Quick bio:

• 22 years old
• Living in the UK
• Law school dropout
• Play full time
• Former breakeven 100NLz reg, switched to PLO a couple of months back
• Part of ChicagoJoey's GTO Club

Purpose of the thread

After reading about CTS' ****ty river decision blog in Joey's book, I decided to start a thread here. The whole point of this thread (other than giraffe's and potential degen stories) is that I'm going to post the hands I misplay the worst, so you can all laugh and tell me how terrible I am etc etc.

Pot Limit Omaha

I have been playing PLO for about 2-3 months now. I had a pretty bad losing month in January playing PLO50 and rough start to Feb too so I am currently playing PLO25 to solidify my fundamentals and regain some confidence.
I have coaching with a winning midstakes player, and also use some PLOQuickPro products.
I don't really know how much strat I'm gonna talk in this thread, but will definitely fire some shots at the regs, post some of the worst hands I've ever played and hopefully show that SSPLO is beatable despite rake. GL me.

Poker Goals and Challenges

My poker goal is to travel the world playing online for a living. I live on a ****ty little island and I try to get off it as much as possible.

Short term poker challenge: be a winning player at PLO50 on stars.

Mid term poker challenge: be a winning player at PLO200 on stars.

Long term poker challenge: buy a car with poker winnings. Sometimes you gotta just go with the classics

Travel + Degen Stories??

I'm going travelling through various places in Europe for two weeks at the beginning of March, starting with a week in Amsterdam... so there is potential for degeneracy. No thread is complete without drugs/strippers/gambling so we will see if anything happens on that front . Will also post about any of my travels, if they hopefully happen.

Gl man!
I love plo climbing!
Vamooosss

Thanks man!

Here is graph from last 3 days of PLO25z, looks like I have run good :-D



And like I said, the point of this thread is mostly to share the hands I play the absolute worst. So, here goes...











I levelled myself into thinking he is spazzing with Axxx because I have villain tagged with fishiest possible colour. But even if he is, not like we are crushing those hands, and given that is probably only in his range a small % of the time when he 3bs flop, whereas AK and AA are always in it, I should seriously reconsider jamming to see the least. Gotta remember sometimes the fish can still make the nuts...



I was planning on playing one more day of PLO25z tomorrow to get 5k and just smash it then back to PLO50 but given how well it is going I'm considering playing PLO25 until March and just trying to book a big winning month. Doing the latter probably requires dropping my ego though, obviously not an easy thing for poker players to do :-D

Ok, turns out I am terrible at updating my thread.... From now on, going to post minimum twice weekly, every Monday and Friday.

Pretty happy with my volume so far in February, pretty close to 180 hours purely on the tables, think I am close to 200 hours total on poker including off the table work, which is my monthly goal.



I will post my month graph at the end of Feb, but it's not pretty, I definitely jumped the shark with the graph posted above :-D

For today's installment of hands I played ****ing horribly, we have this beauty:







I think pre + flop are pretty standard. Turn I really don't like the bet 3 ways, MP is a fun player who is vpiping very wide, and in my head I thought betting was the best way to realise my equity, but in reality we are in a pretty terrible spot if we get raised, and we are crushed by any AKxx hands which represent a significant part of both villains' flop calling ranges. If we check and MP checks, we get a free card which is great for our hand. If we check and MP bets, we will have the extra information of knowing what SB does before we have to act, which I think will also allow us to make good decisions. Overall I think the turn bet is fundamentally flawed because only worse folds and only better calls.

I have a few more of these stored up, but I will post them on Monday

Feb graph -



As you can see, I was far too optimistic with my initial assessment of PLO25, I clearly have a lot of work to do. I'm also running incredibly well, obviously, so it's going to be tough when I inevitably run bad to balance it out.

This month has been tough. Around the 25k hand mark I was in a pretty bad place, wanted to quit, I was feeling very depressed etc. I feel like a lot of the advice I see in situations like that on here is "quit, poker just isn't for you", but I am sadly not a quitter. Joe Ingram told me he wasn't a winning PLO player until he'd played over a million hands, and that thought has comforted me a lot - I think I can be a winning player with far fewer hands played than that (about 150k hands played so far). To be successful in any field you have to endure long periods of things looking bleak, and fight doubt + the urge to quit. I was very lucky that my coach had a lot of belief in me this month, which gave me some belief too. They say doubt is the enemy, but I think it's natural, and I have doubted myself a lot this month, but at the end of it, I am confident in saying I will be a winning PLO player. I have found some huge leaks in my game in the last week, and I really think I can have a breakeven month next month. The most important thing is to work as hard as I can, and in that spirit, here is my hours played for Feb:



Fairly happy with 200 hours played, probably another 20 or so off the table. Seeing as I am travelling in March it's going to be very tough to hit my 200 hour goal, I think 150 hours would be an achievement, but I'm still going to aim for 200, even if I have to grind 12 hours/day every day that I am back home.

I am heading to Amsterdam on Wednesday, I am gonna do my best to post pics or stories of anything out of line that happens here. I'm not really a huge party-er but my friend who I am going with, so I think I am probably flipping to do coke off a hooker's *******. Should be a fun trip.

And now for some hands! These were all played over the weekend and highlight some of the embarrassing mistakes I made. Enjoy!

I think calling pre is fine, our hand plays decently 4 ways (in theory, not when I play it like this). I think flop x/c is horrible by hero, no excuse really, gonna be OOP with horrible reverse implied if a 5 hits, which I assume is the card I want, not really sure what I am drawing to. OTR I think calling is the worst option, in theory at least, I doubt CO is really stabbing with missed 5678 type hands here very often MW when a big part of sb/bb x/c range OTF has some kind of 3 in. I like raising with our blockers in theory, but I think in reality at these stakes it's marginal and maybe not even plus EV, assuming co's betting range here is super value heavy. River is just a clear fold really... Maybe I was tired? :'(






OTF I think either bet folding or check folding are far superior to x/c. Overall x/c by far the worst option, I am only drawing to a flush, I have no nut outs and horrible reverse implied, I have bad raw equity vs anything that's not air plus I am OOP. At least I folded turn...




Could probably fold to the squeeze pre, but I'm IP and deep. Could also maybe find a tight fold OTF given our reverse implied/lack of implied, and we probably don't have good equity vs a 3b + cb and sb CC range. OTT is a likely a bet fold, I levelled myself into thinking villain was spazzing enough of the time to make it profitably but he doesn't really have many hands that make sense to spazz with. This hand illustrates kinda nicely why I can maybe fold this hand earlier than the turn.

PokerStars Zoom Hand #166798360725: Omaha Pot Limit ($0.10/$0.25) - 2017/02/26 14:17:44 WET [2017/02/26 9:17:44 ET]
Table 'Thyestes' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: persephoney ($52.52 in chips)
Seat 2: dopestplaya ($63.99 in chips)
Seat 3: tiakatia ($95.41 in chips)
Seat 4: Alexjoel89 ($39.32 in chips)
Seat 5: Prrruki ($31.34 in chips)
Seat 6: leonidd73 ($16.81 in chips)
dopestplaya: posts small blind $0.10
tiakatia: posts big blind $0.25
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to persephoney [Qc Qd 4h 8c]
Alexjoel89: folds
Prrruki: folds
leonidd73: raises $0.25 to $0.50
persephoney: calls $0.50
dopestplaya: folds
tiakatia: raises $1.60 to $2.10
leonidd73: calls $1.60
persephoney: calls $1.60
*** FLOP *** [4s Kc 9c]
tiakatia: bets $3.07
leonidd73: calls $3.07
persephoney: calls $3.07
*** TURN *** [4s Kc 9c] [6c]
tiakatia: checks
leonidd73: checks
persephoney: bets $11.96
tiakatia: raises $38.87 to $50.83
leonidd73: folds
persephoney: calls $35.39 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($3.48) returned to tiakatia
*** RIVER *** [4s Kc 9c 6c] [9h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
tiakatia: shows [7c Ac As 7h] (a flush, Ace high)
persephoney: shows [Qc Qd 4h 8c] (a flush, King high)
tiakatia collected $108.31 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $110.31 | Rake $2
Board [4s Kc 9c 6c 9h]
Seat 1: persephoney (button) showed [Qc Qd 4h 8c] and lost with a flush, King high
Seat 2: dopestplaya (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: tiakatia (big blind) showed [7c Ac As 7h] and won ($108.31) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 4: Alexjoel89 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: Prrruki folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: leonidd73 folded on the Turn




I should either cb flop or check turn, my hand is totally face up when I take this line, and it doesn't even really make sense? Also an easy fold OTR I think, what natural bluffs does he have on this run out? Virtually none, but I set the money on fire anyway :-D

Don't really have too many marked hands to share because I have only played a few hours since being in Amsterdam for the last 3 days. Discovered a pretty big leak of mine with the help of my coach though, so feeling very confident in my game at the moment, hope games will be good over the weekend and I can grind some hours.

My long time friend overtake me in pocketfives rankings recently so I am adding in some PLO MTTs to try and reclaim my #1 spot in Guernsey. They feel very soft and rake is essentially lower compared to PLO cash so think they are a decent spot to make money as well as appease my ego.

Checked out the red light district here a bit the other day. The entire city smells like marijuana, which I guess I will get used to after a while. RLD was pretty different to what I was expecting, tbh wasn't expecting the girls to be as hot as they are among other things. Not really my style to pay for that kinda thing but we will probably go back and have another look around, it is an eye-opening place for sure.

Took a break last two weeks from poker because of personal stuff. Got back to the tables in the last few days and feeling very confident overall! Don't really have any hands to post atm but will tag some over the weekend for you all to enjoy.

Going to set out two mini goals:

Play minimum 4 hours a day every day for the rest of the month
Win @5b/100 over next 60k hands at PLO25, if successful move up to PLO50.

Both are more than achievable, will post receipts.

Good luck

10/10 thread updating by me :-D

It's probably naive to think I might update this regularly from now on but I'm going to try. My situation has changed a decent bit since I originally started the thread, most notably that I am now living in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. I moved here earlier this month and am living with my grinder buddy who plays PLO500, so learning as much from him as I possibly can.

I've stopped playing on stars too, my WR isn't good enough to support a rakeback free lifestyle sadly. But, to that end I have shifted a good amount of focus aware from grinding as much volume as possible to spending much more time studying and also actively working on my mental game, as I recently realised I am a pretty big mental game fish.

Between some notable mental game improvements, some theory improvement and some exploitative stuff I have learned recently, I think I have improved significantly in the short time I've been in PDC so hopefully I'll be able to build a solid WR, but it's going to take a lot of off the table work.

I'm not checking my results for next two weeks (part of mental game stuff) but may potentially post a giraffe at the end of that, hopefully it is a very tall giraffe :-D. I will also try and take some pics of PDC to share, hope you guys like generic beach photos.

Subbed glgl papi

First month in Mexico is in the books, it's amazing and I love it here. Haven't taken any pictures yet as I have been in the office every day and have been to the beach for a grand total of about 2 hours, but I will take some of the street art and the beach whenever I do end up going again. I spent the first 3 weeks getting rekt by mosquitoes so I'm 99% sure I have malaria now but they left me alone this week after I got sick, my blood probably smelled weird. Got used to the heat and humidity pretty quickly, but for the first week I was sweating balls all day every day.

Onto poker, I hit 200 hours this month which I am happy with. Had a very slow start (pretty much spent the whole of the month before coming to PDC partying and forgot how to play poker) but picked it up EV wise and ran like god which is always nice. Not happy with my evbb over the whole month obviously but hopeful I can be a decent pre RB ev winner next month over similar volume of hands.



Mostly just working on mental game stuff more in the next month and some basic range construction/bet sizing stuff. Gonna force myself to take my first full day off tomorrow and instead of going to the beach I think I'm gonna stay inside and play dota all day. Gonna try and switch up my sleep schedule somehow so I can watch lol worlds finals in China next week, think that is probably gonna kill me but it'll be worth it to see Faker-senpai.

Good to see you are back updating the thread glgl with the grind will be following along

Can't wait to see some pics of Mexico. Only time I've spent there was at a vacation resort and I didn't get to experience much culture.

What area are you in?

How's the food/diet?

Have you found a good gym?

I know you're focusing on poker but....how are the ladies in your city?

Subbed!!
I'm a fellow plo player and I'm actually from Mexico, you picked a really touristic place in playa, lots of parties and good life... but pretty expensive in comparison to most places in Mexico

GL and hope the rungood starts soon

I'm in Playa Del Carmen, about an hour south of Cancun, it's a beach-y type place. I love it here overall, but there is an odd split between the very tourist centred areas near the beach and the more local heavy outskirts. We avoid the main tourist street like the plague, it's almost like being in the States, there is a big shopping mall etc, it's weird.

At the moment my diet is kinda weird, I'm living with slvrsluger and his gf, she is a weird pseudo-vegan, so we eat vegan ~90% of the time, but she was sick last week so me and him went out for steak while she was asleep.... :-D. We sometimes eat fish/cheese when we go out, I don't really understand her diet but I don't think it's worth it to ask. Overall the food here is pretty good, there's a tonne of very cheap local places where you can get a meal for 25-40% of the price I would expect to be paying back home.

We go to Evolve Gym here, not entirely sure if I'm meant to post links in this forum or not, but google Evolve Playa Del Carmen, their main location is basically just like a regular American commercial gym. Also they have some promotional videos embedded on their website that are quite.... well, promotional.

I am a complete car crash with women as ever, maybe I'll write about one of my dumb stories from before I left on here at some point, but it'll betray my terrible social skills. Dating is not a priority here for me at all like you said, just tryna get $$$, I don't even have tinder. But... there are definitely plenty of attractive girls around, most of whom are not local. There are a few hot ones who work at our work space but as far as I can tell a lot of them are on some weird spiritual/hippy **** so that's not really my jam. Playa is a party town, so it's my understanding that there are plenty of foreign tourists in bars basically looking to just have a few drinks and a good time, sadly I am really not the person to ask about that though :-D.


Thanks :-). It's kinda funny you say playa is expensive compared to the rest of Mexico, everything to me seems so cheap... for comparison my rent here is about 6k pesos/month and rent on my old flat in my hometown was closer to 18k. Maybe see you at the tables :-).

Some random pics below, none even vaguely exciting.

I am officially a fun player now xD

Quick update, think my next update I will try and redefine my poker "goals and challenges" to try and get the thread a bit more in keeping with the forum.

Looking for a new apartment in PDC atm as my two current roommates are going to Argentina for a month, it's kind of a drag and I am pretty sure I am going to get ripped off for being a foreigner and not really speaking Spanish, but oh well. Once I live on my own there is a possibility I put more time into the partying+girls side of things and I can get some interesting stories.

Freerolled one of my roommates for the last month that I have to meditate 30 mins every day or pay his rent, and on the 12th we are doing a kind of DIY meditation retreat, a few of us are renting an airbnb in Playacar and we're going to go and observe noble silence and meditate for 6 days straight, think it's gonna be weird but interesting.

Poker wise, trying to not check my results (might post end of month graph when I do look next week but it will not be pretty) is slowly killing me, I am a huge mental game fish. Trying to make my way through MGOP and take notes etc. I think I am playing my best ever PLO though, every time I improve slightly it's frustrating because I realise how much more there is left to learn, but I also realise how much better than my opponents I could play. If anyone is interesting in hands then I have some funny ones saved of regs playing awfully :-D.

I know everyone loves graphs, so first a graph (that will make you feel better about your own poker skills) and then a story. This is my graph since I last did my accounting with my backer:



In this forum I think a lot of the threads can be broadly split into categories: people already crushing it at midstakes with insane, straight up graphs, and rec players starting to want to take the game seriously, but who are still lacking some basics. I don't really fit into either of those (at least I hope not) and maybe that makes what I have to say interesting/different to the other threads? IDK.

We all hear over and over that if you put the time and effort into something, and don't go out partying or spend your day binging Netflix, eventually the rewards will come and you will have achieved something great. We hear that failure is a good thing, and without failure we cannot achieve success, failure is a great teacher. We hear that everyone can be successful at poker if they put in enough time off the tables, if they can work on their mental game so they can emotionally handle variance, if they can simply put in the faithful hours. We also all know that it is far more difficult to make money in poker than it once was, and the clichéd advice "what would you say to anyone wanting to become a professional poker player?" "Don't."

I play full time but would feel loathe to call myself a professional, I have nowhere near earned that right yet. I feel like a fraud for even implying I might be a professional by saying I play full time. At the moment I play staked, and spend pretty much my whole month just trying to grind a 0evbb winrate and profit off rakeback.

I have been in Mexico a little over two months now, and in that time I have taken 2 days off, one of which was my birthday, and for the remaining days I have spent 10-14 hours in the office, every day. I have never worked at anything this hard in my life, and I feel like I am improving rapidly in both my technical and mental game, in fact I think they are both the best they have ever been. But it's not reflected in my winrate at all, in fact I don't think my evbb/100 has changed much in the last 6 months despite all my efforts. Am I simply improving too slowly compared to the rest of the field?

I see a lot of other regs making what I consider to be significant mistakes, but demonstrably I must be making similar and/or larger ones, but am unaware of my own leaks most of the time, which is immensely frustrating. Anytime I feel like I have improved a weak area in my game or figured out a new population exploit, it seems to have no effect on my results whatsoever and I keep getting shafted. Not to mention losing/downswinging is obviously incredibly emotionally draining. Joey put out a couple of videos on it recently and I think they captured how I feel pretty accurately. I have sacrificed a huge amount to become successful in poker, and if that sacrifice were to be for nothing but to fail, I'm not sure how I would handle it (I'm guessing pretty unhealthily though). For various personal reasons, I also do not feel like I can quit poker, even if it potentially emotionally unhealthy for me, so I don't have a lot of choice but to try to deal with it all as best I can.

I apologise if this comes off as generic whining during a downswing, but I hope it provides some kind of insight into the frustration of being a bad reg, or how hard it is to "make it" in poker if you are not already crushing. I am immensely grateful for the position I am in, and for the things poker has already given me, but the problem with playing full time is that it becomes your whole identity, so when things go badly, it's very difficult to remember to be appreciative. I am even luckier than most in that my backer is more than just my backer, and is in fact my friend (at least until he finds out how much of his money I have lost lol) so I am going to talk to him about things and see what he says.



The other super ooooed up thing about poker - I spent the whole day grinding and being miserable because I was losing. I could take the day off and go to the beach or some ruins tomorrow, but I have no desire whatsoever to do anything other than play poker. I think if you don't have a masochistic streak then perhaps you will never be successful in poker.
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very d*wn t* earth p*st thanks f*r sharing. g**d luck d*n't st*p y*u're d*ing the right things (except maybe m*re life breaks)

Just testing this out. Ooooooo look ok ok ok

Just had this happen to me and thought it was too amazing not to share. Anyone who thinks online poker is no longer profitable is totally wrong. I think the actual hand is relatively standard, but the conversation afterwards was glorious.





And now for the chat afterwards:

Dealer: V_Topalov shows a flush, Jack high .
Dealer: AsmaticVader doesn't show
#16705257461: V_Topalov wins $31 USD from the main pot with a flush, Jack high.
AsmaticVader: wtf
V_Topalov: ?
AsmaticVader: why are you floating nothing
V_Topalov: I had a straight and a flush draw?
AsmaticVader: both trash hands ?
V_Topalov: rofl
AsmaticVader: what do u think bets pot there that u r doing well against?
V_Topalov: since when is the 3rd nuts a trash hand haha
V_Topalov: maybe I just had a good feeling
AsmaticVader: ur calling with a flush draw only and its very often bad
AsmaticVader: if u miss flush u have to fold river to bet with urbad straight
AsmaticVader: so yeah terrible play
AsmaticVader: and thus why i said wtf
V_Topalov: yeah you are right I Think I missplayed the hand
Dealer: AsmaticVader has left the table.




AsmaticVader, if you read this, I just wanna say thanks for the advice, I really appreciate you trying to help me become a better player!

Dealer: AsmaticVader has left the table.

you play bad

True, fortunately I see this guy around all the time though, I don't think my gentle needling will have caused him to quit Fingers crossed next time he sees me he thinks he can punish my terrible play and get revenge.

Quick end of month update:

Had a terrible month results wise, ran bad and played bad. Was inspired by cumicon's graph and pod, and **** life balance. My goal is to put 300 hours into poker in December, probably will be mostly playing but some HH review/solver stuff/RIO vids too. I have no real obligations for the whole month, no family here and not big into Christmas anyway, so just gonna grind as hard as I can for 31 days and probably get ruined on NYE to celebrate being done. Will take it a little easier in January probably because of AGDQ, December is the time to find out if I can actually get good at poker or not.