Current update:

Cash : $114.16
Ticket: $0

So after being able to bring back the value of my ticket to its maximum value, everything went down from there. Challenge ends here. Results: FAILED.

Silver lining: at least I made something $28 out of this challenge ($50 I left in my account, $20 from the ticket and around $16 in rakeback). I can still continue building up a roll for 10NL, but one of the rules I stipulated is that the challenge ends when my ticket values goes 0, so there it ends.

Post-mortem: I had several difficulties taking on this challenge: The main one is that Rush (or Zoom) just isn't the game for me, I think. I am really having a difficult time getting reads on players and couldn't make correct standard decisions. And I time-out while taking notes too often even getting folded out with AA once, so that too is a pain. On hindsight though, I think I should have just stuck to playing 2 tables instead of 4.

Another reason is that given the speed of how the game goes, I had very high expectations on how quickly I can win money. When I started out with pokerstars last year I was able to zoom past 5NL regular tables in just about 35k hands over a month and a half (excluding bonuses), yet here I am playing more than that number of hands and yet I haven't even managed to win 6 buyins, so I found myself in a lot of spots were I was forcing the issue (making bad bluffs, overbetting too much for value, etc.) which of course cost me money.

Another thing I realized, which I think is most important, is that I have become weak when it comes to standard stuffs. Given how readless we mostly are against villains at Rush, at least at 5NL, I find myself lost in such situations and making the wrong plays. This is quite alarming and I need to go back to the basics.

Now that I'm done with this craziness, I think I should just go back playing my regular stakes. The challenge was eye-opening though. I hope to retain the lessons I learned from the challenge.

Cheers!