Just got done with the weekend grind. Things went well, I think I ran above EV but I'm not exactly sure how much, i'd guess somewhere between 100-200. Nothing really exciting happened, no real decisions. Just basic stuff like wrap against 2pair/set in 3/4 bet pots, AA against pair+gutter or better, and I set over set some people. I only played about 4 hours so not a ton of hands and a lot of it was 2 tabling because I was struggling to focus when I added more so limited volume.

I've been playing anywhere from plo50 to plo200 depending on the action and my mindset, if I'm feeling great and playing my A game I'll play 1/2. Every table feels extremely soft and I'm noticing more and more mistakes that I didn't used to. I think I've improved a lot since my last midstakes stint. I have recognized a couple spots in 3-way pots in certain table positions that I need to do some analysis in so I've got some new study material as well.

I did play two big multiplayer civ6 games with a bunch of buddies so that was the majority of my free time this weekend. Work has been a real mental ass-kicker lately and I am completely brain dead when I come home so no weekday poker, I'll probably just be throwing money away. I don't really see volume going up all that much for these reasons and the holiday coming up.

Barring what I previously said I do have Tuesday through Thursday off work this week. We changed HR systems at work and they ****ed it up so all employees got an extra two weeks of vacation this year and I didn't realize that until 9 months into the year. So I have vacation to burn but I'm still on the job hunt so I'm putting that first but I'm hoping to play about 3 hours each day then.

Account balance: ~4290

Hey cuz, used to bullsh*t with you on reddit a while back. I'm giving the Iggy grind another shot -- sticking to NL this time though after playing live cash for a good while. GLGLGL.

GL to you as well. I still can't figure out NL, whenever I watch a stream they always do the opposite thing that I would think is the play.


I did some serious grind over Tuesday-Thursday. Had work off and not a ton to do, get your grind on.

Tuesday:
Went ok, I ran like absolute ****, I think I had three sets lose to naked FD for stacks, had a pair+fd+wrap+bdfd against AAAx and lost. Flopped two pair+fd twice against AA in 4-bet pots and the ace came or the board paired them twice. Overall not a good day, ended up losing 350 or so. Played my A-game for just about the entire grind though, played around 10 hours.

Wednesday:
Woke up early ready to grind. Things went my way this day. I started off losing two stacks early 60/40s in my favor but after that smooth sailing. Sets/2p held against FD, my combo draws got there and I was winning all the small pots. I found some tables of pretty bad regs and I found some big weakness early and took hundreds off them nickle and diming them. Ended the day up about 500, grinded about 6 hours.

Thursday:
Woke up early again to grind, this was my downfall. There was only 1 table of 1/2 running and one table of .25/.5 running so I played that. Ended up getting stacked on flips in 3-bet pots in both. Then a table of my dreams opened up. 3/6, average pot size 900, everyone is 1.5k-2k deep.

Deggening:
I sit the table short until I can get some solid notes in. I get it in twice with aces/premium kings twice and end up losing to random trash, just trash not double suited trash. At this point, I've got about 20-25 hands on the table, I realize we have one player with 100% vpip, 100% 3-bet, 100% 4-bet, he's literally bet bet bet and calling it off with whatever. He has 3k in front of him right now from sucking out with 10% equity against what looks like a pro. So the whole table is this big evolved form of trying to iso against this massive fish. The fish has direct position on me as well so I get the job of exploiting the exploiters. I buy in for max to my dismay.

Hand 1:
I get dealt AAJJds from bb, he opens, middle position 3-bet, I 4-bet, whale 5-bets, other guy goes with it, I call. whale shows Qt98ss, reg shows QT98ds. Flop comes 922r, the whale end ups hitting a back door heart fd and wins the 2k pot.

Hand 2:
An orbit or two later, I get Akkxss, we repeat the process, someone opens, i flat, whale 3-bets, other guy flats, I 4-bet, whale 5-bets and we GII, other guy folds. He shows Q642r and he hits trip dueces. I lost another 600.

Hand 3:
A couple hands later I get dealt KK99ds, we repeat the process, someone 3-bets him, I 4-bet them, he 5-bets, other guy folds, I call it off. He shows KKQ4r, he hits trip 4s and I lose.

It lasts about another 5 mintues before the whale leaves. Overall he lost about 5k at the table when I was sitting. All the money was basically passed around to everyone else while he sucked out on me every hand. I've lost 180 twice, and i've lost 600 three times and then I've lost some other random blinds and folding on flop and got caught bluff raising a reg. -2650 at 3/6 and at -3k for my first 45 minutes of play.


Getting my head back:
I quit, and eat breakfast and go for a run. When I get back no 1/2 is running, which is probably a good thing. I sit .25/.5 which is the only thing going. I play alright, still feeling like **** from prior runbad but the players at the table are so bad I could be completely drunk and ready to pass out and still beat them mashing my head on the keyboard. I win a couple hundred and then some 1/2 starts opening up. I'm feeling very confident at this point, no signs of tilt at all ready to get it back. I realize at this point I'm likely to bust the account but w/e I can put another 1k on and go from there if I have to. I'm still up my rent for the year from my first quarter of the year heater.

Redemption:
I'm playing 3 tables of 1/2 for most of the day as I am having trouble getting a 4th, whenever a table spot opens up I get beat and someone sits before me. The games were insane, lots of passive badregs who literally never bluff and are bet size inelastic. I basically get to play perfectly against them so I do that for a long time. Basically me just never bluffing and value betting for hours collecting money. I don't have all that many big hands other than me set over setting people.

Big hand #1: (maybe spew, I have to review this hand)
folds to button who opens pot, hero is dealt KK:88 who 3-bets, BB who is the only decent player at the table and is kind of a tight reg cold calls, button folds.

Flop: 89J
Hero c-bets just over half pot, bb calls

Turn: A
Hero checks, bb checks

River: T
Hero checks, villian bets 37.5 with a 58 in the pot, hero tanks, I'm never good here and he has been kind of a knit, I think I can make everything fold but KQ and QJ, hero raises to 157, BB snaps. BB shows 9764ds, how he found that call I just don't know. I've played over 100 hands with him basically had never bluffed since I didn't get into any pots with him and everyone else was a giant station so I wasn't bluffing. GG I guess.

Big hand #2
UTG opens for pot, folds to hero on button who 3-bets with A654 (utg was a massive spew postflop, I had a lot of notes on how he was misplaying certain board textures, wanted to spice up the pot) (we were also 300bb deep and I'm in position), UTG 4-bets (0% 4-bet through 90 hands) I figured I get to play perfectly, he has to have aces or super premium kings and that is still highly unlikely.

Flop: T73
UTG c-bets for about 120, hero has an inside wrap and a **** bdfd. Hero eventually decides to call after using the time bank.

Turn: :4
UTG checks, hero is unsure of what to do. This is an great spot in general to trap and I would always check this back against good players but UTG isn't a good player, he is pure spew and doesn't own a fold button. He has a 2/3 chance of having the ace of diamonds, I figured since he is so bad he would always shove with the flush and never check it. Hero shoves for 300, UTG tanks hard, eventually deciding to call it off. UTG show AAKKr with the ace of diamonds blocker if that matters. UTG is dead, the river pairs the 3 and hero wins $1250.

Another two hours of grinding and getting a table where this guy thinks AA is the nuts on all streets donates me two buyins. I'm sitting decent. I start to get tired and the games start do get far more aggressive and tougher to what I'd expect the games to be at. I still have a pretty big edge but it isn't just free money anymore and I'm starting to feel tired from all the grinding. I've put in about 8 hours of grind at this point so that's enough for me.

I felt like I played pretty damn good throughout the three days, I only had one real play I wasn't sure of and that was the huge river raise I showed above, never had any real mental lapses in play, only real mental lapse was me sitting at the 3/6 table in the first place and I got punished for it.

Sorry for the huge wall of text, I like to type a lot. I ended up making most of it back which is pretty damn rewarding in of itself.

Ending Balance: 4390

I'm going to be out for thanksgiving and spending the time with my family, I'm not going to be taking my PC with me. I did spend some time getting the card catcher working so I can show some graphs. It doesn't work perfectly as I know some hands are missing where I won a BI and where I've lost a BI but it's better than nothing, it's catching 90% of hands from what I can tell.

I've played about 3 hours of 1/2 tabling the last couple days because I was having focus issues I couldn't increase them. Thankfully I ran super hot. About 100 hands of plo 50 where I played meh and the rest are plo200.

Graph:


balance: 5035

December started off on a great foot. I ran on a little 2k+ heater my first 10 hours of the month. Then I did a good withdraw to get some money on my books for 2016. It then fell apart. I ran 3k below ev my next 20 hours of play and I started to fall apart mentally. It didn't help that my bankroll on the site was low. I lost about 3.5k with ev line at -500. It did include me getting top boat < quads for 400bb as 0 ev in that when he one outed me on the river when everything but 7.5 was in the middle on the turn. I also got 2 outted in a $1500 pot. GII 3-ways deep on flop where I have top set and nut straight where another guy had middle set and another guy had nut straight and an overpair. Turn paired the board and river gave him his overfull. It was just a great string of luck, that left me in a bad spot mentally.

At this point my site bankroll was depleted after the runbad. It was about a week before Christmas at this point. I just decided I needed a mini-vacation for my mental health. I got 2 weeks off at work around the holidays as well so that helped a lot. I spent a bunch of time with my family and visited a few friends and hung out and I played a lot of video games.

At this point I also have some computer runbad. My hard drive with PT4 on it was lost. It failed on me, so I lost all the data in that so no graphs or anything to show. I have a couple other harddrives in my machine so I need to install it on one of those yet. I completely gave up on the card catcher as it isn't working for me at all. There was one session where my ohaha indicator said I played 2500 hands and my PT4 said I played 1700 hands and I have a million error messages saying invalid pot size and it wont' import jack so it's probably not even semi-accurate anyway. I knew I had a problem there just didn't know it was that bad.

I didn't move down like I should have since the games were so good during that runbad. (site BRM says Hi!) This left me with about $750 on the site. I was at my folks place and didn't even my access to my normal machine so I played about an hour each night on my ****ty old laptop. No HUD, no 2nd/3rd monitor, no distractions. Sat at some plo25 (god help me) and that went well. All I can find at there is loose passive stations, people weren't even value betting 2nd nut boats, 2nd nut straights, I had multiple guys checking back nuts on the river in position. With games like that it's hard not to do well. With only an hour of play each night and 100% focus, and the level of competition I was playing against and some rungood, I was able to run it back to 1250. At this point I played half 50 and half 25 and ran that up to 2.5k. Playing 6-8 hours over 3 days for that run.

I went to the casino on the 30th to play some live 2-5 plo for the first time since this summer. Ran very poor to say it lightly. I brought 2 buyins with me as the game is basically 10-max loose passive station city. Average of 5-6 players per flop. I GII 6 times in my 6 hours of play. 2 with nfd and wrap, 2 with a wrap, once with top two, and once with middle set. I whiffed on both my combo draws, losing one to Ahigh, (someone went all-in with a naked BDNFD), lost my middle set to top and bottom and a gutshot when the gutter got there, got there on both my naked wraps but lost one to a bdfd, and won with my top two against literal nonsense.

Ended up losing my 1k I brought but damn the game was good. Last time I went I didn't think there was one even half competent player, this time there was someone knew who moved into town and was actually pretty good from my impressions. Still an insanely good game but the pace of play is slow as hell, 20 hands an hour is pushing it, it's probably only 10. The average stack size in the game is only 200 which is why my money lasted me so long, everyone is basically 45-50bb deep and then about half the guy button straddle so you can halve that again so it's mostly a preflop hand selection game and bingo.

I play for about 6 hours each Sunday and Monday and that goes poorly. I started playing 4 tables of plo50 at this point, and plan on doing that to 5k. Much variance was had. I lost to a two outer on the river for the overfull 4 times on Sunday and another 5 on Monday so that killed my profits before any actual poker was being played. Played well for the most part, made a few big bluffs that backfired in my face losing at least a BI in each one. I lost a lot of all-in pres with AA as well, people were being very gambly.

Did have the dream scenario come up Monday. Sit at a plo50 table, average stack size is over 200. The two guys I have direct position on are both over $400. Game is super deep, at least a 3-bet every hand, and 3-4 people are seeing a flop on average. Turns out the two guys who are super deep have vpips of 95% and 85% respectively and don't own fold buttons until the river. Built the stack up to $200 over my first hour at the table. (not a single person has left) Then I start getting hit, I 4-bet with AKK3ss on the button, get two cold calls from the blinds and the two whales come along. Flop comes K53r. Guy from early position half pots it, one of the whales min-raises, other whale folds, I shove, both players cover me, initial better calls it off and whale calls it off. Whale shows K3, guy from early position shows A295. Turn brings the 4, and river doesn't pair the board. Guy with a gutshot wins the almost $700 pot. Apparently he thought he had a wrap and misread his hand but I'm not sure if I believe that.

At this point we're back down to 2k. and feeling pretty poor about ourselves so I end the session. One of my friends is looking to play some plo5 for funzies because they see how much I'm enjoying it. We get an account set up for them and get them logged in, he's screen sharing with me and we're going to play some play money. Before that he decides to wants to click one of the real money tables to see what's going on. I have him filter to plo only and he hits one. It's a plo400 9-max table. We watch for about 10 minutes and he can't believe players are playing with so much money. I start realizing what's going on. There are two fish who are playing what looks like every single hand and 3-betting them all. One has sucked out his way up to a 1k stack and his play isn't changing, the other went busto. I go wtf, buy in short because this seems nuts.

I sit with 30bb and run it up to 110bb. For some reason my first hand at the table, like 6 players limp, I get dealt TT77 in the bb and check. Flop comes A72r, I check, maniac pots it, folds to me, I repop him and we're off to the races. He show AKxxr jank, turn brings a 2nd A to scare me and I hold. That's an easy double up. I fold for an orbit and we hit our 2nd button where I'm dealt AA86ds. At this point everyone has limped and our target is in the BB, he is raising 100% when it gets to him so we limp hoping people call it off and we then get to iso against him with a bunch of dead money. He pots it on his BB as expected, folds to me unfortunately and I repots it, he puts the rest in. He has KJ87ss, flop comes J77 and I feel punished for my stupidity already(sitting the table), we end up rivering the ace to take down the $400 pot. At this point my senses come to reality and I just leave the table. All while this is going on my friend is still watching the table from his machine and in discord with me. He's going absolutely nuts since this seems like a huge amount to gamble for him. It was actually pretty funny with him there but it was still stupid on my part because I don't really want to deposit atm.

I end up trying to walk him through how to play plo at play money tables (he's never played omaha before ever and hold-em probably only a few times in his life), he decides poker is too tough for him and he had his fun.

Ending balance is around 2450, will keep at the grind. Planning on buying ROI elite tonight. I feel like a moron for not buying that already as it's basically nothing for how much I play for and want to play for.

I took the plunge. I put up 1k for the RIO elite for 2017. I have watched a couple theory videos and I'm very impressed with it so far. I've already recognized a couple concepts and ways of thinking about a hand I didn't think about prior so it's worth it already. I have been always terrible about whether I have to bluff or not and I've already learned enough on that subject alone to pay for the whole year.

I plan on putting some volume into study. My goal right now is to watch one video every other day, and then spend an hour after the video working on the concept in pokerjuice or in excel/ppts/odds oracle getting a grasp on those numbers. My study put in for 2016 was very lacking, I studied a lot the first couple months of last year and then a couple months in the summer but that was about it. I would do have review and other basic upkeep but I didn't do and hard time. No indepth review of certain spots, I was honestly just lazy and lying to myself about my game.

I'm not a terrible player by any means, my ev bb/100 at 1/2 and under was great but it kind of dived down hard at 3/6 to the point and I wasn't very comfortable playing that high. My play basically revolved around player notes and making hard-nosed assumptions based on prior hands. I was basically playing at the player based on said notes. Not the greatest thing ever for moving up. I need to get more of a mathematically game and that is my goal currently. Once I get my math game up to par with my opposition I should be able to combine that with probably my greatest strength in anon poker and that is note taking to have good success. I want to have a over a 7bb/100 ev at 3/6 in 2017. It's going to take a lot of work but I want to put that in right now. For perspective my ev in 2016 at 3/6 was 1 to 1.5bb/100 over 60k hands, so I have a long way to go.

Sucks to hear about your run bad at higher PLO. I played quite a bit of plo50 in 2016 for 2 months. Though I love playing PLO, I just can't handle the variance and seeing people who play so poorly and pot pot pot and call with stupid crap run so good at PLO.

Nice to hear from another PGC poster. I've been following your thread and been enjoying it although I haven't posted in it.


First Half of January:
I've been studying for at least an hour each day until this weekend. That has been helpful, I learned a few things along the way and I've been 3-betting a lot more correctly. I knew I was not doing it enough but I never did it correctly for fear of being put into very tough spots with a very inflated pot. Turns out it's not that tough at all when I put a little time into it. Lot less decisions in the tree with a bigger pot just bigger numbers is all.

Play bads:
With my studying I had also been working a lot on bluffing. My bluffing prior has been lacking and I never really knew if I should be or not. I put a lot of time in working on when is a good spot to bluff and what percentage of the time they should be folding when I polarize. This backfired hard on me as it turns out a big portion of the field is not afraid to call a flop c-bet with bottom pair on a flush draw board, call turn when the flush gets there and call river when they hit trips. I had this happen at least 8 times to me when they were out of position against players that seemed to not be stations prior.

Turning it around:
With that said I decided to go back to my normal playstyle, make the proper value bets, bluff catch accordingly and trap in good spots. All these things also started backfiring on me as well. I lost 80% of my trap spots in my last 10k hands, players were hitting runner runner against me basically every time. Hard to win when you flop top two with nfd and check back flop. They lead pot into you, call. They bet 2/3 turn and they show up with a gutter on the turn that they potted and hit on the river, I call because literally one draw gets there and I have top two, so they have a set or that gutshot or a bluff and their bluff combos are far more likely than the prior.


Run bads:
When I decide not to trap and we fast play. Highly negative results. I'm actually down 7.5bi when I gii with top set against middle or bottom set on the flop. I've been quaded only once but a majority of the time people are hitting a random bdfd or a backdoor gutshot. This is basically happening every hand, when I'm down that much when the average has been 90% equity is saying a lot.


Typical hand example from one of my hands yesterday.
sb post .5, bb post 1, mp opens for 3.5, hero is dealt AAxx on btn and 3-bets to 12, bb calls, mp calls. Flop comes AT5, bb leads for 2/3 pots, mp calls, hero raises half pot, bb repots, mp folds, hero repots and we GII for 250bb. Turn Q, river K, bb shows TTK5 and wins 550bb with a straight.

I was fairly salty about it yesterday as I lost 4 of those in 3-hours of 4-tabling but today I am just sad. Not really sure what I can do about that.


End Results:
With the bad play at the start and getting effed over at ever opportunity things are not looking hot. I don't actually know my real results as about 15%-20% of the hands I played won't load into pt4 because either invalid pot sized error or invalid rake amount error. I can see the difference because of omaha indicator(hud) keeps the hand count and compare that to the the hand count in pt4. So going off that who knows what my actual results and ev should be so I'm not going to post the graph because people will just look at that and ignore everything else.

What I do have in the database though says I should be up a minor amount +150 over my 10k hands on the year in pt4. Actual results -1650. 75% of the play is at plo50 and 24% at plo100 and I played like 250 hands at plo200. lol +650 in those 250 hands at 1/2 so if I didn't play that it would look real bad.



Going forward:
I am not playing the best right now I'll admit that but I am also not playing bad. I'm basically just fairly mediocre play. Almost all my hands have giant stations at the table that are bet size inelastic and I am unable to beat them. It just sucks when I am winning none of my huge equity hands for big money and I am winning about 1/3 of my flips. I did run way over EV in the play bads portion (1k above ev) so that really emphasizes how bad the run went after that 1k sample. (-2.5k)

I know plo can be a swingy game but 90% equity is 90%. This is being magnified by my piss poor brm. Once I withdraw, I consider the money in my life roll and not my bankroll. I am being punished for taking out the majority of the roll and leaving myself with ~30bi at the end of the year. I just thought it would be easier that way to get that money on the books for taxes.

I've got like 950 left in the online roll, I plan on playing some plo25 and some plo50 and I'm just going to hope I don't bust that and run another 20+ bi under EV and that I play well. If that fails then I'll probably deposit another 1k and repeat. At some point I should run well, I was 15k below ev in 2016 and with my start of 2017 I'm due, right guys? That being said, I do need to play better better, the EV of recorded play is like 1.5bb/100 although sample size is small.

I've been playing a lot lately. I switch it off, one good session followed by one mediocre session doesn't make for the best results. I've been pretty steady in the lab though so that's sweet. I did have a two day period where I ran 20bi under EV in about 1.5k hands and that was fun but I didn't go crazy about that so I am least making a little progress. Did have to do a little bitching but didn't tilt.

Feeling very confident about my game and results are starting to come.

A few fun hands from the last couple weeks. Not nessesarily interesting or tough decisions, basically just coolers.

iPoker - $2 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 43.05 BB (VPIP: 62.26, PFR: 3.77, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 53)
BTN: 61.38 BB (VPIP: 18.18, PFR: 3.03, 3Bet Preflop: 10.00, Hands: 33)
SB: 59.07 BB (VPIP: 61.54, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 13)
Hero (BB): 52.64 BB
UTG: 55.83 BB (VPIP: 88.71, PFR: 9.68, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 62)
MP: 174.47 BB (VPIP: 42.42, PFR: 15.15, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 33)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 3 A 7 7

UTG calls 1 BB, fold, CO raises to 2 BB, fold, SB calls 1.5 BB, Hero calls 1 BB, UTG calls 1 BB

Flop: (8 BB, 4 players) 7 7 2
SB checks, Hero checks, UTG checks, CO checks

Turn: (8 BB, 4 players) T
SB bets 4 BB, Hero calls 4 BB, UTG calls 4 BB, CO calls 4 BB

River: (24 BB, 4 players) K
SB bets 4 BB, Hero raises to 14.58 BB, fold, fold, SB raises to 53.07 BB, Hero calls 32.07 BB

Hero shows 3 A 7 7 (Four of a Kind, Sevens)
(Pre 37%, Flop 99.9%, Turn 100%)
SB shows 4 Q K K (Full House, Kings full of Sevens)
(Pre 63%, Flop 0.1%, Turn 0%)
Hero wins 115.28 BB
SB wins 6.43 BB


iPoker - $0.50 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 160 BB
BTN: 54.86 BB
SB: 233.22 BB
Hero (BB): 100 BB
UTG: 168.62 BB
MP: 194.62 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 5 J 7 J

UTG raises to 3.5 BB, fold, fold, BTN calls 3.5 BB, fold, Hero calls 2.5 BB

Flop: (11 BB, 3 players) J A 3
Hero checks, UTG bets 9 BB, fold, Hero calls 9 BB

Turn: (29 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero checks, UTG bets 20.64 BB, Hero raises to 87.5 BB, UTG calls 66.86 BB

River: (204 BB, 2 players) J

Hero shows 5 J 7 J (Four of a Kind, Jacks)
(Pre 32%, Flop 6%, Turn 10%)
UTG shows A T 4 A (Full House, Aces full of Jacks)
(Pre 68%, Flop 94%, Turn 90%)
Hero wins 196 BB


iPoker - $0.50 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: 100 BB (VPIP: 43.33, PFR: 23.33, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 30)
BTN: 238.1 BB (VPIP: 63.08, PFR: 29.23, 3Bet Preflop: 8.00, Hands: 65)
SB: 632.84 BB (VPIP: 50.00, PFR: 32.14, 3Bet Preflop: 17.46, Hands: 142)
Hero (BB): 207.98 BB
UTG: 185.28 BB (VPIP: 27.27, PFR: 9.09, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 11)
MP: 94.06 BB (VPIP: 13.64, PFR: 4.55, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 22)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Q 8 Q 9

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 3 BB, fold, Hero raises to 9.5 BB, BTN calls 6.5 BB

Flop: (19.5 BB, 2 players) 6 Q A
Hero bets 13.08 BB, BTN raises to 26.16 BB, Hero raises to 97.98 BB, BTN raises to 228.6 BB, Hero calls 100.5 BB

Turn: (416.46 BB, 2 players) A

River: (416.46 BB, 2 players) J

BTN shows 6 7 K A (Full House, Aces full of Sixes)
(Pre 46%, Flop 12%, Turn 98%)
Hero mucks Q 8 Q 9 (Full House, Queens full of Aces)
(Pre 54%, Flop 88%, Turn 3%)
BTN wins 438.58 BB

Nice read. Following you.

Please don't check back top 2 with a nut flush draw

Not sure what hand you were talking about but if I did it was for a specific reason. The site I play on there are tons of players who if you check will basically barrel with 100% of their range on all turns and river and you get to wreck their face. Probably was exploiting/trapping.


The wheels fell off the bus this weekend. Played a bunch of plo100 and plo200, very good games. Just couldn't win a hand basically the entire weekend. I can't play with the card catcher running as it's inducing tilt in me so that is gone for good. No idea what my equity is, I imagine it's in the negative but my actual results are horrendous.

Lost 2k this weekend, couldn't win a 3-bet pot, couldn't win if they had outs. Not sure what the bb/100 is but it has to be absolutely terrible. I was up 1k at plo200 and down 3k at plo100 playing 2 tables of each. Stations were stations and they got there every single time. Lost 10 buyins to a guy playing 98/30/0 over about 5 hour period, had direct position on him, 3-bet accordingly, he had a set in 2/3 of our 3-bet pots including calling off a 4-bet with KJ22 and the 2 hit. Getting hit with variance and playing fairly mediocre at the same time don't pair for good results.

The worst loss was a 300bb stack off, worked the stack back up, hit top set and 2nd nfd in a 3-bet pot, 3-way. I bet 1/3 pot, villian check-raises me huge, I call. Turn bricks, and he leads pot, I shove the rest in, he snap calls. He shows middle pair, gutter, and T high flush draw, guess that is what you want to stack off for 300bb. River completes his gutter and we lose it all.

Account is in shambles at this point, I got like 300 left on it. Play is going to be very limited until next weekend when I can deposit. Pretty embarrassing having to deposit, haven't had to put any money on a site in almost 2 years. Going off memory march of 2014 was my last deposit that I used to start all this although I did lose like $250 before I started winning, most of the loses were at NLHE though. I guess this is what I deserve for having the worlds ****iest bankroll management on a site and always aggressively withdrawing whenever I do get a decent amount of buyins.

I bought some bitcoin this weekend, coinbase isn't going to give those to me until Friday so I can't put more on then. Not sure what stakes I want to play, I'll have to think on that.

Just to convince myself that I'm not the world's worst player, here is my graph for 2016 at plo100, plo200, and plo400. (it gets bad above that so I'm selectively excluding it).

I depo money on sites all the time, doesn't mean anything and shouldn't feel embarassed

It's basically that and I've been breakeven since starting this challenge. 80% of my winning in 2016 came in the first 4 months of the year and I've basically haven't won much in the last 250 hours of play. That's a lot of hours to not win anything. I have had fun though so don't get me wrong there and technically I'm a rec/fun player.

At this point I'm not playing for myself, I'm playing to post sweet graphs for internet strangers which is dumb. From this point on I'll be playing for myself and to prove to myself I can be competitive in the games. When I was strictly playing for fun and competition I was doing great and I'm going to move back to that. That being said, I'm not going to stop posting here, I enjoy writing giant walls of text that I assume nobody is reading as it's a way for me to vent and just get my thoughts out there. I will probably be posting graphs less frequently. I think I will one once a month for the prior months play and leave it at that.

I have also lined up a couple study partners. I'm still working out the details but I've been trying to get a study group going for over a year now and whenever I contact someone they always back out or they are all talk and don't want to actually study when we get down to it. One of the players has experience in plo, the other I will be studying with as well but they are new to plo so I i am hoping to do some beginner coaching and then working together with them once they are up to speed. I'm really hoping they don't back out on me as I've never really discussed poker with someone outside of poker forums. I don't know anyone IRL who plays.

That said in case they fall through in the same fashion as the last 5 guys who said the same thing, if someone would like to do some lab work with me send a pm. I'm looking for players that have some plo experience and at least know the very basics, only exception I'll make for that is if I know you or you've been around the ssplo for a while. I honestly don't really care if your a winner or not.

February went just as poorly as all my other months in this challenge, my decision making skills are very poor to say the least.

After my last post I played some plo25, I was determined not to deposit again and just roll with what was in the account. I had $50 in the account and sat one table of plo25, and two tables of PLO10. I got lucky and didn't go busto but had to play absurdly tight as well which nobody adjusts for at those stakes. Ended up playing very well, and had some rungood at the same time, ran that back to 500. Decided to play some heads up plo25 and plo50 and ran that back down to 250 before giving up on HU. Deposited 500 at this point to get myself feeling comfortable.

Second week was fairly rocky basically broke even and played like ****. At the end of the week my account balance jumped up a ton and I couldn't figure out why. I ended up getting a big casino bonus and a poker bonus added to my account. Somehow I got a 100% deposit bonus that came into effect a week later. So I got some rakeback going on now.

Third week started off well. Got the account balance to 1500 with the $500 bonus, then the weekend hit. I started playing two tables of plo25 and two tables of plo50. Things were rough, I was losing all my all-ins in every situation unless they were basically dead. Ended up losing like 200 Friday night.

Saturday came and I did the same thing, I was too suborn to back to two tables of each. Ended up running very hot the first few hours. Ran the account up to 1900.

Here's where the bad decision making really strikes again. At the end of that run I end up breaking two of my tables with people busting to me. There weren't any other plo25 or plo50 tables open. I really didn't want to quit, it's still only like 7pm and I wanted to play till midnight. only option is to open some plo10 or some plo100. I notice there are two tables of plo100 with average pot size is greater than $80. I decide to short stack the games.

I sit with $30 in each and it turns out the games are insane. I got two players at the table two are playing 75/75/50+ and the rest of the table is playing 75/5/0. We got two maniacs bringing it to each other and everyone else burning money. I'm loving the game, very easy decisions, every pot is extremely bloated. An example from the table, utg (maniac 1) opens for pot, mp (maniac 2) 3-bets pot, hero is dealt aces in CO and cold 4-bets all-in with his short stacking, btn cold calls, sb cold calls, both maniacs call. 5-ways to flop and I'm all-in, flop comes 236 and I have the nfd, sb bets pot, with 100bb behind, and everyone at the table basically covers him, they all fold, sb shows 2378ss no fd and I hit and win. That's the type of hands multiple people are playing for 4-bets pre.

I end up working my stack up a couple bi, start playing deep, and when people are doing that **** why not. I'm playing a very tight strat since everyone is so insane, playing about 20vpip. Things start to go bad. I'm literally losing every hand at this point. I got on a cooler streak at this point. GII 12 times with the worst all-in I had 42% equity in a 3-way all-in otherwise every other one I had at least 50%+ most with tons of dead money in the pot to the ridiculous preflop play. I ended up winning one of those 12-allins unfortunately. The table was so insane I don't really want to min-buyin when people are making such large mistakes so each lose was -100.

It's about midnight now and my account is down to 850, games are going strong though, have 3 tables open with the two maniacs. End up getting it in the AKTTds preflop against one of the maniacs who apparently 4-bet me with 8432ss and lose that one. Feeling pretty bad, go back to the short stack strat. End up actually holding the baby for once, I know a challenge for me. Get the stats all above 100bb. People keep doing their dumb ****, literally all-in pre with any 4. End up holding a couple, get a stack to 250bb, maniacs all cover me by a lot, they both have at least 500 on two tables and on the other are over a 1k. They just can't lose a pot, I had one of them win a 350bb pot with 10% equity against me earlier in the night. One of the maniacs decides to call my 4-bet again. I flop top set and NFD on A97, I c-bet for 1/3 pot, he raises me pot and we GII. He shows QQ92r, thats how good the game was. Take down the 500bb pot and then not much later the games die as its 4am at this point. Ended the session with the account at 1450 but god knows what my EV was.

I decide to play a few hours sunday. Sit 4 tables of plo25 again, running about average but playing like garbage. There was a $75 plo sunday event starting and it had been a while since I played it. It's usually very soft and plo25 levels of play at best. Slog through the first 3 hours of play, basically defending my blinds and stealing blinds. Playing under 20vpip since it's 9-max and I can't even get a decent hand. Stacks is about at starting at this point, end up doubling up when I open from early position with bad aces and someone 3-bets me and 4-bet and we gii. He shows AJJ3ss to the jack. I hold and we go another hour of nothing happening. We are close to the bubble at this point. 12 remain, I am 8th in chips but everyone has basically the same amount of chips aside from two big stacks. Top 9 pays and the jumps are about $100 each person you outlast and 1.5k for first. Monster stack opens for pot, he's doing this basically every hand, pfr is about 70, I get dealt aces for the third time this tournament. I 3-bet him, bb defends, and he calls. Flop comes 456, and we have AAKJds, two backdoor flush draws. I only had 15bb to start the hand so I only have one option. It checks to me and we shove, bb folds, CO snap calls and shows ATT7, he turns a T and that's my tournament. I win that hand we go to 2nd place in chips but what can you do. While that was going on I continue to play like garbage at 1 table of plo25 and we end the day with 1350 in the account.

So far this year has been disappointing, but almost all of it has been that I can't keep my tilt in control and the stakes I play are very questionable to say the least.

Stats for 6-max PLO in 2017
money won: -2k

EV on the year prior to this weekend:
winrates in EV:
8k hands of plo25: 21bb/100
8k hands of plo50: 1bb/100
8k hands of plo100: -5bb/100
5k hands of plo200: 20bb/100
300 hands of plo600: -1200 bucks

As you can guess based on those EVs and the money being negative I am winning not very close to my EV. It's almost all from plo100 where I am 25bi below EV and the EV is bad to start off with but it's only 8k hands.

Account Balance: ~1350

Goals for March:
Be more strict with my bankroll, no shots. I'm going to play 4 tables of plo25 until I hit 2k where I will 2 table plo25, and plo50 until 2.5k when I'll move to 4 tables of plo50. When go backwards to 1900 and 2400 I will move back to what I was playing before. I don't care how good the games are at higher stakes my mental sanity can't take it and I just tilt too easily when I play out of bankroll. We are going to do this the right way. (As I say that for the 100th time).

Cheers to a good and disciplined March.

I can guess based on the sample size evbb means little and result means nothing. I can't guess that you are running above or below.

Post some graphs!

You want graphs, here's my graph for this weekend. Somehow the all-in EV is broken for these imported hands, no idea how much I ran under. I have my guesses but I'm sure I think I ran worse than reality. As you can see my redline sucks, which is a sign I'm playing very poorly, usually when I'm playing very well the redline is only slightly negative. I have shown the entire database to prove that I'm not hiding EV somehow the EV feature is broken as there is a 0% chance I ran at 100% ev the entire time as I was all-in a ****-load before the river with the short stacking. It's also just flat out wrong as I lost 350 on the weekend and this shows me down $100 and there were 0 import errors when importing the hands.


Graph for weekend:


An example hand of how the database is broken. Here I get in AAQ5 all-in preflop and it has me at 0% equity.


flop:


river:

slightly tilting but I figured out the problem. I have to reformat the hand histories and re-import. I purged my database did the reformatting and tried to reimport the hands but it still thinks all the hands are in the database and gives me duplicate hands and won't import them. I am trying a few things to fix but the ETA on those is hours. If they don't work I'm going to have to just delete the database and reimport my hands for the last couple years which is probably going to take forever.

Edit: apparently that went faster then expected. I purged 100% of my hands as I have all the hand histories where I didn't use the card catcher. Unforunately basically deleting all history from the database doesn't work, it still won't let me import hands. I had to delete the database and start off from scratch. We're importing everything again and it's going to take 4-5 hours so I'll see what the graphs look like tomorrow.

I play 6 max plo on Bovada too, probably played with you a bunch. The games are okay, at times they can be great. They can also die out easy. Keep it up, don't worry about your account balance as much. You seem overly concerned.

Sorry for no post in a long time but I'm making some adjustments for how I spend my free time which put me AWOL from poker.

Following up on my last few posts, I figured out my EV issue, I ended up running 300 under EV acording to the graph. It had me at a positive 250 and actual results of -150 as shown above. Who knows what it should really be as I actually lost a lot more than 150.

I ended up playing some the first week of March but not a lot. Maybe 2k-3k hands. I never actually downloaded the hands from the site and i'm far past my week threshold for that so that will be gone. I ended up winning 600 in that time from plo10 and plo25 mix. I couldn't get 4 tables of plo25 going for most of that and I stuck to my gameplan and didn't play any higher so I sat plo10.

I did a bunch of study and hand review with hole cards shown. It turns out that people aren't playing anywhere near optimal and I got a lot of good info off it. I basically reviewed every hand played in the last 6 months that I vpip. Turns out I was playing a lot better at the begining of 2016 than now, some of my changes to my game were just wrong for the anon structure and I will go going back to a lot of the things I used to do.

After the first week of the month I basically haven't played any poker. Maybe an hour or two on the weekend is all. I played a bunch of path of exile and i'm playing player unknown's battlegrounds right now. Honestly it's been a relief not worry about poker. I'm just playing games and having fun.

I grind POE when I'm not playing poker. Finally beat mericless because i wasted first 3 weeks of season testing out builds.

I'm really enjoying POE. I played it a lot with friends in beta and then we dropped it and haven't really touched it since the last league which was Breach. The game has definitely had a lot of improvements since then.

I would enjoy it more if it weren't for the fps issues I've been having, especially during breaches.

I'm taking the plunge this weekend into PLO. Have experience in ignition. Mostly triple ups and some FR small stakes holdem

Following your thread. Maybe we can do some studying or run some bands last eachother

Sure, send me a PM and we can set something up. I have a discord set up for it but everytime someone says let's go they stop responding no show, haven't gotten anyone to commit.


I've gotten back up on the horse and I've played 1-2 hours about everyday since my last post. I think I've played very well overall. Focusing on my decision making and not the outcome and I've really improved at playing range vs range poker. I'm getting close to the point where I don't have to actively think about it anymore and I just start doing it every hand.

The one thing I'm not really happy about is my study though. I haven't put much time into strictly studying so I haven't improved in that regard but I'm constantly thinking about poker again and running through lines in my head and doing the math while bored or watching tv so that can't hurt.


I've had only one day of bad play which was last night. I just started off on the wrong foot, my 3rd hand after a limpfest I flat on the button with JJ97ss. Flop comes QT8 with two spades, which I have the jack high FD for. This is a 6 way limped pot. MP leads for pot, CO flats, I pot raise, MP pushes the rest in, CO calls, and I call. All 100bb deep. MP shows Q8xx no redraws, co shows 88xx no redraws and the river brings a Q and I lose. Not sure why I tilted but I just got really gunshy and played super passive like a fish for the next 30 minutes and then I forcefully made myself quit because I was playing so poorly. Still ended up winning like 3 bucks because it's plo25 and everyone is so **** but I just felt terrible about my play.

I'll try and post a graph tonight if I can but I tried last night and had issues. My hand converter software wasn't working and it was saying I didn't have a license, so I dug out the key I bought a couple months ago and it couldn't validate it. I'm hoping their server was just down and it works tonight, never had that issue before.

Couple poorly played hands from yesterday from memory.


hero posts .10 in SB, bb posts .25, MP opens for .85, btn calls, hero is dealt: AK85 and flats, bb calls.

Flop: QJ7
hero checks, bb checks, MP pots it, folds to hero who calls, bb folds

Turn: 6
hero leads for pot, mp calls

River: T
hero bets the last 3 bucks or something MP calls
Hero has nuts and wins $50.

Not happy at all with my preflop or flop play. This hand is the hand that made me realize how stupid I was actually playing, sat out on next BB.


Another poorly played hand from memory. Could have played this one a little better.

UTG opens to .75, mp calls, co calls, hero is dealt JTT9 and calls from btn, sb calls bb calls.

Flop comes: KQ5
utg checks, MP pots it and has $1 behind after, folds to hero on btn who min-raises, sb calls, folds to mp who calls.

Turn: 2
check, check

River:
5

MP shows KK52r and wins main pot
hero wins side pot
sb shows jt93r and rages about being unlucky


You can see a theme of how bad plo25 players are so even when you play poorly it can be hard to lose money at times.

UTG opens to .85, MP calls, Hero is dealt KTK8 and 3-bets pot, btn calls, folds to UTG who calls, MP calls.

Flop:
T93
utg checks, mp leads for pot with one more pot sized bet behind, hero folds, btn folds, utg folds, MP wins pot.


As I said before I'll try and get a graph up tonight if the hand converter works. Not very happy with my play from yesterday. These were just a few from memory, lots of mistakes and need to get that consistency down. Can't expect to get back to the mistakes playing like this.

Plan on putting in some study time the next few days, will be traveling for family this weekend as well so that should be fun. Will be setting some time to watch the jnandez free plo workshop from upswing. I watched the first vid and will watch the rest. Probably won't learn anything because it's free content so it will likely be simple but should still do it. Will try and watch a couple galfond 6-max videos he's posted in march and need to do some more juicing.