Pretty decent chance I could deal to you in December if you play at Wynn. Highest demand time of the month and one of my only mandatory dealing periods. Also... being upstuck (+6k to +2k) is for me a much worse feeling than recovering from a down (-6k to -2k). The first case, you leave the table on a downward momentum leaving a sour taste in your mouth, the second case, you start off getting beat up to end on a upward momentum leaving a satisfying feeling of having somewhat overcome adversity or something. I think this explains why I suffer from winner's tilt and constantly quit my sessions early when I'm up. I don't care about the money as much as I prefer the satisfaction of just being up on the day and going to bed happy. And on the other side of that, I also put in brutally long sessions when I'm stuck.


September Wrap Up + October plans
September was pretty meh. After Texas, I burnt out on poker and ended up playing a lot of video games most days. Actually played about 160 hours of Satisfactory (automation/factory game) after the trip and finally completed the game so hopefully I don't get distracted by more video games in the next few months. Had a sad last day where I lost all day in pretty decent games to end the month around +5k over 109 hours for about $47/hr. I'm about 60% of the way to Diamond Elite at Caesars so I'm considering putting in some online hours again to hit this tier but I'm not sure I'll make it as I don't wanna do the insane online volume I was doing in June/July. I'm gonna use online poker mostly as an avenue to practice and study and I don't really have much ambition these days to play big games/move up in poker anymore. I cashed out my online roll down to 8k and will be restarting once again from 1/2 PLO after dumping all my money into more stocks. The online WSOP bracelet events just started and hopefully volume picks up as there were almost no games until 2 P.M. yesterday but the volume looked decent late at night. My most likely plan for October is play a mix of live in the day time, play short online sessions in the evening/night mixed with solver line checks and study, and I also may get called in to deal a little bit during the October Wynn Fall Classic series. I may start a new spreadsheet section just for how much I earn as a dealer cos I think those stats are pretty interesting and a lot of people are curious about poker dealer earnings. I've also consolidated my live poker results for August + September on the spreadsheets into one section.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

WSOP online poker again
Played a 3.5 hour session online to keep in shape and felt overall very good about my plays and my standing in the lineups. I've also decided to track my all in results on the spreadsheet for fun. All in tracking will only involve all ins before the river where either player has non 0% equity. For the first session I started off 0/3 in all ins but ended the day at 11/17 all ins won. Games seem just as soft as ever but it's only 1 session so we'll see how it plays out over the month. Lets kick things off with a few basic line check spots to get the month started...

HAND 1



Preflop
HJ opens, CO calls, I defend. I think it might have been a 3x raise here instead of full pot.

Solvers are overly tight and fold my hand here. Starts calling mostly around AJ97 single. (depends on which trainer you are using, PLOtrainer for example doesn't fold AJ92 double suited in the BB) I don't mind my call here as I feel like my table is pretty bad.

Flop
checks through

Turn ($19)
I pot and both players call

So interestingly, solver seems to check its entire range here in the BB again. It has some incredibly strong hands here like AAA2, some Akkx combos, and nut heart stuff like AJ97. I suppose in equilibrium theory MP should have a very tight strong range while in reality, these clowns just have napkins a lot of time and CO flats are pretty tight as well. I'm still very surprised at a 100% checking range here.

River ($76)
I bet 1/2 pot and both players fold

As played, a solver line doesn't exist for the river as I should have checked turn. If it checked through on turn, it mixes a pot bet and check trapping river. I think overall, I still prefer the human/exploit line of betting turn over the equilibrium check line in this spot vs fish.

HAND 2



Preflop
I open and BTN on 50 bbs, 3 bets me. He actually 3 bets me to not full pot sizing as he could have made it $24 but chose to only 3x my bet and make it $21. I call.

I haven't studied much short stack stuff so this is new territory for me. Solver will ONLY be 3 betting BTN's hand if it is double suited and will actually just straight up fold the single suited AK69. In my position, I will be shoving my hand double suited always and mixing in shoves and flats with single suited AKT8. Interesting...

Flop ($44)
I check, he ($82) bets 1/2 pot ($22) and I call.

Solver just donk rips my hand. I actually considered this line at this time but only very briefly but my standard is just to check here. Anyways, I really thought his flop 1/2 pot bet was weird. I think AAxx just shovels it in at around 1.4 SPR on this texture so this was a weird sizing line to me. In hind sight, maybe I should have check jammed here then instead of calling.

Turn
I check, he checks.

Another very weird line by him. The 5 on the turn is extremely dry and his SPR is like 0.8 I would expect he rips all AA KK QQ or draws here

River
I check, he shoves, I hero.

So even starting preflop, this line just doesn't make sense to me. Preflop, he didn't full pot though I'd take this read very lightly. It just slightly biases me towards thinking he doesn't have AAxx. Flop was weird again and made me lean towards him not having AA or even Jx+. Turn, same story. Wouldn't overpairs or Jx just shove here at SPR = 0.8? River in theory is good card for his overpairs as but his entire story doesn't check out so I hero call thinking the most likely fish line he shows up here with is A highs and it helps that I block AAxx and KKxx


HAND 3



Preflop + Flop
UTG raises, I 3 bet from the BB and see this flop. I check and he checks back.

This hand is not interesting at all. I just wanted to line check this spot because I checked flop but then I felt like I missed a cbet. Sure enough, solver cbets this 100% of the time with this combo. It uses a variety of sizings from 1/3-pot. Even on a two-tone flop it cbets all of these combos so oops, I missed a bet.

I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but out of curiosity, what exactly are your Poker goals? Just looking for an extra avenue to fill time and generate income to put into your stock portfolio?

This is probably more of a blog type thread. Don't really have any overly ambitious goals in poker any more. I took a full year off of poker and wanted to start this thread to get a little motivation to study and grind to brush off the rust. I realized last year the amount of effort/studying and maybe even bumhunting it takes to do well at 10/20+ PLO online and I think I just prefer to take a much lower stress and relaxed grind approach at lower stakes at this point in my life. Might do a few write ups here on some 10/20, 25/50 hands from last year. Some pretty interesting spots/stories I never really shared but probably won't mind sharing now that I don't plan on playing that big and now that everyone's screen name's changed since new software merge.

Would you be interested in a post about your experience with the big shot you took that may or may not have influenced your path, or any takeaways from that?


Personally I would love to hear about what was going on or what happened there and how it affected you

Sure, here it goes

STORYTIME- My Biggest Losing Sesesion

The Set Up
So I had been grinding the PLO streets on WSOP.com and focused a ton online when the COVID pandemic hit turning off my main bread and butter game of playing Aria 5/10. During quarantine, there was really not much to do and I grinded my ass off online. I primarily specialized in playing HU vs anyone who would play. 0 game selection. I never really studied with solvers and the current day trainers and stuff weren't very good or really around. IIRC, stuff like PLOTrainer and Vision and stuff are only a couple years old. Back then, there were also 2/4 and 3/6 stakes online whereas today it goes straight to 2/5 and then 5/10.

Now most people who know me know I'm a mega bankroll nit and I was extremely disciplined when it came to moving up stakes. I always joked that I could never play 25/50 because for me, I felt like I needed 1.5M-2M to play 25/50 PLO and at that point I would just be retired instead of playing poker. To give an idea of what my bankroll progression was like, I played...

.25/.5 PLO and .5/1 PLO online until I had maybe 8k-10k.
1/2 PLO with around 25k-30k online roll
2/4 PLO with around 45-50k online roll
3/6 PLO with around 80k online roll
5/10 I started shot taking decent looking games at 120-150k online roll.

This was just my online WSOP PLO grind progression. I had built up multiple rolls in the past on ACR and pokerstars and FTP back in the day but I would always cash out (buy a house for example) and start over from lower stakes. Personality-wise I've always enjoyed restarting a bankroll from lower stakes and running it up and in Video games too, I always enjoy starting over fresh for a new playthrough. Anyways...

I would play people heads up and take some shots at 10/20 when I arrived around a 200k online bankroll. I was also in a small discord chat group with a few regs that played on WSOP but most of it was just us trash talking each other or challenging each other to 1 on 1 HU matches or the usual whining about bad beats and stuff. The guys in that group always viewed me as a mega nit but no one really wanted to play me because they thought my HU style was extremely lame and boring and very miserable to play against due to my limp heavy style and small bet tricky "street poker" bs that would tilt everyone. They also constantly made fun of me for having such a conservative bankroll approach and not taking shots in bigger games even when a whale was present. By January of 2023, I had grown my online roll to about a quarter million and finally started to take a few more shots here and there at 2k buy ins. I had a very weird goal/obsession during this time of running an online bankroll up to 1M eventually.




The Session

A few days after this, I was playing a bunch of 5/10 and 10/20 chasing an action whale online and just ran incredibly bad. The whale left and I went back and reviewed my session and found out I went 0/8 in all in that session so I was a bit annoyed to say the least. Of course there was some more needling in the group chat as 2 of the guys were also at the tables chasing the whale and they were laughing at how much money I torched that session.



Anyways, a buddy of mine (Matt) was acting particularly cocky that night and for fun I challenged him HU to 25/50 and he accepted. Now the thing with Matt is that, we've played HU online quite a bit but for very very short sessions because he's a bit of a troll and his favorite past-time is to win a small pot vs me and instantly sit out and hit n run me. So this time, I had decided I was gonna steal his $50 BB and BTN scum him and run away to get under his skin. Unfortunately, he won the first hand and I was suddenly stuck like $400. So I think this was the catalyst that set off the 25/50 session and I had decided that moment that I was going to keep battling him. Another guy in the group chat tried to ruin our fun and joined 3 handed and I was like screw it, we'll battle 3 handed. Not long after, 2 more high stakes online regs (I've met both of them IRL) joined and the battle was on I opened up 3 more tables and before I knew it, I was 4 tabling 25/50 online in an extremely reggy lineup. It's entirely likely that I was the weak spot in the line up.

...


I think one of the tables was a 200 BB deep table so we were playing 10k deep on at least of them. I started off losing a few all ins and was quickly buried for like 15-20k. I obviously don't have the hand histories for that session anymore although a glimpse of some of the all ins were in one of the videos I made on youtube where I battled galfond a second time. I do recall though that the first all in I lost was against UPayMyTeslaY (super nice/friendly Vegas dude even though he's prolly taken like 25k off me lifetime lol) and that sent me off on the downward spiral that session...



I played til 3 AM that morning I think. Me and matt actually both got buried and he was stuck 35k at one point and was so mad but somehow he recovered and ended up. Me on the other hand... I got BURIED buried. Including the 0/8 all in run bad from the earlier 5/10 + 10/20 session chasing the whale, I had gone 4/15 in all ins at 25/50 and my total loss amounted to about ~$83,000 that night. My previous biggest 1 session loss before this was ~20k live, and ~18k online. My biggest overall downswing was around 35-40k. I guess this could be considered a not very good night for me.



The Aftermath
I went to bed a bit numb I think. I actually had a pretty good night sleep though. When I woke up, I still felt a bit numb but honestly didn't feel super bad. I still had like 175k in my online account and still had cash sitting in my Aria box, and life-wise, I was perfectly fine financially. The problem was... I really had wanted to buy another house that year and I even had the house picked out. And I suddenly didn't feel like buying a house anymore. It was a 3 bedroom 2.5 bathroom house in Round Rock, TX as I thought there was a lot of potential in the Texas poker market and was planning on bouncing back and forth from Texas to Vegas while renting out the other 2 rooms. I gave my dad a call that morning...he's always curious about my poker escapades as he plays a little bit of poker himself but he's a complete fish lol. I kinda wanted to see what his reaction would be like.

(Calls Dad)
Dad: What's up?
Me: emmmm.... I just had a really bad session last night.
Dad: well... that's poker right? You already know this
Me: no no no... i mean like really really bad.
Dad: how much?
Me: guess
Dad: uhhhh...20 thousand
Me: more
Dad: i don't know... 30 thousand
Me: more!
Dad: wow really? I don't know...40?
Me: 83 thousand.
Dad: Whaaaaat?!!.... Wow. Damn. ****...well your mom and I always told you to get a job.
Me: ehhhhh, I guess I'm not gonna be buying that Texas house this year after all.


To be honest, this session didn't actually affect me as badly as people might think. I was still very confident in poker and I figure it was an unlucky set back but I'd just grind it back online. And grind it back I did. Actually from Jan-March I grinded like a mad man and recovered 60k of it back and my bankroll was back up to around 230k. But I was still playing plenty of 10/20 even though I probably should have stuck to my original bankroll approach and stuck with mostly 5/10. What actually sorta broke me was the next 3 months.

The After-Aftermath
While regrinding my roll back up, I really felt like I was lacking something and for the first time in a long time, I felt something I didn't feel during the majority of my PLO career. I felt like a clear underdog against some of the regs I was battling at 10/20. I was never really a solver guy but I knew a few guys who battled a lot were studying a ton at the tables and it showed. I recall one moment where I was playing heads up and we got it all in pre. I had AA of course and my reg opponent had some garbage suit AQQ3 and I remember kind of thinking to myself his 4 bet was pretty bad. I messaged matt kind of saying "hey can you believe he got it in pre vs me with just QQ lol?" and matt responding along the lines of "actually, i'm pretty sure solver 4bets AQQ there". I look it up and sure enough, turns out AQQ is a 4 bet in that spot.



I had another argument with matt a different time when he was making fun of me for donk betting HU in a single raise pot and I was arguing with him that I'm pretty sure I saw some hands that Berri Sweet had played where he donk bet flop HU and Matt was adamant that it was not supposed to be a thing.

I pulled up an old database I had of Berri Sweet hands I had purchased from a russian hand history datamining site from pokerstars (This is how I used to study PLO pre solvers) and sure enough... Berri Sweet donk % frequency when HU ... <1%.



Well damn... turns out I don't know anything about PLO and all these guys at these stakes are just studying solver lines day in and day out and from March -June I was getting destroyed constantly battling these guys at 10/20. But in those 3 months, I studied harder than I ever had in my PLO career and this time I finally caved and went the solver method to constantly study every spot I wasn't sure about day in and day out. My pre-flop game got cleaned up a ton and I ditched my old style and started using more standardized sizings and lines post flop and I definitely identified a few aspects of my old strategy I thought the regs were exploiting and tried to plug those leaks by taking a more balanced approach.


Over the next 3 months I had yet again lost back about 50k of the 60k I had just recovered but this was infinitely more demoralizing for me mentally than the 83k loss I had in January.

1. I was running incredibly bad throughout these 3 months and running bad for 3 months feels much more draining than running really bad for just one session.

2. I had studied more that I ever hand in the past 3 months and I was losing. To work so hard, and invest so much time+effort towards something only to end up nowhere was also really rough on me mentally.

3. I started running bad live as well. I was playing a lot of 10/25 games live and even tho these games were softer than online 1/2 PLO, nothing was going my way and it was impossibly for me to realize expectation over a decent sample size. The 52k bomb pot I posted earlier in the thread that I lost to a billionaire at resorts world also happened around this time and having so many things go wrong all at the same time really made me resent poker.

In hindsight, aside from genuinely running terrible during this period, I think what also happened was that I was massively changing my core game strategy. I have always had my own style that worked for me and I would basically crush all the fish I came across and I was winning against most of the regs on the site as well. In heads up, I think my really weird style threw them off their game. But when it came to the elite solver nerd regs, I was clearly struggling against their game plans, but when I tried to make the switch myself to a more balanced equilibrium solver strategy, I was just playing a much inferior version of the strategy they had been studying for far longer than me so I performed worse. And against the fish, because I was also trying hard to play a balanced equilibrium strategy, I was just simply under-performing compared to my hyper exploitative (and thus exploitable) old style that had taken me this far into my career.

2023 was my first ever losing year in poker over 15 years and it definitely made me do some reflecting but to do that, I had to step away from poker for a bit. I did get into a trading card game (Lorcana) that distracted me for about a year and now that I'm back to playing poker, I've decided I know where my focus needs to be.

I've been studying a lot of solver theory and lines still but ultimately, I need to be very selective about when I want to use a theory approach (only vs very good regs/unknowns) and when I want to go back to playing my own personal non-solver style that has always worked for me for so long (basically vs all the live and online fish). I also no longer wish to become the best at PLO since I realize how much studying and effort it would take to beat the best in the world, not to mention I feel old AF. Also I felt kind of stupid keeping 250k in my online roll (as well as a bunch of cash in my aria deposit box) for like 3-4 years when I could have literally just parked it in a near 0 risk 5% annual yield money market fund like Fidelity SPAXX or Schwab SWVXX and could have made like 50k extra by now just from poker bankroll so I'm just doing that nowadays. Past few year stock market would probably have yielded 100k+ honestly. Housing market is overpriced and rental cash flow kind of sucks so I'm out for buying houses anymore. Online 1/2 PLO is very relaxing and no stress and live poker is like a mental vacation so that's where I am today.

TLDR: Washed up PLO grinder gets whacked at higher stakes by solver nerds, dumps roll in stock market, lives out rest of life in peace as a humble fisherman and part time poker dealer

Thanks dude! Really relatable, we played a fair bit(discodawg) and I knew a bit about the downswing but not the after aftermath. The game really changes once you have to battle studied regs and cant rely on an exploitable strategy one that as a reg on wsop has historically served me really well and is quite cozy. I've also played a fair bit of 10/20 online and exploitable strat just kinda isnt a thing in my experience. Great summary and illuminating.

Sorry to hear you missed out on the Round Rock spot, that wouldve been sweet af. I'm surprised after your venture into the live arena youre returning to online tbh. You definitely will improve my game so thanks for that, I suppose heh, I'm on there fulltime as well.

Fwiw I always enjoyed playing with you and respected your game then and I think you've improved since, not that I'm an authority... Pretty wholesome story tbh thanks again

This write up is great for anyone who is experiencing a rough patch in their poker journey. Appreciate it. Gives some much needed perspective about how bad and how long the downswings can last. And that you can still come out okay in the end. You’re definitely a success story.

Funny because I was just considering buying a second place myself and had a bad month and now I’m less interested.

Also lol at the revelation that to beat live poker you need to play “badly” (compared to gto anyway). Two very different strategies for very different player pools. Thanks!

What solver do u use? Thank you

Oh yea, discodawg we played quite a bit. Missing out on the round rock spot was a blessing I think though. The Lodge traffic in round rock has dropped significantly since TCH austin opened up and the texas housing market is one of the places in the US that's on the downtrend since 2022.


I remember watching a GTORB theory video a long time ago about equilibrium strategy winrates and a part that really stuck with me all this time was basically it said something like (making up numbers for example's sake)

GTO equilibrium vs Fish: +6 bb/100
GTO equilibrium vs Exploit Reg: +3 bb/100
Exploit Reg vs Fish: +9bb/100

So perfect theory strategy will beat everyone but you can outperform vs fish by using hyper exploit strategy at the cost of losing to GTO. So the "perfect" poker player will basically hyper exploit fish and not play equilibrium vs them, and then just play equilibrium strategy vs other regs or other equilibrium. I mean this seems kind of obvious now but the amount of people who study solvers who refuse to change their strategy vs fish is surprising to me and they just call in spots they should overfold becauase "solver says to call here"

Been trying out flophero recently but mostly use plotrainer. Used vision a tiny bit until i let my sub expire. Im lazy about using monker so i just ask a buddy of mine to run me some spots if I want something really specific.

Just got back from Paris where I had no time for 2+2, so catching up. Will definitely play at the Wynn -- my husband found a $1,000 chip in his suitcase while we were packing for Paris. LOL! Will be in Vegas from Dec. 1 (maybe Nov. 30) through Dec. 6. How will I know you? I'll be the talkative, 56-year-old woman drinking champagne/wine playing PLO (5'7", avg to thin (hope to lose a few pounds before the trip), mousy brown hair with gray highlights, blue/green eyes).

I think I'm the only asian dealer with name tag Frank so there's that. I'll probably be playing plo at the tables too if I get off work early as well.

Mid October Update
Sorry, I've been insanely lazy. I have 27 hours played online and 15 hours live lol. I really wanted to put some big hours online but i had a big problem of winner's tilt. I hate playing when I win so I just can't put in any volume when I'm on a hot streak. Just one of those months I have where I end up being super unproductive and doing next to nothing. Just reading up on markets, a ton of video games. Somehow, I'm still up close to 6k already this month so that's not really gonna help my motivation levels to grind a lot.



Won 10 consecutive online sessions, all pretty short session. Kept winning a bunch of all ins and got kind of annoyed at that. I'm happiest when I win around 60% of my all ins (since I get it in good most of the time) and at one point I was winning close to 75% of my all ins. Winning too much has me nervous about the impending downswing that's gonna slap me in the face so I kinda felt relief when i finally lost a session or two and went 2/6 in all ins in one of them.

I talked to a reg I play with a lot online and he told me he was from Michigan and felt like the player pool got tougher after the merge. Funny, cos I was thinking I'm from NV and the player pool feels way softer after the merge lol. This is good news since a buddy of mine just told me Pennsylvania just got approved to merge their player pool with us so it should bring more fish online.

https://pokerfuse.com/news/industry/...er-heres-what/

Even tho I'm relieved to be finally losing some all ins, these 2 I lost today were pretty annoying cos of how ahead I was and it was also vs the same guy.

HAND 1


Pretty standard hand, just whining. I 3b vs a CO open and BB 4b me and we see a flop. SPR is low so I just lead rip and he finds a win somehow lol.


HAND 2


Same guy, diff table but we're almost 200 bbs deep. He opens UTG, my 3b is very standard here. He 4 bets of course. On the flop, I guess solver wants me to lead pot with double back door flushdraw QT98 combos and wants me to check the single backdoor one here.



Honestly, doesn't really matter in my opinion. I do donk pot and our SPR is about 2 and he tanks forever and rips the rest of his stack in. Solver will go with his AA73 hand only if its also got double backdoors. It will just fold to a pot lead with a single backdoor AA73.



Interesting. Ultimately, still probably doesn't matter. EV differentials are probably negligible. Still up like $3 this session somehow so I'll take it. Grinding diamond elite at this pace of online volume seems pretty unlikely at this point but we'll see how the rest of october goes.

just found this thread & its pretty motivating. I'm relatively new to PLO transitioning from NLHE & find PLO so much less tilting. I'm simply trying to grind a roll from a few hundred dollars with my ending goal being to make a couple thousand a month online then would love to have enough to sit in my local 1/2 live PLO games a few times a month. I'm able to grind ~2k hands daily.

I would like to ask what you would recommend for studying for beating plo10 & plo25? Are there courses you would recommend for my level? Would you bother with signing up for plo trainer yet? I have a coach that is giving me advice to my questions which helps a lot but doesn't actually review my hands or sessions. Do you think a coach that reviews my sessions is necessary to beat the micros?

Great thread. Its insane that its possible to win so much with PLO.

I play online on Pokerrr2 basically every day. ROE, PLO5 hi/lo, and PLO4. It's amazing how the app seems to pick one person for the game/day to win -- they hit every 2 or 3 outer, etc. And I have weeks where I can't win a hand, then a week when I can't lose. I know it's not supposed to be rigged in any way, but it sure feels like it!

See you in December -- you've probably dealt to me before

wins 70% allins and 30 buyins in 30 hours ~ posts 2 bad beats

PLO trainer was great for helping me clean up my preflop game a ton. But at 10 PLO and 25 PLO the price tag is probably a bit hefty. If you do wanna try it out for a month, I'd commit to studying a ton and taking notes down during that month for preflop scenarios. Also remember preflop ranges are gonna be vastly different based on the stakes you play due to rake as well as stack size. I generally study PLO 500-PLO 5k 100 BB ranges and I recommend newer players probably do the same just because moving up to at least PLO 500 should be your goal and it feels wasteful to keep re-memorizing new ranges each time you move up stakes.

For example, here are the range frequencies for raising first in at plo 5k



you are supposed to limp SB 19% at plo5k but i wouldn't bother with that as you are basically never limping at PLO200 and below.

You memorized ranges here and drilled a bunch so you have a decent idea of what you're opening. Then you realize you gotta see what ranges your playing when someone opens in front of you. Here's an example of my spreadsheet where I jotted down all the equilibrium response frequencies for each position when facing an open.



Then you start seeing that you're 3 betting anywhere from 3-9% vs these opens so you gotta start studying at a 3% 3bet range looks like vs a 9% 3bet frequency.

Then you can start studying the responses as the RFI when it gets 3 bet and you start looking at 4 bet range territory (though at lower stakes 4 betting ONLY AAxx is probably fine). There's just an endless stuff to study just preflop, like changing effective stack sizes and seeing how ranges change, or going more multiway and seeing how squeezing ranges changes. And you wanna try to eventually get a decent idea for every spot so this will take a ton of review, drills, memorization. As for courses, I really liked the PLO Puzzle course from runitonce but I feel like that's a bit more intermediate-advanced. My opinion of the best way to get better is just constantly have a good player review your sessions and see what they would do differently than you and have them point out any glaringly huge leaks. That or just watch videos from winning players and get a feel for how the game should be played.

My advice for beating PLO10-25 though is clean up your preflop game and then just nut peddle your way to profit. I would really advise against multi street bluffs, limit it mostly to a 1 street bluff and give up as players are just really stubborn and don't fold. Also don't be a hero and try and catch players bluffing without a strong read. I guess basically... treat it like live poker lol.

proof that i'm just the typical poker player that likes to whine

thanks for such a detailed answer! this is great stuff. I plan to do it all! I did find a coach that reviews hands I send him for feedback & that's already helping alot. On RIO, I was looking at PLO From the Ground Up next month for black friday; if they have some good deals I'll check out Puzzle too. I'm currently playing $5 plo with a few hundred & plan on moving up to $10 plo when I hit $500. Thanks again! Looking forward to seeing more of your hand reviews.

Enjoy it. I've ran about 150 buyins below ev this year. Didnt think it was possible. I am having to learn some new skills. Like how to not lose my mind completely. What a game

Low Volume, Run Good

Volume in October has continued to be pathetic. My all in winrate has dropped from 70% to 65% (won 110/168 all ins) but overall, still running really hot. But when my opponents keep wanting to get it in horrible vs me, it might not be too far off from true expectation.



$200/hr over 49 hours at 1/2, and a tiny bit of .5/1, to hit 10k for the month online so I'll take it. My sleep schedule is terrible though so I just play a little bit late at night and sleep in and don't get to make it to the morning game starts at Wynn. Nothing too interesting going on this month, haven't been studying too hard so I guess I'll do a few line checks.

HAND 1



Preflop + Flop
I raise 3.5x from HJ, CO calls and we go HU. I decided to go for a check this time. He bets 1/2 and I check raise 4x and he calls.

Turn
My blockers seem pretty bad for this spot to be honest. I block the major draws by having both K and J of hearts. I block 89 combos with 99 etc. Still... I decided I'll continue here by going 20% pot and my opponent folds.


Solver Analysis: I was mostly curious to see if the market solvers would play the turn the same as me but something interesting came up. PLO trainer will mostly be betting this combo for 3/4th POT but will have about a 20% checking frequency with this combo. And when facing a bet after checking, it will check raise here 100% of the time.

Flophero will also mostly be betting this combo with mixed sizings but will check here around 25% of the time. But when facing a bet (I tried 1/3rd and 1/2) it will always check call.

Hmmmm....

This is why i don't really put a huge amount of weight into the solver markets.

The EV calculation discrepancy also bothers me a lot when cross referencing the two solvers.



The pot size is 8.5 BBs. Why does one solver calculate the EV of cbetting to be 8-9 and the other one 5.4. These two numbers should not differ by that much.

Anyways, all this solver nonsense aside, I like my line the most. I checked here simply because I felt this particular opponent was a bit stab happy and wanted to punish a bit. The turn is a bit dicey, but I think his continue range will be much wider than equilibrium and will include all hearts and straight draws. I don't think he's bet calling that much Ax on the flop and if he does, I think committing 20% pot on turn and giving up after that is a good game plan...


HAND 2



Preflop
BTN opens pot, I flat we go HU

Flop
I donk bet 1/2 pot and opponent calls

Turn
I bet 3/4th and opponent folds


Solver Analysis: I don't know why flophero is such a nit but it folds this combo pre which I think is wrong vs this field at least. PLO trainer is definitely flatting SB with QQ78 single. flop hero will flat with QQT8 single though for example so it's probably a borderline hand all in all and not that big of a deal.

The flop both solvers agree that the SB should be donk betting this texture quite a lot. Flop hero recommends donk betting 66% of range here while PLO trainer recommends donk betting 44% of range.



Since PLO trainer uses a larger sizing than flop hero and plays a slightly wider range than flophero, these frequency differences seem logical to me. I think SB donk betting these flop textures are a pretty under utilized strategy by the field. Mostly all players at these stakes default to checking their range 100% of the time here. For me personally, I have started finding donk bets on these textures a lot more since studying solvers although I definitely am not finding the lower parts of my ranges to donk bet.

On the turn when the flush comes in, continuing to bet with top set is another under utilized line by the field. For example, flop hero will continue to bet 27% of its QQ on the turn, and will bet something like QQT8 63% of the time.

My personal analysis is that when you donk bet flop, the field tends to over call vs the donk bets. (For this reason, I actually think its ok that i'm more weighted towards value with my donks than semibluffs/bluffs). Going to the turn, their range will probably be too wide and there are plenty of decent equity hands that will fold to a double barrel when the flush comes in that can still beat your QQ. Plenty of KJ, J9, straight draws, 89 which will be in a terrible spot when facing a bet, and even weak flushes will not be happy facing a large bet. I think the risk of running into a nut flush or nut flush blocker and facing a raise does not outweigh the benefit of straight up thievery equity denial against straight draws and weak flushes, not to mention the added range protection of being able to have full houses on board pairing rivers.


HAND 3
Last hand is pretty boring but while we're on the topic of donk leading, I just wanted to check my line here and cross reference the two solvers in this spot.



Preflop + Flop
CO opens and I have a super standard defend with KKQT in the BB. Flop I check call a 3/4th pot bet.

Turn
I decide to lead here for 3/4th and my opponent folds.

Solver Analysis:
Preflop and flop are all standard. On the turn, both solvers still heavily lean towards check. Trainer will only lead rarely with a single spade KKQT combo and will always check my combo here. Flop hero mostly prefers checking though it doesn't mind a lead as much. PLO trainer has a one size 1/3rd lead strategy here and Flop Hero uses mostly 1/2 Pot. So, I guess my lead and my large sizing here is probably not too great and overly ambitious.

Interesting to note here is that both of the solvers' favorite "bluff" combo to lead here is KK97 and overall lead bluffs KK type combos at a very low frequency



At least in this spot, its also comforting to know that both EV calculations are pretty similar. KKQTsss has an ev of about 24 on the turn from Flop Hero and about 22 from PLO trainer.




Anyways, I guess the point is, if multiple market solvers seem to agree in a spot, its probably the correct solution. But there's plenty of spots where solver outputs seem to have a noticeable discrepancy and I would proceed in those spots with a lot of caution. Ultimately, just use your brain and logic to determine what the best line will be vs the field you play against.



Stop win
Month is almost over and I'm basically pretty satisfied to have made 10k at 1/2 online in so few hours. I'm thinking of just calling online quits for the month and go play a little bit of live poker. Might go back to live poker fully in November idk yet. I wanna kind of play 2/5 online again since the player pools look so soft but most likely, i'll just cash out the majority of my online roll again and dump it into more stocks while messing around some more at 1/2 PLO. I got a bit carried away and I have like 27k in tobacco stocks now lol though I kind of "diversified" and bought some philip morris (PM) and turning point brands (TPB). Bought a bunch of google recently too so I guess I'm sweating their earnings report later today.

Fun read, thanks.

any thoughts on making YT content again?

I have never studied PLO as much as NLH.. I read few pages of PLO book, forums and threads but watched a lot of vid... To study or to get better.. what do you do these days? Do you just strictly use only PLO Mastermind to study or other method? Thanks in advance!

Occasionally entertain the idea of it but ultimately it was way too much work and not worth it which is the reason i stopped.


I mostly just run lines through the market solvers and if I'm really in the mood, I'll buckle down and make spreadsheets to find patterns in certain spots.

Back when I was learning PLO though, I think the most effective method to improve for me was just watching my favorite videomakers at the time (galfond, imbajimba, jeans, oddsen on Runitonce) and watch their live play vids and try to predict their lines before they did it. At one point, I watched every single galfond video on his training site and I felt like I could guess his lines in each video with 85%+ accuracy and also predict what he would say to explain it.


2/5 PLO
I decided I just need to get over my mental block of needing a large roll on the poker site just to play a higher stake and said screw it, I'll just play a bunch of 2/5 now. I can always just deposit again if I bust my roll after all so it shouldn't be a big deal. Wouldn't you know it, i ran super hot last month at 1/2 and as soon as I go up to grinding a bunch of 2/5 this month, my all in win rate plummets and I get wrecked.



Lol.

Doesn't matter, I've been running pretty awful this month but when i'm stuck I usually put in more volume. Plus, I'm pretty determined to get to diamond elite status before end of year. I'm not sure how many free days I'll have to grind since I'm actually gonna be headed on a trip to LA and San Diego next week to visit a couple friends and I have no idea when I'll be back. Might get some live poker in Cali, or might not, we'll see...


Anyways, this is looking like a pretty crappy post so might as well toss in a quick HH in there.




Preflop
I raise SB to $15 and BB 3bets to $45 and we take a flop.

Analysis: Opponent has AKK4 here and everything so far is solver approved.

Flop ($90)
I check, he checks back

Analysis: I'm very surprised he checked back here. Solver basically bets this combo 100% of the time. AKxx combos in general cbet super high frequency on A high boards and I think you use some of your weaker Axxx to check back.

Turn ($90)

I bet $68 and he calls.

Analysis: I feel kind of meh about my line here. I checked with flop hero and it actually bets my hand (80% freq.) more often than not when flop checks through but in the moment when I bet here, I felt like this hand might play better as a check-call. I was thinking a lot of his flop check backs contains naked KK and I sized a bit bigger to try and push off his KK hands. I really think KK nut diamonds should be cbetting flop still so I though he might have a decent weight of pretty bad KK here that I could push off.

River ($225)
I check and he pots and I call and he shows AKK4

Analysis: I had a bit of a decision on whether to bet my hand on the river or use it to bluff catch. Especially with both TT, it felt much better to check and call particularly since I originally thought there was a good chance he had some KK combos. A very interesting line if I'm confident in that read is to actually block bet bait something like 10%-20% pot to induce an even bigger bluff from KK but I wasn't feeling that ambitious. The board going runner Q and J when I have both in hand makes this one of the most comfortable hero calls here as it just narrows his range down to basically repping only KT. I admit I still tanked here though since the field generally underbluffs. I guess the last line to consider on river is jamming my hand and turning it into a bluff but I absolutely hate that line here since I don't think anything worse than a straight pots in his shoes, QQ would have raised turn and JJ might pot but we block that.

I think my opponents flop check was kind of strange and ended up costing him here but since he checked and arrived at the river this way, I suppose his bluff seems ok... He still does have some showdown with AKK here vs my give ups like A685 or maybe something like KJ88dd but with this board texture, I probably end up with way more 2 pairs+ so I don't hate the river bluff that much.

You think the villains are better at 500 PLO or same as 200 PLO?

I think 200 PLO is the softest stake. Even softer than 100 PLO lol. At 100 PLO and 50 PLO, people are bad but they limp a bunch and are kind of nitty. Not to mention 50 and 100 PLO rake effect is pretty significant. I dunno what it is about 200 PLO but the mega whales really come out at this stake and just love to punt it off. I think 200 PLO is usually 4-5 fish/whales 1-2 regs. 500 PLO has noticeably regs on average which will significantly affect win rate but still has plenty of whales. But when everything is 6 max, the difference of 1 vs 2 regs is extremely significant. 500 PLO is usually 2-4 fish and pretty consistently at least 2-3 regs.

1000 PLO is where it really starts getting into heavy bumhunt territory where there will be 1-2 big action whale/fish and the other 4-5 are a mixed variety of average to strong regs.

lol.. I am definitely one of those Mega Whale because.. that’s the stake I play mostly when I get bored of NLH grind and I squeeze a lot..try to make the game little bit more fun….think I punted to you a lot in summer..