1. The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time. He threatened to win the combined playing bankroll of every high-stakes poker player in Las Vegas.
2. 200% Deposit Bonus. The good old 200% deposit bonus. This is a Poker Professor Bankroll Challenge well-preferred bonus among players as it will give Poker Professor Bankroll Challenge you twice the amount you deposited, and a lot of the times you will not be faced with too high wagering requirements. Usually, you will see wagering requirements similar to the more common 100% bonus.

Bankroll Management (14:10) Bankroll management is very simply controlling the level of buy-in that you play, so that you have enough money to sustain you through the inevitable ups and downs of poker. This is what we call variance. You can’t always be a winner at poker because no matter how skilled you are, luck still plays a part.

The best way to learn is through practise. That is proven many times in the academic field. You can spend lots of time reading through theory and memorising it, but you need to actually do it and repeat until it’s locked into your mind

That is why throughout this course we will guide you in a Poker Bankroll Challenge, where you start with an initial bankroll of $25 and by the end of the course will have turned that into a serious bankroll of $1,000.

Why Do the Poker Bankroll Challenge?

Practical experience is a great way of learning. There are many lessons in this course, some of which are quite straightforward and not that hard to take in, but others are fairly in-depth, and it may be difficult to fully grasp until you have actually put the theory into practise.

You have already been through the bankroll management lesson and should now understand the importance of only playing at stakes that your bankroll will support, with plenty of redundancy to allow for bad (losing) sessions.

You will also understand that to play even at medium stakes using proper bankroll management, you require a significant total bankroll amount.

So, the Bankroll Challenge will bring all of these together:

• Give you practical experience to allow you to put lesson content into real life situations.
• Teach you a correct way to move up through the stake levels using correct bankroll management.
• Build a serious bankroll of $1,000 to allow you to play the medium stakes and continue to grow after this course.

How it Works

Throughout the Poker Bankroll Challenge, you will be playing at No Limit, Texas Holdem Tables. We’ll start on the lower stakes and gradually move up the stake levels as we achieve goals and increase our bankroll.

We have already made recommendations of where to play at whilst you are doing this challenge, based on which rooms proved to be the most profitable based on the strategy taught in this course. If you have not already signed up to 888 Poker (or Bovada Poker for US players) then go back to the very first lesson in this course and follow the instructions and links there to get setup.

Make sure you are familiar with the lobby layout and are able to find the Texas Holdem, No Limit, Cash (Ring) Game Tables. Make sure the tables are ordered by stake level. If you wish you can set the filter up to only show the tables you are interested in and make the lobby a bit cleaner.

Remember we are only looking for standard full tables which seats 9 or 10 players, ignore the short-handed tables for 5 or 6 players, as these require an adjusted strategy.

The Poker Bankroll Challenge Box

During the course, at the end of various lessons, you will see the Poker Bankroll Challenge box, one for each of the 12 stages of the challenge.

Here is an example box, everything is fairly self explanatory, but we have included some details below to make sure:

Poker Bankroll Challenge: Stage 1

• Stakes: $0.02/$0.04
• Buy In: $3 (75 x BB)
• Starting Bankroll: $25
• Target: $3 (1 x Buy In)
• Finishing Bankroll: $28
• Estimated Sessions: 1

Use this exercise to get used to selecting which starting hands to play and which not to play according to the Starting Hands chart and get used to understanding what position you are in at the table. Don’t get too carried away at this stage though, play conservatively and be aware that someone may have a better hand than you. We are going to learn in more detail about betting after the flop later in the course.

Stake Level

This gives you the stake level of the table you should play at. If your poker room doesn’t offer that particular stake level then find the closest one to it and adjust accordingly based on what you have already learnt.

Remember, look for the table with the highest percentage of Players per Flop, as this indicates more fish at the table. Anything over 20% is fine but the higher the better. You should also pay attention to the Average Pot Size as we also want to select a table with a high average pot size. At this stage, It doesn’t matter which seat you sit at so you can choose any seat.

Buy In

The Buy In amount is the portion of your total bankroll that you will sit down at the table with. As you join a table it will ask you how much money you want to put into your stack between the table min and max limits. This will usually be 100 x Big Blinds but on some occasions may reduce to 75 x Big Blinds to remain within good bankroll management rules.

Target & Estimated Sessions

The target is the amount that you need to win to complete this stage of the challenge. You don’t have to achieve this all in one session, and an estimated number of sessions is provided as a guide to the number of sessions we think it might take to complete the challenge. Be aware that it may take you more or less time to complete and this is purely a guide.

A session is considered to be between 1-2 hours at the table, and each time you start a new session you should sit back down with the same initial buy in (not the previous balance that you had in your stack at the end of the last session)

Notes

Finally there will also be some brief notes from us on each stage to guide you along and explain the practical purpose of the stage and give you a little bit of encouragement.

Quick Links to Challenge Stages

Good Luck!

Don’t be intimidated by this challenge, we’ll move up in small stages and you’ll be building your new strategy as you go. Each stage you should start to feel more confident and more grounded in the way that you play, and please take our word for it that the practical experience is worth the time you are putting in at the tables, plus it makes it more fun and your building a bankroll as you go too!

Since Poker Professor started in 2005 we have had many success stories with our Bankroll Challenge. We receive emails all the time from happy community members who have felt the enormous sense of achievement by completing the challenge.

Remember, we are always here to support you, if you have a problem, or get stuck on a lesson or topic then please don’t be afraid to ask for some advice in our Questions and Answers forum – no matter how trivial or silly you think the issue is.

Congratulations: Unit 1 Complete

Well done, that’s the first Unit complete. Now you have been introduced to the course and understand some of the key concepts that underpin your new strategy. You are also setup with our recommended poker room and are ready to get started with the Poker Bankroll Challenge. Next, in Unit 2 we are going to look at how to act before the flop and really get started learning your new winning strategy.

Congratulations on reaching this far in the course. You have now learnt a powerful strategy for Sit and Go tournaments and also understand some more advanced SNG strategy topics. Don’t worry too much if you didn’t take everything in the advanced lessons, re-read it a few times and over time it will all start to make sense.

Now the part of the course you have been waiting for, where you are going to actually put your new Sit and Go strategy into practice. In this lesson we are going to guide you through the stake levels in turning your starting bankroll of $50 into a massive bankroll of $1,000.

Armed with your new $1,000 bankroll and the dominating strategy we have shown you then our work will be done, and you will have everything you need to permanently take your seat at the higher stakes sit and go tables and continue to build your bankroll and move up the stake levels, whilst earning a consistent income from poker (just remember us when your rich!)

The Challenge

The challenge is simple, following the guide below, you will deposit an initial $50 into your bankroll and then play through the challenge stages, moving up through the stake levels, all whilst maintaining bankroll management and practising the techniques we’ve showed you in this course.

Once again, we highly recommend playing through this challenge at our favourite SNG poker sites. They really do stand out from the competition with regards to easy and profitable SNGs. You can of course choose any poker site to play through the challenge, it’s just you’ll get a head start with the sites below:

For Non-US Players: 888 Poker

888 is our favourite online poker site for sit and go tournaments. They just seem so easy sometimes.

At the low and mid stake levels the SNGs are packed full of bad players, we don’t know why, but it’s probably related to all the inexperienced players that come over from the popular 888 Casino.

You also never have to wait for a SNG tournament at the low and mid stakes, with most tournaments filling up and starting within minutes of them appearing.

888 Poker is a major Gaming company which is a brand known around the world and listed on the London Stock Exchange. Its software is secure and your money and data is safe. There are always many thousands of players online so you will find plenty of action going on at the tables at all hours of the day.

For more details read our full 888 Poker Review.

Note: 888 does NOT accept players from the USA. US Players please see the next box

For US Players: Bovada Poker

US players aren’t left out because Bovada is also great site for Sit and Go tournaments.

Once again the games seem softer than other sites and it’s probably again due to the influx of inexperienced players coming from the Bodog / Bovada Online Casino.

Bovada is the leading US facing poker room with the highest level of traffic and game availability and part of the Bodog Network. If you are a US based poker player then you should be playing at Bovada, an established and trusted room with a decent traffic flow, and great loose action at the low to mid stakes tables.

For more details read our full Bovada Poker Review.

Poker Professor Bankroll Challenge List

Note: Bovada is an exclusive USA poker room and only accepts players from the USA

If you do not already have an account there, then just click on the buttons above to download and sign up for a free player account. Once you have your new account setup then you can deposit your starting bankroll of $50 ready to get started with the $1,000 SNG bankroll challenge.

Bankroll Management

First thing to recap on is the SNG bankroll management we talked about in the very first lesson of this course. During this challenge we will maintain a bankroll of approximately 20 buy ins, which if you remember from the lesson is a slightly higher risk bankroll strategy.

The reason we have taken this approach is to allow you to play at higher stakes initially, keeping it interesting and make it more of a challenge for you. By the end of the challenge, and as the stakes increase, we will have migrated more towards 40-50 buy ins which is more like the long term bankroll strategy we encourage you to continue on with after the challenge.

Maintaining a bankroll of 20 buy ins (or 5%) means that you are protected somewhat from going broke. You would have to not cash in 20 tournaments on the run to go broke. Of course you should never play with money you can’t afford to lose, and if your $50 means more to you and you want to be more conservative, then that is fine, just adjust the stakes and stages based on the bankroll management rules you learned in the first lesson.

Bankroll management is very much a personal decision based on your personal circumstances, the ability to reload if you go bust and the amount of risk you are willing to take.

The Targets

So here are the targets for the challenge:

• Your target is to finish in the money 50% of the time (top 3 places).
• Of the 50% you finish in the money 20% will be first place, 20% second place and 10% third place.
• You will be playing on single full table (9 or 10 players) standard speed (blinds increase every 6 minutes) SNG tournaments.
• You will not move onto the next stage until you have reached the target bankroll for the current stage you are on.

If your poker software has options to filter the lobby then do so now. There are lots of Sit and Go Tournaments that we are not interested in such as Turbos, 6-handed, Double or Nothing, Satellites etc. Make it nice and easy to find the SNGs you are looking for and save yourself stress later.

Take the challenge at your own pace. It’s certainly possible to complete the challenge in less than a week, but not everyone will want to go at that pace.

Sit n Go Bankroll Challenge: Stage 1

• Buy In: $2
• 1st Place (approx.): $9
• Starting Bankroll: $50
• Target: $50
• Finishing Bankroll: $100
• Estimated SNGs: 15

The first stage is really for you to practice the strategy and get used to it. It is playing on small stake sit and go tournaments. Your first target is to grow your bankroll by $50 to $100. If you hit your targets (outlined earlier) then this should only take you about 15 tournaments.

Sit n Go Bankroll Challenge: Stage 2

• Buy In: $5
• 1st Place (approx.): $22.50
• Starting Bankroll: $100
• Target: $100
• Finishing Bankroll: $200
• Estimated SNGs: 12

No more practising like in Stage 1 we are now focused on what we are here to do and the target for Stage 2 is to grow your bankroll by $100 to a total bankroll of $200. If you hit your targets then this will take 12 Tournaments.

Poker Bankroll Requirements

Sit n Go Bankroll Challenge: Stage 3

• Buy In: $8
• 1st Place (approx.): $36
• Starting Bankroll: $200
• Target: $170
• Finishing Bankroll: $370
• Estimated SNGs: 13

With stage 3 it starts to get really exciting as we are making a significant stake increase to the $8 levels. First prize on these tables is now $36 so your bankroll will start to grow allot quicker. The target for Stage 3 is to grow your bankroll by $170 to a total bankroll of $370 which should take you about 13 tournaments.

Sit n Go Bankroll Challenge: Stage 4

• Buy In: $10
• 1st Place (approx.): $45
• Starting Bankroll: $370
• Target: $210
• Finishing Bankroll: $580
• Estimated SNGs: 13

Another big stake jump and another leap in your SNG career as we are now moving onto the $10 levels. First prize on these tables is now $45. The target for Stage 4 is to grow your bankroll by $210 to a total bankroll of $580 which will take you approximately 13 tournaments.

Poker Professor Bankroll Challenge 2019

Sit n Go Bankroll Challenge: Stage 5

• Buy In: $20
• 1st Place (approx.): $90
• Starting Bankroll: $580
• Target: $420
• Finishing Bankroll: $1,000
• Estimated SNGs: 13

Poker Bankroll Tracker

You’ve reached the final stage of the challenge and you are within touching distance of having a $1,000 bankroll. Now we are making our final stake leap of the challenge up to the $20 level. The first prize on these tables is a whopping $90. The target for this Final Stage is to grow your bankroll by $420 to a complete your challenge and have a total bankroll of $1,000 which should take you about 13 tournaments.