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During all this time, game have produced many players who chose it as a profession. This is the story about one of them and his challenge.
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Chris Ferguson is born on April 11, 1963 as a child of parents who have doctoral degrees in mathematics, while his father, Thomas Ferguson, teaches game theory and theoretical probability at UCLA.
In 2006. he started an usual challenge to make $10.000 from $0. After 16 months, Chris finally achieved his goal and donated his winnings to the Save the Children Foundation.
So, how the hell he did it?!
He says: “For me, this experiment isn't about the money. It's about showing how, with proper bankroll management, you can start from nothing and move up to the point where you're playing in some pretty big games. I know it's possible because I did it once before, turning $1 into $20,000.
To ensure that I keep my bankroll intact, I've adopted some key rules:
1) I'll never buy into a cash game or a Sit & Go with more than 5 percent of my total bankroll (there is an exception for the lowest limits: I'm allowed to buy into any game with a buy-in of $2.50 or less).
2) I won't buy into a multi-table tournament for more than 2 percent of my total bankroll and I'm allowed to buy into any multi-table tournament that costs $1.
3) If at any time during a No-Limit or Pot-Limit cash-game session the money on the table represents more than 10 percent of my total bankroll, I must leave the game when the blinds reach me.”
Starting with nothing but a Full Tilt Poker account (he helped launching the site in 2004.), Chris played in Freerolls until he earned enough to graduate to games with real-money buy-ins.
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Getting started wasn’t easy. In fact, it took more than seven months of steady play until he got his bankroll to stabilize at about $6.50. Undaunted, Chris maintained his discipline and dedication and continued with his challenge. Then, on November 26th, 2006, Chris made a major breakthrough. He turned a $1 tournament buy-in into $104 in prize money when he finished second in a 683-player tournament. Even with that huge bankroll boost, it still took Chris nine more months of hard work to reach $10K. But because he strictly adhered to the bankroll management strategy that he’d set for himself, Chris achieved his goal the following September.
“Even today, people don't believe it's really me when I sit down at Full Tilt's small stakes games. They ask what I'm doing down here, and often tell me stories about how they turned $5 into $500 or $100 into $1,000. Usually, these stories end with the person telling me that they went broke. There's no surprise there. These folks tried to quickly build a bankroll by gambling. They'd play in a game that was beyond their bankroll and, if they happened to win, they'd move up to a higher limit and risk it all one more time. Inevitably, they'd lose a few big hands and go broke.”
www.chrisferguson.com www.wikipedia.org www.fulltiltpoker.com
