Ok, so I was all set to deposit on Stars and Tilt today. A couple of buddies of mine came over to watch some football and at some point the conversation shifted to poker, specifically Chris Ferguson’s $0-10k challenge. They wanted to know if I had heard of this and whether I thought it was real and possible. After some discussion, these guys (none of whom is what I would consider a serious player) decided that it was impossible to freeroll your way to $10,000 or even $1000. I made the comment that not only was it possible, I thought I could do it on Stars.

To make a long story short, we came up with a challenge for me that should prove interesting. The good news is I don’t have to work it all the way up to $10k, the bad news is I have a specific time frame in which to go from $0 to $750. The rules are pretty simple: I cannot deposit to my Stars acct, nor can I have anyone transfer any money to me. I have until midnight on Feb 5 to build up $750 on Stars. I can do this through freerolls and by selling play chips (I had to lobby hard for this provision). For those of you who didn’t know, there are a number of sites where you can sell play chips. The going price seems to be $10/million chips. If I am successful, my friends will match the $750 and I will then have a $1500 bankroll. If I fail, I have to take them and their wives/girlfriends out to dinner and a night on the town at places of their choosing. This could easily cost me more than I stand to make, but I have no intention of failing this.

I think the play chip route makes this a little easier for me, as it should be fairly easy to accumulate play chips. I haven’t played for play money in a long time, but I feel like I should be able to hit 1 mil fairly quickly. Earlier today I had to donk off the couple of bucks I had in my acct and make sure I had no play chips either. At midnight the chase was on!

One good thing with this is I don’t have to follow the BR requirements that Jesus did in his challenge. I conveniently left that part out as we were talking about it, so I can do whatever I feel is necesssary in order to get to $750 in one month. All in all, I think this should be fairly doable and it should be a lot of fun. I’ll post the updates here so my buddies can follow the action and we will see what happens.

I’ve wanted to do a blog for a while now, just never made the time to do it. I have a little time on my hands now so it seems to be a good time to start.

For anyone that doesn’t know me, I can most often be found banging away at the $4.40 180 seat sng’s on PokerStars. I have had some success in them, but I have a tendency to blow my winnings taking shots at higher levels. I’m going to make an effort this year to be more conservative with my bankroll and try to build it up the right way.

I also want to play more at Full Tilt this year as I have had some success playing there in the past. The biggest problem I have with Tilt is that it seems to be more difficult to get money on and off than is necessary since the demise of Netteller. I guess I’ll eventually have to sign up for EPassport.

That seems to be enough for now, I’ll probably come back later and post my thoughts on my play today once I’m done.