Greetings my friends,

After following one of my favorite players ,Stefan11222's blog and comeback, I have decided to start a new blog. I have been suffering from lack of motivation and burnout the past 6 weeks with only spotty C- game grinding. I have been fluctuating between 200 and 500 games online for about 1.5 years now. I have to face reality and realize I have become what I originally said I would never become, a bad reg. I must evolve and come back stronger.

Having a blog to document and write down my goals will help with motivation. I will be mixing up games NL, PLO, and PLO5 live and online for the blog.

Background

I'm in my early 30s living in the USA and been a full time player for over 2.5 years now. I have mainly playing online 4card and 5card omaha. I started at 10NL online several years ago and quit my job to grind full time at 100-200 levels, then switched to PLO. If interested in more of background you can read one of my older blogs here.



Recent results

The lack of volume is embarrassing here. As you can see around 75k hand mark I hit a 40BI downswing and really took a toll on me mentally. This is the last 3 months or so, mainly on GG where the rake is very high. After fish buffet and affiliate RB I made about 7.8bb/100 total including this 2.5bb/100 from the graph. This is mostly 200 with some 500 mixed in.




I've also been dipping into some coding practice to try and learn some skills outside of poker.


Current Status

Currently I am way over rolled for online 200 games but only borderline rolled for 500. This is a difficult jump for 2.5x the BI for online and I have not had great success over my career landing it. It's hard to overcome expenses as is, and if you lose 20 BI at 500PLO that can take 3+ good months to bring it back grinding 200. Grinding 6 tables of 200 online isn't exciting for me anymore, and it feels more like a job now. It's having a bad effect on my overall volume. I just don't have it in me anymore to keep grinding 200 online, so I have adjusted my game plan.

New Gameplan

I will be using live poker to make the jump from 200 - 500, then return online. I am over rolled for live poker and can go ahead and play 2/5 or 500PLO games with no fear here. I will grind these for several months until my roll is comfy at 100K+ then I can bang some online back in at 500+, playing only 4 tables, taking my time with decisions, and focusing on playing well.

My live skills are a bit dusty at the moment, as I have randomly played some the last few months and had little success. Main thing I need to work on is paying attention to game flow, being more patient, and reverting to hand reading over GTO. Going from 6x tables online to 1 table live, the pace is quite a change.

I also am very rusty at NL, which I plan on spending a couple weeks working on before I return live. The live plo5 card games are super soft, but I want to be able to play NL as well at 2/5 and 5/10 live. Both have their pros and cons, and I think being able to shift between the two games will be the +EV bet for me long term. Live overall is booming in the US right now, special thanks to the vloggers!

I have yolo'd my roll into BTC, leaving myself with $10,000 USD to play live.

Thread Goals for 2024

1. Bankroll >$100k
2. 500 hours of live grinding (100 hours per month)
3. Best shape of my life by Thanksgiving
4. Update thread weekly

July Goals

I have vacation coming up in 1.5 weeks, so I will spend this time between then just focusing on NL. I will only be playing 20 hours max (likely less) a week until August. I want to use this month to relax and decompress from my 2.5 years of grinding. This way I am ready to hit the live games as soon as I come back. I will be using the $10k roll and probably just play on Global poker, because I think this is the most similar to live games. I will be hitting the live felt last week of July and ramping up the grinding starting then.

Happy July 4th! God Bless America!

May the force be with you

Good luck

I have returned from my break / vacation. Great mental reset, but I was a total slob and gained like 10 lbs. I am jumping back on my diet and grind tomorrow.

I have been dabbling some on USA sweeps sites, lost about 2K in 100NL and PLO200 to start. Then ran most of it back up yesterday with a $1,500 day.

The thing with these untracked US sites on web browser is that it's just more tedious without easy ability to download HH other than saving HH links. I know I will not study effectively this way, My goal is to grind 2 weeks and knock the dust of on NL while improving as fast as possible. Then start transitioning back to some live games.

For that reason I am going to be depositng 2K on ACR and grind that out for 2 weeks then transition to grind live. I dabbled in some 50NL tonight just to get used to the software. Hopefully I didn't use all my rungood in these practice stakes. Jumping in 100NL tomorrow.




My ACR vibes be like =

July wrap up

Off to a hot start! I have been focusing on WPN online games lately. I got just under 15K hands in so far with a small profit of $196.40 and bb/100 of 1.67. I started at 50NL then went to 100NL a couple of days and now I am comfortable again at 200NL. Not a bad start for an omaha player. I also got some beast money , medals rewards, first deposit bonus, and affiliate RB. Have my graph below, small sample so not too relevant yet.



I did get to mix in some live and got 2 days in for 17 hours. Mainly 2/5 but had to play some 1/2 when waiting for a seat for a couple of hours. I love live poker now, it is hilarious interacting with these people. Next time I play I will note down some of the funny hands to post. I went spur of the moment here and wasn't prepared.

There was mega whale on Global at 5/10 PLO which I had to jump into the mix. Ended up $1,300 there, my first time playing PLO1000 online. I would have won $800 more but made a speculative call in 3BP OOP vs him SB v BB on KJ257 runout. He was barreling so aggro every hand I called him down with AK28ds unblocking the flopped flush draw I thought it was enough. I probably just let this one go though and call with better 2pair. He had the KJ.



August Goals:

1. Grind 60k hands of 200NL on WPN
2. Lifting 5x per week
3. study NL 1 hour a day
4. ride BTC to the moon

After this hand sample I will breakdown my leaks, and play a bit more online. Once complete I will be feeling good about my NL game and can play live mainly and table select higher stakes online. In Sept - Oct I will be hitting the live tables hard.

Learn to play plo online or just grind live cash. Online nlhe is very tough these days and requires spending a lot of time studying it's not worth it

Lots of fishes for plo online even these day

Update:

Last month I decided to go back to grinding online mainly. I do plan to play some higher stakes live for fun occasionally. It's also just way nicer to play from home and chill with my wife and dogs. I'm also going back to PLO online as my primary game.

When I got into poker, I wanted to play with the best. The best are online or playing only the highest stakes live. When I retire from the game I must be able to tell myself I took at shot at the best and gave it 110%.


I did give online NL a short run on ACR which was fun



Small sample but winning at 6bb. Games are not as tough as everyone says and on my affiliate RB deal, I got a very nice amount of rakeback on top of this. NL players at 200-500 games still playing horrendous overall.

Alas, I do not have the same love for NL as I do PLO. After completing the above NL volume I have made my return to the great game.



I am running quite above EV but still crushing the games while being rusty.

Unfortunately I suffered a major life setback earlier this month that has left me quite depressed. I am finally starting to recover and get back into the grind. I also gained about 20lbs of just fat eating junk the past couple of months. Today this ends. I will be annihilating my opposition over the next few months.


End of year goals:

1. 150,000 hands of PLO online by Jan 1 (starting today 10/31)
2. Lose 8lbs ( hard with holidays so setting this goal small)
3. Finish 2 books
4. No social media, shorts, scrolling, etc. Only 15 minutes per day to check twitter for crypto updates.
5. Max out Roth IRA for the year

playing plo on ACR or gg?