpokerrankings.com or www.sharkscope.com. Going broke after you have built up a decent sized bankroll of $50 is devastating. You can win much more playing the lowest stakes online than you can playing freerolls. Moving up too fast and going broke and losing the ability to play the low stakes real money games is devastating to your winrate. When you do decide to move up in limits, be ready to drop back down if you take a beating. A $50 bankroll is decent sized for the $5 sit and goes, 10 buy-ins will go a long way. But, if you are willing to drop down in stakes to the $2 tournaments when your bankroll hits the $20 mark, then that is like effectively having a 16 buy-in bankroll, and your risk of going broke is much smaller.

Step 8: Continue Reading Twoplustwo and Other Poker Forums


There are many poker forums and resources out there available for free:

Join them all and absorb every bit of information you can get your hand on. There is enough information out there for free that you can become a big winner at the small stakes games without ever spending a dime on your poker career. There will come a time however when you have exausted every resource the internet has to offer you and you would be handicapping yourself by not spending a few bucks on some books or training sites.

Step 8: Begin Building a Poker Library

If I were going to focus on tournament poker to make serious money, here is a list of the 4 most important books I would read, in the order I would read them.

  1. The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky
  2. Tournament Poker for Advanced Players: Expanded Edition by David Sklansky
  3. The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition by FullTilt Pro's
  4. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play by Dan Harrington
  5. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame by Dan Harrington

As you move out of tournaments and into other games, any book from twoplustwo publishing is worth more than it's weight in gold. I hope you've learned a thing or two and I hope you have as much success as I have at the tables. Shuffle up and Deal!

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