I've been playing poker for a couple of years now and I'm still hacking around the low level of entry games. My preferred games are multi table tourneys but I've never had the bankroll/balls to play the decent entry level games for any long period of time. By decent entry, I'm only talking about $50 games, but if you don't cash in a few, the cost soon builds up, especially if you like to play daily as I do. So, I end up with all the other hopefuls hoping for a mega luck fest in the $5 ish buy in tourneys. I've have played higher buy in games before and I know I can cope with them, but I can't cope with going on a non cashing run of several tourneys as it just ruins my bankroll.

I'd love to say I was one of those that deposited $50 a couple of years ago and now I'm playing $100/$200 NL ring games, but my poker life is way off that. I've tried cash games and I've tried stt's but I'm a break even cash player at best and get frustrated playing low level stt's partially because of the correct fold fold fold strategy you need to adopt to become a long term winner, but also because of the low pay out, I'm seduced by the thoughts of winning thousands from my $5 entry fee and so I mainly stick to my multi tables but have a dabble here and there in the other games when I feel good about things.

Anyway, my point? Whilst I'm not one of life's poker prodigys, I'm going to try and concentrate and perform good bankroll management for mtt's and get myself playing the $55+ tourneys on a regular basis whilst not having to worry about any losing spells. I think I'm an above avereage player and whilst I haven't turned my first ever deposit into millions, I have build up some nice funds and can't remember the last time I reloaded from my 'real life cash'. So, how am I going to fund my life in a bigger buy in world you ask? (well you probably aren't asking but I'll tell you) - by avoiding the cheap 2000 runner mtt's and concentrating on building up a bankroll of T$. Now I still have to start of cheap but Stars have introduced $5 turbo rebuys to the later on $55 tourneys - excellent news. They attract just under 200 people usually and usually have at least 1 seat for every 4 people in them. It's only a small profit but for $15 I can get $55 back and do it on a regular basis, and profit is profit. The only downside is that they start late for us UK players, but we'll get a bit quieter at work soon so I'll play them late in the night and go into work late after a bit of kip hopefully.

The plan is to play these until around $700 then I'm going to start playing sats to the Sunday Million to build up quicker. Every now and again, I'll play the event I qualify for and if I cash then that's great, but if not, there's nothing lost. This has already started pretty much, but I'm going to concentrate more starting October as I have a heavy weekend ahead

So after ruining my bankroll at cash games, I took in a few mtt's tonight and managed to cash in 3 out of 4 turning a nice profit for the day and making a small profit after my losses in the cash. Quite pleasing and perhaps I should stick to tourneys.

My best result was 41st in the $25k on blonde, but it was a bit of a sick ending. I had 99 on the button and when it folded to me I min raised to 20k and the big blind called. Flop came 8 high, he checked, I bet 50k into, he moved all in, he just about had me covered so I had to call. Anyway, he had Jacks and I was out. Bit disappointing as it was right on a bubble, one more out and I'd have doubled my $74 to $145 which is annoying, especially as there was a couple of shorties on my table of less than one big blind.

Still, I was going for the win I guess and it's still a profit for the night, very pleased overall.

In a bid to build my crappy bankroll back up, I thought I'd play some limit cash again. First couple of days went ok and I showed a nice profit. Well, a profit. The last couple of sessions seem to have been shit though. I forgot that you can't get people off bottom pair no kicker in limit games so when they hit runner runner to hit the straight, your nice hand pre and post flop looks amateur and you've lost half the buy in in the process. Anyway, bottom line is that I'm down $100 now. I'll get it back though, I think I'll move back down to $0.50/$1.00 and rebuild. Perhaps a better starting hand strategy would help. I'm away for a week soon so I'll read the Small Stakes Hold em book that I have properly.

On the plus side, I'm quarter of the way to Silver again on Stars - wooo! I may have to get a new iPod soon so getting silver or preferably gold, would be an advantage, although I'd rather not go busto in the process!