#26 I'd definitely jam the flop after his raise. Why leave some money behind if you know you are never folding on any turn?

I'M IN! I like playing PLO for fun but I cant make profit from it, so gl on your goals!!

BTW you seem to run really bad. These guys call 4bets with the dumbest hand and seem to hit everything against you.
Hope you get a nice upswing soon!

vill had jj97 in one of the terribly played hands above.

yea you're pretty much spot on. i appreciate the honesty, and i don't disagree with almost anything you said. lots of leaks, lots to work on.

money is a made up, imaginary concept that humans use to keep score and keep society running. so no, i don't respect it. it's a tool. i respect it as much as i respect a hammer when i'm trying to hammer a nail into wood. it's useful, but only for the task at hand. it can **** up your life, or you can build an entire civilization with it. money is of course a lot of things, like freedom from work, freedom to travel, freedom to take care of ones self and family. i do need to use it better if i'm going to achieve any amount of success in PLO.

i do have a different opinion on playing against better players: it's a an absolute must if you want to get better. yea you're gonna get owned. it's going to cost you money. but in the long run, with a learning mindset, it will be critical to improving.

coaching is also really helpful for pretty much everyone. but i think what you're saying is there's a ton of basic A B C concepts to be learned before coaching is even useful or worth it. don't disagree there.

sounds good, keep improving, try not to lose too much in the process as money may mean nothing until you are left with none and in debt....

ty! i'll def keep this style, but with fewer results unless upon request.

hand 27. matrix likes the 4bet against a squeeze here. i think it just picks this hand to have some balance. calling is probably better against the types of villains that are never 4betting non AA.

hand 31. matrix likes the 3bet call here vs MP. can't argue with the math.

for sure man 👍. i'm lucky enough to have had a decent amount of poker success outside of PLO to afford this. but my approach is all heart. maybe need to subtract some heart and add more brain.

100% agree on hand 26.

welcome to the ride! we're gonna start ****ing climbing soon so get your boots on.

idk what PLO run bad even is, so can't comment. but i do know that i haven't earned the right to start complaining about run bad.

i was very much like this, i questioned how is it possible that i am losing when i am better player then they are, the truth is i was not, i can only be a better player if i manage to adapt and humble myself to playing sound poker against all types of players and use my knowledge and experience from that platform and build on that slowly and healthy perfecting my style, which doesnt mean i dont make mistakes, i do all the time, but they are rearer and justifiable to me, i feel that i am improving as a player all the time, but it has to start from a healthy foundation..

March recap




Sessions and graphs:



Obviously not the result I wanted. Not happy about losing money. Not content with where my PLO game is right now. I am happy with how little of that loss I can blame on tilt, and how well rested I felt at the end, and how happy my outlook is and was throughout the month.

But mostly **** my redline. I'm hemorrhaging money.

I don’t think I really hit this goal. I probably had around 10 hours of actual study watching training videos and taking detailed notes. And maybe another 10 hours of clicking through HH and looking to see if my fold was correct. This is not the way.

I think I’ve taken really good notes and given full focus to training videos, but I have neglected to go back over the content a day or so later, and again a few days after that. This is how most people memorize and commit things to memory. Definitely going to focus more on this in April.

I did look at bet/call on the flop, but don't think I was as structured or as rigorous as I need to be for it to make a huge difference. I don't think I have the perspective to know exactly what changes to make.

Smashed my volume goal. As a whole I was definitely more focused than I have been previously, and way better about cutting out distractions like twitter. I was really bent on putting a ton of volume in, IF I felt good, which I mostly stuck to. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I’m not going to be able to put as much playing volume in during April/May/June.

A random live NLHE session
I was actually able to put in a rare live session at a nearby casino. The game is NLHE 3/5 uncapped, but it plays like a 5/10. Like most nights the game was full of regs, but still had a lot of soft spots and chances for edge.

I played for about 6 or so hours, bought in for 2k, cashed out for 3275. For maybe 5 hours I rarely looked at my phone, was able to get some banter going, and was super focused on action for hands I wasn’t involved in. This focus on other players let me quickly size everyone at the table and start to develop heuristics that I was able to use against them. But the last hour, around 3am, I was getting really tired and started looking at my phone more.

I really miss live poker, and wish I could play more of it. I love watching how basic regs react to aggression they’re not used to. It’s usually passive, but sometimes you see some bluffs on some obvious spots, like in check down pots.

One of the most interesting live poker phenomena is watching the chatty reg go from happy-go-lucky, friendly and amiable, to hater of all things under the sun, and overall outwardly miserable human. It sucks to watch another human go through so much strife and turmoil, but it’s really interesting because of the amount of emotion and energy (albeit very negative and almost always misdirected) in that transformation. It’s a good reminder for me to stay balanced: feel the feelings and let them pass without letting them exert control. I’ll be in that angry reg’s shoes in no time, with the same negative emotions and the same rage, as I watch my chips go to another player. But it’s on me to not let it take control and influence my mindful presence.

April Goals:

Study: 30 hours of structured, rigorous study

• Finish all of the remaining APLOM videos. I believe it’s the rest of the river, and some of their 1-off videos.
• Re-read all of my notes from previous APLOM sessions (100’s of pages)
• Re-watch flop section
• Re-watch 3bet pots
• Re-watch anything I didn’t take quality notes on
• Review all of my HH from March, and pull out my top 10 blunders and describe what I did wrong, and why.
• Review non showdown pots from March. See if I can identify any opportunities to stop the redline bleeding, e.g. am i calling down too light? Am I cbetting in the wrong spots? With the wrong sizes?

Play: Focus on Vision, no goal for actual poker volume

• Based completely on how I feel when I play NLHE (now that I have 6 hours of it in recent memory) vs how I feel when I play PLO, i’m gonna say **** setting a volume goal for play this month. I’ve got too much to learn, too many leaks to patch, and a ton of content to get through.
• Instead I’m going to try and get 80%+ on all of the flop streaks for vision, I believe they’re single raised and single raised multiway.
• Unlock the rest of Vision’s streak features, I'm at 8/18 today

2/3 of the way through april update:
up to this point in vision, i've been able to get gold (20 correct answers in a row for a given the situation). and they've all been relatively easy. i've been stuck on UTG v BB for a week or so now. iv'e made it to 19/20 a couple of times, but just haven't been able to get there. i encounter so many 5-10% frequency spots that seem tough to recognize.

i do not think i'll be hitting this goal, as I made that goal without looking at how many flop spots there are in vision:

i don't think all of these are straight up blundersome. but here we go

hand 33


hand 34


hand 35


hand 36


hand 37


hand 38


hand39


hand40


hand 41


hand 42



in summary i'm getting crushed in these non-sd spots. there are a ton of opportunities to just fold and not get caught peeling light. i've looked over 50+ hh from last month where this was the case. idk if i'll get much volume in during the rest of April , but the next time i play i'll try and be a lot more diligent in these particular spots. in most of the spots i should have just been folding, but i didn't see many where i should have been raise/bluffing.
some specific spots that come to mind:
- lots of tp hands, specifically Axxx w/ a good kicker
- very low fd w/ tp
- small overpair with no bd draws

Good luck mate

definitely a lot of potential for you as a student. I love the fact that you are posting an array of hands in varying spots and not just your biggest losers. This means you recognize there are leaks in your overall play.

Now I dont know **** about PLO honestly so I really shouldnt be commenting. I have something like 300 hours of live PLO 5/5 and am up maybe 10k but really just from a few sun runs. That being said I have made some attempts to get coaching and sure it's live and probably totally different to online, but there's just something about your style that puts me off. I feel like you arent treating this as the drawing game that it is. You're either going for thin value spots or bluff catching or just trying to "get there", cant put my finger on it. To me PLO is all about setting the stage for a showdown. I feel like your preflop range and positioning is fine, but you're either whiffing the flops too hard or you are putting yourself in spots to get blown off your draw. Like that beautiful wrap + 2x backdoor flush that you forfeited because you check raised or 3bet the flop or something. You set yourself up to only be able to see 1 street before having to let it go. Thats unfortunate. Sure it was a big hand and you could just punt it off on the flop every time but that is too unbalanced and will just make opponents only play bigger draws vs you.

You need to see a river with a lot of these hands, so excercise some of that POT control in a game that was blessed with a limit on bet sizing.

ty!

ty ty. definitely think there's something to this. probably a small mindset / approach thing that would have a huge ROI. i'll be sure to share it once i discover what it is

reading your post reminds me of my progression in NLH, when i 'discovered' pot control 200-300bb deep in 3bet pots in holdem. i.e., we shouldn't be blasting off all or even most of the time with overpairs or strongish draws 200bb+ deep. lots of shitty spots, exactly like the wrap you mentioned. obviously lots of nuance to that statement, but bear with me it's a high level idea lol

April May June update







It’s been a ****ing minute / month or two. My real job has started to chill out, so I've been able to start putting some volume in these past few weeks. I definitely needed this “break” for mental game reasons. And the renewed focus on study helped a lot too. Let’s recap on these goals since April:

Definitely hit the 30 hr mark between vision and regular study.
Finished all of APLOM. Was great. Now I need to watch it all again.
Re-read half of my notes.
Rewatched flop and some of the 3bet pots but that was it.
Did watch a few Galfond videos (still the GOAT) and some other 1-off videos. Took notes on those too!
Did all of my blunders, see above.
Reviewed some non showdown spots. This did a lot for me, most importantly was simply awareness of how often these spots occur. So much opportunity for taking down pots no-one cares about.

This was huge. I spent probably 20+ hours in Vision. Unfortunately never made it past the flop cbet (lol). Got to 19/20 so many times. Despite this I think it was huge for me. I’m able to breeze through most of the preflop stuff at this point, so I can tell something is finally working.

0% chance of unlocking the rest of Vision’s streaks, flop was hard enough for me. My subscription has ended, so don’t think I’ll be grinding Vision again anytime soon as it’s quite expensive.

All of my results since April 1st



I would be lying if I said this didn’t feel good. Feels ****ing awesome. I know sample size, but it’s great to put hours in the lab and finally get some results that are green. Still a loooooooooong way to go, but now I’m starting to see the little blip at the end of the tunnel. Another big win for me was I didn’t really tilt at all in any of these last 9k hands shown above. The only tilt I can remember was the last session where I definitely played too long and eventually lost some of my control after going -3bi, to +6 bi, and then -4bi when I decided to stop after yelling and screaming. A good reminder.

Reflecting on a lot of what I’ve learned / forgotten / remembered / forgotten / remembered about myself is that I really have to work up to the long, >2 hour sessions. I can’t just plop down and grind out 4 hr sessions and expect to play my A game for long. I’ve worked up to the point where I can play really well in short 2hr sessions. But I had to work to do that, and I remember having to work up to 1hr sessions, so just need to keep this in mind.

hard to tell from the graph unless you zoom in but i've shaved off about 6k from the lowest point of -15k. my red line also flattened out a bit relative to its previous trajectory. i'm going to take this as good motivation to keep focusing my studies on non-sd spots and look for ways to better my strategy there.

also blew past 100k PLO hands



calling my shot now, the next 100k hands are going to go a lot better.

My Favorite Poker Hand

This is a hand from over a decade ago. But I think of all the millions I’ve played, it’s one of my favorites. This hand represents one of those ‘a-ha’ moments for me where concepts, in this case thin value bets, really started to click.

The game is No Limit 2 card PLO. Stakes are 1/2, obv full ring at a local casino. I’d been at the table for a few hours, and it was a fairly standard and unremarkable table except for one older gentleman, who we’ll affectionately call Roberto. Roberto was probably in his 70’s and had been sipping on tequila throughout the game, as one does at 2pm on whatever day it was.

Roberto’s favorite word in all the world and language was burro. You might be wondering to yourself, that’s an odd thing to know about someone, how would you know what his favorite word is? Well dear reader, let me tell you: Every other word out of Roberto’s mouth was burro. Everyone and everything was a burro to Roberto. Waitress only brought him 1 tequila instead of 2 - burro. Dealer was too slow - burro. Floor person asked him to stop yelling at everyone - burro. Anyone(s) who ended up in a pot with Roberto - burro. River bricked and Roberto missed his draw - burro. No one was safe from Roberto.

I found Roberto hilarious. Once you got past being called a burro he was actually a nice guy, and his banter never got personal. Not everyone felt this way, but alas. Roberto was a bit of a wild card, other than his 100 VPIP strategy every hand, he was fairly balanced between being as aggro or as passive as he possibly could. He had called down all day with all sorts of light holdings that a lesser man would have folded. I had position on Roberto and as any would-be-professional, had been formulating my strategy against him since I sat down. Onto the hand. But mind you this hand is from over 10 years ago, so bear with me as I gloss over the finer details.

1 or 2 limps to Roberto in MP who also limps. I have JJ on the button and bump it up to 6-7BB. Everyone folds but Roberto. We’re about 100bb effective. In my head I’m praying for low cards that I can just value bet the entire way with a nice shove on the river.

Flop is something like K93r. Not the ideal flop for my previous plan. But I had been watching Roberto for long enough to know he could call down lighter than most. So began my cunning plan.

Roberto looks at me, looks at my stack, and says, “Go ahead and bet, burro. Check”

I think for a second and bet a little over half pot. Roberto looks at me again, “I know you don’t have a King, burro, call”

****. He’s got me pinned.

Turn is a 5 or something brick-like. “I check. I know you don’t have a King, burro”

“HOW DOES HE KNOW?! Does he have 3 of them?” I think to myself. I’m pretty sure this gentleman can call me down without a K, so let’s ****ing go for it.

I bet again, probably something like 3/4 pot. “I know you don’t have a King, burro”.

River brings another brick like card, let’s say a 7. “I check to the burro.”

I think for a few seconds and announce that I am allin.

Roberto hems, haws, and reminds me that he knows I don’t have a king. Eventually he says “OK burro. You don’t have a king” and throws his chips in for the call.

I flip over my JJ after he makes the call. Roberto is shook. He stares down at his cards and mutters to himself as they find their way to the muck. Meanwhile my single pair of JJ collects the pot. I can’t remember if I needled him or not. I probably didn’t. But in my head I was definitely thinking, “Yep you were right no King here.”

The rest of the table was confused. One of the younger (my age) players at the other end of the table looked dumb founded, like he couldn’t tell who the burro was between Roberto and I.

Cool thread. Good luck

ty!



Not the worst start to August. A little run good is a great excuse to bump the thread.

All areas of my life have been absolutely crazy lately, and I haven't been able to update this thread as much as I'd like. Hopefully that changes soon. I'll try and force myself to put in a July recap with some HH stipulations before August ends lol

Subbed, gl for August.

July Results



overall volume was a little bit lower than i would like, but with life , work, and travel it wasn't too bad. 20 hrs is actually a good number of hours for me to hit with everything else going on.

I feel like I'm at the point now where things are really starting to click, AND I'm starting to see some results, vs just the former with no results. it's an interesting inflection point, where all of those things i was doing previously to try and start winning, e.g. get my mind/head/life/game straight, working out, review HH, study, not tilt etc. are really starting to pay off.

Typically when this has happened before in poker or other areas of life, I tend to ease off the throttle and relax on the process because hey, LOOK AT ME I'M DOIN THE THING. then after I let off the throttle, my framework for success disappears, and I basically let go of all the things that got me there, it's almost inevitable that i fall back down and start the misery cycle over again.

I guess this is may way of consciously calling myself out ahead of time to not ease off the throttle, to not let my guard down, and to keep refining and following the process that got me here. It's so easy to get lazy when you're winning, and even easier to get into another terrible cycle.

Dr. Dre summed it up really well in Kendrick Lamar's Wesley's Theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9fN-8NjrvI




so appropriate for poker and life

TY!! gl with your grind as well

July Recap

I wrote these goals down before Aug but I forgot to post them in here.

Study goals I think I read some APLOM notes once... maybe twice lol. the rest of those are a big nope as well. really dropped the study ball in July. I did watch Phil G's really long series and watched it with minimal distraction.

Play goals. Got really close here. I might have hit it if I add in ACR time. Insignificant sample but winning is way more fun than losing. Gonna try and do that more


Other updates
Real life starts happening too: A family member is struggling with mental issues, and the ole drug and alcohol. it's a story as old as dirt, and definitely not the first in my family. It really ****ing sucks **** watching someone you care about piss their life away. There's literally nothing we can do for this person outside of kidnapping and tying them up.

Here's some July HH:

Hand 43




hand 44




hand 45





hand 46




hand 47

Hand 46 -

Bottom set is better in these types of spots generally. Because When a bunch of money goes in with middle set on the flop, you are more likely to see top set compared to when you have bottom set, and you’ll see some more top 2.

If you look in some similar spots in vision or whatever, you see bottom set reraising much more and middle set doing a lot of calling.

This is different to how you value sets on flush / straight boards, where you start to fold more bottom set with no blockers because you fill up to worse boats and as a result have poor implied odds.

If the hand was 4 ways it’s ok to bet fold flop

I like peeling flop in this hand with 2bdfd and just fold turn.