Sometimes finding action can be tough, and it makes me regret trying to have more schedule to my sessions. Have been one tabling a $100 KO MTT for todays session, can't find any other running games! Keep in mind I'm only playing 1/2 atm, the filter shows 2/4 but I'm not playing those.



These clubs are the highest traffic clubs for 4 card PLO (I'm only supposed to play 4 card for now)

I'm trying to not play short handed, as my winrate in short handed and heads up games is very low, partially a function of the high rake environment. And right now I am focusing on having a high winrate, in order to move back up to 2/4 once I play 5k hands.

Nice, I play on the major unions too. There’s not much 200 running these days so I get what you mean. 5 and 6 card games look good but have no idea what I’m doing so mostly 100 for me. Yep, We prob played a bit vs each other 😜

Had a nice session today, obviously one session is meaningless, but I take solace in the small victories!



Got in 200bb drawing dead/nearly dead multiple times set over set to start the session, took a break, came back, table selected, focused on few tables, had my water with me, and battled back to profit!



Had this punt, I accidentally misclicked to min raise instead of folding preflop and then the hand went off the rails. On the river coach said it was extremely spewy. We did a bit of math and assuming V never bluffs, we need them to fold an overpair ~93% of the time in order to make this bluff profitable.

My thoughts on the spot in general is that I'm jamming any 9 here, especially the worst 9s for example 9662 because they unblock overpairs that could bet call. If he is folding overpairs, I am only generating EV by bluffing in this spot, or coolering a 9 or small boat. (raise or call a 9 would be EV negative if he will fold all overpairs and I win at showdown if I call anyways. Because I can lose to random boat, better 9.). If he isn't folding overpairs I think he will end up calling vs a 9 too often.

I think it's significantly a bad play, but I don't think I lose a ton of EV by making a move here. Especially factoring in that he will have some autofolds (bluffs)

Interestingly, when coach asked how much I would expect villain to have to fold overpairs in order to make a bluff good here, my instinct doing head math was 80-85%, leaning towards 85%. I was surprised that the low end of my estimate was so far from the reality. So honing my mental math might be nice. Although I did some rounding with pot size, so that could explain how far off my guess was.

How could the SB have overpairs betting the river? What would he expect you to call with? I think him leading the river is either 9x+ or air, but rarely do people check the turn and then bluff a river when you can easily have 9x.

Probably expecting me to catch with a ten, JJ, QQ. When the flush draw bricks out I'm just gonna have some random stuff that I have to catch with. I wouldn't expect somebody with reasonable river agg frequency like he had to be that polar in this spot. Because it would lead to either overbluffing a ton, or just checking down a ton of stuff.

If he bets and I call he's probably good with his overpairs like 80% of the time or something vs me because I'm shoving all my 9x+.

I think checking the turn is pretty standard because I will turn top 2 way more often than he will. And then on the river I think going for value with overpairs is probably good, I think you lose too much value by not.

But yeah like I said, the bluff attempt isn't good.

From thinking and listening to feedback from coaches and some youtube content creators (uri specifically), I've made some changes regarding poker mindset. These are those changes.

-Don't worry about factors that make or break decisions (suit combos in a 200bb pot on the river, instead try and figure out if they are overbluffing or underbluffing)

-Instead of thinking about correct or incorrect decisions, think about frequency and magnitude (this one is of my own creation, basically how often am I punting off 50bb, or how often am I leaking 1bb etc)

-Focus on not making mistakes, instead of outplaying opponent (ie don't punt)

-Focus on game quality, not volume

-Don't give regs credit (talking to one of the stables strong players it's clear that the regs aren't necessarily strong theoretically, they might just have extremely strong skills at game selection and beating fish)

Nice to find ur blog, subscribed and GL

Thanks!

August results



Sent off this 5k hands to head coach, ready to get back into the 2/4 streets! Need him to approve moving back up, but 9bb/100ev seems good enough? IDK. But I'm happy with how I played mostly. Played a 1bb ante table at 1/2 and lost 1.1k. I asked about the 1bb ante structure and if games were worth playing, and one of the other stable members said at 2/4 those tables are "99% collusion", and to only play them at 1/2. Kind of concerning, I don't see any magical difference between 1/2 and 2/4 that would stop people from colluding, so my action moving forward is to just not play 1bb ante tables, at 2/4 or at 1/2.

This months mission has been mostly to crush regs, because there haven't been enough extremely good 1/2 tables. So far so good! Improving my focus has worked wonders. Kind of at the point where 1/2 feels easy, so I'm excited to sink my teeth into 2/4!

I am a little bit concerned about the 30bbev winrates floating around the stable. I feel like I'm playing decently strong exploitatively, but I have literally no clue where this extra 20bbev is supposed to come from. I guess table selection? Maybe it's possible if you just sit all day on computer looking for the best possible games, but in poker we should care about hourly, not just win rate. I would absolutely add tables where I'm only winning 2-5bb/100 in ev, if I'm not already playing a bunch of really soft tables. At least at 1/2 and in 4 card PLO 2/4 it doesn't seem like there's enough of these perfect world tables where u can crush for 40bb in ev, so I don't understand how so many people are doing it.

Also a graph of my most recent 50k sample at 1/2! 14k rake paid xD thank goodness for rakeback!

Mid August Update

Back at 2/4, trying short stack PLO as a way to abuse ppl opening too wide, and cold calling BTN too wide to play hands vs fish. Asked head coach if it's worth pursuing. It's clearly the dominant strategy in PLO, but I'm unsure if it will make for a better winrate than playing deep vs fish. My experience with the pool fish is that they are way too wide pre, have comically low fold to 3bet (both really great for short stack). In addition, they generally only put a lot of money in post with extremely strong hands. So I don't see as much benefit to being deep.

Also, playing shortstack will lead to me paying less rake, because I am cold calling less and not trying to play deep in position vs fish.

It's not sexy, and people hate playing against it, but I think buying in for minimum and not topping up is the highest EV play. Once I get deeper I have been staying at the table, so I'm not worried about losing my understanding of post flop play (short stack is admittedly a game of preflop and flop)

Why do you think your EV is higher short stacking / what's your reasoning for wanting to short stack? It's still poker, but it seems like the number of tables required to reach monetary wager parity with 4x of 100bb tables turns it into a completely different set of skills. basically motor movement, and decision making with divided attention.

To anyone who read the advertisement above;

You would be better off playing regular clients. People on CFP deals on Apps need to realise that the stable owners act as affiliates and make the vast majority of their money on rake and not student profits. There are some seriously misaligned incentives in the business model because they literally don't need you to make a profit.

Un-named polish stable has had a lot of internal critisism over this exact model a few years back when the group of students communicated with eachother and realised majority of them were breaking even for the full duration of their deal due to the ridicilous rake charged in most unions on apps.

This is common practice in many larger stables, even some of the biggest name ones.

+1 to this. Don't get trapped in the "rakeback" trap, especially on these apps.

Hi,

I don't take offense exactly, but I am disappointed that you viewed my post of my results as an advertisement. It's just me posting my results, which is close to break even, and the rakeback I've received. This is a blog of my personal results, process, and progress. Not an advertisement for the company I am currently working with

I am not surprised / don't disagree that this is the business model, although I wouldn't know for sure. It's not exactly hidden. I believe detox profited 6m or in the ballpark over 3 years, with ~200 students. That's only ~10k a year per student. The profits are up to players imo, and the study and effort put into the game, along with the talent. Detox doesn't have many, but does have some crushers.

Imo it's disingenuous to blame results on rake, and the business model of the stable. There are crushers, but it's not easy. Poker in general is just difficult to play for a living, and requires a varied skillset along with a robust mental game. So instead of blaming rake and other external factors, I'd rather study, optimize my process, and crush the tables. Because I do really want to play for a living

How I have been doing it the last couple days is just buy in for 50bb, don't top up until I get below 25bb. Don't leave a good table after I get deep, just take the temporary EV gain by being short.

I had messaged a stable member who tried short stacking a little while ago, and he basically said it's nice but you lose a ton of value to fish. So I think what I'm going to do is buy in short, but pay attention to the table, and be willing to top up to max if there is a fish making large post flop mistakes.

I just want to short stack to maximize my EV. Again it isn't glamorous, but I don't want to discount it being the highest EV line to take.

I don't disagree with short stacking requiring a different set of skills

This was in reference to another post on the previous page, not made by you. I should have quoted part of it. I apologise for being so vague.

I don't know the exact specifics of the deals but in many cases the students will pay around half of their income over a year and I believe they deserve a lot more than being exploited as rake mules by stables.

I just wanted to offer an explaination as to how these businesses do not work in the interest of the students in case anyone else tried to reach out to the coach posting on the previous page (who I've never heard of despite playing HSPLO over the last three years).

This comes from my own experience of running a stable for 6 years with a very small group of players.

I never, ever, act as an affiliate for them as it deteriorates the incentives. I also always preach that stables need to stake to have some skin in the game and this forces them to focus on quality over quantity.

Anyone offering just CFP should be a massive red flag.

Thanks for clarifying!

Interesting

If we define a coach as someone who makes >50% of their revenue from their students profits, and an affiliate someone who earns >50% of their revenue from rake generated, we can do some simple napkin math to visualise how these stables operate.

Affiliate earnings:

a) OP is raking 14bb/100 at $1/2 which seems pretty close to what I've seen in most cases.

b) A large affiliate earns about 80% of the rake paid in the unions they put players (different stables might have different numbers, it could be between 60-100% depending but let's give it a middle ground).

c) Affiliates generally pay around 40% RB but remember 50% of this is recaptured via the profit split between student and coach.

This leaves us with about 60% of generated rake going to the "coach", which equals 8.4bb/100. This number may vary but at least we are in the ballpark.


Earnings from coaching:

In order for a coach to earn the same amount of money from a students earnings, at a 50/50 deal, the student would be required to win 16.8bb/100.

While this might be possible in some games, a large stable offering small amounts of dubious coaching would never come anywhere near that. If I had to make a qualified bet I would estimate the average winrate of a student in such a stable is between 0-4bb/100.

If we are generous and say the average student is winning at 4bb/100, this is still only about 25% of the earnings the "coach" will be making from student profits.

Some disclaimers, this is obviously not by any means the exact numbers but they are ballparks and I am really steelmanning the profits side of the equation. It might be a 90 / 10 split between affiliate earnings and coaching-earnings, and it might be 60 / 40, but these stables should really be viewed as affiliates and not coaches.

If any of the people running these stables would want to correct my numbers or explain why they are not affiliates masquerading as a coaching-business I am very happy to listen.

I can't blame them from a profitability view, guaranteed stable making you 8.4bb/100 profits is quite impressive given that you only have to make sure they are breaking even. Ethically I think it is pretty disgusting however.

Another way to put this more simply in OPs case:

If they really wanted you to profit, would they not give you access to other games?

The reason they don't is because you are not the customer, you are their product, and they need you to play on their unions to profit off of you.

@Rahm93 I have some thoughts on what you said, will take a while for me to think on them but I will respond.

FTed a tournament in 3rd today, was my first time getting tilted. Final 3 was a bit tilting, I lost some flips and the other guy who was at risk every time kept sucking out with 14%, 40% 3 or 4 times. And this 3 handed was over the course of about an hour, just stacks going back and forth and back and forth. And then eventually I got AA with like 5bb and lost to some random garbage. Also flopped middle set on 9c8d3c and got it in vs Ac6c7c2c or something like that, all clubs and lost. Punched my hand, and now my hand hurts ;-;

But still profited for ~1800, which is nice.

In response to the point about short stacking making the spread on my wagers kind of absurd, I felt that today. Had a $60 stack in a 1/2 game, and then bought in for $800 at a 2/4 game with a couple big fish. Probably going to ignore short stacking for now.

Thanks for going in depth.