PLO-Challenge

Yeah in EP shoes I would just cbet super small my whole range so in real life I would likely not be in this spot ever. Unless for some exploitative reason. In BU shoes I would indeed always check back.

Also as I posted at least simulation on trainer would basically never check. If that is the case also in vision simulation it can make those very low frequency actions very inaccurate. Those might even completely disappear if simulation had more iterations per node. Just something to keep possibly in mind with weird looking spots.

That nuts+redraw seems like some sort of error obviously...

You can never be too tight! :f_love::f_love::f_love:

As I moved down in Stakes I have some results now for this year grindin the PLO25 Rush tables. The volume lowered because I decided to get back to work for a part-time position so I have a fix minimum income. Grinding PLO50 for a survival is just too stressful. Haha. But actually not funny. I am glad my efforts into improving at a Rush environment showed some results and I might have some sort of more realistic winrate expectations now (I thought beyond 50k hands luck is too big of an factor according to primedope but ChatGPT had the opinion that 20k hands in PLO is not that bad of a sample to evaluate winrate and that beating three Rush tables with a winrate of 5bb/100 is not that bad so I guess it is fine). Variance is really a tricky thing. I often hear, you do not play that many hands on a low stakes limit since you´d move up before but this is not true for me. And if it would be that easy, why all those regulars ain´t playing mid-stakes? I do not think, that the playing level at lower rush stakes is that worse if you take the necessity of beating rake into consideration (13bb/100 at my place).

Stats look decent too with one exception: My cbet% ip of 35% is way too low compared to GTO. Gotta have to take a more close look into that. I´ll continue to grind some for some time and might take shots on PLO50 rush later on if nothing changes.

Considering my studies I landed at a dual approach where I still convert tons of preflop range data and train PLO-Vision where I arrived at Turn play in 3bp already. My RFI accuracy is close to 100% and drops to 70% when moving on to making postflop plays in 3bp. Knowing GTO-lines is really crucial in a more anonymous environment, but still hard to figure out villains ranges as I have no villain player aliases from GGPoker where everything in HM3 is anonymized). ChatGPTmentioned some possible configurations at monker for adapting its solutions to exploitative ranges over pio-solver (you cannot import ptt-files into monker). That is something I have in mind for studies later on in the longterm.

Hallo Mascherano95,

da ich bzg. PLO diverse Fragen habe, bei denen Du mir aufgrund Deines eigenen Werdeganges evt. weiterhelfen könntest, habe ich Dir mal eine Freundschaftsanfrage gesendet, muss ja hier nicht alle damit nerven.

Viele Grüße
Flibby

New Update for my 2 latest logs at the Bankroll Challenge.

Week 38-53 (11.03.-22.06.)

I left out the Hands played at GG (lots of Rush tables) in the screenshot filters as I do not play there anymore and not planning to do so. I mean I always thought I could beat at least the regular tables, but in fact together with the Rush tables it was just break-even over such a big sample. The skill difference is significant so I considered it is just not worth it. If you compare it with my Bankroll-Challenge Login from 23. June 2023 I played like 30k hands for less than 100$. My winrate of 22,83 bb/100 is surely not sustainable but having that over 30k hands is not bad either. I mean on lower stakes a bigger part of winnings is made by bringing good value-bets that do not show up in the Allin-adj. bb/100.

Week 53-64 (23.06.-09.09.)

Low C-bet otf again, but I managed to correct my River frequencies. This was quite laborius since I have to import those complex situations into Monker every time, and GTO at the river is already deviating a lot from what we have and what we should be doing exploitatively once we get there. But it helps to have a rough picture of what solver does on different turn-river runouts. I am not sure how bad the low Cbet is, since often I am up against people that just call too much oop. But since they do not check-raise I guess I am still not aggressive enough ip. My RFI´s from EP and MP in both scenarios are a little high, but it is not getting exploited in any sense (3bets, coldcall+solid postflop play) so I am getting away with it decently. The rake (2.547$ over 60k hands!) is pretty high but my solid winrates (7,49 bb/100 with 14,41 Allin-Adj. this time) make up for that. I am running quite below EV but that is fine as long as I am still winning. ♠_biggrin:

I nearly finished my RFI´s at my gameplan. Ofc I also traing with PLO-Vision in postflop spots, but the range construction process is still dabbling with preflop hands. I once more adapted the GTO ranges which I´ve already written into my excel sheets and modified them in a way, the frequencies remain roughly the same but the sidecards, structures, ranks etc. become easier to memorize. For example on the Button, where range gets bigger, I need a more rough orientation. So I do not care if too much if we raise T♥:T♣:7♣:4♦: but fold T♣:T♥:7♦:4♦: cause studying those nuances in detail would take too much time. So a table for high pairs stealing from the Button would look like this:

Furthermore it looks like I am succesfully implementing my routine to follow the daily plan and I recently improved small aspects of my life using artificial intelligence (namely Google Bard) who tells me stuff like "add oatmeal to your wholegrain muesli so the complex carbonhydrate delivers an energy surplus of up to 1 hour. This way you can work on your gameplan longer after the 30 minutes cardio session." or "when you have x $ amount of cash reserve and monthly cashouts of y $ with a standard deviation of 140 and a winrate of 10bb/100 etc.. you might put x% of your bankroll into the stock portfolio and y% on the pokerroom to reduce the risk of a total loss below 5%." You have to be a little tricky with your questions though about your finances cause "Google Bard is not an financial advisor and be aware with stocks your capital is at risk". Or when I was looking for stuff that could in general help me in life beside the known to me "approximation process" and "exclusion process" which I use more often after I brought them more into awareness several years ago, he told me "further concepts for daily life including the following scientific/mathematical procedures are:

Trial and Error: This is a simple process where you try different options until you find the right one. This can be helpful, for example, when you need to try a new recipe or solve a problem.
Logical Reasoning: This is a process in which you draw conclusions from information you have. This can be helpful, for example, when you need to solve a puzzle or make a decision.
Intuition: This is a process based on your gut feeling. This can be helpful when you need to make a decision for which there is no clear information.
Inspiration: This is a process based on your creativity. This can be helpful when you need to find new ideas for a project or problem.

Then poiting out application examples. I even invented a new German word which was approved by Google Bard. The technical method of using Inspiration would be "Schöpfungskraftverfahren" which would be translated into sth. like "Creative Power Process". Crazy and funny af. Helps a lot in many aspects.

So. The rough fundamental structure of my day now recommended by Bard is basically repeating this following structure:

1. consume food to produce energy
2. convert energy into relaxation through physical activity
3. use a relaxed state of mind to do concentrated mental work

I use this sheme multiple times a day to have a optimum input-output relationship that might look like this:

1. have breakfast
2. go jogging 30 min or go for a walk 1h
3. finish 1 table of my SB RFI range

then repeat but slightly varied

1. buy groceries, roast and eat a burger, put in the dishwasher, digest on the couch watch some news on TV
2. do a 15 min workout with your fitness app, warm-down with some stretching and a cold shower
3. grind 2 poker sessions each 45 min with a 10 minute break inbetween

My whole day is structured like that, the trick is, I dont need tons of willpower and discipline, activities just flow into each other as they should.

AI improved my life!

Originally posted by pkrprty

Spoiler

Hey man, i read the forums here every 2-3months or so and normally dont comment on anything, but i think it might help you. Seems like you have been trying to become a professional (think you wanna quit your job if you reach the right stakes, right?) for quite some time now, like 2 years + you have been playing poker for10 years now, right?
I have no idea about your financial situation, but if you live in Austria you need some money to cover the essentials of living. That said, I would suggest that you safe up money from your job so that you can live comfortably for like 1 year without having to cash out from your poker winnings one single time. Safe the money on pokersites to build your bankroll. That said, I think that there are some other things you might want to consider.

- I would strongly advice you to stay away from rush and cash on gg poker, even if there is no traffic on normal tables. I saw your monthly samples and I think that it doesnt make sense for you to play that format, because a) you are not remotely close to putting in enough volume, b) the volume wont get you on the leaderboard where you would like to be to make extra cash, c) you wont produce enough rake to climb in the fish buffet fast enough to get more moeny out of that and, most imoprtantly, d) if you play higher than PLO10, the competition becomes tougher. Once you go above that, people are playing for a living and take the game very seriously. Again, stay away from that.
Also, I think that i read (not 100%) that you think that your winrate decreases by roughly 50% if you go up in stakes. So if you have a 40bb/100 on PLO5, that would mean that you can beat PLO10 for 20bb/100, PLO20/PLO25 for lets say 10 and PLO50 for 5bb/100. If you go to PLO100, that would mean that you have a 2.5bb/100 if i got what you mean correctly. Honestly, I think thats not true. If you come to a limit like PLO50, there are good regs and I am quite certain that you cant maintain a positive winrate at that limit, which does not mean that you will not be able to do that as a professional of course.

- Why play on ggpoker at all? It seems that it is going way better for you on win2day, so just stick to that and drop ggpoker 100%? Do what's best for you winrate, seek for the softest competition you can find and stick to brm. Dont take shots when there is no action, rather play lower if there is any action. There is no point facing different opponents on higher stakes if you are not rolled for that or having enough money to take a serious shot.

- I dont think there is much value in reading poker books. Idk if I am allowed to mention any products here, but i think you know what i mean if i say that a sub to a leading PLO training sight might benefit you greatly. Dont only go through a 10 week transformation and dont only watch a couple of other courses that might say how to beat this and that limit blah blah blah. Rather stick to the real deal, learn how to play 3bet pots, how cbets work, betsizing and so on as their are courses dedicted to only that. Practice quizzes and see + understand why a hand is played like its played. Do all that and revise it over and over again until you have it down cold.
First, focus on situations that happen most frequently, in your case startin with pre flop game makes sense i think. I saw that you posted some hands and 4 of them should have played differently pre flop. Dont deviate from these ranges and do not make up your own ones, bc they are made of certain rake environments.
I also saw that you came up with some ranges in other threads, Idk where you got them from, but I would also strongly adcive you to stick to GTO solutions in certain rake environments (included in training sites) and stick to that. Pre flop cant be exploited if you nail it close to 100% (not taking into consideration to get 3bet more often bc villain or player xyz folds to cbet to a certain % blah blah blah)

- If you wanna take it really seriously, try to get a coach. Best would be someone who plays plo200+. Idk their h/rates, but i can imagine that it is not that cheap. Maybe you can, if you focus on poker 100% for a year, make a deal with them and get coaching for profits or something. In case you manage to find someone, stick to what they tell you 100%.

- Does it have to be PLO? Or would you also be willing to try out other formats? Maybe there is more value in another gametype, maybe tournaments, idk. At this point i think its fair to say that you can still experiment with a lot of stuff, put some volume in and then decide on what you wanna be doing all day long for 1 year.

- If you should choose to go for it and try to become a professional for 1 year (implying that you have enough money for yourself + resources that you might need to up your game), forget about going out on the weekends. Take one day off a week at max. Work out, eat healthy, start meditationg. Do everything in your power to feel great and maybe start journaling, maybe even here in some blogs.

These are not meant to be any points of critique, I just want to help you to succeed in poker. Wish you good luck at the tables

edit: I forgot to meantion 1 thing. I do not know if you already do this, but have you ever considered playing PLO MTTs? They are incredibly soft and some good money can be made there.

...

I should have listened to some of this points more seriously. Not the "switch the game from PLO" but the "leave out playing at GG" part. That would have saved me lots of time and money indeed.

Originally posted by SvenBe

Spoiler

Originally posted by Mascherano95
iPoker - €0.50 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 5 players
Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3

UTG: €87.51 (175 bb)
CO: €62.32 (124.6 bb)
Hero (BTN): €57.45 (114.9 bb)
SB: €88.52 (177 bb)
BB: €56.97 (113.9 bb)

SB posts €0.25, BB posts €0.50

Pre Flop: (pot: €0.75) Hero has 7♣: J♦: 8♦: 8♣:
fold, CO calls €0.50, Hero raises to €2.25, SB calls €2.00, fold, CO calls €1.75

Generally I rarely have been raising medium semi-connected pocket pairs very aggressively. Something I changed after my training with PLO-Vision. GTO has some preflop raises with hands like J♠:9♦:8♠:8♦:, T♠:8♣:7♠:7♣: or J♥:8♣:7♥:7♣: from spots I did not expect it. I do want to play here with position against bad players, SB is a very loose passive player (75/15 AF 1).

Flop: (€7.25, 3 players) A♦: J♥: 8♠:
SB checks, CO checks, Hero bets €3.62, fold, CO calls €3.62

Pretty standard cbet here without draw-blockers or backup by myself. Despite the board being not very dry I opted for 1/2-pot only since the A♦: locks it down somewhat and I have decent FE with my perceived range here. The limper, a loose player (40/13/2 AF 5) comes along. He will have a decent portion of hands beside to obvious made hands and draws, weak-pair+gs too.

Turn: (€14.49, 2 players) 3♦:
CO checks, Hero bets €10.86, CO raises to €21.72, Hero calls €10.86

Following up a second barrel with my standard sizing when the texture goes towards enabling more draws. I prefer not betting pot here exploiting low-stakes tendencies of check-calling too much. The minraise is not very meaningful cutting down his range a little towards non-total crap. I had to think a moment between calling and raising since he won´t be folding much here but I did the call to let him hang himself.

River: (€57.93, 2 players) 4♣:
CO bets €34.73, Hero calls €29.86

River card is a perfect blank and I made the call as planned.

Results: €117.65 pot (€1.50 rake)
Final Board: A♦: J♥: 8♠: 3♦: 4♣:

Spoiler

CO shows A♥: T♦: 3♠: Q♥:: (Two Pair, Aces and Threes)
(Pre 47%, Flop 33%, Turn 20%)

Hero shows 7♣: J♦: 8♦: 8♣:: (Three of a Kind, Eights)
(Pre 53%, Flop 67%, Turn 80%)

Hero wins €116.15

Very nice analysis. If everyone could so eloquently describe their reasoning, we'd have a lot of coaches coaching each other around here in the forum. (and with ghaleon, kyyberi we do have some!)...

Also thanks for this! Sry for the late response, I think I kinda overlooked this.

Some more hand- and thought reviews in near future are coming!

Hi Mascherano95,

very good update. I am quite astonished about the high rake. Not sure, if that was payed all on GG Poker or another side.
Do you get any kind of rake back or is this amount just out of the chimney?
Read about a "Fish Buffet" promo, but as I am not playing on GG Poker atm, I haven't looked into it any further.

Your daily routine looks very structured and organized, very impressive!
Do you have - from time to time - any discipline matters, such as "oh now, not again, at least today I quit for one day", and if so, how do you deal with it?

Good luck for the future endeavour, go get them!

Also worth mentioning (Hero probably already knows this but for others) is that at GG they have PVI (player value index) that is a multiplier to collected fish buffet points. And it's below 1, meaning you get less points than the fish buffet says you should get. For high volume players (doesn't need to be winning one) it's roughly 0.33. That means that you get 1/3 of the points, which means that 15% rakeback turns to 5%, 30% rakeback to 10% and so on.

Rush&Cash is pretty much breakeven grinding (slight losses, slight profits) at PLO25 and above, and most profits come from leaderboard and flip tournaments. For those flip tournaments I think the value is best for PLO10/PLO25 as the minimum payout is significant for those stakes.

The hands from GG I filtered out, so without rakeback deal this is all blown out the chimney. But high rake scares away tight regulars so more fish for you! An old poker pal recommended to me, weaker players are always a better deal than a better rakeback system. With the fish promo, you have some inconsistency in your rakeback as the wheel of fortune pays you randomly but once you get enough points for the platinum octopus, this is the best option for PLO50 and PLO100. You get 35% rakeback fixed. At GG Poker this really pays off, if you play a lot of hands furthermore you´ll benefit from additional rakeback deals like the daily leaderboard.

The bad thing is that I found the competition unpleasantly dry at rush tables and regular tables aswell. I always feel like, I am the best player on the table but still hardly manage to extract sufficient money out of those hours. Many Asian rakeback-grinders especially on Rush tables are incredibly tight. Whereas they do not play fundamentally sound poker they are not dumb either and sit very tight on their stack and also have some tricky plays in petto. In general making profits by stealing those blinds and little SRP-pots is way harder than the bringing efficient value-bets. Also my GTO-knowledge aka postflop skills ain´t good enough to fully exploit those leaks in a more aggressive way. I´d say the main source of my current profits is due to superiour handstrength evaluation and better adaption in differing spots (SPR´s, Position, Tendencies). Those edges diminish in a more nutpeddling or handstrength-driven environment. Also the actual high VPIP fish often ain´t that bad, their passive tendencies are a weakness obviously but in terms of valuing handstrengths, they´ll often have something decent too if they pay out 2-3 bigger bets and finally you´ll have less of those crazy guys splashing around their chips. Like Kyyberi said, especially those Rush tables are Low-stakes Raketrap.

Well, I forced myself several times in the past to not do certain activities or not do anything at all for a day since many experts say taking a day off can help you to recover more quickly. But for me I did not find this helpful. Those days were boring and empty since I could not enjoy them very much and it also did not feel right to make no progress. Yes, I have a routined structure in my day but that does not mean 99% of the time is strictly pinned to activities nor that those activities are planned very specifically. My plans are simple and the have short-term goals.

I just recover over the span of the day I have a lots of breaks where I just relax. When all tasks are finished I also reward myself by playing some videogames or watching TV. But I have been able to restrict the time spent for those activities to 1-2 hours max so I do not waste too much time in the night time like I have done during school time. I also managed to replace more time of "non-productive" activities with activities that are still less mental demanding than the core stuff (workouts, studies, grind), like videogames that use up your capacities for concentration and mental focus aswell and do stuff like housework like washing my clothes or cleaning the floor instead. Doing that housework is actually pretty fun! Crazy^^ First, I feel like I get immediate reward in terms of that satisfactory feeling of having done something productive second the fact that I have more clean clothes now ie. (or living in a more clean environment) is useful too in an overall psychohygienic term of sense. Or cooking instead of eating out or ordering menus which also saves money. You cannot eat a whole chicken, lift weights for an hour a day, study 2 hours and then grind 2 hours repeating that from morning to night. Avoid becoming mentally exhausted is critical too. That usually always came from having barely any physical activities or playing videogames before the poker sessions, I needed some time to even recognize that. So those household activities actually fit the gap perfectly for the purpose of step "2. convert energy into relaxation through physical activity" and in the end even help to play higher quality sessions.

Hi Mascherano95,

a quick question regarding the use of your above mentioned excel sheets for RFI:

do you memorize them and apply them just out of your mind or do you use let's say printed charts of them, which you might have handy beside the computer during play?

35% fixed fish buffet is just 10% fixed with PVI.

If you haven't done it yet, I suggest you calculate your PVI asap.

Write down your balance and fish buffet points and play a session. If you get a session without any cash drops, check out your profits on Pokercraft. As that is without rake, the difference to your balance is the rake you paid. Check how many points you got.

1$ rake is 100 points, multiplied with PVI. So if you got 50 points per dollar, your PVI is 0.5.

Anyone who plays at GG should do this.

Originally posted by Flibby
Hi Mascherano95,

a quick question regarding the use of your above mentioned excel sheets for RFI:

do you memorize them and apply them just out of your mind or do you use let's say printed charts of them, which you might have handy beside the computer during play?

Yes I print thhem out and memorize them then rely on my mind.

Since that mental work is dry as f* I vary different methods in memorizing those ranges:

1. I either memorize the hand structure going top-down like BU RFI QQTx includes all versions whereas QQ9x all single-suited are RFI´s and QQ9 8-7 only the rainbows.

2. Then going through positions like repeating all QQ´s from EP to SB RFI´s.

3. Then I have an electric card mixer where I put in my deck of plastic cards and filter manually.

4. Finally I train with the GTO-Trainer from PLO Vision where I try to guess the GTO-line and compare the results how it would look like in my gameplan if there is a intentional deviation or not. Helpful in a way that swing hands often mark the boarders of marginal hands.

The last approach without comparation is the method I used the most so far, it is the most passive but with a high volume it also soaks in pretty well into your subconscious. Never undererstimate the human brain! ♦

I do not grind and study at the same time. This is too laboroius and distracting. I also do not play focus-sessions. I try to remember single hand(-categories) and how strong to deviate and the effects of different ranks, connectivity, danglers, triple-suitedness etc. A confirmation of my methods working is, that I have those "aha"-moments where I suddenly know how to play a hand which I can remember from studies which I get dealt ingame. Otherwise I approximate ranges and hands according to their structure, nuttiness, playability and the opponent-specific situation.

Since I got confused sometimes with all those different default bet-sizings in various situations I took time today to make a table illustrating my bet-sizing strategies:

My Turn strategies is betting 3/4pot in and out of position when being in a SRP and both 1/2pot and pot ip and oop when in a 3bp. On the river for triplebarrels and bet-check-bet lines I bet 1/3pot or pot when oop and 1/2pot and pot when ip both in SRP and 3BP (in 3bpots it´s usually just a shove left otr when 3 bets go in).

iPoker - €0.50 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 6 players
Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3

BB: €50.00 (100 bb)
UTG: €361.44 (722.9 bb)
MP: €97.77 (195.5 bb)
CO: €56.73 (113.5 bb)
BTN: €50.00 (100 bb)
Hero (SB): €128.44 (256.9 bb)

Hero posts SB €0.25, BB posts €0.50

Pre Flop: (pot: €0.75) Hero has K♠: 7♣: K♣: A♥:
UTG raises to €1.75, fold, CO calls €1.75, fold, Hero raises to €7.50, fold, UTG calls €5.75, CO calls €5.75

Flop: (€23.00, 3 players) A♠: 2♥: 8♣:
Hero bets €11.50, fold, CO calls €11.50

Turn: (€46.00, 2 players) 3♦:
Hero?

CO is a 40/5/5 opponent over 100 hands but still with unclear aggression tendencies yet.
EP inbtw is a crazy Maniac 70/30/11 on tilt.

The flop favours our 3-bet range so I ended up bringing a modified 50% cbet. EP´s deep stack together with a his loose aggression makes it very tricky. If he shoves I make my call dependant on CO´s action. I think I can´t bet-fold with the top-kicker but the pocket pair hurts a lot and going allin with 250bb having top-pair no outs seems to be pretty crazy.

Fortunately he folds and we are down to 100bb effective stack. As the dynamic was wild I correctly assumed CO´s VPIP to be even higher. It played out as follows:

Reviewing thoughts:

According to GTO (at a little higher SPR, the SPR´s are not accurate here) being heads-up we should check and villain should bet here half pot only leaving another street to play for rivers. Usually any player would just shove or check though at SPR1. Solver conitnues to check-call with :Ax::Kx::Kx: and plays a check-call 60% and check-fold 40% strategy:

The first 5 rows make obviouis sense as we prefer to check-call the stronger SDV 2pairs. The rest is more interesting, Monker prefers to check-call the :Ax::Kx::Kx: (:Kx: - ) over the and (:9x: ). Villain is more likely to have a missed straightdraw when we unblock a or than a hit to the actual :6x::4x: straight so we´d rather fold having those ourself. Blockers always make a difference even to the last decision. ♠_thumbsup:

I would only call preflop with deep stacks and cbet flop smaller on such extremely dry flop.

Originally posted by ghaleon
I would only call preflop with deep stacks and cbet flop smaller on such extremely dry flop.

Agreed. Solver as a default cbet(-folds) 1/3pot 70%+ 3way on this flop. Cbetting the standard sizing would have been better (decent FE due to the texture while better odds to fold against aggression).

New Update:

I am really getting into solver studies now. Daily studies of all sort of spots and memorizing my gameplan. I also added some 5-card PLO tables some time ago. I actually want to do some studies there aswell, but the complexity of normal PLO is already quite occupying. I feel like I do okay though, probably because the competition on 5-card PLO seems to be just one more level worse and most people just did not do any 5-card studies so far either. I almost play it like 4-card PLO which basically can´t be very solid.. Still made nice profits yet^^. There are some interesting differences: Less value for lower ranked cards, nuances in the additional suit possibilities (you can be favourit with KK vs AA which is not possible in 4-card) and other logical consequences you´d derive from the transition of NLHE to PLO (even more importance of nuttiness, texture balancing, side-card components interaction, blocker effects)... It´s like "More PLO than PLO".

Since the beginning of this year I also do shots on PLO100 which were more successful than in the previous years but I don´t feel very comfortable in playing PLO100 only (also due to lack of traffic) so I basically mix everyhing now from PLO20, PLO50 and PLO100 both 4-card and 5-card PLO. I am skipping PLO100 5-card since you need a bigger bankroll for 5-card as variance goes up (200 buyin instead of 150 buyin I would recommend - or 150 instead of 100).

I might also add some poker content in the coming days, it´s very much the same style I apply that seems to be working and it´s not like I play completely different from a year ago but surely I improved. More aggressive in spots I know better now from GTO, more nuanced plays in 3bp´s. All in all it´s still a lot of Posion, handstrength awareness, estimating equities and picking up on easy identifiable and distinct tendencies. I opened a discord server where I exchange with other (mostly beginning) players, feel free to join or mail me if the link is expired:

https://discord.gg/9UbYHDeT

Private thoughts and life experience:

January and March, so some months ago I felt a little burn out because of all that everyday grind, so I tried to get a job and also got a commencement last month at a big pharmacy company but the first work day and my boss were so terrible that I just gave up the next day. It´s kinda sad, cause I do actually like to work and contribute efforts to society in general (very fulfilling if you beside just take it from all the fish on the tables and do not contribute to anything) but the conditions were just so bad. Also pay is not like I´d earn much more than just playing poker. But if you are new without super-specific expertise you are pretty much just a wage cuck lol. In the media they always talk about all opportunities and free market but I guess that´s not really true for the job market. It´s the only market where the seller does not get the benefits of trade. There is also a bunch of other social and psychological garbage going on when you just try to "trade" work(-time)-against-money. This would be different imo if there is less fixation on job security. It improves the value you are actually contributing to a company and lowers the cost the company has for employing someone. It´s not like it is super easy to have a start-up for example in Europe, not even start with financing it etc.. I am against minimum wage and current super-high taxes and all that federal interference within, it would open up real opportunities and stop the strangle on small and medium-sized businesses.

The health securance system in my country (and it is similar in many countries I assume), the compulsory insurance starts at ~380€ per month, totally not worth it for me so far. I had an accident summer last year where a piece of wood got stuck into my eyes. The ambulance lift and getting it out by a medical specialist with a small operation together with the eye unguent without being insured cost me less than 200 bucks. And it´s not like I run into a car once a month. I´d bet it´s not even worth it if you get cancer or even the plague because every rational human being probably is willing to trade its earnings for its life. Health insurance is basically not affordable when you need it and you don´t need it when it is affordable. You´d need to have some really strange and super rare disease where medication costs goes up 6-digits to actually benefit in terms of risk coverage. So this is all a governmental huge rip-off just like pensions and we have a 2-class health system already anyways cause nobody earning 6-digit a year would have no private supplementary insurance. What politician are talking makes no sense to me at all. As a self-employed you cannot really afford the basic insurance and you gotta pay more if you earn more before taxes, that is a significant monthly financial burden if you try to achieve more than the average 0815-job but you are not rich yet either. My 2 cents on it.

Another thing is, in hindsight I feel like, the longer you are in school, the more you basically waste your time and degenerate to a cocky but real-life distute NPC cause you are not gathering knowledge and practice that actualy fits your individual skill- or workplace requirements. Memorizing shortterm memory stuff has nothing to do with learning something useful. And it´s not like in every company that´s the case and not everybody can be a Elon Musk or Jeff Besos but you do need specific skills and personal qualities to contribute to the well-being and expansion of a business. I went to a business school for example and we had 5 years of accounting. So you do tons of detailed stuff you´ll never need, you can´t even build on it if you actually start working in accountacy lol cause you gotta relearn most of the stuff you actually do anyways and every company handles much stuff different, you´d learn it faster by just having a 3-year tenet or sth., this strikes me just as madness. On top of it I had stuff like biology, chemics and geography. Like Mendels´ law where you gotta know how beans can be cultured with each other.. I mean wtf. On the other hand you don´t learn at all how to manage your own finance or how to keep your self in physical good shape which is surely among the most important things for life. Financial management beyond simple BRM was really crucial last year to make a living out of poker. I have a simple but strict money management system going on that ensure there is always enough cash around, always an appropriate bankroll available and also that surplus money gets invested well. The way you handle your private money gives you a big mental and psychological advantage on the tables, I cannot emphasize this enough.

Considering my gameplan, I have finished all those RFI spots more or less. In the vision trainer I usually get around 95% accuracy, that should be sufficient to continue. I did not completely memorized every hand so I have to fall back a lot, RFI is where everything begins. The ranges I am now working on are "advanced" preflop setups. I will not do a comeplete gameplan on every spot but restrict to the most important ones:

- BB coldcall vs EP & BU (~15% & ~25%) and compare them
- SB & BB 3bet vs EP (both ~5%) and 3bet vs BU (both ~10%) and compare them

- BU 3bet vs EP (~5%)
- BU 3bet vs CO (~8%)
- BU coldcall vs EP & CO (both ~10%) and compare them

- CO 4bet vs BU (~3%)

- BU vs MP & CO and SB vs Co & BU sqz. opport. (both call ~3% & 3bet ~6%) and compare them

I am also occasionally watching the video series "this is PLO" by Phil Galphond. It´s to sprinkle in some high level thoughts, the main achievement unlocked from those was the hand reading method of "counting combos" by assessing frequencies (how likely someone will roughly have broad hand categories) and deduct the portion of those after each street. I may do this aside the tables in my session reviews but I am not sure yet how to implement this thought process in my game since I am not any doing focus sessions atm. Maybe I can even set up some (post)flop studies aswell if there is time. (Checking out swing hands on different textures/spots, figuring out raising candidates/bluffs, etc...).

Hello from UpperAustria,

very interesting PLO-Blog.
I am a little sobered about my one PLO-expectation, - that you get not more profit-rewards for your hard work.
I am sure that you can win mutch money at SpinGo's with your disposition to hard work on your game.

Originally posted by PokerSpass
Hello from UpperAustria,

very interesting PLO-Blog.
I am a little sobered about my one PLO-expectation, - that you get not more profit-rewards for your hard work.
I am sure that you can win mutch money at SpinGo's with your disposition to hard work on your game.

Hi!

Yeah, sobering down is a big feeling I have too when comparing to my expectations at my beginning of the poker journey more than 10 years ago where I thought I´d be a millionaire pretty soon for sure.

I still believe, hard work always pays off and that nothing will be in vain. I mean it already kinda paid off. In Poker I would say, you are not benefiting form your input immediately or 1:1. It´s like an exponential curve where gains will sum up in larger sums later on. Same is true for business they say. But doing something that is scalable in general is key. Other than this I'd agree with your quote:

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm

.^^

Not transitioning to SpinGo's though, different game and more variance. You gotta specialize on 1 game ideally, not spreading your focus.