Gamification of the Poker Journey with GJReggie

The new year is a great time (but not the only time!) to start a new challenge and to plan for the months ahead. This rings true for your poker playing as well!

Setting a plan for your poker playing is vital to your poker journey, and dividing your time between playing and studying is encouraged for poker players of any level. A fundamental aspect of an established poker plan is adherence to bankroll management and time management guidelines, so you are able to lose in the short term and still win out in the long term.

PokerStars ambassador Georgina James, best known as GJReggie, and her team have developed their own exciting poker playing challenge with a particular focus on bankroll management and combining playing poker with the mechanics of levelling up through experience (XP) in role playing games, like that of the Final Fantasy or Persona series.

The challenge will see GJ start from the bottom of the poker-playing ladder and use a disciplined approach; using results, hand-playing experience, the study of past games and the balance of playing with a healthy routine to move up in stakes.

We were able to chat with GJ about the new challenge.

Why have you decided to do this?

I’m just always thinking of new ideas for the stream and enjoy doing something different. For a while I felt like I wasn’t putting out the best content, and that what I was doing was stale and I really wanted to come up with something to freshen things up both for myself and the stream. I think it’ll be fun, and hopefully something people will be able to follow and enjoy too!

Why did you decide to take on bankroll management as the focus of your challenge?

I often get questions on stream about where to start in poker, how to move up the stakes, etc. and I think bankroll management is a really important part of that for new players wanting to get better at the game and build a bankroll, and its something that players can often struggle with too.

I know it can be hard to play and grind the smallest of stakes; sometimes efforts can seem futile to play for hours to only win enough money for a cup of coffee. I’m hoping this challenge is something people can not only learn a bit from but also realise they can have fun with it too. After all, whats the point in playing if you’re not going to enjoy it?

What made you want to merge the elements of role playing games and poker?

I just love playing both! I know my stream is built my stream around poker but I also have a huge love for video games too, particularly RPG’s. Trying to come up with an idea for some new kind of content or challenge, something that suited me, my personality and style – it just seemed to make sense to try and bring my two loves together.

I know there are a lot of challenges on Twitch right now, and a lot of the time it’s focused on profits and stream volume. I know I’m not a marathon streamer or one of the best players and so I just wanted to create something that I thought we be unique, fun and engaging.

What are you hoping for?

I’m just hoping it works and that I can keep up! I’ve tried a few different things over the last two years of streaming; some have been been pretty minor edits, some others have been series-focused competitions or challenges. Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes ideas don’t last more than a few streams.

I think if this goes well, it’s something we can keep adapting and growing and changing as it goes on and it could really be the focus of how I run the streams going forward. The main thing will be that the viewers enjoy it! I’m hoping it’ll be something I can start documenting and putting out on YouTube too through highlight compilations. I’m just testing the waters with that at the moment. If it’s not that easy to maintain or people aren’t interested then it’ll just be another idea I try that doesn’t quite work out!

How does the levelling work exactly?

I’ll be starting at Level 0 with a set amount of HP. HP being the equivalent to my daily allowable bankroll. I’ll gain XP by playing poker. I’ll get a base amount of experience based on the number of hands I play, with bonuses applied if I either cash, make a final table, win a tournament or take a bounty.

As I gain experience, I’ll level up and with that I get a little more HP allowing me to play slightly bigger games each time. There will also be opportunities to earn a little extra XP through various daily and weekly sidequests – shoutout to SirTom for creating an easy method of being able to track all this behind the scenes!

The XP chart GJ will be using in her challenge

Which part of the challenge are you most looking forward to?

I’m actually really excited to see all the tracking and the level up mechanism in action. A lot of this stuff is really “behind the scenes” but I’m hoping it will help build a story and provide some fun insights and statistics along the way. I also have a feeling that the moderators and viewers will be able to come up with some cruel and unusual sidequests to help (or hinder) me along the way, which is both exciting and a little terrifying!

And which part of the challenge do you think will be the hardest?

From a levelling point of view, I think once I get past the first few levels, the difficulty will ramp up quite quickly. We’ve tried our best to balance it out, but it’s something we won’t know we’ve got right until we get there.

I’m going to have to be smarter about the games I play and make sure I study. I’m also going to try and stick to a fixed schedule and need to refrain from buying and eating chocolate unless I do well, and that sort of discipline is not my forté!

How much chocolate are you able to eat in one sitting?

A LOT. I have a slight confession in that I’ve eaten enough chocolate in one go to make me feel a bit ill afterwards on more than one occasion… I just have a massive sweet tooth and sometimes it gets the better of me!

You can follow GJ’s journey at twitch.tv/gjreggie and join the community on her Discord server.