In November 2020 new ACR Stormer Pokerbrahs set upon a big bankroll challenge, to turn $1,000 into $11,000 while streaming all the play live and on no-delay on Twitch. This was to be done in combination with very strict bankroll management rules which required 200 buy-ins minimum for a small field MTT, SNG or on-demand and 500 buy-ins for a big field MTT of 500+ players.
The challenge began exclusively on ACR for the first 38 sessions but as the bankroll grew and the need to play some higher buy-ins came into the challenge it became apparent that simply wasn’t going to be easy/possible to do exclusively on ACR.
A Great Start
The first 18 sessions went tremendously well, actually a lot better than I had initially expected. This included 4 Final Tables in the 8.80 PLO out of 11 times playing it and a 2nd place finish in a $6.60 Saturday Special for $600.
Moving Country and Moving Up Stakes
When you look at the challenge sheet as a whole (link at the end of the article) it doesn’t look like I had any huge swings but the most testing point of the challenge came after this fantastic start. There are a number of reasons why this could have happened and I’m not sure which one it was.
I had to take a forced break for around 2 weeks due to moving country from The Netherlands to Gibraltar. When I got things set up again I also moved up stakes as the bankroll had hit the 3k mark which means we were able to play small MTTs/SNGs to 16.50.
This downswing represented around 25% of the bankroll at which stage I decided to go back to the slow and steady route and try and get things climbing up again in the right direction
Massive Value to be Found in the Low/Micro Buyins on ACR
I have to give ACR massive props with the schedule they maintain for the low/micro players. There is HUGE value to be found day in day out on a schedule that consistently overlays between 10-50% on a regular basis.
For those of you not familiar with what overlay is, it’s when a site puts on a guaranteed prizepool for a tournament and the money collected from entries does not reach the guarantee. This means that then the site is putting the extra money into the prizepool.
In the long run this means a lot more players going into the back pockets of players and makes the games much easier to consistently beat at a higher ROI (return on investment) per game.
The most crazy piece of overlay I found came in the shape of this tournament where 2 people busted out early and then the late-registration was closed and I was guaranteed $200 for a $16.50 buyin with just 5 players having played the tournament. Sadly I couldn’t improve on the third place but still a very juicy piece of value.
'The Goldmine'
One tournament that I recognized very early in the challenge as being amazing value was the 5.50 $2k gtd which runs two times a day in early afternoons in Europe. I dubbed this tournament as ‘The Goldmine’ and the graph for this tournament through the challenge will show why.
I won this tournament four times, consistently overlaying around 20-30% of the prizepool, a very profitable tournament to be playing every day!
More Rackback is Better
I can’t stress enough the importance of putting in your poker volume where you are also getting rakeback from the site. ACR offers a very generous 27% rakeback to all players (if you find you’re not on this system and want to be contact support and they’ll move you over). In the long run this adds up to a LOT of extra value. It’s hard for me to precisely break this down as I played some bigger tournaments on GG which I sold action for.
The columns with RB in the Filter show total profit including rakeback and the ones below without. Even at these low average stakes you can still see that over 2,000 tournaments the difference with rakeback is an extra $500 in these tournaments alone.
I calculated it for the whole challenge across all sites and the amount of rakeback I’ve received for this challenge is over $1,000!
So if you want to maximize your profits please make sure you’re playing on sites that give you the best rakeback on offer, it will add up to a lot more money in your back pocket!
It’s also worth noting that ACR give you rakeback on all play including all tournaments that overlay, this makes for exceptional value in these tournaments!
The Final Tournament
I don’t normally play/stream on Sundays but on Sunday July 4th I saw there was a Short Deck Series starting on GG for a week, I’ve noticed these fields have been small/soft so I decided to fire up a session off stream and managed to make a final table and fire the stream up.
I needed 5th place or better to complete the challenge and I got exactly that.
Appropriate that a bankroll challenge for Americas Cardroom should be completed on American Independence Day.
It’s crazy to think that through the whole challenge I didn’t have a single four figure score but throughout the challenge it was the slow and steady cashes that won the overall race
If you want to see the full progress for the challenge and the bankroll management strategy you can check out the full sheet here: $1k – $11k BR challenge – Google Sheets
What is Next?
On Monday July 12th I’m going to start a new bankroll challenge to turn $10,000 into $30,000. I’ll also be giving away $2,000 to my community once I’ve completed this challenge so make sure you follow the progress on https://twitch.tv/pokerbrahs/
If you don’t have an ACR account and you’d like to get involved in some of the best MTT value anywhere online make your account today using this link https://t.co/tNpK13JEj9?amp=1 and code POKERBRAHS to enjoy 27% rakeback
