Hi all,

I'm a former NLHE reg transitioning to PLO. Before this I played up to 200NL on Ignition, and mostly 1/2 live with a little 2/5 around the Dallas area. Last year I withdrew a lot of my bankroll in order to travel and buy bullshit, and then I took a year off from poker. Despite crushing 1/2 live for years, I have never been able to move up due withdrawing from my bankroll, but now that I have a full-time job as a software engineer, I shouldn't need to make any withdrawals until I reach midstakes PLO.

My 1/2 graph for reference:



I'm transitioning to PLO because I believe the achievable winrates are higher, and I'm also getting bored of only having 2 cards. In the long-term I envision myself becoming a crusher a mid-high stakes PLO and achieving financial freedom through multiple sources of income. I love learning and studying poker, and I'm attracted to the competitive and intellectual aspects of the game moreso than the money.

I will be starting out at PLO25 on ignition, using PLO Mastermind and the Upswing Advanced PLO Mastery course as study material. Some milestones I'm keeping an eye on in the immediate future include:
- Build a database of 50,000 hands and get a database review by a coach
- Move up to PLO100
- Study one hour per day, and play 30 minutes a day until I move up from small stakes


It's difficult to make it in poker all on your own, so I'm hoping that this thread puts me in contact with people on a similar journey. If you ever want to study, review hand histories, shoot the ****, etc. just hit me up.


Graph of the first PLO session I've ever played in my life:

Good luck on the journey. You’ll certainly enjoy plo more . Not many make the swap and go back

My first 2000 hands at 25PLO haven't gone well, I've lost about 12 buyins. I'm running below EV, but I also am probably playing badly by being lost in SRP and overvaluing marginal hands in 3BP. Since I don't have much experience, I don't have an intuition for how much equity my hand has against an opponent's range and I'm just jamming because I assume the SPR is low enough to GII with a naked overpair or whatever. However, I'm happy that I'm making these mistakes at 25PLO instead of after I move up in stakes.

On the studying front, I'm enjoying going through the beginning courses on PLO Mastermind. Jnandez seems to emphasize lifestyle optimization and mindset compared to other poker courses I've gone through which is cool. For strategy, he focuses on the idea that you want to put your combo into the part of the gametree where it has the most playability, ie. if you have high nuttiness and equity while unblocking Villain's continues you want to bet, while if you have low nuttiness but high future playability you probably want to check.