Hey, thanks for the feedback.

I've recommended books in this thread many times. My recommendations have changed over time, however I have always recommended the effective guide to body language as a must read for poker players.

I've been going through some interesting times lately(per usual). Fun times for the self-aware individual;

Last week I watched a podcast with an ex-Scientologist on Joe Rogan. It's an unusual topic for me to follow, but I decided to watch it for no particular reason. Two days later, one of my flatmates tells me he is a Scientologist. I believe this is the first Scientologist I've met. After telling me this, I pause and ask "Are you OT5?" which is one of several levels of rank that I randomly guessed. He is OT5.

Fish limps in MP, hero has KJT8$ds on the btn with 50 BB and ....overlimps. This is normally a very standard isolate spot for me. I went from grabbing raising chips to limping, not sure why. After I limp, SB snap pots it(QQ55), BB re-pots it(AAds), fish calls, hero folds. I would have got stacked if I iso'ed.

A fish who limps 50-60% limps in mp. For some reason I think to myself "he has aces". This is an unusual thought and has no logical bearings. Fish gets to showdown and has AA.

I'm chatting with a woman from Sydney on okcupid for a few days. One day I decide to cook Thai food for the first time in my life(or at least, to my memory). I buy the ingredients that day, and decide to wait until the next day to make the meal. The next day, as I'm preparing green curry, she messages me and mentions shes about to go for Thai food with her friends/family. There is no mention of thai food earlier in the conversation.

What was the mistake you made pre when you bet 65 and then gii otf but said you got raped cuz of your mistake pre?

Thai -- The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

Live plo seems easy there's probably enough rec players. I play on ignition 1/2 plo 6 max mostly but the games can be very competitive. I am making most of my profit by taking very risky lines pre, 3bet, c bet, turn bet type stuff. Along with a fairly tight abc style range pre. A lot of regs will make big laydowns on the turn with thier non nut hands (mistake and exploitative)
I feel like live you can possibly get more value from your nut hands with redraws, crushing opponents 792q type hands on boards like 568 when we have 7988 with bdfd. Whereas online it's a much more disiplined group of pros and it's straight tough. Still beatable though. But I have to take very creative lines in uncontested heads up and multi way pots. Like leading a limped checked flop on the turn when I'm in the small blind with a blocker bluff. Our range is stronger than if button bet turn. I am not sure live players even think deep at all. They are more abc and they play more of a short stack predict strategy by raising, and check raising with made and draw hands.
9 player live is I imagine we need to tighten our range up, can't make as many plays like we do online vs opponents who limp/ call 77qk hands peel a k45cc flop and fold a club or even a jack turn. Because there's probably %50 ppl seeing a flop. Hard to iso.
What's your ideal range pre? Sorry don't mean for you to divulge that info if you don't want to. Are you playing 3 good cards like aqssk2dd but won't if it's single suited and a seven not a deuce? How does the competition to compare to Texas he?

One last thing I want to add is that online competition is very position aware. More math based. Live position doesn't matter as much if villans hand looks good. The only thing I care about is if on average the plo game is better than a holdem game. Plo is a better game honestly, has a lot of action. Which it is, they can be hard to find for me. They don't run near me it's rare.

I like the "wall of text" posts that you write, so much good information. Have been keeping an eye on this thread for a while now and keep doing so.

GL!

In game, I made the sizing too small. I couldn't re-open the action. (It's possible I wrote the wrong sizings above)..

Haven't heard of that term before... I think of it as possible confirmation bias (+other biases).

I'm very aware of cognitive bias'. I realize most people underestimate the influence of cognitive bias'-- particularly confirmation bias.

Whoa this is a lot of stuff.

A couple years ago bovada 1/2 played similar to the live games I'm playing. I'm not sure what the games are like now.. There are some good live regs, but most players play between bad and horrible. There is a strange split of players that are way too loose and players that are way too tight. I think this trend is consistent with positional awareness, too. For instance, playing with AxK56x in a 5 way pot with lappy types, our position doesn't matter very much. We aren't going to get pushed off our equity, we aren't pushing others off equity, and we are getting the same value when we hit.

My preflop range is dynamic. It changes based on the lineup, game flow, and image. In some games my vpip/pfr is like 17/6 and in others its 35/10. However, my default range is tight relative to other regs. I find people generally think tight=passive, so I find I get tons of FE in large pots just by passing up on some marginal preflop calls/limps.

Most of the regs(and even fish) aren't making huge mistakes postflop by bluffcatching with strong absolute hand strength holdings. That was more of a 2011 trend. The biggest mistakes regs are making is playing low SPR situations poorly(massive overfolding) and checking back obvious bluffs on the river.

That said, there are some special whales who never fold. Like yesterday... I got into a $9k pot (5/10/20, 3b pre). I had AKTT on a JhTh4c and c/r flop, jam turn. Got it in versus AKT2 on a 9x turn. 0% to lose, 85% to win. Chopped, of course.

tyty, I enjoy the rambling posts the most... Brain dumping!

Interesting, so you are raising relatively tight. I've played quite a bit of micro 6max on ignition and doing well (lol) but live I have conflicting thoughts on how to adapt to the amazing dynamics. Online I'm fairly aggressive and obv make love to position. Live i'm essentially nut peddling and bluffing good rivers when the opportunity rises.

What circumstances make you want to raise? Or I guess what circumstances make you want to open limp / over limp even very strong hands?

I've started to think playing something like 20/5 is the best stategy. FWIW this is 1/2 PLO with 5 bring in but as I'm sure you know is insane. Kid ran up $5k the other night.

isolation isn't really feasible in the games I'm playing, so it's essentially pushing equity pre and keeping board coverage if against anyone not horrible. I find limping particularly good in games where there is a low buyin and straddles.

Yea bolded are the reasons I came too as well, but I mean it's just hard to not bloat a pot when it's 7 limps to you otb with JT97ds.

Re: limping low bi+Straddle games, can you further explain? Are you limp/shoving even crummy aces and or decent run downs if the opportunity arises?

For the most part I've just been seeing flops even in situations where I'm faced with a decent l/rr opportunity when I know it's going 11 ways no matter how much I repot. Bad thinking?

Yes, bad thinking. Only that last sentence though. Everything else is great. And I am way behind at least tmckendry, and probably you too, so I'm just putting this hear to test myself/stake a position before tmckendry responds.

My thinking is that you are just being afraid (maybe justifiably depending on your roll?) of the variance train. If you are ahead pre, and can gii against 11 others, then you should do that. For example, what this really looks like is you with 33% equity, and 4 others splitting the remaining 67% equity. You should be happy with that. Just an example, but that gives the main point.

I think tho that I'm basically treating pre as a non issue and waiting for my equity to be more clearly defined on flop (and especially turn)

It sort of goes to the "wait for a better spot" fish thinking in NL except for the fact that equities are so even you are in fact waiting for your spot (equity) to improve. Basically I went from being pretty aggro with my premiums to just limping everything and while it's sort term I'm really satisfied with the results.

Don't get me wrong, I'm repotting strong run downs and good aces, but beyond that I'm limp calling. Even okish aces. Unless I know the situation is going to result in a heads up SPR1 scenario.

Not disagreeing with you, these opposing thoughts have kept me up at night for about a month now.

^It makes sense to wait for a better spot, depends on if there is a better spot. In tough online games multitabling you cant though. Live you can. But anytime preflop that theres something like a raise and multiple callers and I can pot it with AAxx and get 2/3+ of my stack in and thin its +ev. Yeah we will lose ~5.x/ 7 times with 6 callers but its not a mistake. Just high variance. That is why short stacking is profitable, we play tight then get a good spot to 7x or octupple up etc.

Short stacking is high variance? Maybe, but full stacking can be just as high of variance and we probably make more bad folds/ bluffed more. I hope PLO doesnt die out, the equities run way closer than NLHE, such as no %80/ %20's. Think of people who play blackjack at a %1.x loss, PLO seems like theres tons more equity to be had. We cant take razor thin equities though, its not a good variance strategy. Especially with sub 30 hands per hour.

Yeah, I think pokerodox is approaching these spots correctly. Pushing equity pre is the essence of short stacking. The spots are generally super +EV for even marginal edges because there is often limps/straddles and other dead money. Often when I get it in with 20-30bb there is ~5-10bb in dead money.
So yeah, pushing 52%/48% on 25bb when 7bb is dead is simply more +EV than flatting and going 4-7ways playing with an spr of 2-3 (in almost all circumstances).

Also, having aces headsup with an spr of 1-1.75 is still quite +EV in my books. People tend to make pretty big mistakes in these spots folding with hands like QJT8 on Q47r versus a range of medium-weak AA/and decent KK.

Waiting for a better spot in cash games doesn't make sense if you are properly rolled for a game. The optimal strategy (if you want to optimize win rate) is to take the most +EV decision given all options at any decision point. If one is playing for reasons other than making as much money as possible, and/or is underrolled, than other strategies can be better.

If there is an option to 3b rip KK97ss for 60% of our stack against ranges like (25%open, ~60%!5% x 4) pre or flat oop and see a flop 6 ways with spr=1.5, the EV of shipping is far higher than flatting, even though flatting is still +EV and far lower variance.

Waiting for better spots because there are only a few hands/hr doesn't make sense either if ones objective is to maximize winnings. It can make sense if ones career is going to be so short-lived and one places a high value on equity realization.

The two points above assume proper bank roll management, as both assumptions break down the more underrolled someone is playing..

I've heard many people argue that shortstacking live PLO is lower variance than fullstacking. I think, under almost all circumstances, that optimal shortstacking strategy is higher variance. Perhaps if the games are super tough/aggro/wild than fullstacking is higher variance. However, the way the games play is the opposite. People are way underbluffing rivers/turns, and people aren't bluffing with enough ch/r. So you just don't get into that many high variance spots for stacks. For instance, on a KdKc9s flop 3 ways btn, sb, bb, btn has a high cbet% and cbets 60%pot sb folds, bb has TdTxAd8x and folds. This hand should often be in a c/r for bb, but because hes overfolding both players are in a lower variance situation. The same can be said for spots where someone is checked to on the river and decides to checkback with near the bottom of range and a good blocker. These spots people underbluff, which lowers variance for both players.

I've never heard of a professional live PLO shortstacker. While ss can be profitable the variance is insane much more so than full stack PLO. Why wouldn't you play smaller stakes, full stack and have more control?

Do people give you **** for short stacking their super deep games? Do you hit and run?

I also play smaller stakes, full stack.

It depends on the table and my seat. If there are 6 regs, and 1 fish with a half stack two to my left, its an easy short-buy. If I sit down in the godseat its an easy buyin to cover the whale. If there is a reg on my right that opens 50% on the btn, 40% in the co, and 30% in mid, its the easiest short-buy of all time.

The Players dont give me ****. The min buy is there for a reason-- it attracts certain types of rec players that aren't completely ballers but want to play the big game. I dont hit and run, or at least not consciously. I havent had many opportunities, as I'm something like 3/15 for big winning sessions on shortbuy shots at big games.

My journey has been quite intense lately. I played 115 hours of poker in 15 days, ran way under expectation and turned a small profit with multiple $10k+ swings.

A few days ago a friend of mine messaged me saying she was in trouble and needed a place to stay. I invited her to stay at my place.. and that ended up being one of the best decisions I've made in long time. We had an amazing week. I haven't had a connection like the one we had in a longgg time. I had forgotten how awesome it is to spend time connecting/sharing love with another person.

All the messages the plants gave me about experiencing love and more love make way more sense now. It's one of the peak experiences, and one that I tend to forget about. It is a defining characteristic of the human experience. To live a life and to miss out on love would be quite unfortunate.

Over the last week I've done a bunch of thinking about love and human relationships. Most of my views aren't polished, but I'd like to explore/consolidate these views on here.

I've wrote about this before, but I'd like to touch on it again because I think its something that affects me quite strongly and goes largely unnoticed in society... Its about language and in particular words that carry a high level of ambiguity/subjectivity. For instance... the word "love"(and the use of the phrase "I love you"). It tends to evoke much different feelings with me than it does with others. I feel like our generation/society was conditioned to associate it with certain emotions/feelings. Movies, culture, parental relationships and early romantic relationships(or lack of) are all factors that influence the ones perception of the phrase "I love you". My experiences with that phrase has been mostly negative/neutral and thus, my association with that phrase has been warped. That said, I think that expressions of love are ****ing amazing and probably the most effective energy expenditure-to-reward activities possible. That said, I should be giving and receiving way more, with or without using a cliche phrase.

The types of experiences people describe as "love" vary by such a high degree. I get the sense that the word "love" to most people means you have a close relationship with someone you can trust and depend on to help and support you in times of need. I think this is a small aspect of the experience of love, and most are missing out on something much greater.

In the common perception of the word, I feel like all of my friendships are what the average person would consider a loving relationship(minus the sexual element). I need to have a high level of trust with someone to consider them a friend, and its expected there would be help them in times of need (although, this seems unlikely as my friends/I tend to have a high level of independence).

By listening to others and thinking about the nature of relationships I've come to a couple realizations. To me, it seems like many people have relations with "friends" that I would classify as an enemy in my life. Essentially, spending time with someone that encourage them to engage in unhealthy/destructive behaviors in return for some form of stimulation. It seems like, for some, the average friendship ends up generating net negative emotions.

It's as if people maintain toxic relationships to avoid boredom, to avoid a sense of guilt, and/or just a general lack of self-respect/self-love. I think there is a common theme that touches most people that harbor toxic relations... I believe that most people rather be with someone that has a negative influence on them than be alone. Most people are ****ing terrified of spending time with themselves, and most don't even realize that's the truth. It's that fear of being alone that poisons all of their relationships. They have to be with others to avoid being alone, so they end up coming from a place of scarcity which(of course) attracts negative relations. I believe one need to be able to love oneself before one can love another. That said, the way I perceive love, I think that most people are incapable of giving/receiving love, and its because they aren't engaged in a loving relationship with themselves.

As a way to express this better, I'll touch on a well-known model of relationships. It says there are three styles of relationships. I think these styles are closely related to personal maturity, and that most people only experience one style of relationship. This is theory which I have adopted and altered. It relates to the paragraphs above. Okay. So, I think the first style of human relationships are relationships based on dependence. For example, the child-parent relationship. I believe 70-80%+ of all human relationships are in this stage. These relations revolve around getting something from the other person to fulfill a dependency/need. People in this stage perceive "the ultimate love" as a agreement for another person to fulfill all their dependencies(this could be mutual).

Stage two is independence. This is characterized by developing a relationship with oneself. A person realizes that personal values/boundaries are important. A person understands that the nature of self-talk is as important or more important than how they talk with others. One recognizes their needs/wants and learns to be able to fulfill them independently. ~20-30% people develop a healthy version of this relationship.

The third and final style is interdependence. This style of relationship can only be maintained between people who have gone through the previous two. This makes up a small percentage of all human relations, and it is the stone cold nuts. The relationship is characterized by series of agreements(spoken or unspoken) based on needs/wants that have been appropriately recognized, explored, and expressed. The max-strength of a relationship of this style is strongly influenced by the experiences/lessons learned in other relationships(of all three styles). The way I see it, the first two styles build the foundation for a interdependent relationship.

Ah ok. I didn't think you were a rec player? Even though I don't play poker professionally there were a couple obvious things that clicked that imo most poker pros don't think about at all, that's interesting to share imo.

Professional poker player mindset only works playing mid stakes limit and low stakes 1/2 2/5 no limit. What I mean by that is you can a relatively small working bankroll, and take aggressive shots with impunity because it's rare to go broke from playing the game.

Moving into plo, hsnl, big mix is more like sportsbetting, having a professional sports betting mentality. Like the smart guys who are betting sports, plo, hsnl, mix etc are doing so because they're bankroll is ****ing massive, and there's no way to get more than X% of their roll in right playing mid stakes limit and low stakes nl. Even though they could carve out a good profit playing smaller, it would be counterproductive to do so, again, because their working br is just so ****ing huge.

I think sportsbetting and plo are extremely similar (albiet plo has bigger edges). I think taking a look at the sb forum and looking at the absolutely disgusting variance a winning sports bettor who makes thousands of max unit bets per year, like rgsigly goes through, could open your eyes about the long run.

What's happening is lots of poker pros have moved into plo, sportsbetting land but they don't realize they've moved into a completely different domain, under a completely different set of good guidelines and they are setting themselves up for failure.

Buying in short has nothing to do with the size of PLO players bankrolls.

Sure, you are right. The size of thier bankroll has something to do with buying in short though.

most cases it does.

The rules are there to protect rec players and create more action for the game.

A professional poker player mindset and bankroll management are two very different things.

Variance, as measured in std dev bb/100 is something like ~80-100% higher in midstakes live PLO v live 2/5 nlh. This isn't that much higher, and requires a bankroll in the 1.8-2x range given the same stakes (although, PLO normally plays bigger, so its more like 2x-3x. I wrote this, then searched 2+2 and found some supporting evidence

You can play with this calculator to get a better feel for these numbers; http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/ You will notice that winrates vary greatly depending on winrate and std dev bb/100. I put in 10bb/100 as my winrate(below observed), and I use 130bb/100 std dev(above observed). This is using conservative inputs, but I think they accurately represent winrates moving forward into ~mid-stakes 2017/2018
live PLO.

If these were my observed numbers, I've run okay as far as downswing. I've never had a 3000BB+ downswing, which is suppose to happen ~5% of the time. I have been in a 1500-2000 downswing about 23.5% of the time, which is predicted by the chart.

That said, I've also run cold in upswings. I've never had a 3000BB+ upswing, which is suppose to happen >10%.

I've been losing in cash over the last 500 hours, which is suppose to happen around 15% of the time according given conservative inputs(so perhaps 10% observed)-- so just unfortunate timing / not much I can do about it. This has only happened once before this, which is about right for downswing length according to the variance chart.

I haven't done much research about sportsbetting, but I imagine variance is 2-5x higher than live PLO(aka much higher, and around double the difference between live nlh and live plo). The edges here are far smaller and harder to define from what I have understood. I also imagine it depends on the market/information advantage. For instance; I imagine someone that is a well-known MMA trainer betting on MMA fights have has a way lower std dev(like, 2-3x lower) than someone using an algo with public information on NBA. Although, also it would take far longer to realize equity, and also much harder to define edge.

Anyways, I've always been a fan of conservative bankroll management. The "Shots" I've taken the last month have still been quite conservative relative to the general populations BR management. The recent ~complaining on my part is mostly a result of timing. I'm nearing the end of my career so equity realization is ~impossible. Plus, saving that 10-20% runbad for when I take shots is also quite unfortunate/bad timing.



That said, I placed a fairly large investment(largest investment of my life, actually) in BTC last year(I wrote about it in here). My investment philosophy is long crypto-currency for the next 5-15 years. I'm still very confident in blockchain technology, albiet I don't know if its possible to passively invest in blockchain technology effectively. However, I think BTC is the best way to do so currently, and I may adjust my strategy in the future.

I've run quite hot in BTC given that I expected speculation/variance to be super high. I've taken out around a third of my initial investment at double my average purchase price. I'm looking to sell more at current prices, (lmk if interested). Personally, I'm buying more at anything below $700, and I should be putting 5-10% in second/third most popular bitcoins.

Pretty much every gambler does two things: 1. overestimate their edge and 2. underestimate variance. Plugging things into a calculator doesn't matter a whole bunch when the data you are entering is flat out wrong... right?

You yourself said that you were playing around with a ~3% edge shortstacking high stakes plo. The variance involved with punting ~3% edges is insane. Easy to go on +/- 100 unit swings and even standard to have even bigger swings. It's not wise at all to be shot taking/ short stacking mshs plo if you don't have a massive roll.. unless you just love gambling. Even less sense when you don't see yourself sticking it out to realize your equity imo.

Full stacking plo is a different animal and generally is less volatile than short stacking since you're not playing fold/shove strategy/ and because a considerable amount of your equity at full stack is earned through denying equity/ not seeing 5 cards. As you said, I agree a pro would need at least 3x the bankroll needed to play plo which is simply more cash than what most live pros have if we're talking about 5-5 5-10plo.

If you see your poker career coming to an end, and you don't have a huge bankroll... why aren't you squeezing what you can get out of nl for what is essentially variance free cash? If you had a steady, large income source that wasnt related to gambling I can see why you'd do what you're doing now... but if you don't it sounds pretty reckless.

I figured most readers and you would assume that I wold overestimate my edge and underestimate variance. That said, I made sure to adjust my inputs to adjust for perceived biases(which, I would argue, aren't sound assumptions anyways-- but Its difficult to claim a smaller ego than the average poker player on a public poker forum). If you read my post carefully, you'd notice I put in a lower than observed winrate and higher than observed variance.

Also, I tend to sell action(80% of the time) for ms/hsplo. I generally win, and give the profits to investors. The last month was an exception, mostly because the games were good and I was playing well-- so I figured I'd give it a shot and set a stop-loss. I'm generally for conservative BRM, but I think its okay to incorporate a rare shot at bigger games if the games are good and you are playing well. If one is playing with a few BIs and willing to move down, giving up <5% of your roll a rare % of the time cant be that bad. In fact, Looking back, I would have told past Tyler to take more <5%(even 10% shots in amazing games) bankroll shots at really good 10/25+ games in Florida/LA.

I'm quite sure most pros are underrolled for 5-5 / 5-10 plo-- which is whatever. I'm not sure what a huge bankroll is considered by you-- I'd consider anything under 50 BIs to be widely agreed to be underrolled, where 100BI probably gets mixed views. I think if people think 200BIs is underrolled for 5-5/5-10 PLO, they must have a 0-2bb/hr WR.

I'm not playing nlh for a few reasons. First off, my WR would be less than half. It would take me a few weeks to get back in-touch with meta and get my NLH game back to previous peaks. Once I get my WR close to half of my PLO winrate, I would then proceed to bore myself to death at a rate 3x greater than live PLO. Quite simply though, I think its more of a function of personal factors such as risk aversion and alternative opportunities. I'm quite good at dealing with swings mentally/emotionally, and I have quite a bit of confidence in my money-making/saving abilities.. so when I'm given the options of;

1-risking losing ~5-15%(some <25% of the time) of my roll over 2 months for X$/hr
2-risking losing ~<5%(some <25% of the time) of my roll over 2 months for .5X$/hr..

I'll take option 1.

But yeah, those % of roll numbers in combination with other factors can easily make 2 the best choice for others(or even most) poker players.

---

On the topic of.. my poker career coming to an end.. I am expected to have less than 6 months of full-time left. Ideally, I'd like to get +$20k in da bank before I start my next project-- but I won't be playing more than 6 months. That said, I believe that happens about 50% of the time in less than 6 months, and otherwise I just end up playing 6 months and making <20k ~90% of the time, and losing monies 5-10%.

My plan after Australia poker is to travel around building self-sustaining homes, and permaculture. My plan is to visit/work at a few of these places for a few months. I'll gather some knowledge/experience and go from total newbie to newbie.

Once I get some base knowledge/experience, I'll be building my own place. I think the process of building my own bode will be a very rewarding experience, on multiple levels.

I'm not sure the best way to go about this, but I got some rough ideas. I want to use as little $ as possible and inspire others to follow a similar path. I've come to realize its important that a community is involved, too. I don't think I would be fulfilled enough if I was solo in nature for more than half the time. So, that may involve me starting a community or me joining an existing community.

More exciting news: I have a girlfriend, and she is moving into my room this week. I haven't done this before, weee excitement!

Aussie?