What is your favorite color?

A friend and I were discussing that freeroll tournament I posted about a week or so ago. As I did during my semi-live blogging, I was complaining about the minuscule prizes available. He replied that it was all for fun anyway, so what difference did it make.

I've been thinking about that, and have to admit that while I once kicked ass at the limit tables, something changed about two years ago and I've done nothing but lose at limit since then. More recently I've been playing close to even, but certainly not picking off fish like I once did. Exploration of the reasons for this change would probably fill many blog entries, so I'm just going to state it as a fact here and move on.

As has been discussed in many blogs of late, thanks to Miami Don bringing it up, the odds of making big money playing tournaments are very questionable. I said to one of my co-workers a while back, tournaments are like lotto where skill can get you a few extra tickets. (I read somewhere recently that Barry Greenstein stole that from me. Last time I pass my pearls of wisdom along to Barry.)

So that leaves NL ring. I am slowly coming to the realization that I may not have the cojones to play NL ring at the level required to make really good money at it. I am not a huge risk taker. One of the guys I work with went sky diving a few months back. He emailed everyone video of he and his wife jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. To me, that's borderline insanity. I clearly don't have the danger gene.

NL Hold'em at the level required to make real money still strikes me as very dangerous. Maybe I'll get used to it eventually, but, at the moment, I just can't bring myself to buy in for more than about $100, and even that makes me very nervous.

So, where does all this lead? It leads to the realization that if I'm not playing poker strictly for the fun of it, I'm deluding myself.

At least for the near future, I'm setting aside concerns about seriously growing my bankroll -- which is probably for the best since it hasn't moved significantly in a positive direction in longer than I can remember -- and going on a quest to have fun with poker. I've decided this quest shall be one of those rags to riches chases, and have therefore begun a seriously under-funded attempt to turn $5 into $5,000.

Okay, this maybe sounds like an attempt to do exactly what I just said I wasn't going to do -- grow my bankroll. I suppose it is, but that isn't the point of the quest. The point is to see if I can do it and how long it takes.

I've started with $5 at the $0.05/$0.10 NL tables. As I said, this was a seriously under-funded beginning. My first session made it look like it would be easy. I more than doubled up in no time. But then I took some bad beats and got stung by some idiots drawing against all logic and the odds at inside straights and hitting them at the river.

After five sessions I've grown my original $5 to $9.40. If I can double that up five more times I'll have enough bankroll to safely play at this level. Wish me luck. I'll post updates as the quest unfolds.

I'm also thinking of trying the Ironman thing at Full Tilt. I've meant to do it before but always forgot about it until the month was half over. This time I got started early, so I may make it. The only problem is that I can't multi-table NL very well, so I tend to play limit when doing point chases. I don't know if I can survive a whole month of playing a couple hours of limit almost every night. I'm not sure my bankroll can survive it. (The "quest" bankroll is virtual. I have a bit more than $9.40 in my Full Tilt account.)