I thought it would take me a year, but it only took three months.  I’m staring at my Cashier box on Full Tilt Poker and I can hardly believe that I turned $100 into $1000 (actually $1147) in just three months.

I’ve learned a lot over the past few months.  In fact, I’d say I learned more in the past 3 months than I’ve learned in the past 7 years of playing poker recreationally.  I’ve learned how to perform a deep analysis of my game to find and plug leaks and I’ve learned how to use combinatorial analysis in conjunction with betting patterns to read hands more accurately.

I’ve also learned that my bankroll management plan was pretty damn reckless.

After calculating my Risk of Ruin (the probability that I’d go broke), I came up with 16.7%.  That’s a bit risky even for my crazy ass.  In fact, a bad run took me just a couple of chips away from the felt.  Fortunately I was able to pull out of the nosedive, but next time I might not be so lucky.

Moving forward, I plan on creating a more realistic bankroll system before moving from the $30 SNGs to the $50 SNGs.  My current bankroll strategy would let me play at the $50 level now, but I know I’m not ready for it.

I still want to build my bankroll aggressively, but I want to reduce my Risk of Ruin to 5%.  It’s going to be hard to set an exact number since I only put around 900 SNGs under my belt in the past few months so my ROI won’t be accurate for quite a while.  Until then, I probably hang out at the $30 SNGs for a while and take an occasional shot at the $50s.

The second half of 2009 should be interesting for me.

Sometimes the poker gods decide it’s time to make you their bitch. Today was my day. Check it out.

Shortly after that hand, I fight may way back to about 580 in chips when this dirty, dirty gem happens:

why can’t I ever suck out like that?

Through all the bad beats and the swearing, through all of my anger and despair, somehow, someway I grinded my way up the food chain and here I sit staring at my bankroll.

I’m staring at $501.72 and I can’t believe my eyes.  Just one month ago my bankroll was $100 and now it’s five times higher.  Just one month and I’m already halfway to my goal of reaching $1000 by the end of the year.

Don’t get me wrong.  I knew I could do it.  I just didn’t know that I could do it so fast.  Three years ago when I was in college and working as a waiter to support my family, I’d have cashed out my bankroll at least twice by now to pay bills.  But things are different now.

Now I have a good job that pays the bills and a great side business as a freelance writer (a side business that could soon eclipse my “real job” in terms of income).  I don’t need to use my bankroll to pay bills anymore…and that means I have a decision to make.

I’m going to subtract $100 from my total since that’s money I earned clearing my bonus and I don’t think it should be included in the money I earned.  But even without that money I’m still at $401.72.  According to my bankroll rules I can start playing the $20 Sit N Goes now, hence my dilemma.

I haven’t really made an honest push to break into the $20 Sit N Goes before.  Sure I’ve played a couple with mixed results, but I’ve never immersed myself in that level of play.  I’ve heard a lot of talk about how different $20 SNGs are from $10 SNGS and I’m a little nervous.

My trepidation is enforced by the fact that the $10 SNGs weren’t exactly good to me.  I took a lot of bad beats at that level and even had to pull out completely and grind the $5 SNGs for a couple days.  But eventually the bad beats subsided and I was able to return to the $10 SNGs with a vengeance and a week later, I I’m looking at a bankroll that says it’s time to play the $20 SNGs.

I’ll probably easy my way into it the way I usually do when I move up in limits, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m nervous.

So I guess what I’m asking is, what have you heard about the $20 SNGs?  Should I be nervous?  Should I work on my game a little more or should I treat it like any other SNG level?

No matter what happens, this is definitely a turning point for my game.

It’s pretty amazing really. For the first time, I really started to think a poker site was rigged. Keep in mind that these beats occurred over about 30 tournaments. I lost several races as well and there are some QQ/JJ vs. Ax that I didn’t include so this page wouldn’t take forever to load, but I think these 9 say it all. Without further ado, here they are in no particular order.

I think I’ll go throw up now. So F&#@in’ rigged!