A friend of mine has been grinding for a while, and told me that these $2 180s were profitable, so I started to grind them. I firmly believe these  $2 turbo 180s are one of the absolute best ways to build a bankroll online, and I took around $200 to around $1000 in a short amount of time.

The basic outline for these involves playing really tight in the early levels, and loosening up when the antes kick in, playing push/fold poker generally the entire way. People, especially at these levels, are not playing correct tournament poker, and are often raise/folding 1/3rd of their stack, or not shoving with any 2 cards in the button with 3bbs when folded to them on the button. There are (a bajillion) times during tournaments where you should be pushing with a Chimney Imp and a parking ticket. If you aren’t getting it in behind a lot, you aren’t playing winning tournament poker.

If you’re looking to utilize these juicy tournaments (I can definitely use juicy for any tournaments I maintain a 61% roi in 483 tournaments..lol), there are a couple things below you can utilize.

Bond18′s article series on MTTs is a MUST read for any tournament player. I found myself rereading this series (especially the stack size article) quite often during my short grind.

TableNinja is a program that will automatically register you for tournaments while you’re playing. You can also set hotkeys with this program, and utilize a “stacking” feature. The “stacking” feature allows one to very easily play 10-15 of these tournaments. I got up to around 20 before I had any problems. This, in my opinion, is a MUST for grinding these things. I wouldn’t even think of playing these without it.

Holdem Manager is another great program, for both cash and tournament players a like. Not going to really go in depth here, most people know about this program at this point.

Poker Stove is another program people need to use, and keep using, over and over, during their grind. This will help you justify when you shoved 83o into some douche bag’s K8o.

SNG Wizard is another great program for finding errors in your play. This is another must have for grinding tournaments, period.

These tournaments were a great bankroll builder, and I firmly believe that there is no better way to do it for so little startup. In addition, you really don’t need to have any confidence in your post-flop play to be successful.

Feel free to leave any questions in a comment below, and I’ll try my best to get to them.

Bankroll: $852

-Sean

Overrated thing of the day: AC/DC (they won a grammy. The grammys are overrated too, as mentioned before.)

Underrated thing of the day: The awesome fried rice cart on the University of Texas – Austin campus. $2 meals are ridiculous.

A lot of you know me personally, but plenty of you don’t. Hopefully both my successes and blunders will serve as entertainment and education for people looking to grind up online.

I set this goal slightly after the end of the Fall 2009 semester at the University of Texas – around December 17th. A friend of mine agreed to stake me, and I started grinding the $2 turbo 180s on Pokerstars.

My next post will detail the first few weeks of my journey, with a summary of my $2 180 strategy, and my overall results.

-Sean

Overrated thing of the day: Going to class…

Underrated thing of the day: “O’ Brother Where Art Thou?”