Bankroll Challenges and Prop Bets
Online poker is a buzzing environment, with new challenges and prop bets announced every month. Many poker players will have heard of the god-like bankroll challenges that the likes or Chris Ferguson and Boku87 have achieved online.
We’ve listed a number of the most extreme bankroll challenges completed by professional poker players below.
Chris Ferguson – From $0 up to $10,000
In September 2007, Full Tilt Poker Pro Chris Ferguson successfully built up a $10,000 from nothing in 15 months. All of his winnings were donated to the “Save the Children Foundation”.
Starting with $0 in his Full Tilt Poker account, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson started off playing freerolls until he had enough money to sit down in the micro-limit cash games at Full Tilt Poker. It took him 7 months before he built up $100, and then another 8 months before he hit the $10k mark.
The rules of his bankroll challenge meant that he would never buy into any cash game or SNG with more than 5% of his total bankroll, or more than 2% in tournaments. In addition to this, if his chips stack ever rose above 10% of his total bankroll than he would have to leave the tables.
From $0 up to $100,000
Continuing on from his previous challenge, Ferguson aimed to add a “zero” to his current bankroll, building on the $10k that he has already won.
After hitting some downswings (going from 30k to $10k), Ferguson eventually hit the $100k mark after winning $68,000 coming 5th in Event 15 in the FTOPS XVII.
Boku87 -From $100 up to $10k within 15 Days
Boku87 is a 22 year old German PokerStars Pro who successfully turned a $100 bankroll into $10k in less than 15 days.
What’s most incredible about Boku’s challenge was his ability to multi-table more than 50 SNGs at a time. Even most mid-stakes professionals would have a difficult time multi-tabling half this number of games.
Starting his 3:1 prop bet on the 3rd March 2009, Boku made $322 profit in Day 1 from 550 games, $731 profit on Day 2, and after playing $12 and $16 SNGs he eventually succeed in building a $10k bankroll by Day 15. Boku actually won the bet by Day 14 when SharkScope.com showed a total profit of $10011, however he continued playing and his bankroll fell below this after some bad beats, to which he made it up again on Day 15 finishing on $10,042. You can read more about the rules of his challenge http://pokerbankrolls.org/boku87-10k-prop-bet-challenge/).
