Bankroll building Chris “Jesus” Ferguson style

April 4, 2007

I had a couple of really nice winning runs at poker.com , which is one of my favourite sites. It’s not a huge site but accepts US / American players and new players from all around the world, which makes for really easy to win cash games.

I really need to work on my bankroll management though – which is where Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s bankroll management approach will come in.

Anyway back to my first run – I’d built up to $1800 from a $200 start in a few short days. Only to blow it on a couple of tough $500 hands at the higher stakes tables, even with the nuts on the flop etc I managed to get 3 or 4 bad suckouts and it was all over.

Hell I knew I shouldn’t have been at the table with $500+ or over a 1/4 of my bankroll at any one time – But c’est la vie.

Half a lesson learned I had got myself back in shape and in a couple of days I’d re-built my remaining $35 bankroll up to somewhere around $800. This time I wasn’t going to go broke playing above my roll and I wanted to see some hard cash coming back over the line – So I cashed out $600 leaving me with around $200 to play on.

NB. The cash out from poker.com was excellent via click2pay – Quick, easy and the cheque arrived by post 2 days later.

Anyway I mentioned it was only half a lesson learned. Stupidly I carried on playing at the middle stakes (coming down but not enough) and I was still risking 1/4 to 1/2 of my bankroll. The inevitable happened – I busted out and down to about $3.50 in double quick time.

Why ?

Well to be honest the games even at the middle / upper stakes at poker.com are still – well really really juicy and I figured they’re just as beatable as the low limit games. NB. You have to play the middle / higher limits a bit better and slightly differently to low stakes but they are still very very winable.But here is my mistake – regardless of how much you can beat higher limit games – If your bankroll is too small you simply can’t ride out the inevitable bad beats / bad runs.

Which brings me on to the second Chris “Jesus” Ferguson experiment.

A great example of strict bankroll management and a lesson to us all. A couple of years back Chris Ferguson legendary WSOP winner and high stakes poker pro set about building a $20,000 bankroll online from $1. He managed it in over a few months but applied extremely strict bankroll management to make sure he never endangered his bankroll.

Well he’s back at it with his latest challenge – To turn nothing, yep $0, zip, zero, nada into a $10k bankroll.

This guy is a genius and highly successful high stakes poker pro but wants to prove with the right application it’s possible to start with nothing and end up with $10k.

His rules and bankroll management are strict, strict, strict -

He started playing a load of freeroll’s and still does. Setting a max buy-in of 5% of his entire bankroll into a cash game (which means playing micro limits) and a max buy-in for MTTs of 2% of his bankroll. Also if he ever has 10% of his bankroll at a table he has to leave.

Now that is discipline and something we could all surely learn from. The last I heard he had built his bankroll up to $5K and shows no signs of breaking his bankroll management rules.

Inside Edge interviewed him – Chris Ferguson $0 to $10k bankroll

You can play with Chris “Jesus” Ferguson and other top Pro’s like Phil Ivey, Clonie Gowan & Gus Hanson at Full Tilt Poker

So where am I after all this ?

I’m not going to pretend to be Chris Ferguson or that I’ve got the discipline to manage my bankroll as strictly as Jesus but it has certainly made me re-think my game plan.

If the micro-limit games are good enough for Chris then they’re sure as hell should be good enough for me …

I haven’t fully adopted his solid approach but I’m at least trying to stick the to the $0.05/0.10 games until I actually have built up my bankroll to justify playing in them. Importantly I’m going to stay down there for alot longer too, none of this doubling up and moving up the limits as quick as I think I can … Only to find a couple of hickups puts me back on skid row.

So far I’ve got my $3.50 up to $31 – Yes it’s slow and always tempting to just put everything on the table and hope. In fact I’m still risking 1/3rd of my bankroll everytime I sit down and so there is no room for anything but very solid hand selection and prudent play.

Once I get up to $100 (10x max buy-in at the 0.05/0.10 tables) I should be playing within my bankroll – but I’m going to stay at these limits until I really am in better shape like $200.

Now I really appreciate all that bankroll advice really is worth listening to – Til the next time.

Good Luck at the Tables – Cheers Scrawnybob

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