Hi 2+2,


very few of you will remember my last Challenge Thread attempt, where I tried to grind $7 to 1,1k by the End of the Year just by MTT-SnGs in order to become a $11 Tourney Regular.

I dropped the coverage here because there was basically no interest in it (understandable, the goal was not very ambtious) and it simply sucked trying to write something interesting about 30-40 tabling micro MTT SnGs.

The Challenge however was sucessfull, I managed to get there by the beginning of october and could start playing scheduled Tournaments spread over several sites

This was what I wanted when I started out the Challenge, so I should be happy, right?

Wrong! Ive learned several things about myself, my Pokermindset and Poker in General in the last 4 weeks:

My Goal was to restore the excitement for Poker I felt when I started out in 06, cashing in some big tourneys, running like god, making very nice money.

But the first thing Ive learned is that MTTs are fun if you run like god, the other 95% of the time it leaves you puzzled when you go to bed after a session if that bustout hand was screwed up anyhow, leaving you empty handed after 5 hours of play.

The nature of MTT grinding is to go through dry stretches for several months to hit a big score.

I or better said my banking account would appreciate a more steady payout

As a quite busy person (University, shortly before final exam, social life) it kind of sucks to be bound to fixed playing schedules)

I kind of didnt know what to do about it, until enlightment struck last sunday, while I was sitting at a friends house (freeroll grinder ) watching football (soccer ).

He just busted out of a 14k people Badugi freeroll and went on monkeytilt. He was itching to play, but none of his freerolls was about to start so he asked me for "staking"

I didnt remember my Party PW out of my head, but told him he should look into my FT Account if there was anything left he could use.

There were indeed about 4 dollars in rakeback and I told him he could use them If he wanted to (I know I shouldnt let any other person use my account, but letting this guy play is just a donation to the Poker Community)

He signed up for a 2 dollar PLO8 Tourney, thinking this was PLO when he realized that it was PLO8 he didnt want to play anymore,as he "has no clue about splitpotpoker which is gay anywayy..."lol

So I took the Laptop and started to donk a bit while we were stoneing and watching football.

I didnt pay attention, played very thight, busted one guy for a huge pot when I hit Quad 9s over his Nutfullhouse and after 3 hours I even made it to the final table.

After looking at the payout structure we decided to play for first place only and degend it up in a very bad way, while everyone else was nitting around.

I was shouted at, called nazi-degen (lol) and cursed, but in the End (as you might guess..) I donkshipped the Tourney for $65.

Being absolutley intoxicated, I felt completly tilted to ship a 2 Dollar Tourney after dropping like 30 BIs during the last week at my other tourneys.

One thing Ive always loved to do when I tilted was playing PLO HU, so I played some guy from hungary at PLO 50 HU, and after beeing down to 17 Dollars in between I finally busted the guy for about $150

Friend: Dude, that is one sick game...

Me: Yeah, I love PLO, I wished I could play it good enough to grind it...

Friend: Why don´t you just learn it?

Me: Well.....


Always when I just played Poker just for fun, not looking at hourly rates, EV or anything else I played shorthanded PLO and usually have a good time no matter if im winning or not, so It the best way to restore my passion for poker is by going with the game I love

So I take these 150 bucks I donked off from this hungarian dude and this be my challenge bankroll

My Plan is to Play 100 $1.10 deepstack HU SnGs on tilt, and evaluating after that. If I feel I beat this limit I play 100 $2.10s, and $5.25s after that.

This is where the Challenge hits its first Milestone, If I can play the $5.25s profitable ill buy OM, analyse my play, sign up at a training site to plug leaks and take my tourney BR for a shot at PLO 50 HU

Until then, I wont do any coaching or video watching as I want to develope my own thought processes, and experiment with them while playing as long as the money is not important.

If I dont beat any of those 3 levels, the challenge is over


I dont want to develope an robotic, unflexible way of thinking about hands as I did in NLHE, but always thinking about different possibilities to play my hand

I will go through to handhistories and analyse my decision for myself though and will post some interesting hands to discuss them with people who are interested

The worst thing that can happen is that I drop 110 Dollars and never touch a PLO game again in my life, but go back to grind MTTs, the best thing is a completly new Pokerlifestyle.


Ok, this was long, I apologize for the bad english, its only my third language

I will start the challenge maybe tommorrow, probably on saturday as I want to learn a bit about standard PLO math/ preflop odds as a fundamental before I start out, but now I finally watch the new wsop episodes

see you guys.

Gl OP, will follow. HU PLO cash is super degen stuff, so I hope you make it that far lol.

Ok, a quick summary what happened so far:

I gave the whole thing a few more thoughts and came up with the following modifcations:

HU Sngs suck, even the deepstacked ones, because they are against the postflop nature of PLO, and deepstacked SnGs are also only deepstacked for 2 levels.

After that it starts to become a donkament. - sucks

So whats the alternative? I asked a friend of mine (who is a msnl HU Reg btw) and he told me that he used to start playing HU at bet365, where they have HU tables from NL and PLO 2 on.

So I shipped my roll to bet365 and sat at at 2 tables deepstacked (1 Euros and british pound each)

Soon a huge fish joined my Pound table who dropped 9 BI's over the next 2k hands before he surrendered, but this was pretty much the only action Ive got at B365 that evening.

Out of boredom I started to play a bit PLO/PHE 2 on FT while waiting for opponents and won additional 3 BI's at 2 2-3 handed tables.

I decided that even though my ultimate goal is the HU game its better for my developement as a player to start with 6-max until I can take s hots at PLO50 HU, as game selection is much easier there, and a lot of additional value is added from the opportunity to play more hands against fishes in position on more tables.

Today was usually planned as a tourney day, but I felt like throwing in a short session after the tourneys where through, and I ripped another 5 BI's at 8tabling PLO2 over 1k hands

I also ordered Advanced PLO Vol1 by Jeff Hwang and PLO - Understanding winning Play by W.Jockusch (I found it cool that he is like me a former MTG Nerd) and started to read Jeff hwangs book.

Im also planning on buying OM small in the next days, as its probably the best learning tool available and i should really use it get a better understanding for the math behind it while learning the basics.

Ive btw also ordered Leatherasses book, in order to learn from his sick grinding ability ( a skillset im also lacking by now)

The next days, studying and learning fundamentals will be first, but im planning to put in some serious sessions soon.

so far, thx for attention

imo up to plo100 HU the games are very beatable.

Shouldnt every level be beatable theoretically? Or is the rake a problem on certain limits?

Anyway, Id be very happy if I could even establish on PLO 50.