Passing another mini-milestone in the charity challenge

This week I've passed another small milestone in my poker charity challenge.  I've turned my starting amount of $27.59 into $1006 dollars.  Yes, I've passed the $1000 mark, so I'm 20% complete.  Although this is great, I really need to pick up the pace in order to hit my end of year deadline for $5K.  As it stands, I've got to make a bit under $1K each month to meet this goal.  Up to this point I expected that once I got to $1000 that it would be pretty easy sailings.  That has proven to not be the case.  I've run into a streak of bad luck.  I'm sure once it passes I'll get the earnings back up to a mark that I want to be at.

More updates to come. Until then Challenge yourself to challenge the need.

Charity Challenge Update- Frustrations and Opportunities

This weeks update is slightly bittersweet.  I'm beginning to get slightly frustrated with this challenge.  Did I continue making progress this week? Yes.  Did I play up to my ability? Yes.  Did I make time to play more? Yes.  Did I see the return that I was looking for? No way.  This, ladies and gentlemen is what we in the poker call running bad.  I've been getting beat on hands that I should win 80% of the time...all the time and I've been losing what seems like every critical all-in that I get into.  Does this put me on tilt (tilt = when you let your emotions clod your judgment at a poker table and begin to play badly...vicious vicious cycle)?  No, no tilt for me but it is VERY VERY frustrating.  I'll pull through though.

As for when I want to stop running bad and begin running good...45 minutes from now would be a good time. And you may be asking why 45 minutes from now.   If you are, I'll tell you why, because that's when the tournament starts where I could win a seat to the World Series of Poker Main Event for next year worth $12,000.  With only 45 people to beat in this tournament...I like my chances.  So, think good thoughts for me over the next 3-4 hours because I will be playing my hardest and hoping for some of these coinflips to go my way.  I'll be updating this blog every hour on my progress until I'm out if you want to follow.  My first update should be at 8:30, after 1 hour of play.  Keep checking back for my status.

Correction..the game starts at 8:30 so the first update will be at 9:30.

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Hour 1 Update:  No really big hands to speak of.  I'm slightly above the starting chip count but not too much.   47 of the starting 54 players left.  Lets hope for something big the next hour.

The end.  Out in 33rd.  The guy had 2 cards to catch and he made his hand.  Oh well, I played perfect...back to the challenge.  No world series seat this time.

More updates to come. Until then Challenge yourself to challenge the need.

Charity Challenge update and bank error update

When we last left off I was accidentally rewarded $12,000.  Perhaps I should be more optimistic and say, I was awarded that amount too early.  That issue was resolved with some swiftness and the poker site was kind enough to reschedule the tournament with the players that were remaining for this Friday evening.  That's great, now all I have to do is beat 55 or so players for my seat at next years World Series of Poker.  What's more, for the inconvenience, we were all given a free pass to play in Bodog's big Sunday event.  This game guarantees $100K of prize money and it pays $25K for first place.  Once I find a good weekend to play in it maybe I can wrap this challenge up.  Regardless, as usual, the site dealt with an issue that came up very well in my opinion.

As for the challenge, I am sooooo close to another mini-goal, the $1000 mark.  My bankroll sits at $984.22 right now so the hope is that the next update will be over that 1K mark.  As I said before you will likely see some ups and downs as I move forward from this point and try to wrap this thing up.  Check the dedicated challenge page out for an updated graph.

A new update will follow at the end of the week, until then Challenge yourself to challenge the need.

$12,000 Bank Error in Your Favor, What Do You Do?

As I'm trying to complete the Charity Poker Challenge, I've been involved in a 13 game series that Bodog has going on.  It's called the Mini Series of Poker and we were required to win our way into the final tourney of the series.  You could do this three ways: 1) play every event in the series 2) win one event in the series 3) complete the series top 10 in points (I think I was 23rd or so) or 3) finish in the top 18 in a qualifying event that was held on Tuesday night.  I final tabled one of these events but couldn't quite finish it out and because of my work I couldn't play in all 13 events so I had to depend on qualifying in Tuesday's game..which I did. 

First place in this tournament won a fully paid seat to next years World Series Main Event and some spending money ($12,000) package.  Second and third got what equates to a $2000 package and 4-9 got a ticket to Bodog's big weekly $100,000 guarantee prizepool game.  At the end of hour 1 the game abruptly ended with about 50 or so people in it and we were all paid the $12,000 first place tournament credits!!!! What to do, what to do?  It's obviously an error soooooo... what did I do, I e-mailed and called and let them know so they could take it out of all of the players accounts that the error paid out (prior to them losing it)...and yes, that included my account.  Minutes later...12K back out of my account.  I'm certain they will reschedule.  What would you have done.  By the way, that would have definitely completed the challenge :-).

This is one of the rare cases where I've had an issue with their software and their staff are working quickly to clear it up.  Good people over there.  I'll keep posted on what's going to happen w/ it.  I would like a litle feedback though...what would you have done in this spot?

Picking up the pace in the poker challenge..almost at $1K

As I've increased the buy-in levels that I'm able to play a little I've started to consistently win at the pace that I want to be on.  This week I picked my bankroll up to $894.52.  I have a good feeling that I would have broken the 1200-1500 mark this past weekend but my internet service provider (I won't name names but will let you know my home may be dark pretty soon), went down in my neighborhood while I was my largest final table to date in the challenge.  I had a chance to win $700+ but because the network went down as soon as we got down to business at the final table (for 3 hours), went out in 8th and took $75. That's pretty depressing since I'm more emotionally attached to this challenge than I am on my day to day poker games with my own money (which are slightly bigger than the games I play in the challenge).  There are no worries on my end regarding the challenge though.  I'm pretty confident that I can still complete it in the timeframe I set out for myself.  I will tell you to expect some ups and downs in my graphs from now on as I will be taking some shots at some bigger games in the future.  I know there are some interesting developments on the way for this challenge.  Check the challenge tab out for the latest graph at the bottom.

I'll continue to keep everyone posted on this challenge but until then...Challenge yourself to challenge the need.

Increased the bankroll by 50%

I've won my third average sized (for my bankroll) multi-table tournament on Bodog since this challenge started.  I took down a $12 buy-in event for $323 this past week, bringing my bankroll up to $754.52.  That's great considering I haven't been able to put the time into that that I have wanted to yet.  Next goal $1K.  That's 20% there.  Not quite the pace I want to be at but steady progress and that is good.  For those of you that are more spatial (can't read), here's an updated graph of the progress.  I've added a tab to the top of this page where I will update this graph more frequently.  I'll likely only update it on the main blog page on a monthly or bi-weekly basis to keep clutter down as I will be beginning other challenges soon.

Until my next update: Challenge yourself to challenge the need.

$500 mark broken in the charity poker challenge

Although I had some ups and downs last month and missed on some bigger shots that I took I've kicked off the new month by breaking the 1/10 mark int the challenge.  My account balance is up to $554 which is great because I can now buy into some pretty good sized prize pool multi-table tournaments that are a $10 buy-in.  Just a short update but I wanted to post the small celebration.  By the way, I expected that as I went up in limits, the competition would get tougher...that's not the case yet (for the most part).  Here's to hoping it stays that way.

Until my next update: Challenge yourself to challenge the need.