Day 1/35: +$575

Good start, played a bunch of Chinese, some BigO and a nice table of 12-game.



We had this fun Fantasy Land with two almost uninterrupted Straight Flushes (unfortunately in 2-7, so we could only use one).



This $330 NLHE hand in the mix where we bet twice and got donked into on the river. More on this later.



And an interesting 2-7TD hand where, after a 3bet pre, we 4-bet 985 after the first draw and decide not to break it against two pats from our opponent. Usually, this hand is not strong enough to face this much aggression, but especially in the draw games, it is extremely valuable to observe what kind of hands your opponents pat or break. Badugi is an even better example for this.

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Given the different games I played today, I was thinking about my own strength in the different games and what I want to put my effort into in the future to maximize the value of my time. I came to this conclusion:

FLHE: 6/10 - The game I won the most money in lifetime, back when starting hand charts were still a new thing. It's a game of small edges (where whether you want to x/r flop, x/c - x/r turn or x/c - donk turn is a huge infliction point) and one people have a reasonably good intuition in, but one that punishes fishes heavily. Given it's in most live mixes, probably worth refreshing knowledge in.

PLO8: 3/10 - This one I am not very good in. It is so different from BigO because there, pairs and 3-low hands are so much more prevalent, and I struggle to grasp the concepts of this game without getting too nitty. It's played rather passively, yet you can find thin value bets in unconventional spots. I would like to get better in this, whenever it comes up, I feel uncomfortable.

Razz: 9/10 - Rather simple game, with some intricacies. However once you figure out how blocking / figuring out pairing cards for your opponents work, most decisions are trivial.

Stud: 6/10 - This one is tougher, because it involves more hand reading which is not my strength. I know I call down too much in that game, so usually I just start pretty tight so that my hand strength justifies my weaknesses.

Stud8: 8/10 - People make huge mistakes in starting hands here, if you are able to conceptualize what hands are good to start with, you're usually already good to go. The split part seems to break many people's brain here.

2-7 TD: 9/10 - I love this game. You can get so creative with pats if you block low cards, figuring out opponent's patting/breaking patterns is huuuugely valuable and aggression is key. It's great fun.

NLHE: 5/10 - Of course, many of these are relative to your opponent's strength. The truth is, most people focus on their NLHE game and therefore have spent more time on this game than me. However, recently I have put effort into getting up to speed, with minimum defense frequencies, geometric bet sizing etc. and I don't feel like an automatic underdog anymore. I do, however, still find it mind numbingly boring.

4PLO: 6/10 - Another game that I find hard to conceptualize beyond the basics. I am winning here, however in an experienced field, I probably run into issues.

5PLO: 8/10 - This game, however, I feel more confident in, specifically because it's less about preflop aggression and aggression postflop is usually rewarded more. I consider it a much more balanced game than 4PLO as draws and made hands are more evenly stacked up against each other, compared to 4PLO where made hands reign supreme or 6PLO, where draws do.

Badugi: 9/10 - Same as 2-7 TD, you can be really creative, aggression wins and finding out drawing patterns/which 3-suit hands you can comfortably value bet is just printing money.

Baducey/Badacey: 8/10 - These games are tricky. Most people undervalue the badugi part of this game and therefore frequently get freerolled, which makes winning really easy. However, finding situations where you should abandon the badugi part in favor of just winning the low is very tricky and intricate. Two more games that I would love to get better in, but good information on them is hard to find.

Big O: 9/10 - Another one of my favourites. The amount of different situations that can come up, which multiway pots, whether you have a 2, 3 or 4-low hand, when pairs are playable - this game will never be fully solved, and that's beautiful. I could think about this game for years to come and still find more details to learn.

NL2-7SD: 7/10 - This is one that a year ago, I would have rated closer to a 4. Very, very technical game where sticking to mathematical principles just pays off. People are very bad at this game, so situations where you can get this game running are usually gold mines.

OFCp (2-7, normal, prog): 10/10 - People think, these are not real poker. They think it's easy to play and figure out. Man, are they wrong. They're a thing of beauty, where thinking about what your opponent discarded can make a 5 point difference - PER HAND. The amount of value you can have here is staggering. I would play this against almost anyone for any stake.

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Given we all only have 24 hours in a day, and I am exceptionally lazy as a person, figuring out what to spend time on has always been an issue for me. I believe that Omaha is gonna grow in popularity, specifically the 5-card variants, so I think learning these, especially given the complexity and therefore skill ceiling you can reach being very high, is the best value.

However, from a pure skill difference standpoint, the draw games should always be in the back of one's head, for when you find a game of them running, it can easily make your month.

Good Luck manggggg.

If you decide to sell ... I'd buy some.

Very interested in travel recaps / experiences of these smaller central/Eastern/Caucuses cities (considering pulling the trigger moving to that region or South America)

Thanks! I don't think I will sell any and if I do, I have some real life friends who have eternal dibs, but I'll let you know if there is.

I'll try to get on the road a bit more again, there are some other, mostly smaller venues I'm interested in checking out (Kosice, Miskolc, Komarno, Vienna and Vilnius).

Day 2/35: +$670

1176€ / 4000€ reached.

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Most of today's profit, again, came from Chinese, with some 5PLO and Mixed Games sprinkled in. Unfortunately I lost a $150 with TT vs. ATo, but other than that, I ran alright.





and a fun little 5PLO hand:



I have been playing these minbets with some success recently. For some reason, as soon as people see a bet of any size, the thought of slow playing their hand immediately evaporates. In this case it probably didn't make a difference, but the psychology is quite intriguing.

Day 3/35: +928€

2104€ / 4000€ reached.

Almost 9 hours of continuous Chinese, my brain is scrambled.

No action yet, so it's time for

Day 4/35: +16€

2120€ / 4000€ reached.

Ran horrendously in Chinese (which was expected after the recent upswing), completely botched a hand in BigO for absolutely no reason, then got bailed out for breakeven with this hand:



Preflop 3- and 4bet ranges are still a massive weakness of mine. In this hand I made it 2bb, we got a coldcall by a fish in BU and BB then makes it 14bb. It's hard for me to believe that a shove here is massively -EV with real life ranges, but apparently it is. I guess I just have to swallow my pride and re-learn these ranges from scratch.

So as a little side challenge, I commit to 5 hours of GTO Wizard drills and range work until the end of October.

Day 6/35: +170€

2290€ / 4000€ reached.

Well, the upswing had to end eventually. Played a looong session yesterday and ended up breakeven after running it up in Chinese, then losing the same amounts in Big O. Small session today for small profit, but I can't play any more, have to leave my apartment for the cleaning lady so the plan is to go exercising, then play the tiny Omaha tournament live. Good practice.

I got a chance to start staking a guy I met in the poker club here and so far, it's going great.



60/40 split in my favor, we settle monthly. Anyway, he had a hand yesterday that I am interested in other people's opinions:

Blinds 100/200, BU straddle 500. Hero raises 1500 with T 9, BB flats, UTG (good aggro reg) 3bets to 4k, CO (fish) calls, hero calls, BB calls.

Flop: Q T 5 - Hero checks, BB checks, UTG bets 11k. CO folds, hero calls, BB folds.

Turn: 6 - Check, reg bets 20k, we call.

River: Q - Check, he goes all-in for 90k.

"I tanked a bit and called off. But I shold just blockbet/fold rivers, like 25k. But he is overaggro in general, and I was unblocking all of his gutshots which he turns into triple barel."


Suggestions welcome.

Day 7/35: +155€

2445€ / 4000€ reached.

Mostly due to these two 5PLO hands:





That second one is quite interesting in my opinion. Obviously we are not folding the flop. On the turn, our hand looks like a check/fold but given the amount already in the pot, I decided to use the A to put pressure on flop two pairs like K8/87+straight draws etc. Our fold equity is low-to-none, but I thought going for it with this massive of a draw can't be terrible.

Got bailed out of course, as you can see.

Now off to the weekly $150 tourney to end my month live.

Day 7/35 part 2: -277€

2168€ / 4000€ reached.

Incredible amounts of BS happened today.



Double Quads to finish me off.

2nd Hand:

Given the SPR I don't think we can ever fold, but I doubt we have any Foldequity on that Ace like you said. Villain should not fold Pair with FD or Straight Draws and certainly no Two Pairs w the Ace and no Sets. Given Flop play only Hand that we are targeting is bare K8. At least he should not play K7 with no back up this aggro on Flop. And all two pairs that have Backup won't fold on that Ace like K765x and so on. So Question is if the Equity is good enough here and at this SPR I'd say it pretty much always is. Ran the Equities and vs bare Sets - its over 40%. Even vs Top Set with openended Straight and Flushdraw like KK6h5hx its still 37%. That being said I would say, given his flop play, the assumption of "pressuring" him is not accurate. The Hands we could pressure if any are the ones we strongly block with 996 ourselves too. Either way its not wrong to get it in. In my opinion I prefer x/c or x/f brick Rivers if checked behind. Especially in an MTT format (I assume this is?) it would be a reasonable plan to save the rest of the stack if we can, when there is no Foldequity anyway. At this SPR I would say x/f is a mistake. Sure it gets ugly when it is T9 with the Flush draw, but even then its 29% and thats our worst case scenario.


Great Blog. Been following on and off for a while and enjoy the different formats. It's an interesting read compared to the usual Holdem and PLO stuff that are 95% + of the Blogs

Yup, basically if we never ever fold (which I agree is correct), targeting K8 here is probably the best move. K765 also has a tough decision here imo, although calling would be correct.

Thanks, I'm doing my best.

Day 8/35: -392€

1776€ / 4000€ reached.

I swear, as soon as you hit an upswing, just take a week off.

Day 9/35: +372€

2148€ / 4000€ reached.
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Still running pretty badly, so I had to do it via brute force. Had a pretty decent 300/600 12-game table running for a while, where we got this NL 2-7 SD hand:



I raise and get 3bet by beans, who I had the challenge against a few years ago during covid. With the 8 low draw we call and catch a T, however he patted and bets now. His bet size of 1050 (~$35) however doesn't really make any sense. If he had a really good pat hand, he should bet bigger against the hands I cannot fold to it. He should balance that with the bluff pats, and therefore bet big here. I guess he can value bet some rough 9s like this, given me a good price to call specifically my T draws, but given I don't call his 3bet with a T draw, I would have had to specifically hit that.

All in all, while a good idea in my opinion, not executed well by him - it feels like people are too afraid to really pull the trigger in that game, which is where most of my edge comes from.



Scooped this ~$500 pot after calling a 3bet, calling the flop and then shoving the turn. People, in BigO (as in most variants) are way too transparent in their 3betting ranges. It is very hard to extract value preflop if your opponent can accurately guess 2 to 3 of your cards.

I got 6 more days of grinding ahead of me before my friend comes to visit me and I'll have a week off. Hopefully I can come close to my goal by then.

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This is another good example of tournaments no one (internationally) knows about. 550k HUF are roughly $1500 buy-in with a $250k gtd., however it's not advertised anywhere. There was a $2500 BI tournament this weekend that reached $150k (and $48k for 1st place) and again, the whole competition was Hungarian.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can be here for that one given as I will be at my mom's... but we'll see.

Day 10/35: -€175

1973€ / 4000€ reached.

Games are dead, so change of plans: I'll play a few tournaments trying to hit a score instead of waiting for hours.

Day 11/35: -€187

1786€ / 4000€ reached.

No comment.

Day 15/35: +3121€

4907€ / 4000€ reached.



Big score achieved, challenge over. Just in time, my friend arrives on Sunday and we're gonna do a bunch of sightseeing. I haven't really been outside of the usual home -> swimming pool -> home -> poker club route since I've come back here, so I'm quite excited.



Apropos poker club - they have raised their cash game rake, not only the total amount, from 10k to 12k HUF ($34 USD CAP!!), but also the rake % from 8/5/3% to 10/7/5%. Consequently, I won't be playing there anymore, except for the Friday tournament.

I'm quite split in what I want to do from January to May. I love this apartment here and I have my routine, but it's gonna be suuuuper cold and online poker, while very profitable, is kinda boring and there are some veeeery juicy games back over in Cambodia/Asia.

Oh well, I'll decide another day. GG see ya later.

Grats ... hope you immediately cashed out and rubbed on titties ....

Thank you sir. Tiddies were, indeed, rubbed!

I had this one interesting hand when 6-handed, went like this:



I don't really want to get into the strategy, I'm sure it's solvable and it's Hold'em, so I'm sure the solution is both mixed and boring. What I will maintain, however, is that the recent poker boom we're experiencing live, but not online, is not due to RTA/bots or whatever people complain about nowadays.

I genuinely believe people have figured out that NLHE as a variant, much like 5-card draw in the olden days or NL2-7SD is just better played live. This spot would benefit so much from being able to see my opponent instead of just going with frequencies ("does he ever bluff here? I'm aggro chipleader but he has been pretty tight this whole final table but my hand makes a very decent bluff with back up equity vs. his calling range but staying big stack means I can keep putting pressure but if I win either preflop or the showdown, I can bully even harder.." yada yada yada, the things you think).

The reason that people have so much better winrates live over online is not that people are so much worse live somehow (I mean, they are, but not to that degree), but that in the big spots, you're just more likely to lean towards the right decision in close spots when you can see your opponent (or, vice versa, lean towards the wrong decision significantly more often if you're bad and your opponent is good at giving off reverse tells).

This is, in my opinion, why Phil Hellmuth wins so many bracelets in weak fields but gets absolutely destroyed online, in strong fields and influencers who can't give off tells because they know too little to do so.

If I see my opponent at the table in the above situation, I am confident I could assess that he is strong and make the fold. NLHE lends itself to that over fixed limit games or PLO. It should be played live.