After cashing out a pretty large chunk of my bankroll to care for the holidays and year-end family expenses back in November, I had to find a way to build back up. When I looked at the options, I simply didn't want to invest countless hours at the micro games clearing bonuses, so I looked to SNG's, partly because I wanted to develop my NL touney skills, and partly because I was sick of ring games.

I've usually done fairly well at the $11-$33 level, but the variance just seemed too steep for my meager BR, so I decided to try the mini-steps instead. I took my measely $220 I had left and gave it a go.

After a few attempts at the mini #1 (one buy-in, a couple freerolls), I looked at the structure again and came up with the following plan:

1) Buy directly into Mini #2 ($20+2)
2) Play for 5th place
3) Turn on the jets when I'm guaranteed a re-roll into my current step level.

Now, I have admit I've put in about 160+ hours this month into this, and had to play COUNTLESS re-rolls and a few dropbacks (twice from 4 back to 2) but I've had the following results:

10 Direct Buy-ins = $220
2 Bust-outs before Step 5
1 Finish OOM on Step 5 (Finished 7th)
7 Cashes on Step 5 - (2)5th=$400, (4)3rd=$2000, (1)1st= $2000

$4400 total winnings, $220 Fees = $4180 profit, at roughly 160 hours = $26/Hr.

Now, I know this doesn't seem like a lot to most people, but considering the bone-dry bankroll I started with, this worked out very well. Not only have I built up enough to be flexable again hunting the bonus $, but I've also given myself a cushion to deal with the variance again on the $11's and $22's.

For me, this was far more advantageous than grinding out bonuses playing micro-limits, and had a more manageable risk/reward factor than just playing the standard SNG's. I forced myself to play smarter poker overall when the game was still 5+ handed, and got to really work on honing my short-handed skills after I met my top-5 finish goal. And of course, once reaching the final table, I had to really focus on the game and play to the best of my ability against a wild range of competition (the same gentleman who took me out on my only non-cash final table was, ironically, the same guy I beat HU in my only victory two days later).

I'm going to continue next month with this strategy, so I'll fire up PT and crunch some hard numbers for you guys if you're interested. But I wanted to throw this little story out there because I've found it to be a very good alternative to the standard bankroll-building grind.

Thanks for listening,

MotorCityMike