Cash Games vs. Tournaments: The Chris Ferguson Challenge

Alright enough of this nonsense with Drew Barrymore . . . lets talk poker.

One of my biggest struggles as a semi-serious player is bank roll management. I think most players of ANY level of poker would agree with this. Now just to clarify, this does not necessarily mean I am going out and blowing large amounts of money on poker. In terms of casino play, I am in the black for 2009. Online play I am a career 'in the red' player, but I generally play MUCH lower stakes online with more high risk tournaments. If you add into this the fact that I really do not differentiate between my 'poker' money and my 'regular' money it complicates things further. Whenever I have a profit, I generally put it immediately towards bills or some unforeseen expense (car maintenance, bachelor parties in Vegas, outrageous bar tabs, etc.)

On top of all of this, I struggle with the cash game vs. the lure of the tournament. When I first started playing poker in the casino, I was much more comfortable with the tournament structure. In a tournament, unless things go wrong quickly, you can generally sit at a table for 2-5 hours knowing that the worst case scenario is that you are not going to finish in the money and you will lose your buy-in. In a cash game, you can lose a TON of money very quickly. During my recent Vegas trip, I lost $600 in about two hours. Not good. However, learning to manage your chips at the cash game actually is a much better investment than a tournament in my opinion. By this I mean, if you are willing to sit at the table for 8 or 9 hours, you can double or triple your original buy in if you are disciplined and patient. If you make it that long, generally there are a few people sitting with you who are doing just as well. So in a table of 10, it is not rare for 30-40% of the people at the table to be making a large profit. In most multi-table tournaments, 10% of the players will get paid, although at a much larger profit.

Hence the lure of the tournament.

Now since I won a tournament within my first year of casino playing, it was hard for me to give up on the quest. Against my better judgment I kept plugging away at these long shot tournaments. I also had an unbelievable streak of finishing on the bubble . . . but more on that in a later entry.

So here is my challenge to myself that you all get to watch.

A couple of years ago I read about the Chris Ferguson challenge. Since this blog is aimed at fairly serious poker players, I am not going to bore you with the whole story of said challenge (if you are not aware of it check it out here). But I am going to make an attempt at the primary goal with a few modifications.

• I am starting with about $15
• My goal is $10,000
• I will not buy into MTT's with more than 2% of my bankroll (this is going to be very tough)
• I will not buy into Single Table SNG with more than 5% of my bankroll
  
• If I am sitting at a table and my stack exceeds 10% of my bankroll, I will leave the table.

Just like Chris Ferguson there are only two exceptions to the above. I am allowed to buy into any game at $2.50 regardless of my bank roll. For multi-table tournaments, I will always be allowed to do $1 buy-ins.

A big obstacle in the early going is the amount of bad and wild play at low limits. I mean when people have $4 on the table, they don't treat as carefully as if it were $400. It took Chris Ferguson, who happens to be one of the greatest poker players of our time, seven months to get his account from $0 to $6.50. All in all, it took him 16 months to complete the challenge.

Anyone who has any experience with poker knows that this task is going to take a tremendous amount of zen-like patience, and probably many ups and downs. I am actually a bit reluctant to attempt it, because I enjoy a good Saturday multi table tournament. But, that will have to serve as a motivator. Here is a snap shot of my starting bank roll. Wish me luck.