Introduction
Hello everyone,
I'm a 32 year old Swedish guy thats been playing poker on and off since 2006. I spent a bit off time on 2+2 when I was younger but I never dared to open up a blog back then.
During my years playing poker I've basically only played NLH, apart from the odd dealers choice sessions at friends houses where every weird and weirder poker variant was tested out.
Fast forward until 2018-2019 and you would have seen me sitting in front of my computer trying out PLO, not like trying out playing a hand but really playing and trying to figure out the game. Then in the beginning of 2020 covid came along and kind of ruined my motivation to poker, work and most things, so I took a break from poker except for the occational homegame online.

In general I'm a guy that likes to hang out with friends and travel. During my last trip to Vegas this summer my fire for poker was once again lit and now for the last 1.5 weeks I've spend every evening after work studying and playing PLO.

I've got a notebook where I take note from studies, I do short summaries from my poker sessions and study sessions, but as my hand writing sucks I prefer to write on a computer. So I felt the need to start a blog. And then I thougt "I wonder if that old site 2+2 is still running". So here I am

Where am I now?
I currently have a bankroll of 6 700$ and I'm currently playing PLO20 --> PLO25 mostly, and some PLO100 games (where a friend owes 50% action).
I feel pretty confident about preflop RFI ranges, need to work on my 3bet, coldcalling and facing 3bet ranges. And I havent gotten to work on my postflop game yet

Goals and Ambitions
I dont like to set up deadline based goals like, I'm gonna finish with preflop studies in 2 weeks and head over to postflop. Mostly because I dont know how long it will take for me to grasp the concepts, so I prefer to set goals where I have a chance to influence the outcome. So here are my goals from now:

• Study on average 2h/day for August
• Study at least 50% of my time spent on poker
• Write a summary to my blog at least once per study+grind session

Goal results so far
I keep track in a spreadsheet and so far my results in general is shown below:

In! GL

Thank you @KidCudi

I'm currently reviewing old hands, and had a study session with a PLO friend earlier today. Will write a bit about it in my summary, but yeah my postflop is all over the place

Now I'm just about to go to bed. Today's been a productive day with work, a study session with a PLO friend during lunch. Watching my cousins crush the opponents in soccer after dinner and finishing of the evening with some hand reviews (my own and a friends) as well as watching a video about defending big blinds.

I ended up studying for 2h 8 minutes today which means I increased my average study time per day for August slightly. It's currently at 2h 24 min/day average. Which is going to be needed since I'm traveling away and got friends visiting my town between 18-28th August.

Some takeaway from the sessions:

• My cbetting postflop is way off
• My sizing postflop is also off
• I've been defending BB too loose. I need more nuttiness to my hands that I call with, especially multiway.
• I have a tendency to not plan a line for my game postflop. Really need to work on that

Plan for tomorrow:

• Continue reviewing some hands OOP
• Have a session where I review BB defend vs EP and MP.
• Get in a grind session

Good luck with the learning.

Thank you Kind of Kaos

Today I've so far had two sessions. The sessions contained watching videos about BB defence, doing some handreview of hands I marked as well as my hands in BB against open raises in EP through SB. I also set up flashcards to be able to study what equity is needed to get it in on the flop with different SPRs. Planning to put in a session soon to study that.

What I learned is:

• I tend to overvalue single suited hands.
• I often forget to check open raisers stats before defending BB, to make appropriate range adjustments.
• I have a tendency to call off light when my opponent is shortstacked (both from missing to check his stack before entering the pot, but also just calling off lighter)
• I often bet too small in pots where I'm OOP.
• I also tend to bet too many flops OOP.

Overall it was two good sessions and I noticed I folded some hands that was supposed to be folded preflop that I'm sure I wouldint have folded a week ago. My total study for today has been 2h 22min. My goal for my evening session is to really try and focus on the macro first before I go down to the specific spot. To think about stack sizes, positions, ranges, before getting to my decision for the current spot. I'm sure it will be a big challenge, but it's also something I really have to become better at.

Subbed and GL.

Thanks for ur sub Discipulus9

As you might have noticed there was no post from me yesterday. I took a day off after going out with my cousins saturday night. I was hungover and definately did not want to play. I started watching a video but could not focus at all so decided it was better to take one off and get back with more energy for this week.

Today I have:

• Watched a play and explain video by JNandez
• Had a hand review session with a PLO friend
• Read a chapter of Jared Tendlers "The mental game of poker"

Some takeaways from the session and my reading/watching:

• I have a tendency to overbet A-high boards
• I overplay hands in the small blind
• I have a tendency to bluff on paired rivers when I actually have showdown value
• I need to get more structured when it comes to my planning of days and sessions.

My plan of adjustments forward:

• I'm gonna try to be more concrete and plan my days more here.
• Have at least one session where I focus on the takeaways

Later this evening I will try and put in a longer session. And as mentioned above, my plan for tomorrow is to have a hand review session with a friend, have a session of my own focusing on small blind and have a grind session in the evening.

My current statistics for the August challenge and poker in general are as below:

Good morning,

I thought id do a rough week planning for this week as well as the daily plan for today.

This week I'm gonna have two main areas of focus:

• 3bet pots preflop
• C-betting postflop

I'm gonna put in 2 study sessions with friends (one tomorrow and one on thursday). And then today I'm gonna do:

• 1 PLOTrainer session on facing 3bets pre
• 1 PLOTrainer session on c-betting IP on the flop
• Review hands from yesterdays session with these focuses
• Have a grind session of at least 2 hours

So yesterday I did my tasks and in total I studied for 3h 27 min and grinded for 2.5h. I had a session on facing 3bets preflop in PLOTrainer where I got the total result of 87.7% over all positions, where BB vs SB was my worse one with 72% accuracy. I did also have a session on c-betting IP on the flop CO vs BB, which I only scored 56.3% in. Still got a lot to learn when it comes to postflop c-betting.

When I looked at my results it was not that I was overbetting per se, I checked back hands that was supposed to cbet and the other way around. I have a hard time getting my head around what hands to cbet and at what boards. I'm gonna focus on this for the rest of the week and do hand reviews and preflop as a smaller part of my studies. I also reviewed my session from the day before. Mostly good preflop, a bit loose overcalling some hands I shouldint have because of the high rake environment.

And then I had a 2.5h session where I ended up loosing 5 buyins. My current bankroll is now $6 521. I felt mostly good during the session but I ended up overcalling in a few spots which kind of annoyed me, since I know people dont really overbluff these spots. On the positive side I got some hands to bring to the study session later today.

Plan for today:

• Study session on cbetting
• Study session with study group (hand review)
• Do some PLO quizzes on JNandez Mastermind
• Have a grind session later tonight

Also has anyone noticed the rake attributed stat in Holdem Manager 3 being much higher than the sites number for it?
For example on my session from yesterday, HEM says my attribute to Chico network was 27.92$, while according to Chico I raked 9.98$. This messes with my rakeback stat in HEM

So yesterday was a heavy grind for me. I played for 4h 18 min, as well as study for 2h 26 minutes. A good day for poker
I finished the grind session slightly up. And my BR is currently $6 741. I played mostly PLO50 and 25.

As I've noticed before, I tend to c-bet in the wrong positions. Dont think about my position enough, and I cbet too much with weak hands. But after the study session I also noticed that I play too passive sometimes.

My plan for today is:

• PLO Trainer session cbet
• PLOTrainer session 3bet pre
• Video on Cbet training on Mastermind
• Hand review preflop
• Session tonight

I also think that I'm gonna start write a weekly summary here.

how do you think about which boards to bet or not ? how does being IP or OOP impact your decision to bet or not?

Hey Grass elephant,
Thank you for your post and question. I've noticed that sometimes when I play I tend to get back in to my recreational way of playing, just doing automated decisions rather than thinking about every spot, which makes me bet the wrong kind of boards. What I've learned so far is that future nutted runouts, or future blockers really impact a lot on how much we're betting.

Other factors that affect the frequency of betting is the different kind of boards. If the board connects to your range rather than villains range and the other way around ofc. Being OOP with a medium strong hand without additional equity is in general not good to bet since we hate to get check raised, and also dont want to build a pot, since there's a lot of runouts that affects our hand badly.

But so far it feels like I'm getting these concepts on a theoretical level, but when I'm in a real spot, its hard for me to know what applies in a specific spot. I mean of course in some cases we've got the nut blockers and no showdown value which makes it easy to turn intoo a bluff. But there's so many hands between the obvious bluffbets, and obvious x/c hands OOP for example.

I definately need to study more types of flops and also in connection to bet sizing.

Do you play PLO yourself?

Weekly summary
Last week was intense, first week back to work. But still proud of how much poker I could fit in to my evenings and during the weekend. Study-wise it was a bit worse since I had a lot of fun grinding and ended up doing that instead during the weekend. I played an Omaha tournament and played cash meanwhile. On the positive side I got 3rd for 590$ as well as profiting 100$ on cashgames.

I played 9 105 hands cashgame over 27 hours. My results on cashgames was a stunning -13 buyins. I studied for 16 hours, split between 3.5h videos and 12.5h hand reviews, PLOTrainer, study groups.

I decided to put the money I had from my old vegas cashes intoo my bankroll. Which gives me a total BR of $8964.

The study challenge
Currently my avg study per day for august is 2h 13 min. So far its good. But it's going to be hard for me to reach the goal, since I'm going away on a company trip as well as getting friends visiting after that.


Upcoming week
This week is going to be a short week for me. This wednesday evening I'm going on a company trip, and I will be back next wednesday. And then thursday - sunday 3 friends is visiting, so I wont be able to do any poker or study while they are visiting. My plan is however to study on the train ride home from the company trip, as well as some evenings at the hotel. But I wont be able to have an average of 2h/day.

My focus for the week will me SRP OOP & IP c-betting flop, as well as turn and river. I will watch a couple of videos on mastermind about it. And I will also use PLOTrainer as well as look in to some hands in my holdem manager to evaluate how I'm currently playing in these spots.

so crucial to identify and snuff out that "auto-pilot" as you mentioned. PLO is so ****ing complex there's no space for autopiloting, especially when learning.

the different kinds of boards should also impact your bet size, and what you want villain's range to do, e.g. call or fold

i do play PLO. switched over to PLO this past year and started getting serious about it. i'm currently hemorrhaging money like a water through mesh net, but slowly getting better.

Welcome to the club Yeah I'm very clueless when it comes to bet sizing so far. Got a few takeaways from some study sessions with more experienced players. But I need to study more to get the "Oh this is that kind of scenario, that means we wanna go 75% here". Also bleeding money atm, but I feel more and more confident and I'm happy to pay the money for learning.

Nooow I'm finally back from all my traveling. I must say even tho I had a lot of fun traveling for work and with friends, it felt like the trip came at the wrong timing, since I'm really intoo poker at the moment. As you might have expected, there was very limited time spent during these last 2 weeks on studying or playing. I basically had every day, and evening booked for work and social activities.

My statistics currently look like this:


However if you remove the days I've been away traveling the result is 2h 4 min studying per day. In heindsight I should have formulated my goals differently.

How about results?
I had a longer session yesterday that was quite nice, I ended up 380$. My bankroll is currently at 9 343$.

Focus upcoming week
This week I've got a poker trip planned Thursday - Sunday. So there will be a lot of playing poker live, and less studying. My goals for this week is:

• 6 hours playing
• 6 hours studying - PLOTrainer RFI training, 3bet pots preflop

I think your approach and head is in the right space. GL. Watch out for the rake at those stakes.

Thanks for your comment Yeah I'm currently paying about 11-12bb/100 in rake. However with rakeback and bonuses its way less

So August is coming to and end and its time to set goals for the next month. I thought I should add some life goals apart from my poker goals, to hold myself accountable for that as well.

Summary August

• Study on average 2h/day for August - Fail. - Did not account for how much I was away from my computer. I'm happy I spent more than 2h on average the day I was able to tho.
• Study at least 50% of my time spent on poker - Done. - I ended up with 52.11% study
• Write a summary to my blog at least once per study+grind session - Somewhat ok - I did not do it exactly everytime. But I didint feel that it was worth writing something after every small session or study that I did.

September is gonna be an interesting month. I've got two trips planned. tomorrow until sunday I'm going away for a poker trip with friends. It's gonna be a lot of poker, hanging out with friends, drinking beer and eating nice food. And then 14-19th I'm away on another company trip, and in the end of the month I'm going to a wedding. In total I'm gonna be away from my desktop a total of 13 days. Which leaves me with 17.5 days available for poker. So I'm gonna try to set goals that should be challenging, but still possible to reach in those 17.5 days.

Goals for September

• At least 35 hours studying
• At least 35 hours grinding
• Have 4 study sessions with friends, or if none available post at least 3 hands in discord as replacement for a session
• Lower my use of snus (Swedish tobaco) from 48 pouches per day to 25.
• Have a walk outside at least 20 of the days

post some hands

congrats on hitting your study goal for august!

Thank you
A little status update. So far on my goals for september I'm at:

• At least 35 hours studying - 9h 20 min so far
• At least 35 hours grinding - 8h so far
• Have 4 study sessions with friends, or if none available post at least 3 hands in discord as replacement for a session - No study session so far, posting one hand here and another on discord.
• Lower my use of snus (Swedish tobaco) from 48 pouches per day to 25. - Currently at 23 on average 1-10th september
• Have a walk outside at least 20 of the days - 4 walks so far. Need up up my game here.

Hand history, as requested
Omaha Pot Limit - $0.25/$0.50 - 6 players
Hand delivered by Upswing Poker

UTG: $67.86 (136 bb)
MP: $83.88 (168 bb)
CO: $108.44 (217 bb)
BU: $37.12 (74 bb)
SB (Hero): $183.39 (367 bb)
BB: $213.70 (427 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.75) Hero is SB with A♦ 9♦ Q♠ A♥
1 fold, MP raises to $1.75, 1 fold, BTN calls $1.75, Hero 3-bets to $7.50, BB calls $7, 1 fold, BTN calls $5.75

Flop: ($24.25) K♠ 5♥ J♥ (3 players)
Hero bets $12.13, BB calls $12.13, BU folds

Turn: ($48.51) 4♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $36.39,

Raise pre obv, on the flop I decided to bet half pot. Feels like there are a lot of broadway rundowns in his range after calling my 3-bet pre. I c-bet a 50% sizing, I have no clue what the sizing should be on these kinds of flops, however I do have the A heart blocker, and Aces to block straights. My plan was to continue barreling on a heart, or Q/T. When the 4c came I gave up.

What do you guys think?

C/f flop especially not blocking any sets. SPR is around 1 so bluffing turns isn't gonna work much.