hypothetical

[Phone Booth]

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your bankroll is $200. you can play a maximum of 1000 hands of poker. if your bankroll reaches $400, you will receive a $1 million bonus.

what's your plan? what game(s) would you play? same game the entire 1000 hands, or adjust according to your progress? would you play standard solid poker, or would you do something out of the ordinary?

also, how does this change if your bankroll is $2000, and you receive the $1 million if your bankroll reaches $2200, but are disqualified if your bankroll drops below $1800?



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I think you'd want to start out shortstacking/ratholing full-ring NL200 (live if possible). If somehow it comes down to the last few hands and you're near your goal, you'd want to switch to a short-handed game for a full buy-in and just steal blinds like mad and hope you don't run into a monster.

[PantsOnFire]

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I would play full table SnGs. With 1000 hands, and an average of 60-80 hands in an SnG, I predict I could play about 12-16 of them.

Probably, I'd start at the $40 buyin and play those unless I dropped to $80 (i.e. three shots at the money). Then, I'd switch to $10 buyin. After three shots at that and no cash-in, I'd switch to NL cash and play really tight.

With 100 hands left to go, depending on my bankroll, I'd look for an SnG that payed $400 or more for first and take one last shot. If I couldn't find an SnG that paid this, I'd find the highest stakes NL cash I could enter with my remaining backroll and start to gamble with some small stack play.

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is my math correct: wouldn't a winning player expect to be up only about $50 or so after 14 $40 SNG's (~1000 hands @ ~70 hands/SNG)? is it likely enough that you would, for example, have one win and one 2nd in your first three, to take the risk that you finish out of the money on 2 or 3 of your first 3 and cripple your bankroll? (also, it seems like you would want to play a 10 player $55+$x or something so that you could earn the bonus straight away if you won your first SNG)


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I think anyway you slice it, you need a higher winrate than a normal good player.

Perhaps you could enter a $200 buyin MTT where the first payout is around $300-$350. Your tourney strategy would be to just make the money. If you get to the second payout level, I'm sure you're over $400. And I'm also sure it can be done in less than 1000 hands so if you make the first payout, you can still play something to reach $400.

Good question by the way OP.

[jogsxyz]

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I ask my neighbour to go allin on the river with nothing untill I'm at $400. I'll give him $5K.



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That's the correct strategy. Only you're going to need to offer your neighbor a better split.

[jogsxyz]

There is a faster safer way. Go $199.99 preflop on the first hand. Bet the other penny postflop. Neighbor folds for the
penny. Should be able to win the last penny in 999 hands.

[DeliciousBass]

This is clearly a question for HIV. If he could only afford an Internet connection we could rest easy tonight knowing the answer.

If I had to guess in his absence...it would involve either sitting at a 30/60 Stars game or multi-tabling 10/20 at BoDog.

[El_Hombre_Grande]

The most important element of whatever game you play will be table selection. You are limited by hands played, not observed. And you are going to need quite favorable conditions (or luck or both) to get the million.

So watch for as long as you need to to get to the left of a passivish idiot calling station.

I think if you find a true one in a NL game, one who will call big bets, you don't want to short stack despite
not having a bank roll. NL 100 or 200.

If the idiot leaves, so do you.

Hunt for days if necessary. Its a million bucks.

[mvdgaag]

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That's the correct strategy. Only you're going to need to offer your neighbor a better split.

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My neighbour doesn't know I'm getting a million [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]...


I assume we can't make deals like this.

There must be an optimum level to play... 2NL OBV won't get you there in 1K hands, but $200NL obviously is more risky.

My idea is to play a supertight strategy waiting for aces or kings on multiple loose tables (we don't want our supertight image to come across), but one at a time, so we can buyin for our entire BR.

Say you have 90% equity on average. You get dealt aces or kings about 10 times over 1K hands.

You get it all in before the flop 20% of the times you do this. Crusial number, maybe way to high of an estimate!

Ten times you get a:
- 18% chance to double up (0.9 * 0.2)
- 2% to be called and lose (0.1 * 0.2, so you are in very bad shape)

I total we have:
- a 86% chance to double up at least once.
- a 56% chance to double up at least twice.
- a 26% chance to double up at least 3 times

We have a 81% (0.98^10) chance of not losing once in 10 times doubling up, but on average we don't need to try all ten times.

I feel we need to double up at least twice on $200NL, because we pay blinds as well. Or we could hope to double up once and play a low risk game to gather those last few dollars that we lost with the blinds. Or we could steal some blinds using our tight image so we compensate for the payment of our blinds.

If we add queens or equity for going allin drops so although we get 50% more hands to play with the risk of losing one and the average win will drop significantly. Or am I forgetting the times we pick up a 3bet pot???

I'm too lazy to make the same calculations and estimations for looser allin strategies anyways [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img].

I'm convinced a supertight doubling up strategy or a super agressive high variance strategy are the only options to get there this quickly without cheating. I'm for the supertight one, because I feel it has less risk. How tight exactly; I don't know... This was just an example

[mvdgaag]

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Perhaps you could enter a $200 buyin MTT where the first payout is around $300-$350. Your tourney strategy would be to just make the money. If you get to the second payout level, I'm sure you're over $400. And I'm also sure it can be done in less than 1000 hands so if you make the first payout, you can still play something to reach $400.

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Sounds like a great plan, why didn't I think of this? You don't need to build a stack... Just play very tight and safe until you're in the money.

[ryanj247]

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Perhaps you could enter a $200 buyin MTT where the first payout is around $300-$350. Your tourney strategy would be to just make the money. If you get to the second payout level, I'm sure you're over $400. And I'm also sure it can be done in less than 1000 hands so if you make the first payout, you can still play something to reach $400.

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Sounds like a great plan, why didn't I think of this? You don't need to build a stack... Just play very tight and safe until you're in the money.

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hmm, i know next to nothing about tournaments. taking a quick glance at poker stars, i see a tournament where the buyin was $215. there were 2403 entrants. payout levels:

316th to 360th $240.30
271st to 315th $288.36
226th to 270th $336.42
190th to 225th $384.48
154th to 189th $432.54

so we have to get to the 5th payout level to earn the bonus. is this a standard payout structure for a ~$200 tournament?

so, what's a good estimate of how likely it is that a decent player whose primary goal is to make it to the 5th payout level will be able to do so, assuming he plays with the proper strategy for this goal?

it would be great if someone could walk me through the calculations involved in the estimate or point me to resources that can help me figure it out on my own...

[mvdgaag]

Are you seriously getting some big bonus for doing this?

Getting far into a tournament is not very hard. The big money starts at the final table, so most people play to get a big stack for that final table. A very conservative strategy will get you very deep, but likely without a shot at the big money. If $400 is enough, given you are a good player and have a proper strategy I think this is your best option. Try to find out what tournaments you can find that have the money spread away from the final table a bit more, so you can more easily reach your goal. I can't give you any good estimates, but I do know this is a very tough task at the cashgame tables.