The Tuition Challenge (low content)

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I'm 18 years old and a senior in high school. Next year, I will be attending Boston College. The only dilemna is that, coming from a lower-middle-class Connecticut family, I have to pay for college all by myself. Thanks to various financial awards, my estimated cost is a very manageable $13,055. Nevertheless, I hate having debt of any kind - I like to be the one doing the lending, not the borrowing, as my friends will attest (no, I'm not a loan shark [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]). In the next 75 days, I am going to try to win this much & more playing online poker.

I have always been fond of gambling - as early as 8th grade, I would play games of 8-ball, tennis matches, and assorted card & dice games with my friends for stakes as high as $100. Though it would be years before I knew the term 'EV', I always understood that betting with an edge trumped any ripoff house games like blackjack or craps.

In 2003, I was lucky enough to discover a sports message board on which a few posters were taking bets on their own made-up props (payable mainly via Etopps cards, highly-liquid sports cards which could easily be "converted" to cash on eBay). I exploited two prop bets in particular - one that paid 2:1 for correctly picking the top individual scorer in a NBA game, and another which asked if a particular MLB game would have over or under 1.5 HRs hit (at 1:1 odds). I consistently chose Allen Iverson, Tracy McGrady, or Paul Pierce for the NBA prop and baseball games with high over/under totals for the "over 1.5 HR" MLB prop. I made quite a bit off these two props, but I blew a lot of that money attempting to Martingale my way to small victories against another poster who took his odds (and juice) directly from Sportsbook.com. Deep down, I understood that betting systems were fallacious, but it took a 4-digit loss to reinforce that lesson.

In February of 2004, I was introduced to poker by fellow 2+2 poster Eevee. I went to the library and borrowed a book with a one chapter section on Texas Hold'em and made my first $100 deposit at PartyPoker that same week. I watched my balance fluctuate greatly as I bounced around from $0.5/1 to $1/2 and $2/4. At some point, I cashed out my original $100 and continued to gamboooooool with what was now house money. The high positive variance that I experienced in the beginning made me think I was God's gift to poker, but after months of 1- and 2-tabling low-limit hold'em games I had little to show for it. Luckily for me, I discovered 2+2 sometime in the summer of 2004 and began to 4-table Party $0.5/1 and NL 25 tables with much success. I was making more from poker than my cashier job, and so I quit Brooks Pharmacy in November of 2004, confident that I could make online poker a viable part-time job.

Homer's post in the zoo about Reef Club Casino's $200 bonus in November 2004 introduced me to casino whoring, which was a major infusion to my bankroll. Thanks to the Playtech stickies and a foray into $5/10 6 max, I bought my first car in January of 2005 - a 1996 Subaru Legacy - which I promptly crashed (but that's another story). Both the car and I were fine, but my bankroll was barely intact - I had about $1,500 to my name, and my only choices were to (a) sell my basketball card collection that I had built up with income up to that point, or (b) continue to play on PartyPoker while cashing out every so often so that I would have spending money.

I chose option b, but without a sufficient bankroll for 5/10 6 max, I started by 4-tabling $22 SNGs on PartyPoker. I built my bankroll mostly through $22 and $33 SNGs and later moved up to the $109 and $215 levels.

Frustrated by the number of pros at the $109 and $215 levels, I am currently 8-tabling the $33 SNGs on Party & skins. I reserve the right to move up in stakes later in the challenge (after all, it's MY challenge [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]), but for now, the $33 level is my home.

My goal is to win $15,000 playing SNGs and the occasional cash game on Party & skins by July 15, 2005. All of my rakeback payments for this time period will go towards "spending money." Since I want to keep my bankroll healthy, I will not dip into the initial balances of my Empire or Eurobet accounts. Hopefully, this challenge will encourage me to win more than $15,000 in the next 75 days so that I can build my bankroll at the same time.

I will post semi-regular updates on this challenge here. It does not matter if anyone reads it - hopefully by posting it out in the open, I'll be as motivated as those who have attempted similar challenges in the past.

I'm sorry if this post turned into an abbreviated life story!

[this guy]

Good luck.

[Ianco15]

I wish you all the best luck and I hope you make it. I also hope you have a contingency plan if you don't make it (student loans you can get, etc.).

[steaknshake925]

nice writing

and good luck

[Perseus]

Where in CT are you from. I grew up in Stratford

[BritNewbie]

I wish you every success.

[jzpiano14]

GL i'm on a similar quest, but I can't play over the summer and have to come up with 30k a year, looks like your in better shape than I am [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
Frustrated by the number of pros at the $109 and $215 levels, I am currently 8-tabling the $33 SNGs on Party & skins.

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Evan]

I am doing the same thing pretty much. I win for having the biggest uphill battle though....thanks NYU!

[bicyclekick]

Good luck.