How to Get 1 Billion Chips

Poker Discussion
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In January 2024 I started using Replay again. I think I had about 300,000 chips in my account at that time. After some early success in tournaments, I got hooked on the action and started playing as often as I could. By the time I won my first Widow’s Bite and got over 100M chips for the first time, it was only mid-February. So I thought, hey, if I can average about 100M profit per month, I can hit 1 billion by 2025. And I made that my unofficial goal.

Here it is the beginning of June and I just crossed 500M chips! So thus far, I am on pace to make it by the end of the year :grinning:

It’s basically been a steady 100M per month, playing as many high buy-in MTTs as I can. I probably spend about 3/4 of my Replay hours on tournaments. The rest of the time, I play high limit ring games where I can afford at least 20 buy-ins. Occasionally I “take shots” at higher limits and just play very conservatively, waiting to catch a big hand. Those guys love to take risks and play big pots, so even if you are kind of nitting it up you can still get paid.

I am writing this not just to flex (although I am proud of my results!) but in case any other players are curious if you can win a lot of chips on this site. The answer is yes, you can!

I’ve heard people worried that the top ranked (wealthiest) players “bought all their chips” and while I can’t speak for everyone, I certainly haven’t bought any and I don’t think most of those players do either. It has definitely been an adjustment taking what I know about poker “IRL” and applying it to the Replay population! But having now played almost 150k hands, I can also say with some confidence that the fundamentals of good poker strategy will still serve you well :money_mouth_face:

Shout out to @lihiue for providing very valuable feedback on strategy along the way and putting up with all my hand histories. He is a top 100 player on the site and probably knows poker better than I do. And big thanks to @Lelaina and @ChinoD, my Replay SQUAD, for always cheering me up when I get down about losing :innocent:

If anyone has questions about how to win on Replay, bankroll management, or any of that stuff feel free to hit me up! I’m far from the best player, but I’ve figured out a few things that work for me. Maybe they will work for you to - anyway, I’ll see you all in November/December, hopefully to check in and say that I did it and reached 1B chips in one year!

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Hi @Younguru
I love this post…
I hope you that you hit your goal!!!
Using solid poker fundamentals will enable you to exceed the goal that you have set for yourself!!!
Good luck!!!

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I hope you get the billion :index_pointing_at_the_viewer: :muscle:t2:
And I love to see your progress in your profile.

But a question: when you sign in for a tournament, what are the risk of losing the price money?
What is your strategy for buy in and win amount?

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@Younguru ,

I share your billion goal, although it’s been a four year journey for me. Lots of highs and lows. I’ve learned to take the bad beats in stride, stay patient and enjoy the competition. See you at the tables.

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Once I hit 25M I just played the highest limits tourneys as often as I could. For a 1M buy in, 1st place is often upwards of 11M so you don’t have to win that often to break even.

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A post was merged into an existing topic: Connaissance joueurs poker Cocorico

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what is the need for that? the chips are worthless and my time is not .

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:slight_smile: r use your black ( the big one with $50,000 credit limit ) credid card and get there in a day:) JK--------:slight_smile:

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You’re the anomoly. Just like in real life, some people have all the chips and the rest of us scramble about getting kicked back down with bad beats and no luck whatsoever day after day.

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I appreciate the sentiment, but I am not special. There’s nothing magical about me in particular :slight_smile:

I win because I study the best players in the world and make a consistent effort to try my best to play like them. I am still WAY short of accomplishing this, but it’s gotten me far enough that I can make a steady profit playing high stakes on Replay. I also put in way more volume than 99% of players, which lets me minimize the impact of variance.

I’ve lost 100M chips in a day, more than once. I’ve taken so many ridiculously bad beats—1 and 2-outers, stuff that goes viral on YouTube—that I can’t even begin to count them. Bad stuff happens to me all the time. I just play enough, and consistently well enough I suppose, that the + outweighs the - in the long run.

In June I played probably 100 hours of breakeven or slightly losing poker. It took 2 great sessions right around the end of the month for me to get back on track over that thirty-day span.

I won my first 5M buy-in tournament in February, and have played at least 6 of them every month since then. Yesterday I finally got 1st place again, after over 20 consecutive failed attempts. Poker is brutal. The variance comes for all of us. To be sure, some people are blessed and run way above expectation for their entire lives. But don’t be fooled into thinking that those are the only players who win—if you grind it out and play well, you’ll eventually get positive results. The only question is when :slight_smile:

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I should do the same. I’ve already been able to improve my skills a bit just by watching some old tournaments in the WatchWPT app and analyzing them a bit. Especially the FinalTables and HeadUps, you can learn a lot there. I can recommend it to anyone who wants to get better.

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Absolutely! I myself should study more and play less. But well, easier said than done :wink:

I don’t know how to say this without sounding condescending so I’ll just say it and apologize weakly—I think often we don’t fully appreciate just how hard it is to win at poker. I mean, you can literally do everything right and still lose money/chips over a 10,000 hand sample. There is so much chance involved at every step that making consistent progress can be difficult, and that’s frustrating. Worse, when we play well but get a bad result—like making a big bluff and running into the nuts, or opponents hitting a lot of draws against our made hands in a small sample—we can start playing worse in an effort to avoid that bad feeling (taking fewer spots, playing more passively because there’s less chance of busting).

I do a lot of positive self-talk to basically gaslight myself into not getting hung up on my bad results. I don’t always succeed, and sometimes I play poorly for long stretches in an effort to control things that I know, at heart, I really can’t control. It’s just a really hard game. Which is what I love about it <3

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I didnt mean you are special.

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How to win a billion chips:

  1. Not have fish donks butluck their way into 20 million GTD Grand Final Marathon.

  2. Then when you have been positionally semi TIGHT, carefully agressive, and blinds are either 300/600, or 400/800, amd 2.5 x Raise QJ suited in either UTG +1, UTG +2, 9 handed table, repping 99 to AA, AJ suited to AK, KQ suited, with a 26 bb stack, then not have previously mentioned fish donk opponent, not fish donk call call out of position with K8 offsuit garbage.

  3. Then dont have the flop come 8Qx rainbow, and then bet pot, with top pair, and then not have fish donk, donk call with bottom pair of 8’s, and then suck out trips 8’s on turn, and then not have fish donk slowplay turn by flat calling half pot bet on turn, because no way am I or any other good player putting the fish donk player on a hand like trip 8’s because surely the other player would not donk call preflop Early position raise from seeming tighty with Q8, K8, A8, J8, T8, etc, so because of that I have the other player on QT suited, JJ. So I bet 1/3 pot on river, and fish donk reraises all in, and I am pot committed, with only 4.5k, so have to call, and found out that yep he fish donked preflop, postflop, then butlucked fish donk butluck beat, knocked me out semi close to cashing the 20 mil GTD replay marathon grand final.

You get 1 billion chips by not having that happen, not having Variance rearing its ugly head at the most unlucky of times.

How a fish donk opponent gets all the way to the replay marathon grand final, and ao far into the replay marathon grand final, is beyond me, as very hard to butluck that far, that much.

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Pretty sure you know this and are just venting, but I doubt anyone has ever got to 1 billion chips without having that happening many times over. I doubt many have got to 1 billion chips without being able to recall hands accurately and honestly though.

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For instance: the Widow’s Bite 5M buy-in tourney happens twice every Sunday. That’s 8 times a month.

I make an effort to play as often as I can; I’ve probably played 25 of those this year, or more. I’ve gotten 1st place twice and 2nd place twice; most other times I don’t cash.

The key to MTT success is a sound approach, plus volume. The less volume you can put in, the more unpleasant your experience of variance can (and likely will) be.

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What are your win rates, cash rates, and podium rates and ROI for the MTTs? I really wish Replay would provide basic statistics like that especially considering the collect the data for the top lists.

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I do too! But since you asked, I will look at the last 100 or so and post here.

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I love statistics! Anyone wishing to analyze, please do!

rp2024current

I started playing NLH-High in December and would consider myself an average player.

sorry for jumping in on your post guru :slight_smile:

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Wow this is AWESOME, where to begin… did you do all this manually or did you code something? So cool!

Looks like your ITM is solid to quite good. People cite 15-20% as average for real $ games so even giving that a bump for Replay, you’re performing well above average, which is expected given you’re always on the toplists :slight_smile:

Having seen your general and especially FT play, both of which seem quite strong to me, I expected a few more wins—it’s possible the variance right now isn’t on your side, or maybe there are some leaks where you could be more aggressive or something. Hard to say just from these numbers.

I will run mine for a smaller sample (don’t have the patience to do a full year review rn, but it’s a motivating idea you’ve provided me with) and we can compare :slight_smile: