Hey Forum,

Do you know the ongoing offer from pokerstars to receive 80$ bonus if you manage to earn 1000 player points in about 4 weeks? Usually I only play a couple tournaments on stars because of the great price pools and I stay away of the cashgames. But this challenge keeps me there for the zoom games.

I like playing PLO20 on RIO poker, but often the play pools are too small there. If this is the case I keep 4tabling (more tables aren't allowed in germany) PLO10 zoom or often enough now even PLO5 thinking "that 80S challenge should be easy money, even while being broke the winnings are big for these short stacks." But after 6 or 7 challenges I have the experience of losing ridic amounts playing these easy games. At RIO poker I'm constantly winning so I'm slowly desperate because of this losing streak playing these challenges.

I played 130.000 hands of PLO10 and PLO5 zoom 6 max on stars the last half year and running 20 buy ins below EV losing at 3 to 4 bbs/100. It seems like Im just terrible in poker but since I started taking it a bit more seriously in september 20 I still won 2.000€ (3/4 of it were PLO winnings or rakeback / bonus). Probably I will try the PLO beginner courses on RIO or upswing to improve my game i the next weeks, would love to hear your advice which one you can recommend.

This thread was mainly started to hear some opinions or experiences to this pokerstars challenge. I don't want it to be a discussion if online poker might be rigged, this forum knows way better than this. I just struggle experiencing these losses over and over again when this pokerstars challenge is running and don't know how this is even possible. The last 2 weeks I lost like 300$ playing these stakes, this shouldnt even be a thing even with the wellknown PLO swings or am I wrong? Thank you in advance for your opionions and advices!

PLO swings are huge. Losing 20 buy-ins isn't that uncommon.

Yo dude, $80 bonus for 1000 points is your specific challenge. The challenge bonus and points to earn are different for everyone it seems. I believe you unlock 5 points per $1 paid in rake. Like WannaBeLag said, the swings are huge in PLO. I specifically play 6 Max Cap (Kinda like shortstack) to unlock the bonus. As an example: $10 CAP ($0.25/$0.50), It's more like NL rather than Pot Limit, the Max you can go All In for is $10 at those stakes. The reason I say more like NL is that you don't have to wait for the raise/re-raise like you would with Pot Limit, but the most you can lose at one time is $10. Hypothetically, if all 6 players (including you) went All In, you risk your $10 for a chance at winning $60 (including your $10 back). It's interesting to say the least.

If PLO is your game, then stick to what you're comfortable with. I wish you the best of luck with the challenge bro!

My challenge is $200 for 2,500 points

Thank you for your answers. I know PLO is an extremely swingy game, we love it and hate it. My personal real poker challenge has been from january to april trying to win 800€. Happily I succeeded and want to reduce my hours in work to focus on poker a bit more - it would be worth with my winrate. Just these pokerstars 80 bucks challenges get me and constantly saw me losing stacks over stacks which frustrated me to start this thread.

Very interesting what you tell me Jonny. Then you play for bigger stacks probably and I want to wish you more luck at these challenges. It's a very attractive offer from stars!

Thanks man! It keeps things interesting, that's for sure. Good Luck

Lol 4 days and 2000 hands after writing the first message here I lost another 4 buy ins minus EV and am now at 25 BI under EV at stars - not that easy in that short period... On the other side I won another couple of stacks playing RIO... PLO is a sick game.