Extreme Bankroll Building

[Ludanto]

You find out that Microsoft wants to enter the online poker market (LDO!). They are new in the online poker industry so they need something attractive to ...uhm... attract players. Balmer recognizes that he will need something better than "can you believe it??? Reversi!!!" and makes an aggressive call by setting up a challenge. During the first year of the new (very well named) microsoftpoker.com every new player gets 40 bucks for free in his account. GREAT, eh? But that's not all. You can win a cool billion dollars if during MSP's first year you turn your original 40 bucks into 500 thousand bucks faster than anyone else (who did not make a deposit yet).

To have something to work with you can assume that:
- You are only allowed to play fixed limit Hold'em cash games.
- MSP copied Poker Stars' game limit structures and rake structure
- You firmly believe that you beat EVERY level with at least 1BB/100 if playing only one table
- You can play an infinite amount of tables simultanously(SP1?)
- You have only one chance! Once you bust there is no depositing money to try again.
- Not the TIME matters in which you go from $40 to $500k but the AMOUNT OF HANDS that you need to achieve this! You can take 365 days to do it and will still win if you do it in less hands than anyone else.
- Microsoft developed a software to read your mind and erase any possible thoughts of doing anything illegal to win the cool billion.

How do you proceed with your chance of becoming a billionaire?

[pzhon]

The number of other players matters a lot.

Let's suppose you are considering a short cut, something that will cost you 100,000 hands of grinding if it fails, but save you 20,000 hands if it succeeds. If you are competing with thousands of winning players, succeeding might increase your chance of winning from 0.1% to 2%, so it would be worth it if you only succeed 1 time in 20. However, if there are only 5 competing players, success might be worth 60% while failure might cost 15%, and you would need to succeed 20% of the time for it to be worth it.

Anyway, against a large field, there will be plenty of people using the Kelly criterion. You should probably use something much more aggressive while you are in contention. You should sacrifice expected growth rate for variance that might make you first.

[Ludanto]

Let's say all the Poker Stars players and then some choose to plsay MSP -> You are competeing against 5 million players.

BTW, minimum buy-in to sit at a table is 5 BB.