Poker Web Watch / Matthew Pitt / 28 July 2009 / Leave a comment

A couple of months ago, a SNG grinder by the name of Thomas Boekhoff hatched a plan at his home in Osnabruck, Germany that would initially see him ridiculed but would ultimately make him a household name in online poker circles.

He had already drawn some attention to himself by mass multi-tabling SNGs and by mass multi-tabling I am talking about in excess of 40 tables simultaneously using no software to open tables for him and he even posted a video on YouTube where he was playing a staggering 51 SNG at once! I am of course talking about the player known as Boku87.

Boku87 made a post on a well-known forum stating he could turn a starting bankroll of $100 into $10,000 within 15 days playing only low-limit SNG with a maximum buy-in of $16. He said he would bet $20,000 of his own money if he could 3:1 odds on him completing the challenge.

Fellow posters were queuing up to place money on him failing, seeing the challenge as extremely difficult and some even saying it was impossible.

By Day 11 Boku87 was close to quitting the challenge. His account balance showed $5,500 which although impressive, was off the pace by a long way. He made the decision to play two more sessions and if he did not run well then he planned to quit and lose the $20,000 he had invested.

The Poker Gods (amen) shone down on young Boku87 and he won close to $2,000 in just five hours and by Day 13 he was sat with $9,900 profit, enough to see him collect all the bets and cement a place in online poker's unofficial hall of fame.

After completing an epic challenge like this he needed to set some new goals in order to keep his concentration levels high and his interest in SNG. So on July 15 Boku87 started another challenge, this time taking $5 to $100,000 in one calendar year!

Unbelievably, Boku87 quickly went bust meaning that he had to grind out the play money tables so he could earn enough play chips to sell for cash. A day later, after some intense grinding he sold some play money chips and his challenge was back on track.

As I type this there has just been an update saying that his account balance is an astonishing $5,853.16 after just 12 days of play! Everyone knows Chris 'Jesus' Ferguson took $0 to $10,000 a few years back but if Boku87 manages to turn $5 into $100,000 then he may need to change his name to Jesus87!