Kevin Martin has begun one of the wildest poker bankroll challenges ever, and every second of it can be witnessed on Twitch.
The popular longtime streamer has abandoned his entire bankroll — every last penny of it — in an attempt to go from $0 to a brand new bankroll. Martin answered a few questions for PokerNews during his Thursday stream, the second day of his unique challenge. He first explained what gave him the idea to go through with, more or less, starting his poker career over from scratch.
“I started my career in the micros,” the GGPoker ambassador explained. “I spun it from nothing to what I’ve created today, and I’ve always wanted to revisit it, and it’s about 10 years since I’ve started in poker.”
“Great chance to put away all my money and restart with zero. Just want to show people heart, hustle in poker, you can just spin it up in this industry.” – Kevin Martin
What’s the Deal with the Poker Bankroll Challenge?
“KMart” began his quest to go from zero to hero by pawning off a few items so that he’d have a small bankroll to begin the challenge. On Wednesday morning, he turned on the Twitch stream, and he vows to keep it going 24/7 for quite some time. And when he says 24/7, he means it.
That includes keeping the camera on while he sleeps or takes a shower (facing the opposite direction of the shower, of course). After he logged off the GGPoker client on Day 1, he kept the video feed going from inside his bedroom, and aired a replay of that day’s poker action along with it on the screen
Martin has a specific target goal to achieve — $5,000 — a bankroll “that would be fantastic because that’s what I had when I started my professional poker career.”
Achieving a four-figure bankroll from nothing isn’t the only goal of this challenge. He’s also striving to “set a record for longest stream for a poker player in history.”
Difficulties of a Bankroll Challenge
Martin, a reality TV star who appeared on Poker After Dark: Game of Gold last year and twice competed on Big Brother Canada, admits the challenge he’s taken on won’t be a walk in the park. But he’s confident in his abilities to pull it off.
“I bricked yesterday, and tournaments have a lot of variance,” Martin said of the rough first day of the challenge. “Yeah, it’s not going to be easy, this is really f*****g hard. This is really, really, really difficult. How many top tier pros have had bankroll challenges that they gave up on?”
Going even further, Martin says his “rate of failure is really high.” Many other high-profile pros have competed in bankroll challenges, with Chris Ferguson being the O.G. of it all when he went from $0 to $10,000 on Full Tilt Poker in 2011. Doug Polk is another high-stakes pro who successfully completed an online poker bankroll challenge when he built up from $100 to $10,000 in 2018.
Another obstacle “KMart” will face is getting enough sleep while attempting to reach his goal.
“I can go as long as possible, if I get my eight hours of sleep, I’m a health-oriented person. If I’m eating, sleeping, working out, I’ll be fine and I can cook for a long time. So, yeah, I’m tracking my sleep, and I must have eight hours every single day.”
Martin said he doesn’t have any side bet action on the challenge, although poker fans can certainly wager on it if they so choose. He stands to lose $30,000 or more putting this together, which includes renting out an apartment for streaming purposes and to pay his team.
“This is a pure soul project where I want to create something beautiful for the poker world. Yeah, obviously if it can blow up, that would be great, but yeah, no additional side bets.”
Poker fans can tune in to all the action 24/7 on the KevinMartin Twitch channel.