July

1) Stakes


2) Lines


So as you can see, I must thank all in Gods for my profit. Last 1/2 of volume I played while being sick in addition to this crazy heatwave. I felt like I still played my A game, but sickness probably affected it. Anyway, had a great month outside poker with busy weekends etc.

July goals:

1) 100h play, 20h study; 96h/20h [ ] Was on track, but was lazy on final day..
2) 20 work outs; [ ] 9 - sick for 1/2 month
3) 150 pages; [X]
4) Get out of bed before 9:30am every single workday; [X] - This is great!
5) No distractions while I play; [X] Focus maintained high;
6) Develop and start doing session preparation. [X]

August goals:

I will dedicate most of my volume to study. Right now I got like 150k sample of PLO100, and my EV ain't that great - I win ~1bb/100 EV. Sure, 150k sample is lol for this game, but there are red flags in my blind play, so I'll work on those.

1) 50h play / 70h study;
2) 15 work outs (looks like I won't do 1/2 Ironman this year);
3) 150 pages;
4) Get out of bed before 9:30 every single workday;
5) No distractions while I play - decrease table count to 4 and improve my game.

Subbed, GL!

Nice result for july!

How much have u raked in thoose 150k hands? Must be a decent hourly after rakeback?

Last month I was paying like 30 eur/h in rake. So that's 12-15 eur/h from rake. Add in study time in "working hours", and that's like 10 eur/h from RB alone. As my EV winrate has been just 0.5bb in this sample, almost all of winnings come from RB. Thankfully I'm running above EV and making more money than I "should". So what I want to say with this, is that I can only look at Rakeback numbers - 150k is lol sample for PLO, my game is evolving, and I have no clue what my true winrate is, so it would be toxic to have any monetary calcs.

As I already started to think of this - lets have a look at "poker hourly" and "9-5 hourly".

In my country avg wage is 1k eur post tax, therefore 6.25 eur/h. But is it? 1) 9-5 worker get 4 weeks paid vacation, so hourly miraculously got bumped up to 6.81 e/h. 2) To get 1k eur post tax, apart from 250 eur income tax, 500 eur is paid as a social tax (so you get to receive age pension, paid sick leave, maternity leave etc) and BANG, hourly is 10.22 eur/h. Of course we should add commuting time, money spent on gas to get to/from work etc that nobody even think of (at least from I don't know anyone).

When it comes to poker, it's easy to fool yourself with numbers. You can play a year and look at "hourly" tab and be happy. But that's not it. We don't get paid vacation, social benefits, end of the year bonus. We pay for software, hardware, coaching etc. + don't forget about the taxes if they apply (I'm supposed to pay 22% this year for winnings above 3k).

So what is my hourly? Who the **** knows.

Hello boys and girls!

I've been diving into my DB pretty deep this month, therefore volume at the tables has been low. Found a lot of spots where I can improve, and implementing those things should allow me to crush PLO100. Those hours I've spent on tables, I have been running (and playing) good.

Played 1/2 for the first time of my life on Friday! Not much to report on that, but the first step has been made.

Sad thing is that Microgaming skin I had been using, one day had decided to kick out my country. No email, no nothing. Just couldn't log in and it took some time to find out what had happened, but got paid out quickly and fairly (but after my incentive).

Final week of August gonna focus on volume at the tables. Lets have a good one!

What kind of things did you review in your DB? That's one area I don't really know where to begin. I wish I had Hold'em Manager over my PT4. Seems like it's better for sorting through the data from what I've seen.

Pretty much every most occuring spot using filters etc. No idea how to do any of that with PT4.

I've figured out how to run the filters for a lot of stuff. Just takes some poking around. Most of my review is tagging tough hands and reviewing them afterwards. I do some work with PLO calculators and such. That's always interesting to review the equity in certain spots. Sometimes you're surprised at what you see.

Hand reviews can be good, but they are not the most beneficial way to study as most likely (at least for most people) you get a binary result out of it - whether or not you played that hand good. Imo it's better to study in blocks, like "open from BTN and face a 3bet from blinds" and dive into it. Requires reasonable sample tho.

Makes sense. I'm still working on the sample. I have about 15k hands total in PLO. I'm just a part time enthusiast but I'm always trying to get better.

I see. 15k hands won't be enough for any kind of DB work.

Bluffing is hard

August

1) 50h play / 70h study; [X]? 78h play, 42.5h study, so smashed TOT hours;
2) 15 work outs (looks like I won't do 1/2 Ironman this year); [X] - 24 or 25. Gonna do 1/2 ironman in Sep 15th, so pushing hours!
3) 150 pages; [ ] No time for everything.. Did 1/2 of that I guess;
4) Get out of bed before 9:30 every single workday; [X]
5) No distractions while I play - decrease table count to 4 and improve my game. [X]

1) Graph



2) Stakes



Still a RB pro. EV was doing fine, but final 3 days were just brutal. On top of that, a wasp found it's way in my mouth Yesterday when I was cycling and bit me close to throat. Ended up visiting a hospital as I'm alergic.

September gonna be very low volume month for me as road tripping to 1/2 Ironman gonna take almost a week, + I'm heading to Philippines on 27th. Will come back with goals later.

Nice month any way! 1600 on 78 hours is still pretto nice
How many tables do you play?

Up to 5 tables.

Some news - the stable I had been working with is closing it's shop, and I'll be playing on my own money again. The bad part is that I'm not rolled for PLO100 and therefore I'm forced to drop down the stakes. Not the best timing as September gonna be a very low volume month, but I know I can push through this road bump. I've already paid for 3 month rent in Philippines from AirBnb, so I expect my monthly expenses gonna be low enough to be able to grow back my BR and be back at PLO100 this year. Bring it on!

Time for a quick update!

Been a stressful first half of the month. I realized that my "roll" is smaller than I thought as I had to spend more of it for half ironman that I'm road tripping to tomorrow, and I also bought a laptop on which I will grind in Philippines. On top of that, I had one of those worst days of all just as I started this month grind, and just after 3 days I had dusted off 70% of the 1k roll I had deposited. At that point I realized that I must 1) Get staked or 2) Grind my ass off to make this work. So far I've opted for 2), and I've averaged 6h20m play time each day I've played so far (+ couple of study hours). I'm mixing PLO20 and PLO50, both because I'm underrolled for 50 and there is not enough action there, and so far I'm making 8 eur /h from RB (6bb/100). Assuming I do have 5bb/100 winrate on top of it, that should land me like 15 e/h, that's 1650 eur EV for 110 hours of grind, and that should easily cover my monthly expenses and leave a chunk of the profit in roll. That is the plan! Unfortunately there is no way I can make 110 hours this month, I'm aiming for 75h play and 10h study.

Anyway, here is my MTD:


Stakes:


As I mentioned, I'm doing Ironman 70.3 (1.9km swim, 90km bike, 21km run) this Saturday! Roadtrip to Hungary starts tomorrow morning already, and I'm totally not ready for this race! I've been "training" for it for last 2 months or so, but with way too low volume as I work poker full time, maybe 7-8h training hours a week. Last year I finished 19/200-ish in this very same race. Bring it on!

u played plo20 and plo50 with a 300 roll? :P

GL!!

I could reload.

I'm back from my Ironman 70.3 Euro trip! That race was tough... Swimming was w/e, but cycling was pure suffering, just uphill or downhill, almost no flat at all. I'm no cyclist, and my legs were completely ****ed when I started the run. I never got my legs back, and therefore I didn't run it really, just moved from start to finish at 5 min/km and even had to walk ~500m. That's what you get when you are not training properly Overall my time was 6h03m, 35th/180. Winner time was 4h42m, yet his personal best is 3h40m - you can imagine how tough the course was when even pro's do 1h off PB.

Back to poker now! Been playing 2 days now since back, and won some stacks. I got 7 days ( and just 3 more days to play) before I'm heading to Manila! Getting a bit nervous, but that's normal I guess.

Protip : HSBC ATMs allow you to take out up to 40,000 PHP ($800 usd) and have no fee to use. Other ATMs are capped at 10,000 PHP and have a fee per use ($5-$6). How long are you going to be in Manila for?

Cheers! Any way to avoid 3.99% fx fee that I have for my Skrill mastercard?

I'll be in Manila all October, then heading to Cebu for a few months. Gonna stay in Acqua while in Manila. Are you there?

yeah, I'm living in Makati. be careful when u get out of the airport, most cabs will try to over charge you by a significant margin. fair price is probably like 300. normally u can just get them to go by the meter, which is super cheap, or use grab which is like uber (not necessary because taxis are so cheap) but sometimes taxi drivers won't go by the meter and will try to charge you 2x or 3x as much.

I'm alive!

Been really busy with my move to Manila, but now it's time for some graphs of September!

1) Graph: (real hand count is x2)


2) Stakes:


Played 12 days, got in 71h of play and 7h of study. Not bad considering how much time I had for poker!

Got a sweet upswing at the final days, I really needed this increase to my roll.
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I'm in Manila for a couple of days now! So far I'm enjoying it.

This is my condo till November - sick setup, I know (500 eur/mo)



But the view kills it!

How would you compare Party and Microgaming for micro stakes plo player? Which one have better games? better software? How about tracking hands on Microgaming, is it possible?

Btw sick views from your flat and prize seems also resonable, atleast alot less than most cities.

Sorry for a late reply, Manila can be a bit... distracting.

The question you ask has been asked and answered in this thread couple of times already. It depends what exact stakes you play and time of the day (there's more action on Party obv). Some tracking is possible on both rooms.

Price - idk. I guess it's all right, but I had this ilusion that it would be cheaper in 3rd world country. I come from Baltics, which isn't exactly 1st world country, but still.. yet rent is somewhat similar here and there.

How is it going lately?