PLO Game Development & Bankroll Challenge - $200 to $5,000 medium-term goal

I made it to the monthly rakeback points target without too much further damage, which creates a limited amount of breathing space to work with.

At current limits there's zero chance of me completing the 2nd available cycle of this bonus, so my rakeback rate is effectively reduced from now until the end of the month, as I'm only meaningfully contributing to the regular chest totals for now. Additionally, achieving a break-even play result for the month is also not feasible, barring the unlikeliest of heaters over the next few days, so it's no longer a particularly relevant short-term target. Consequently, it's a good point to reduce bankroll risk while continuing to work on my game until we're back on a full rakeback schedule from 1st March.

The general plan for now until the end of the month is therefore to drop out the PLO25 limit and focus on PLO10, most likely using a full 100BB starting stack. From a leaderboard challenge perspective I may also add in PLO5 so that we're attempting scoring on 2 leaderboards, but I'll consider that further. I'm already playing in a high rake environment, so adding in a limit which has a higher effective rake, just for the sake of leaderboard prizes, might be sub-optimal compared to playing only PLO10.

This change is primarily focused towards bankroll protection, and is essentially a recognition that the next big cash rakeback award is probably now a month away. The regular chest clearances will be worth $50 in cash, but with no guarantee of how the remaining $25 is made up. Consequently, it's a sensible move to reduce the risk of significant downswings relative to the size of the current bankroll.

Since the previous update on 22nd Feb I've played exclusively PLO10, as outlined in that post. During that time I've managed to grind down the bankroll to a grand total of $204.39, putting me pretty much back at the start point of the original challenge.

About $100 was a further shortfall vs EV, and it feels like a greater than usual proportion of setups/coolers occurred in that period, but the result is the result and I'm not looking to make excuses for it.

As a result I've taken today off from playing while I decided what to do with the challenge, as it's effectively now at a reset point. Initially I was going to siphon off the whopping $4.39 profit from this one and start a new one from $200 exactly. However, that's too much messing around, so the plan is to effectively reset the challenge with new goals from this balance and treat it as a new one from 1st March.

Whilst this might sound like a bit of a cop out, there are several reasons why I'm adopting this approach. The first is that, compared to when I started the original challenge, the parameters at this point now look a little different and I'll now be adopting a slightly different approach, based on the learnings taken from the original one. Below is a brief summary of the key learnings gained over that time:

- The challenge has 100% confirmed that the rakeback/bonus opportunities are sufficient to grow a bankroll playing breakeven poker.
- I started as a returning player hoping that he'd be somewhere close to break-even. 130k hands of evidence tells me I'm currently a losing PLO cash-game player, although (hopefully) not at the rates experienced over the last 6 weeks which have been a pretty much constant downswing.
- The original challenge was based on a 50BB buy-in strategy which I no longer think is the optimal approach. Despite the short-term results of the last week, I've concluded that 100BB is a better strategy for game development. Therefore 50BB at PLO10/PLO25 will now be replaced by 100BB at PLO5/PLO10 as the start point.
- There's a huge risk of ruin at the start point of this challenge, but getting to $1000+ is still not safe from the PLO swings.
- The reliance on bonuses will be more difficult at this point as, having moved up the rakeback levels from the volume played previously, the rakeback bonuses will be bigger, but less frequent, than when the original challenge commence. Consequently, there is less room for manoeuvre in the early stages of the challenge.
- The new daily leaderboard challenge, which gives everyone 3 chances per day to achieve a score on lower volume attempts, feels much more difficult to get prizes on as the scores are much more closely distributed. Consequently, the chances of bonus hits from this promo are likely to be lower than experienced on the previous version.
- From a mental game perspective, the prospect of starting a fresh challenge is better than feeling like I'm in a state of 'catch up' on the original one.
- My overall game stats are now sufficiently different from the early months of the challenge for me to want to re-assess my stats from a new start point. My pre-flop stats now are much closer to GTO stats than they were in September last year, so my game is sufficiently 'different' to treat this as a new start point. Currently the irony is that my actual results have got worse as the pre-flop stats have supposedly improved, but that points more towards fixing issues with my post-flop game.

In terms of the new challenge, I also want to make it more reliant on actually becoming a better player than simply relying on bonuses and rakeback. Consequently, there are going to be two measurables which will determine when the challenge ends, rather than a simple cash target.
The outline rules are:
Starting bankroll deemed to be $200 (actually will be $204.39)
Buyins will commence at 100BB at PLO5 and PLO10. I might experiment with this a little through the challenge, but they will be no lower than 75BB at the 'regular' limit being played. Whilst the Daily Leaderboard is running, it's beneficial to play 2 limits on a daily basis, but one will always be deemed the 'regular' limit for play where the leaderboard attempts have been completed.
There are two goals for the challenge as follows:
1) A total bankroll of $2,500, including any bonuses/rakeback.
2) Within the above, a play only profit of $500, so hitting the target total alone without achieving this mean that I've not deemed it to be complete. Based on current evidence, this modest target may prove to be the harder to achieve of the two goals.

I'm not sure how all this will work in terms of the official bankroll challenge monitoring, but the intention is to continue to update in this blog, rather than start a new one. In terms of the reporting thread, I will add a final update on the first challenge before declaring it closed and then start afresh with new stats in the ongoing updates.

Wish me luck as I dive back in for further punishment. On current form it might end very quickly, but I'm determined to start with a fresh mindset and a determination to put in the off-table study to fix the elements of the challenge that I can control. Variance will even itself out in the long-run, but no bankroll challenge will end well if I continue to be a losing player, and that's undoubtedly where I have to assess myself as this new challenge begins.

A day off now and again really helps — I'm taking one today myself.

Best of luck from here on — whichever way you decide to go

I would recommend to focus on learning more than grinding. I have not seen you posting much hands to get feedback on your game.

Given the almost permanent downswing experienced over the previous 6 weeks to the end of February, the 1st week of the reset challenge has to be viewed as reassuring progress, as it has been a week of playing breakeven poker, which was the baseline target for the original challenge.

I've played 6,885 hands in the first 6 days of March, with a cash loss of $25.29, but with an EV loss of only $0.59, so the $25 is adverse variance (and a relatively small number compared to the February experience).

The first few days were PLO5 and PLO10 only, which confirmed that on 1,000 hands per day of volume, I would fail to hit the points target for the $200 monthly rakeback challenge, so I've realised that I need to add in PLO25 play to address this. I've done this on a limited basis so far, and it's been successful, but any kind of downswing would put huge stresses on the starting bankroll, so I'm proceeding with caution in this regard. To date, the volume split has been 3k hands at each of PLO5 and PLO10, and 800 hand of PLO25.

The bankroll pressure will ease if I can hover around the starting bankroll level for enough time in March to hit the bonus chest targets. If so, then we should be starting April with something like a $500 balance, which is much more comfortable (albeit still not immune from a repeat of February's experience). However, in recognition of the risks, I'm treating the starting balance of the new challenge as being $500, of which the residual $300 won't be deposited until or unless required. If I can avoid making the top up then I'll treat it as a small mental victory, but this change is essentially a recognition that the current rakeback targets for March can't be achieved without PLO25 being included in the mix and, with the change from 50BB buy-ins to 100BB, $200 would be an extremely short bankroll to attempt this.

From a general play perspective this week, I've been happy with the minor changes that I've adopted as part of the 'reset'. The most significant of these has been to focus in-play on the All-In EV result for the session, rather than the actual result. Mentally, I'm trying to keep this figure at or above break-even in each session, rather than focusing on the actual result. Although there are glitches in the way that HM3 calculates this I can also monitor these more closely by following this in-session.

I spotted one such issue in the first session played during the month where there was a multi-way all-in hand that didn't register a percentage in the result, so wasn't factored into the stats. However, it was one of only two all-in hands played during that session and I realised afterwards that HM£ still takes this into account in the average EV for the session reported in the stats, where it is counted as 0%. Consequently, I was more relaxed about my average all-in equity for the session showing as something in the mid 30%'s when I'd realised how this had been calculated. The hand in question was one where I had 60% equity on the flop when the first player goes all-in, and then 19% equity when the remaining money goes in on the side-pot to leave me all-in, so I appreciate why this is not a straightforward calculation for HM3 to include in the adjusted EV stats. However, to have it count as 0% within the session averages calculation is something of a glitch which I'm now keeping an eye out for.

Whilst being a very small sample of sessions so far, the new approach seems to be better in terms of tilt control. I've had one session to date which was circa $50 below EV (not great on a $200 bankroll) and focusing on the All-In EV result allowed me to continue playing without a noticeable tilt mid-session as this accumulated. Additionally, trying keeping the All-In EV number above zero as a focus for each session is also making me consider post-flop decisions with a greater focus towards it, and I think this is eliminating some of my earlier leaks in this regard. I certainly feel like I've played far more consistently over the entire week than I have done for a while, regardless of whether the session has been a winner or a loser.

I've also managed 3 cashes on the leaderboards this week, with a very near miss on a 4th one (I went to bed showing as being in 20th place, which didn't survive). However, as these were all minor placings on PLO5 and PLO10 leaderboards, the sum total of all these cashes has been a whopping $9. Better than nothing though.

So a good week overall from a mental game perspective. The results may not look spectacular from the graph, but there are a significant number of positives to be taken from relatively minor tweaks having been made to my approach and my play. Hopefully, I can continue this progress throughout March. If so, this should be sufficient to get me to a point where the bankroll is in a much more secure position for the scale of the overall challenge.