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

So yesterday continued with my plan of playing 300 hands at 3 limits, to maximise the Daily Leaderboard attempts. The PLO50 attempt is optional, based on whether I feel my mental game is in the right place, and also with the option of being abandoned if I think that my play is deteriorating, most likely as I start to tilt. For me, this is an important discipline that I want to develop properly, in constantly trying to assess my play mid-session and being prepared to cut my session short if I'm moving too far away from my so-called 'A-game', assuming I was hitting that level in the first place.

Sesson 1 - PLO10 & PLO25

This session got off to a flying start, with a couple of early hands won and by the time I'd played about 1/3 of the requirement on each table I was feeling very comfortable. Then, in a short space of time I came out on the wrong side of 2 hands while sitting with 170BB+ stacks and we're suddenly back to the start point again. After that, the remainder of the session just felt like one where nothing was ever going to work out, and it became a case of trying to make good decisions in a losing environment. I can definitely recall at least one occasion where I continued in a hand which would have been a routine post-flop fold and I had a "let's gamble" mindset towards the end of the session, so there's little doubt that the swing in fortunes had impacted me part-way through. It was by no means a major tilt, but a much more subtle shift away from optimal play that is much more difficult to identify and address, as the adjustments are more minor than simply shutting down the software if you're having a major meltdown.

Session 2 - PLO25 & PLO50

After a few hours break I thought hard about whether or not the PLO50 board would be a good idea. I decided to give it a go, but with some changes from the previous day, when I'd played it as a single table session which, if anything, re-inforced in my mind that I was playing a higher stake and tightened up my game to a 'scared poker' level.

This time I replicated my normal setup of two limits side by side, with a PLO25 table as the 2nd one. This made a huge difference in making the session feel more familiar and, with everything being displayed as BB rather than $, just focused me on bringing the same, consistent decision making to both tables.

It turned out to be a bizarre session, results wise, as I consistently found myself in bad spots on the right hand table, while the left hand one was one where nothing could apparently go wrong. Thankfully, this was the right way around in terms of the limits being played so I ended the session booking my second sizeable session loss at PLO25 that day, which was more than offset by a win of almost $150 at PLO50 (which has restored my cumulative PLO50 result in this challenge to date to almost break-even once again).

Taking the day as a whole, it was a net win of just under $40, but achieved in a rather unorthodox way.

The other notable thing in the later session is how much more passive the stats appear, both compared to the earlier session and also where I'm generally trying to get my game in general. On this occasion, this wasn't an obvious result of the old habit of playing passively trying to minimise variance, but just a case of how the hands within the session fell. On the PLO50 table, the fact that I had a sizeable stack early increased the frequency of high SPR hands being played. On the PLO25 table, the 3Bet spots just weren't there, as I was either open-raising in late position myself or looking at marginal hands in raised pots which were easy folds.

None of the leaderboard scores were anything close to being competitive (best score was 9,605 with 9,800+ being the target for a top 20 place) so no overnight sweats as to whether I was going to wake up to another cash credit.

Alas, as the website predicted, the Daily Leaderboards have now disappeared.

This isn't the first time it has happened since I commenced this challenge, so I'm hopeful that they will soon return. For recreational players, they are a great promotion, given that the requirements is to play 300 hands per day at a given limit, rather than it being a rake race inhabited by high-volume regs.

The first tell-tale sign will be if the Leaderboard icon on the lobby remains in place. It's still there at the moment, and I doubt it's going anywhere in the short-term, albeit any new promo might still exclude cash games.

In the meantime, I may use the change to drop PLO10 for now and focus on PLO25 as the main game, with more volume at PLO50 added in. It will make the rakeback targets easier to hit, whilst testing out my game and mentality in the face of increased variance, albeit the bankroll has hit a point where the overall plan had intended for this to occur.

Originally posted by Riffman117
Alas, as the website predicted, the Daily Leaderboards have now disappeared.

This isn't the first time it has happened since I commenced this challenge, so I'm hopeful that they will soon return. For recreational players, they are a great promotion, given that the requirements is to play 300 hands per day at a given limit, rather than it being a rake race inhabited by high-volume regs.

The first tell-tale sign will be if the Leaderboard icon on the lobby remains in place. It's still there at the moment, and I doubt it's going anywhere in the short-term, albeit any new promo might still exclude cash games.

In the meantime, I may use the change to drop PLO10 for now and focus on PLO25 as the main game, with more volume at PLO50 added in. It will make the rakeback targets easier to hit, whilst testing out my game and mentality in the face of increased variance, albeit the bankroll has hit a point where the overall plan had intended for this to occur.

Looks like I might have spoken too soon on this. There's some sort of leaderboard count taking place on my PLO50 table at the moment, albeit just a blank tab on the PLO25 one.

The graphic also shows 'Attempt 1' on it, so this looks to be a different type of promo allowing multiple attempts. The scoring system looks different too.

Will need to look into it further later, but there's some form of cash game leaderboard still available, by the looks of things.

That's a good sign at least.
They may run limited trials of a few promos before they settle on one.

Based on a bit more play, the new leaderboards look to be available at all levels, via the same opt-ins as previously.

The scoring system looks to be the same, with the key difference being that the totals are taken over 200 hands, instead of 300, and multiple attempts are possible. So having cleared the first 200 hands, the scoreboard simply reset to another target accumulating for another 200 hands. I'm not sure if the number of attempts allowed each day is capped, or whether they simply roll over continuously.

Time will tell how this plays out in terms of ability to cash in them, but no doubt the frequency of regs being able to cash via multiple attempts makes it much more directly linked to total volume, rather than the capped 300 hands per day from previously.

Received an email this morning clarifying the new leaderboard rules. You're allowed a maximum of 3 attempts per day and it's your best score that counts. It will be interesting to see what the impact of this is, but it potentially gives me more flexibility to attempt the leaderboards across various limits. 1,800 hands a day for 3 attempts at 3 leaderboards is a stretch, but posting a competitive score early might only require 200 hands played so being able to flex the attempts might well assist with my daily volume goals.

In my latest session, playing 200 hands each of PLO10 and PLO25 I had the, seemingly rare, experience of a decent winning session at PLO10. I had a few early wins which meant that most of it was played with a deep stack, peaking at something like 660BBs. I lost one big hand subsequent to that but still managed to claw back much of the monthly PLO10 loss to date in one session. PLO25 has been a bit of a battle recently. 6 out of last 7 sessions have lost money, with a total downswing of $185. However, it has generally been offset by wins at the other limits, as in this session, so the overall bankroll hasn't really moved.

I'm about 250 points short of clearing the next regular chest too, so the next session played will be worth $75 in either cash credits or Stars coins (or a mixture of each). Compared to the 10,800 point requirement at the previous level it's felt like an eternity to clear the 37,500 points required for this one. However, the return rate is slightly better overall, so not a cause for complaint.

The PLO10 session was boosted by this hand, which turned out to be the all-too familiar 3-way all-in of 2 x AA hands vs a rundown. On this occasion I came out on the right side of the run-out and it's one that I'd play differently without the backup of at least a suited ace in my hand.

I'm a bit of maths nerd so I find reviewing the equities of hands like these really fascinating. Despite winning on this occasion, when I see this scenario play out I typically want to be the player holding the rundown in these situations as, regardless of the actual equities, the playing experience suggests they win on about 90% of the hands played!

PokerStars - $0.10 PL Hi FAST (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 6 players
Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3

BTN: $10.00 (100 bb)
Hero (SB): $29.45 (294.5 bb)
BB: $11.84 (118.4 bb)
UTG: $18.82 (188.2 bb)
MP: $11.78 (117.8 bb)
CO: $42.57 (425.7 bb)

Hero posts SB $0.05, BB posts $0.10

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.15) Hero has 5♥: A♥: T♣: A♦:
3 folds, BTN raises to $0.35, Hero raises to $1.15, BB raises to $3.80, BTN calls $3.45, Hero raises to $15.20, BB calls $8.04 and is all-in, BTN calls $6.20 and is all-in

Flop: ($33.68, 3 players) 3♥: 9♥: T♠:

Turn: ($33.68, 3 players) T♦:

River: ($33.68, 3 players) 5♦:

Results: $33.68 pot ($1.43 rake)
Final Board: 3♥: 9♥: T♠: T♦: 5♦:

Hero shows 5♥: A♥: T♣: A♦:: (Full House, Tens full of Fives)
Main Pot: [$30.00]: (Pre 28%, Flop 46%, Turn 64%)
Side Pot: [$3.68]: (Pre 51%, Flop 72%, Turn 100%)

BB shows K♣: 4♣: A♣: A♠:: (Two Pair, Aces and Tens)
Main Pot: [$30.00]: (Pre 27%, Flop 10%, Turn 0%)
Side Pot: [$3.68]: (Pre 49%, Flop 28%, Turn 0%)

BTN shows 7♣: J♥: 6♥: 8♣:: (One Pair, Tens)
Main Pot: [$30.00]: (Pre 45%, Flop 44%, Turn 36%)

Hero wins $32.25

I'm currently 'enjoying' a run of 12 consecutive losing table sessions which I'm hoping will come to an end fairly sharpish. I'm running well under EV within it, but that's not an excuse for it. The table below summarises my results over the last 3 days, so it's been consistent across all limits, so I can't even attribute it to the challenge of playing more PLO50 within the mix.

I'm very close to clearing the $200 monthly rakeback challenge, which will repair much of the short-term damage, but I'm effectively now back to a break-even cash game position for January, so the short-term goal is to try to ensure that the full month results for January don't end up with another playing loss in the books.

One of the frustrations is that I think I've made some positive adjustments to my game during the month. I'm generally happy with the much of my overall decision making, but have undoubtedly lost some discipline mid-session as results go against me.

Once I've cleared the bonus target, the rakeback return will effectively drop for the remainder of the month, as there's insufficient time available to complete the 2nd cycle until the new monthly challenge kicks in (one of the downsides of the Stars rakeback scheme), so this might be a good opportunity to reduce the volume somewhat until the start of February and increase the off-table study. The new leaderboards have provided some incentive to step up volume in recent days, where I've basically managed to hit the 1,800 hand targets to have 3 attempts at each of 3 leaderboards, but it's important that I can also step back and ensure that the quality of play is of a sufficient standard too.

Downswings due to variance are one thing, but ensuring that I'm consistently bringing my best game to the tables as much as possible, and not adding further to the problem, is one of the mental game challenges that is a near-permanent focus (which feels like something I've ripped straight out of a Jared Tendler book). I know for a fact that I've slipped in this regard over the last few days.

Yesterday was a lower volume day, with just a single cycle of 200 hands played on each leaderboard, but it was enough to clear the $200 monthly rakeback chest. I'm now earning points towards the repeat cycle, but there's no chance I'll hit this before the deadline of 28th January, so these are just dead points earned.

The final table session logged finally ended the run of losing individual table sessions at 17, which I think is a new record. The day's play actually included a >$100 swing within it so the main frustration was seeing a solid winning session drop back down to a small loss, with the session being artificially cut short at that point by my wife announcing that food was on the table going cold.

I hadn't spotted it at the time but yesterday also brought a more significant landmark in being the day that I passed 100,000 hands played on the bankroll challenge so far, which is easily the most consistent volume I've produced in probably the last decade. My theory as to break-even play being sufficient to build a bankroll with the current level of bonuses and rakeback has been well and truly proven to be accurate. If anything has surprised me, its the fact that I've been able to hit the $1,000+ mark despite a playing loss of slightly under $700. It has definitely proven to be a good environment to work on my game in a sustainable way, which is essentially the way in which I got into playing poker back in 2003/04.

I'll feel less 'dirty' about it when the playing result finally gets back to break-even. I was sneaking towards that point prior to the downswing over the last few days and I'm confident that I'll finally get there by staying patient about things and continuing to work towards being able to bring my best game to all sessions and, more importantly, to maintain it during them.

I'm having a fairly torrid time at the PLO tables at the moment, which I'm planning to write up in more detail at the weekend. For the last few days I've reduced playing volume and dropped out any play at PLO50, as the bankroll no longer justifies this, but the downswing has been across all three limits so isn't just attributable to the higher stakes.

The one bit of positive news is that I've had my first cash on the new daily leaderboard format, with a $60 credit for 3rd place on the PLO10 list. The scoreboard updates on the site are terrible, as most of the leaderboards don't show up in the results listings, for some reason, so checking back final finish positions isn't generally possible at the moment. On this occasion I was in 2nd place when my session ended and was relieved to have only dropped one place in the subsequent time still to run for the day.

In typical fashion, the $60 credit offset a $58.80 playing loss for the day (a rare occasion where I was in profit playing PLO10 and took a hit at PLO25, as the experience is normally the other way round). Essentially, the day proved to be a microcosm of the entire bankroll challenge so far.

Current bankroll just under $885, so I'm still in positive overall territory for the month thanks to the various bonus earnings, but starting hot and then hitting the skids in the second half of the month has been a frustrating way to go about things.

Onwards and (hopefully) upwards....

And, at long last, January is over. The good news is that the bankroll grew over the month. However, the way that this occurred over the course of the month is such that it feels like I've lost money.

The overall breakdown for the month is as follows:

So, once again, I grew the bankroll via the various bonuses available, whilst making a loss from play over 32k hands played at 3 limits. The main positive I can take from the play result is that the PLO25 result, which is my 'main' limit at this bankroll, is positive for the second month running. PLO10 continues to be a frustration and the step up to PLO50 was quickly curtailed when the bankroll dipped below $1,000, which was my cut-off point after adding in the limit at $1,250.

Looking at the HM3 data for the month shows just how much it was a "month of two halves":
Overall

PLO10

PLO25

PLO50

So after a great first half of the month, the downswing well and truly kicked in over the second half. This coincided with the decision to add in the PLO50 games, as outlined earlier in the blog, but it wasn't solely the PLO50 games that caused it, as the experience was pretty much the same across all 3 limits at the time. Even after dropping back to just PLO10 and PLO25, the run continued, with the odd false dawn that I'd stopped the rot, for the remainder of the month.

One very obvious observation throughout this is that my pre-flop game was adversely impacted, as my stat sessions show a significant loosening up, beyond anything that could be attributable to the variance of cards dealt in a single session. This has been the immediate focus of my recent play, and I think I've managed to address this over the last couple of days. It's so easy to let things slip, particularly when running bad at the time, so it's reasonable to say that my own play has contributed to the poor result and that I can't simply blame it all on variance or running bad.

Looking forward, I think my overall plan for February is to focus more heavily on putting the volume in at PLO25 and dropping out the PLO10 play, for which the results continue to be a frustration. I've not yet hit 50k hands played at PLO10 across the whole challenge, so it's hard to say much about the PLO10 result over 38k hands with any confidence, but I'm focusing on the fact that I've been a break-even player at PLO25 over 68k hands so far and I feel that this is where my overall play is at its most consistent.

The main purpose of keeping the two limits in play has been the PLO leaderboards, which have been a consistent source of additional bonus income so far. With the recent change in format, the initial plan for February will be to keep the PLO10 play to 200 hands per day, so as to have a single attempt at that leaderboard, with the remaining volume played at PLO25 where I'll do the full cycle of 3 leaderboard attempts and then continue to play there in whatever time I have available that day. It will be interesting to see what the overall effect of this is, in terms of the bonus/rakeback income, but any missed leaderboard cashes should ultimately be offset by a more regular churn of the volume related rakeback opportunities.

So a new month begins with a bit of a re-focus. Despite all the challenges experienced during the month, there's nothing within it which is particularly out of the ordinary in terms of the expected rollercoaster of this type of challenge, so the main goal is to keep up the focus, hit the volume goals and continue the ongoing focus to improve my overall game. At the end of the day, I've added to the bankroll in 4 out of 5 months so far, so the general direction of travel is upwards, albeit perhaps not in the way that I'd ideally like it to be.

Finally, here's the graphical summary of the bankroll challenge for the month:

...and for the entire challenge to date:

If I was hoping that February would bring a fresh start after a frustrating January then the Poker Gods had other things in mind. I'm in the midst of the most sustained downswing experienced since I stopped playing regularly in 2010, and it currently feels like it's neverending.

Below are the results for the first 8 days of the month:

All of the play has been at PLO10 and PLO25, and pretty much every session feels like a repeat of the same story.

I cut short my session yesterday after around 300 hands as I could feel my play deteriorating quickly after a succession of lost all-ins, which is the first time that I've not bothered to register an attempt at either daily leaderboard by accumulating 200 hands at any limit. This is the first time I've felt the need to do so, and not helped by a long day of work and other meetings, but this downswing feels relentless at present, and the speed at which it negatively affects my play in any session is noticeably quicker at the moment.

I keep reminding myself that this is an inevitability with a PLO bankroll challenge, but it's still difficult to deal with when your dealing with it in real time. Even the simple focus of trying to make +EV decisions feels like it is constantly under attack, and yesterday was the first time where I've really felt that the best option was to stop playing for the day without hitting my minimum volume target of 400 hands.

I have a pre-booked live tournament to play this weekend, so will get a chance to regroup with a bit of recreational NLHE in the next few days. In the meantime, I'm mixing my play with a higher proportion of off-table study until we eventually hit the trough of the downturn. Right now, the immediate focus is to make sure that I don't worsen the variance with the weaknesses in my own mental game, as that has undoubtedly contributed to what's being shown in the graph.

Great Blog, keep it going!
The variance is why we Love zoom PLO

Thanks. It's good to get a bit of feedback on it.

Can't wait for the day when I can start posting more positive updates. Downswings are an inevitable part of the challenge, and it's the ability to handle them that's the important thing. I'm still re-familiarising myself with that aspect, and there's plenty of room for improvement in that regard.

I have lately implemented the habit to only look at my EV graph and only every few thousand hands that helps me to not get frustrated by any short term $ results

Originally posted by DamnG00d
I have lately implemented the habit to only look at my EV graph and only every few thousand hands that helps me to not get frustrated by any short term $ results

It's one of the things I'd planned to discuss in the blog as the All-In EV data in HM3 feels particularly flawed playing PLO, so I tend not to rely on it, other than for isolated spots. For example, if you are pot-committed, but not quite all-in due to the pot-size restriction, the equities can have massively shifted by the time that the data is captured. It also struggles with all-ins where there's a side-pot still being contested by other players, where it simply doesn't record it as an all-in at all (due to my short buy-ins, this isn't an uncommon situation for me.

The theme of this week seems to be that, regardless of which side of the equation I'm on when the monies go in pre-flop, I typically improve on the turn to be a 75%+ favourite and then the river card ALWAYS hits for the opponent. Perhaps it's just the Stars software re-inforcing this by displaying the equities as the hand plays out, but I'm getting pretty fed up of seeing that red number turn into a blue zero on the final card.

In typical poker player fashion, I clearly suffer from amnesia when the opposite happens, but it all feels a bit one-sided in that regard at present.

Ironically, the first 400 hands played today have been a near perfect session, so "moaning it in" in the earlier post might have been been therapeutic. Only 4 all-ins across the session, but the lowest equity of these was 59.7%, and 3 out of 4 of them held. That in itself feels like a remarkable result compared to the experience of the last couple of weeks or so.

I'm trying to get to 100,000 hands at any limit before I start to make any assessment of my game, and the initial goal was to hit break-even play. I'm a long way from that at the moment, but haven't hit the volume goals at any limit yet. I'm absolutely certain that there are fundamental leaks in my game to be addressed, but the short-term wins will undoubtedly come from addressing my mental game leaks, which have become very much more apparent recently.

Hopefully it makes for an interesting journey to blog along the way. Personally, the highlight of the day has been getting confirmation that someone has been following it!

Personally I find losing pots to total absurd preflop plays most annoying ones. Of course its nice people make huge mistakes but when you get that long stretch of things going badly its tough mentally. Cold run in those 3bet and 4bet pots can make you lose 10 bins very quickly even without much of mistakes.

But yeah have had those preflop allins lot in recent days where some maniac decided to ship it with some J753ss and one can guess how that ends with AAxx.

Interesting blog. I too have Wilson Software Turbo Texas Holdem, I also have the limit Omaha but had almost forgotten about these ancient programs.

Good luck with your challenge.

There is a good calculator on primedope which lets you model variance subject to inputting a few parameters. You can see what swings look like in theory. No meltdowns, no pain. Also, HM2 has variance stat if you are curious.

You could use Hand2Note to check all-inEV, it can't make any less sense than HM3 and it's free in base version if you don't
buy any add-ons.

Originally posted by Nunki
Interesting blog. I too have Wilson Software Turbo Texas Holdem, I also have the limit Omaha but had almost forgotten about these ancient programs.

Good luck with your challenge.

There is a good calculator on primedope which lets you model variance subject to inputting a few parameters. You can see what swings look like in theory. No meltdowns, no pain. Also, HM2 has variance stat if you are curious.

You could use Hand2Note to check all-inEV, it can't make any less sense than HM3 and it's free in base version if you don't
buy any add-ons.

The Primedope data is primarily the reason why I'm not making to many judgements without a decent sample, as it's really eye-opening as to the scale of swings to be expected, especially using the higher standard deviations for PLO 6-max. I'd looked at it in the early days of the challenge just to get a feel for how high my risk of ruin was with such a low starting bankroll, and it's fascinating, even with really high win rates, as to the levels of variance to be expected.

It's a really useful tool, if only to ensure that you can apply a bit of perspective to results (both good and bad) in terms of making any assumptions about how well (or badly) you play.

I can't remember whether I ever bought the Omaha version of the Wilson software. It's incredible to think that it was one of the very few trainers available at that time, given how many resources are out there these days. The AI players were laughably bad, but then again so were many of the human opponents playing online in 2003-4.

The theory of EV line being flawed when you are pot committed but not all in is false. When you miss, it gives a bit of "false" information, but when you hit it evens out. For side pots, you can easily check it instead of wondering if it is. I would assume your EV line goes down too?

You said you are playing with short stacks. In my opinion it is REALLY hard to make money in high rake, low vpip environment. The money in short stacking comes from two things:
- opponents are making big preflop mistakes
- in multiway pots deep stacks fight for the side pots, and generate folds from the main pot

It's PLO and high rake, hard to make big preflop folds. And as opponents are playing with different ranges pre and post flop what solver assumes, you can't just take solver short stack strategy and play with it. It assumes way more FE postflop than you really have. What comes to deep stacks fighting for side pots, that is not happening in Zoom. Or any small stakes games, in big pots most players are really honest.