Andre Coimbra
This year, he set out to multiply his $100 deposit to a $100,000 bankroll just by playing MTTs, which he will donate to charity. The challenge is not impossible to do, though it seems very hard to complete today. In 2009 Thomas 'Boku87' Beokhoff built a $100,000 bankroll out of $10, but the player pool was much weaker back then.
Coimbra started the first day with BronzeStar VIP level with 0 FPP on 16 January, but he ran rather badly, he lost $30. The next day he was much luckier; he had $75 on Day 2, $85 on Day 3, $83 on Day 4 and $95 by Day 5.
He posted the following on 21 January on his blog about his journey so far:
Strategy
Yesterday I decided that I was going to play a bit more than in the other days and I debated some hands on my facebook page, which worked really well to find some leaks!
Hand #1
Here I justified the fold by thinking that the player that did the re-raise on the flop was going to have a range to stack-off that would dominate my hand a big portion of the times.
Where does this argument come from? Bad experiences and fear! It’s a typical amateur mistake, where the amateur lost in a certain spot at some point and from that point is going to assume that it’s a losing spot. Of course that with my “4 days of experience” I wasn’t the exception to the rule and I did this mistake anyway!
This play has some problems… If I don’t get value from my hand when I get two pairs, then it’s value drops drastically and then I don’t even know anymore if it’s profitable to invest those 10 chips out of position.
The mentality here must be “I have a super strong hand, they will have a better hand sometimes, but it’s part of the game and my hand is going to be the best most of the times, so I will make money in the long run!”.
The correct play would have been to check/shove. Here it’s better to check and let the other plays increase the size of the pot so that we can play for our stacks, because out of position with such a big pot to stack ratio it will be hard to stack off without a re-raise somewhere in the hand and we want maximum value!
But nowadays most players check/raise like crazy anyway, so it’s probably nothing new to most people…
Hand #2
This second hand was at a final table of a 90 players turbo
Before analyzing the hand, it’s important to look at the structure:
As you can see, there is a $0.99 pay jump from 13th to 12th, but the pay jump to the final table is only $0.22.
Let’s take a look at the pay jumps:
In the Money +$0.99
Final Table +$0.22
Top8 +$0.24
Top7 +$0.27
Top6 +$0.4
Top5 +$0.71
Top4 +$1.01
Top3 +1.83
HU+$1.82
WIN +$3.71
As you can see, up to the pay jump from 6 to 5 players, moving up a position is worth less than getting ITM and then moving up a position starts being more and more valuable. This means that at the beginning of the final tables I should risk more so that I can reach the later stages of the tournament with a good stack and a good chance to fight for the first places.
Now, back to our hand…, I’ve already explained why this is a good point to take risks and the reason why I went all-in on that hand, was because I believed that the player from UTG could have a weak range and he fold sometimes, leaving a lot of dead money in the middle. Then it would be worth to take the risk with my AQ and try to accumulate chips to fight for a good score. What I missed though, was that the player in the first position raised 4 Big Blinds! This bet usually means strength and that he doesn’t want to play flops, because the hand is too strong pre-flop, but he/she is afraid of getting out-flopped. Once again, fear of bad experiences repeating!
Taking this into consideration, it’s a clear fold, because we don’t have fold equity and those chips are not dead money “anymore”. UTG is going to call our all-in almost every time there!
If you liked these analysis, please follow my facebook page, where we have many interesting hands to discuss every day I play!
Bankroll Management
After losing 30% of the bankroll on the first day of the challenge, yesterday I finally recovered and got back to the green reaching a $106 bankroll. Now I know that it was a clear mistake to start with 100 buy-ins on the first day of the challenge, because I was most likely a losing player and I should have started with a bankroll that allowed me to spend some time losing and learning. If I had to start again, I would start with 200 buy-ins and playing 45 players turbos.
After I reached $106, It was time to move to the 90 players turbo and even though I made 2 or 3 final tables, I never managed to accumulate chips to reach the top prizes, losing a bit at those. But, still finishing the day with a positive balance!
I played 61 tournaments in 6 hours.
My plan now is to stay at the 90 players turbos unless the bankroll drops to $75 and whenever I can reach $200 to move up to 90 players $1 turbos. I won’t plan more ahead, because I need to see how things go and get a feeling of everything that’s happening.
Anyway, the plan for next week is to play more tournaments than this week and I will keep discussing the more troublesome hands on facebook. This will allow me to play many different game sittuations, get more hands to discuss and at the beggining of February to have a decent amount of hands on my HoldemManager database in order to search for leaks.
Ah…, I almost forgot!
Almost there!
In terms of points, this month I will get ChromeStar, but maybe next month I will be able to reach Silver. I’m not in a rush anway!
