Super inspiring, true show of charachter what youre doing right now.

Best of luck

bumping for interest

Big mistake NOT knowing how you performed. Always calculate and write down expenses and winnings. Note your tips, taxi tickets, hotel costs, party etc. It will help you so much figuring out where the money went.

Hey Chris

Have been relistening to your Joey ep. Get back on there with an update!

I have some q's:

i) did you continue with Jared Tendler, or was it a short relationship? Do you think you'd get any more starting up again?

ii) Is Limit Holdem solved? Is 9max LHE a game where you can get a big edge in? (Not in comparison with edges in other games!)

iii) This was my main q. On the podcast you discussed a possible collusion with 2 Chinese players in stud hi where they were calling you down a lot and you lost big repeatedly. Not for any other reason than my interest but do you have any proof that they were colluding? I appreciate you are/were an experienced player but can looking at HH's especially with your biases of losing in the spot give anything conclusive?

Thanks J

Why do you have so little hands play?

• After starting fresh, I didn't use much game selection and went on more of a downswing
• Got married in March! Went on two different honeymoons (Portland and St Barths)
• Now I'm back to the full time grind to rebuild my poker/life roll

The last 2 years I lost most of my bankroll. I was offered a great deal to play nosebleed stakes, and I couldn't turn a profit for a year. In that time I drained my life roll, mostly from spending, traveling, and losing in tough high stakes games. I've been grinding hard at the small stakes PLO games and 8-game to rebuild. I've been able to beat the games at a decent win rate, but it's hard to make a living at small stakes and build a bankroll at the same time. If I'm able to reach 500 zoom and put myself into good games I believe I can make a big enough profit to live comfortably and build my roll again, but it's going to be hard to climb out of 200 PLO. Assuming I can beat 200 at 6bb/100 I would need to play at least 30k hands a month just to pay rent and add 2k to my bankroll each month.

I would like a bankroll big enough to avoid a risk of ruin over 5%, and according to the poker variance calculator I would need 7.6k BB at whatever level I play if I have a winrate of 6bb/100 and a standard deviation of 175. There are a lot of factors here, but over the last 70k hands i've played at 200 that's been my results so I'm assuming I don't get better/worse over the next while.

Since this is a poker goals & challenges thread I am challenging myself to continue to beat 200 PLO and build a roll big enough to take shots at 500 PLO. That is my immediate goal. So I guess I could rename this thread 200-5000 PLO Honestly my goals have changed over the past couple years. I don't really desire to play at the top level, but rather be able to beat a level comfortably that can allow me to live comfortably and put money aside for retirement.

The SCOOP is happening now and half of my attention is on that, and the other half is on PLO. I've been playing my normal games and adding a couple of tournaments a day. It's very easy to play a couple of tournaments on the side as long as I only ever have a max of 4 tables open at the same time (usually 2 PLO 2 tournaments). The SCOOP is an opportunity to get lucky and have a big pay day which would be awesome. I'm only playing tournaments in which I believe i have an edge, so I expect to have a positive ROI after the schedule is over, but the variance is obviously very big in tournaments.

After the SCOOP is the WSOP, and this year I'm taking it easy. I only plan to go for a couple of weeks and play 4-5 tournaments. Last year was really hard on me and my bankroll, so I can't really afford another 6 figure loss. If I somehow pull off a big win during SCOOP maybe I'll play a few more tournaments at WSOP. Moving forward with this thread I will try and update at least quarterly with results, and whenever I feel like it with context

TLDR;

1. Rebuilding roll at small stakes PLO
2. want to get to a level where I can make a comfortable living
3. SCOOP and WSOP big opportunities to have a big score

2018 1st Quarter

Things I improved on/did well:

Implemented a strict stop loss.
This is a game changer for me. Historically I've lost way more big sessions than I've won, and with a strict stop loss it's impossible to lose more than 5 buy-ins in a session and I've had quite a few 5+ buy-in wins.

Worked on my game
I followed through with a plan to better my game and increased my knowledge base of HU PLO.

Things I didn't do well:

I took a lot of big shots

My normal game has been 200 plo and I played in a 75/150 o8 game and lost over 8k in one day. Shots like this are devastating to a small bankroll. It just can't happen when trying to rebuild. Unfortunately I had money spread out on ACR and my stop loss software doesn't work on that site. I decimated my small bankroll and had to drop down to 100 PLO to rebuild.

I took multiple shots at 500 PLO and they all went south. I don't think this was as big of a deal as the o8 loss, but I'm still on a short bankroll for 500 and mentally it's hard to play my A game.

This graph includes all HU PLO (doesn't include the mixed game results) Jan - May

Gratz on getting married and all the best moving forward. Definitely right move to step down limits in order to build a bankroll. It sucks, but sometimes it has to be done.
Do you think playing mix/o8 on the side affects your game in PLO? I used to dabble some in 8game too, but it started to affect my winrate, so i dropped those games.
You only play stars?

I think playing mixed with hu PLO can be challenging some days if i'm not feeling focused. If i'm only playing one table of mix and one HU table I think it's good, but it's when I'm playing 2-3 tables of plo and a table of mixed that it becomes a challenge.

Sorry to hear things haven't gone super well lately. Seems like volume is pretty low, are you able to get decent volume playing mainly hu plo? What do you think was the cause of losing over the year playing high stakes mix/limit games? Lack of games/variance over a smallish sample? gl on the rebuild, i think it makes a lot of sense to not chase the highest stakes anymore, seeing as games aren't as alive as they used to be and plenty of 75/150 or lower goes and you can make a decent hourly.

Volume was low mostly because of all the things going on with life in the beginning of the year. Going to start getting more volume this summer. There is plenty of action for midstakes HU PLO at the moment.
I lost playing high stakes mostly because of variance. I didn't play enough hands to really judge. I would win 10k at 2k plo but then I'd lose 40k playing 1k/2k o8 over 20 hands. Running bad at the big games and big tournaments was mainly why I ended up losing at the end of the deal.

Wow, eye opening stuff. You are very humble and open about your results. It’s a great reminder that variance is powerful and no matter how good a player is, he has to be ready for every card to go against him for extended periods of time.

Thanks for sharing.

If variance isn't respected, broke is always on the horizon.

I just wanted to say I've enjoyed your RIO stuff immensely and it's been great help to me. Of the ~80 vids on mixed games on the site, yours are my favorite. I'm sorry to hear about your latest results but it sounds like you're approaching the situation in the most mature manner possible. Best of luck in the future and I look forward to seeing updates in this thread.

Yeah, permanently. You have to be prepared for extended periods of bad variance else you're far too fragile for this game.

RIO? Sorry I'm just a regular semi-lurker, I haven't read all the PC&G threads and only slightly skimmed yours.

Where can I find your RIO stuff on the RIO website?

Why don't you sell pieces of yourself in order to play mixed games instead of grinding 100plo rake trap?

EPT- is ANYONE strong enough to last? I mean even watching guys who "made it" on tv they look ****ing miserable/ like they hate their lives. It makes you question things that's for sure.

Thanks

runitonce.com and search in the coaches section for Christopher George

People say 100 is a rake trap, but I've been winning over 23k hands at 25bb/100 after rake. If you're playing HU your edge is way bigger than in games like 6 max, where the edges can be finite if your game selection isn't there.

Hi, this is great thread, I just found this blog this week and read all 9 pages.

Its very nice how you aproach when you fail, because everyone fails, but its rare face the problems like you do, being humble/honest and thinking about trying again. With your mindset and skills I think you will be able to get back at stakes you were playing a while ago. In my opinion, your real problem is number of hands... 25-30k months is really low if you are trying to build a bankroll playing 1/2. that amount of hands its enough when you are already playing higher stakes.

gl.

SCOOP is over and after ~4k of buy-ins I ended up winning ~$100. I'm happy with how I approached it, but there were a few things I wasn't happy with. I would have liked more of a focus and patience during the tournaments. It's hard as a cash game player to focus a lot of attention into a tournament you know will be knocked out of 60-80% of the time and will take 2 days to finish. Mentally tournaments are far more trying than cash games. When you become a short stack in a tournament it can feel stressful and cause impatience. In a zoom cash game you can always reload and are constantly playing hands. Focusing during the whole tournament is something I need to work on before the WSOP.

The cash games during the SCOOP were great. I felt I played well most of the couple of weeks, however I've noticed a slip in focus and patience at the end (which i was very happy to be able to recognize as it was happening so it didn't turn into a tilt session) so I will take off tomorrow and try to recover and rest so that I can get back on my 200-5k grind.

Was going very well this month. And then I just lost 4x my stop loss. I changed my tiltbreaker to kick me off after I hit my stop loss for 1.5 hours instead of 6 hours. Usually the 6 hour breaker meant I was done for the day. I was feeling good, my bankroll has been growing so I figured I could afford to lose 2x my stop loss in a day if I played again after losing. Today I hit my 2x stop loss but the program didn't kick me off, so I was able to keep grinding and ended up losing a total of 4x the stop loss. Really disappointed in myself in allowing it to happen, and will have to turn the program back to 6 hours to prevent this from happening ever again.
That being said I was lucky to have done very well last week so this isn't as disastrous as it could have been if I had a shorter BR.

2018 2nd Quarter

Things I improved on/did well:

• Played only when I felt like playing
• Focused on getting good hours in
• Game selection

Things I didn't do well:

• I changed up my stop loss and it was a mistake
• Mental game

I've thought a lot about bankroll management these past few months and I think what worked for me was to minimize the losing days and maximize the winning ones. I watched Barry Greenstein's podcast with Joey and he talked about this idea, I suggest you watch it! It makes sense for someone who is good at poker but bad at the emotional discipline needed for bankroll management. I'm going to adjust my tilt breaker back to a 5 buy-in stop loss (I tried 10 buy-in stop loss before and it didn't go well) It may be a small stop loss, but it will be good for my mental game. When I'm winning i'm going to try to put in more hours.

Come on Chris, there wasn't a 3rd quarter review yet!

And of course the 4th quarter will then be due soon

2018-2019 recap
2019-2020

I Haven't updated this thread in a long time, which is due to what I have felt has been a lot of failure. No one likes to write about their shortcomings. I can't recall with great detail how my 2019 went, but I do know the gist of it.

Last I updated I was on my own playing HU PLO which had been going well until...I wasn't making enough consistently to forgo the stress of a small bankroll, and it was too much to deal with. It affected my game, and my mental focus. I went on a very significant downswing at HU PLO of 50 buy-ins and I wasn't ready for it. I had been winning at roughly 10bb/100 and wasn't aware of the variance that could occur.

Here is a frequency of downswing chart when winning at 10bb/100 over a 20k hand sample. As you can see a 50 buyin downswing can occur 5.79% of the time. Something I should have expected.


After the downswing I became very discouraged. Maybe I wasn't winning in these games and was just running good. I decided to step away from HU PLO (a mistake in hindsight) and pursue something else. Historically I've had success at limit games. HU PLO was a very different game, maybe it was too different for me.

I decided to go play at my local live casino. A game I could surely beat, after all I crushed 2/4 full ring rush poker on Fulltilt! I started playing 2/5 with a short buyin. Shortly after, I was making close to $100/hr at 2/5 live. (yes, I was running good). Unfortunately I had sold my action to my friend (I didn't want to risk my life BR). After winning at 2/5 I decided to go on my own and settle up with my friend, earning him a nice profit. I immediately go on a downswing and lose most of the profits I just collected from my deal. On short bankroll I played live 2/5 and 5/10 from late 2018 up until August of 2019. I was able to make a living solely from playing this game, but was always one downswing from being out of the game. I was paying expenses while trying to grow the bankroll, and often I'd just make 3-4k a month pay life expenses and the bankroll would stay stagnant or decrease slightly.

I eventually hit a downswing with my limited bankroll. At this point I am scared to play on my own again. in September the WCOOP is starting up on Pokerstars. Surely this is a great opportunity for me to rebuild my bankroll by running good at tournaments (a terrible mentality). I find another deal with a friend to play the WCOOP. I played 30k worth of tournaments. I final table 2 tournaments, but can't close them out. At the end of the WCOOP I find myself down 7k, but with a new deal which allows me to play the games I used to play. I start grinding games that historically I have done well in with players I know I can beat. I slowly get back into the online grind prioritizing good game selection (something I've lacked in the past). I start doing well and get out of makeup and start making myself profit.

So now here we are, back online playing mixed and HU PLO, armed with more experience.

I've learned a lot in this time that I'd like to share in list form. If you'd like a more detailed explanation I'd be happy to expand in a later post.

• It's easy to get too much information in poker. Do what works for you, and what you enjoy doing.
• Don't play on a short bankroll, even if you have an edge at higher stakes
• When building a bankroll it's important to lower variance the best you can with good game selection and stern stop losses
• Bouncing ideas off of others has a lot of value when learning, listen to what they have to say with an open mind.

Glad to hear you've turned yourself around ceegee

Nice update, cool that things are improving. Might be wrong about this but you're living in Vancouver right? Regardless 3-4k per month seems like a pretty big hurdle to overcome every month just to break even, I'm not surprised it's stressful trying to rebuild a bankroll under those circumstances. Have you considered moving to a place where living expenses are lower?