Old time nlhe pro here, did very well in the early years up till 2016. Got wiped out by serious illness for 6 years. Just getting back on my feet now and started learning plo (mainly 5c) this year.

Let’s see if the dream is still alive in 2023.

The approach is simple, study effectively 3-5hrs every morning, play 1k hands at night. Going full monk mode. The goal is to make 30k+/month.

Will update weekly with my progress.

Also happy to talk in depth strategy in this topic. Feel free to drop any hh’s.

Good luck! How do you study?

3-5 hours is a lot, do you think that's sustainable?

Thanks!

I've made the decision to go hardcore. I have been putting this study volume in for a few months now. The main problem I'm still running into is I'm still weak/low energy levels from the aftermath of all these years of illness. I struggle putting in the 1k hands in the evening, so I will give myself some time to reach this goal.

As for study approach I work with an awesome study partner, I highly recommend doing this. It keeps you accountable and you are forced to explain your thought process and get feedback on it which is all much better than working alone.

To really improve I think its important to have a curiosity about the game. Most spots that I review are not actually massive pots but rather hands like this:

ClubGG Hand #205960062: 5 Card Omaha Pot Limit ($5/$10) - 2023/10/24 13:32:59 UTC
Table 'CGG_1230421' 6-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 3: 88861982 ($1198.34 in chips)
Seat 4: 19599323 ($1604 in chips)
Seat 5: 89326243 ($1435 in chips)
Seat 6: 88327065 ($2485.50 in chips)
19599323: posts small blind $5
89326243: posts big blind $10
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to 88861982 [Ts Tc 9h 3s 3h]
88327065: folds
88861982: raises $25 to $35
19599323: folds
89326243: raises $75 to $110
88861982: calls $75
*** FLOP *** [6c 8h 4h]
89326243: checks
88861982: bets $112.50
89326243: folds
Uncalled bet ($112.50) returned to 88861982
88861982 collected $225 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $225 | Rake $0
Board [6c 8h 4h]
Seat 3: 88861982 (button) collected ($225)
Seat 4: 19599323 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: 89326243 (big blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 6: 88327065 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

We took down the pot with a reasonable play but do we really understand this spot?

Lets pull up the solution and take a dive.

So first ask ourselves how do the ranges interact with this board and what kind of strategies does that lead to?
Its a lowcard flop which means the 3 bettor is not going to have strong interaction. But since its more low than middling the button also does not have super strong interaction, 57,88,66,44 are the high eq made hands on this board and they are not that common in buttons range either. So with the flushdraw on this board this becomes more about the draws. Since the 3bettor will have a lot of aces with nfd and nfd in general that helps him on this board.

With that kind of interaction I would expect the 3bettor to have plenty of hands that want to pot like AA+gutshot+ but since they are high playability a lot of them could also half pot. This would help build a range around some weaker bluffs like AAT96 with Ah blocker but no fd. Then we also mix plenty of good hands in our checking range since we have a lot of weak checks on this board. So I would guess 35-40% cbet. 20% pot the rest half pot.

I open the solution in visions or mastermind and see if thats correct. Then I quiz myself on OOP: do I understand this cbet range? what hands are intuitive and what hands are not? How would population/this particular player most likely play this spot?

Don't just flip through hands, take some time to think about each combo. Based on the interactions on this board, what line of the gametree is best for my hand? Go through each possible line in your head. If I cbet this hand how do I respond to a raise? But also, what if he flats, does my hand play well across a variety of runouts for this size pot and SPR? How would you adjust it to a partciular player?

On this board it seems to me that most regs would overestimate buttons interaction on the board. This is not as bad a board as it seems as AA combo equity is still driving the equity on this flop. That would mean we face a little bit more check/jams and we should polarize our stabbing range more and be very mindful about equity realisation.

So lets quiz ourselves on the stabbing range. We can see this hand is actually a check and betting is almost a full bb error. Lets try to understand why and what the real error in our thought process is here.

The hand is a good bet because we are unblocking the folding range (AA and high card rundowns). Its bad because we have no blockers to c/jamming range and we have to b/f a lot of equity here. So instead we should pick bluffs that can comfortably bet/fold or can bet/call AND can push its equity effectively across turns when we face a c/c. Thats the other reason this hand plays poorly as a bet: even if we don't get pushed off it on the flop when we face a c/c now we have a massive pot on the turn with a hand that will be too low in equity and blockers to effectively push on turns. Clearly it plays better in a smaller pot, as a check back.

So what bluffs are good instead? Three categories. Hands that have strong immediate blockers and functions as a one and give up bet, for example AJT82 with Ah blocker but no fd . And hands that have good fold equity and can rip turns when faces with a c/c, for example J9976 with fd and bdfd. Or cat 3, hands that have reasonable FE but have poor checking equity, like Aj933 with 9s but no fd/bdfd.

As you quiz yourself you'll find hands that overlap each category and become indifferent between lines. But now you understand really why and how you could adjust those holdings based on your opponent.

Now lets try apply this improved understanding across a variety of similar spots to really integrate the improvement. Lets pull up a random straight flop in the same pot and see if we can construct the IP range. You'll come across boards that function differently and get to understand the deeper dynamics that drive each particular texture and how to adjust it to each opponent.

Once you're done with that take it to the turn and try to construct ranges and quiz yourself on holdings.

Good luck man I'm also getting into 5 card so will be fun to follow your journey, what sites do you play on?

Sent from my SM-A715F using Tapatalk

Good luck! Nice approach of studying the game and good hand example. A spot that brings often a lot of questions for me as well. Especially as played and when you get called. What do you do on the turn...

- When it is a blank with the hand you have. Checking is kind a giving up unless you hit the river. Betting could be for your stack with bad EV when you got Check raised and if you get called and the river is another blank it will be difficult to continue the bluff. What would be your choice on a blank turn as played?

- And what if you bet a pure bluff and get called. You give up? Or bet small to have a reasonable river size bet behind (does not seem logic to me because you rep nothing except a monster)

Best regards,

Martijn

Subbed always love to see more 5-c players!

With the hand you posted, this just seems like a fold pre, no?

These disconnected double pairs play really badly multiway and have terrible reverse implied odds. I'm not sure I would even defend this in the BB given the high rake structure.

Yeah good questions and thinking so it helps to consider his range as various strength buckets and then consider the ev and your playability vs each of those across the different lines.

Let’s go through them one by one.

Vs flopped straights/sets we really want to check. We have substantial equity and they will often c/jam us out of the pot

Vs overpairs + combo equity we want to check. They will bomb us out of the pot. Checking is marginally better because we don’t have much equity vs this part of the range.

Vs nfd with/who overpair we want to check. This one is a bit more hidden but we don’t want to build a pot vs strong fd’s as we have reverse implied odds. We would rather have a T hi flush in a small check back pot. Important concept that cross applies in many spots.

Vs weak hands like 2p no draw, Overpairs + SD etc betting is not super harmful but checking allows us to remain at a deeper SPR and more effectively apply pressure to this part of the range. This is key, if our hand has relevant blockers or nutted equity then we could bomb these hands off on the turn, but here we can’t and betting doesn’t accomplish anything.

Vs the weakest part of its range, hands that will c/f betting is clearly best as we get immediate folds. Vs checking where we let him realise his equity.

Adding it all together checking seems superior as our default play.

If we consider that on average a mediocre reg will check more straights and combo equity on this board then betting becomes even worse.

But betting could be the best line vs a recreational opponent that for example likes to bomb away all equity and check just weak aces and misses.

Yeah It’s def a very marginal and close hand. I’d say it depends on rake structure and opponents. I agree that as a default it’s actually better to just fold this. Best case it’s very marginally plus ev, worst case it could be losing .1-.2bb. Would probably always defend the bb but again depends on rake.

Week 1 write up

Still plagued by illness and fatigue. Every day goes something like this: wake up in agony crying and cursing the gods until around noon when I start to have a bit of energy, enough to jerk off for an hour or so and then I fill a cup with 10-12 espressos and drink it and put in 4-5 quality hours on poker. On good days I get a workout in after.

I have been consistent in my efforts and gotten 4-5 quality hours in every single day so I consider that a win. 80% of the time was spent studying but I played around 2k hands at 5/10 - 15/30. Played very good poker. The daily plusses are compounding. Unfortunately spotted several instances of collusion at my tables in this club and so I decided to stop playing there all together. I'm a naive idiot and need to be much more careful about this going forward.

Hand analysis of the week:

Table 'CGG_1275314' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: 32106655 (¥9918.14 in chips)
Seat 2: 56154249 (¥12476.44 in chips)
Seat 3: 88861982 (¥6817.50 in chips)
Seat 4: 99333400 (¥5775 in chips)
Seat 5: 67419067 (¥10982.10 in chips)
Seat 6: 93554353 (¥14003.75 in chips)
93554353: posts small blind ¥25
32106655: posts big blind ¥50
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to 88861982 [As Qd Qh 5d 2s]
56154249: folds
88861982: raises ¥125 to ¥175
99333400: folds
67419067: folds
93554353: folds
32106655: calls ¥125
*** FLOP *** [3c 4d Ad] {Rake: ¥0}
32106655: checks
88861982: bets ¥123.75
32106655: raises ¥466.87 to ¥590.62
88861982: raises ¥1556.24 to ¥2146.86
32106655: calls ¥1556.24
*** TURN *** [3c 4d Ad] [2d] {Rake: ¥0}
32106655: checks
88861982: checks
*** RIVER *** [3c 4d Ad 2d] [8d] {Rake: ¥0}
32106655: bets ¥4668.72

These spots come up quite frequently in plo5 and its important to have a good framework for approaching these. Most of us have a nlhe background where you can consider your whole range and say ok I have to call x top part to remain unexploitable as a default strategy and maybe we can adjust and overfold a bit.

This kind of framework is bad in plo5 because the spots are fundamentally different:
- Blockers are much more important
- Many spots lack natural bluffs because of previous street action

For example in this spot villain has plenty of nutflushes but lacks natural bluffs because without the Kd its quite dangerous for him to bluff as my range is extremely heavy in flushes as well and has many nutflushes in there. So lets say he has a straight or set, most of it will be without a Kd/Qd and therefor suicidal to bluff. The weaker flushes have some blockers that could bluff but it doesnt make much sense because they have SD value. So here we have a typical spot where all the value is there in the range, but most players will struggle heavily to come up with the necessary bluffs. While gto/unexploitable this call probably loses massively in game. Of course I called and he had it.

Goals for week 2 are to keep up consistency up and hopefully accumulate more energy to get some volume in playing.

Which product(s) do you use to study? Liking these hand reviews, I'm not an expert but surely he can bet worse for value there especially on 4th diamond, also how many nut flushes do you realistically have after you check back turn - likely not many.

Glgl

Hi OP, I've followed you since you were an establish HUSNG crusher.
I'm very sorry to hear about your disease and I'm glad you are back.

Unfortunately, I had and still have an undiagnosed diseases that ruined my life completely, I was a crusher in my pool than, when the illness struck, I wasn't able to recovered effectively from that. Now I'm the shadow of the person I was.
I'm very glad to hear that your fate wasn't like mine.

Best of luck

what was the illness if you don’t mind sharing?

These hand analyses are really interesting!

Good luck, will be following

It depends a bit on the player pool, I would say at <200 PLO you could say a random can show up with enough random hands here that you can justify calling. But vs someone with a serious strategy it is deceptive and non intuitive just how strong the ranges and flush interaction is on this run out. In this context the 4th diamond coming off makes little difference as it would in other spots. Even if someone were to vbet a J-hi flush here I'd say they tend to go for a small size rather than jam here.

Sorry to hear that man, it was exactly like that for me for many years so I feel your pain. I have recovered tremendously since and things keep getting better so don't give up and keep searching for solutions. Happy to talk more over PM if you want.

Medically undiagnosed but in a nutshell almost complete collapse of my immune system and subsequent chronic lyme disease and other infections that my body cant shake. Was in a pretty dark place for a while with barely any physical function left unable to stand on my legs for years but have recovered tremendously since and continue to improve. So everything now is already a win and very grateful for a second chance.

The fact that it was undiagnosed is ****ing devastating, it was the same and still the same for me. I've seen the best doctors around, even got went under surgery, still a long way to find a cure for this unknown disease.
The first doctor I've seen was a researcher, who devoted his life to medicine and he told me "We know 5% of medicine, we are trying to connecting the dots but we are very far", **** he was so right.
I'll drop you a PM with my Discord, happy to talk to you, ty in advance for your time

GL Lotte! Very happy to hear you've got your medical issues more under control, hope you continue to make progress. Will be following the thread with interest.

Your story resonates. Got hospitalized due to mental illness. Then found poker and plo5. Hit me up with any strat questions. Good luck and I hope you feel better.

Hey

Is this Lotte Lenya?

What I will write has nothing to do with your case (I guess), it´s just something I feel is overlooked but crucial to everyone, and most players
who end up sitting for long hours/alone in front of the PC etc suffer a bit

I would say a significant % of players I know have some issues with anxiety/depression etc

Food- We must define this, a simple example is eating blueberries/walnuts for enhanced brain performance (in balanced quantities)
(All tree nuts+red berries are good in moderate quantities ofc) , eliminating processed foods, sugar (accelerates damage) so on

Exercise - Again, this has to be daily and I am speaking about walking 1h30 per day, Yoga, not hardcore stuff (crazy weight lifting etc)

Social life - Key to our mental+physical balance, probably more important than all the rest, I can include here things like Love life, Life purpose
sense of community, spending time with friends

Stress - I think it causes more diseases than anything else.Managing and coping with it. Prioritizing happiness

These 4 pillars work together and if we don´t work on these we will sooner or later pay the price.

This could be a very long post, just touching the surface, again this is not related to the OP (afaik) but it´s something overlooked and many suffer a lot

5 card plo is my favorite game. I will say I think your playing a little to loose pre flop. Should tighten your range a little bit. TT933 is a hand I am not playing in 5 card plo.

bro, your a legend in HUSNG community. H2olga/Lotte lenya, the crusher of HUSNG back in the days. Also enjoyed the well you shared yrs ago. glgl, subbed. whether or not you post HS hands is irrelevant. nice to see an OG come back to our community and share his stories and wisdom.

5 card plo at GG shifted to 5 seats recently. Any idea what would be decent vpip % for the positions? I'm finding it a bit difficult to transition. From 28% 6 seats I am now suddenly on 38%. With the impact of rake at 50 and 100 plo at GG I think it is a bit too much.

Thanks for all the kind words of support guys, appreciate it <3

Whatsup Dunc, hope you’re rocking it wherever u are.

Respectfully I disagree
What if it’s hu? Would you play it then? Or what if there’s antes? What if the blinds don’t 3bet much? It’s better not to have such hard rules for any range and be more flexible in adjusting it based on the situation.

In this case I thought it was a close +ev play, but in any case I think focussing on very close preflop decisions is not that impactful on our bottom line. If it’s losing maybe this hand is -0.05bb which just isn’t much. This is not an excuse to splash preflop but the real money is made post flop.

Week 2 write up

Time flies. Intense fatigue made it difficult to work but got 4-5hrs in almost every day. I played a few sessions at 10/20 and 25/50 and felt quite good about my game though there is still many areas that need to be improved. Overall I'm very happy with the progress in my understanding of the game but the persistent low energy levels are frustrating as I'm not able to put in the work and grind I desire to. Its going to be this way for a while longer so just gotta keep moving forward.

Results



lol volume so not very meaningful

Hand analysis of the week:

Table 'CGG_1305951' 6-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: 49987561 (¥19871.08 in chips)
Seat 2: 66942062 (¥15871.45 in chips)
Seat 3: 16284446 (¥13354.50 in chips)
Seat 4: 88861982 (¥6851.93 in chips)
Seat 5: 81956006 (¥2022.78 in chips)
Seat 6: 12213359 (¥25260.97 in chips)
16284446: posts small blind ¥15
88861982: posts big blind ¥30
49987561: posts the ante ¥9
66942062: posts the ante ¥9
16284446: posts the ante ¥9
88861982: posts the ante ¥9
81956006: posts the ante ¥9
12213359: posts the ante ¥9
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to 88861982 [Ks Kc 9s 8d 7c]
81956006: folds
12213359: folds
49987561: folds
66942062: raises ¥129 to ¥159
16284446: folds
88861982: raises ¥387 to ¥546
66942062: calls ¥387
*** FLOP *** [5h 8h 2s] {Rake: ¥0}
88861982: checks
66942062: bets ¥870.75
88861982: calls ¥870.75
*** TURN *** [5h 8h 2s] [5c] {Rake: ¥0}
88861982: checks
66942062: bets ¥1815

Very tough spot all round. For 100bbs its acceptable to pot/gii otf. Generally we do not want to pot hands without a fd in such situations because you end up in spots where on a flush turn you have a hand with 0% equity, which is something we want to avoid. So another option is to put these hands in a half potting line, waiting for a safe turn to commit more chips. Important factor for that would be having a backdoor flushdraw as it allows you to rip more turns. Backdoor flushdraws are more important than you intuitively think as they add a lot of playability to your hand on turns. For many hands on the flop this is a crucial factor in deciding wether it goes into the betting range or not.

As we are a bit deeper here things get more dicey. Pot get it in is too light now. Half pot and c/c are both acceptable lines. Again important is not to play these flops too passively. Don't be afraid to rip in 200bbs with a pair and fd. The biggest mistake we can make OOP in these situations is going on the passive defense too much against capable players. The way to get good at these is to practice these flops consistently in trainer/solver and err on the side of aggression when in doubt.

It bears mentioning that deepstack 3b pots will always be very tough OOP. While this is opportunity for capturing extra ev through relentless study of these situations, there is no shame or much ev loss in dropping all mediocre 3bets from your range. Deepstack, 3Betting something like AAJT2 single nutsuit is only marginally better than flatting in a gto sim. Its easy to lose that extra ev in messing up postflop.

Back to the hand, c/c on the flop is a fair line but how do we proceed on this turn? Considering that on the flop we c/c mediocre draws and overpairs with draws, on the turn we naturally fold all mediocre draws as they became worthless. We should continue most overpairs with equity and frankly this hand is jammed on the turn in a 100bb sim vs a half pot stab and half pot turn bet. Thats not intuitive but it simply has enough blockers and equity and is too vulnerable as a flat. The situation is quite a bit deeper and were also facing larger bets so how should we adjust?

Lets practice the stabbing and barreling range until we understand the principles and it becomes intuitive. Compared to that barrel range, how would population deviate? The gto barrel range on this turn includes a lot of low equity bluffs like AKJ73 no draw because blocking AA/KK is an important factor. Most human players struggle to find these hands in their range and barrel more equity heavy. That means a call becomes worse and a jam or fold becomes more appealing. The next thing to consider would be the players tendencies and bet sizing. What part of his range do we think he's weighted to? But perhaps we can make no such judgement. After all this I'm still not sure what the best play is. I think jam slightly better than folding/calling with all options being close. Fortunately when all options are close that usually means there is not much ev difference between each line as long as our philosophy to approaching the situation makes sense.

Week 3 write up

Very positive week: energy levels are rising and put in some very solid days. Played a mix of 10/20 - 30/60 and feeling very good/confident save a few medium sized blunders. Still much to study and improve but feeling great about things.

No graph because it’s mixed currencies and half of my volume wasn’t tracked. Results somewhere between -15 and +10k on the week.

Also added 6card to the mix and its going well.

Instead of a weekly hand review I’ll post my thoughts on some of the exisiting poker content.


Llinusllove triton cash games 2023

Watch this to see what greatness is in poker. It’s live and so you only see a few hands. Nevertheless in spite of being up against the likes of Jason Koon and Chris Brewer you can see Linus is one step ahead in spots and has them on the defense. Many consider Linus to be a gto machine, I would argue he is actually very good at exploits too, using his superior theoretical understanding of the game for all kinds of technical exploits.

Watch how aggressive he pushes his ranges in spots, like in the multi-way pots, he understands better than the other players what the frequencies should look like and check raises extremely aggressively.


Phil Galfond YouTube content

Phil is a very strong/solid player. Solid theoretical understanding, very good intuition/reads/discipline and framework for approaching situations. Watch his match with jungle man we’re they both talk through the hands. Although jungle has very good intuition for spots his fundamentals are fairly poor in plo. Phil has got a clear edge here.


Follow bencb on twitter, he always posts solid down to earth advice. Also follow Fedor who occasionally posts his opinion on hands.

Uri Peleg
Uri Peleg, although I have no affiliation of any sort I highly recommend watching his course. Very strong thoughtful exploitative plays at online high stakes nl. Could be top 5 in the world it he wanted to.

Watch Doug Polk’s video with some caution. Although super entertaining Doug is the perfect example of someone who is highly intelligent and has worked very hard on his game but lacks a bit of natural poker talent. His approach for fundamental range construction is good but he’s oblivious to factoring in adjustments/exploits. This is not enough to make great poker and I think for most people this is not the best approach and although his theoretical understanding of the game is very strong I always joked that watching that as a low/midstakes player would probably make you lose ev.