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

Looking forward to read more, on why you have deiced to play PLO...

As mentioned in the original post, I'd been occasionally dipping into micro-stakes cash games using the small amounts of funds left in my residual bankroll after 'real-life' necessitated me using the one I'd build up previously. These always resulted in the same two thoughts hitting me:
1) the games were much tougher than before;
2) NLHE cash games were dull to play and it was hard to get out of my old mindset playing them.

Ultimately, this took me to a point where I began to take more of an interest in playing PLO. I discovered some online content, including some from Kyyberi, and started to look into it more seriously. In early 2020, I took part in one of his PLO courses with a group including a couple of other regular bloggers on here (Primrose6789 and ghaleon), which was good fun and informative, but was at a time when I still wasn't playing regularly. In the summer of 2021 I bought JNandez's book to added to my collection (I've been building up quite the library of poker books since 2003) and it prompted me to start playing a little online.

I did an quick count up of the funds I had sitting in various sites, and discovered about $700 was split across 4 of them, but with nothing much more than $200 in any single site. I then promptly lost a bit of this playing micros PLO, which resolved me to try and set about things in a more formal way.

I'd realised from playing a bit that, possibly for the first time in a while, it looked feasible to build a bankroll in a similar way to how I'd started in 2003, which is to take advantage of the rakeback and bonus monies available to essentially be able to aim for break-even play initially and still be able to build one. This is a key requirement as, unlike in the old days of limit hold'em cash games, the micro stakes for NLHE and PLO are incredibly difficult to beat due to the high rake environment (something which reading more and more theory has confirmed to be the case). Essentially, the bonuses would become a way to maintain a playable bankroll for the challenge whilst overcoming rake, variance and the assumption that I'm starting as a losing player whilst I re-build my knowledge of the game and try to break-free of some of the outdated thinking.

The other big difference from using limit games is that your errors are punished much more significantly in a PLO or NLHE environment, and this creates the risk that you'll adopt a variance minimising approach, which ultimately is sub-optimal. PLO is naturally subject to greater variance than NLHE, so is perhaps not the ideal choice to attempt this challenge, but it is much better suited to generating rake more quickly at the micro-limits, which is an essential part of the strategy I'm adopting, where rakeback targets are a key part of the early stages.

Playing PLO, rather than NLHE, is a way to assist with this process as many of the foundation courses in PLO are geared towards converting NLHE players to the game, and adjusting their mindsets towards this. I also think that if you get to a point where you have become a competent, winning PLO player, it will be easier to adapt this mindset back towards NLHE than doing it the opposite way round.

The Challenge: $200 to $5,000 playing PLO cash games (initially on PokerStars)
In mid-September, I withdrew a small amount of money out of Party and made a small deposit into PokerStars to take the residual balance I had in there to exactly $200 and commenced my official bankroll challenge on 12th September 2021.

I've chosen Stars as, contrary to recent years, it currently has a good underlying structure to be able to earn rakeback and other bonuses by playing cash games there. Having a HUD-friendly site was also important in the initial stages as I need to be able to review my play, and that of opponents, as part of the learning curve of adapting to playing PLO. These factors offset the fact that they're still probably the toughest cash games out there on any online site, at each level, in particular the PLO Zoom games which will have the highest proportion of regs playing them. However, if I can get to a stage where I'm comfortable playing these, then I should be well prepared to tackle the so-called softer sites at a later stage.

I didn't have an overall end-goal in mind when I started the challenge, other than I would move up (and more importantly, down stakes) at a pre-determined point to protect my bankroll (this being exactly the approach I took playing limit hold'em many years ago, and the ability to move down in stakes is one that I had, which many other players couldn't bring themselves to do, which is a big factor in why my original attempt was successful). For the purposes of the formal challenge I've set the goal to be a figure of $5,000, which I see as an ambitious medium-term challenge. It's not something I'm going to hit in a few months, so I expect this will be an ongoing goal for quite a while.

Ideally, I'd like to ultimately be able to siphon off funds and build stand-alone balances on several sites, but this blog will be initially focused on the challenge of moving up stakes to eventually get to the $5,000 overall figure from a single $200 start point.

The games I've initially selected are PLO10 and PLO25 Zoom games, for which I'm buying in for the minimum of 50BB and always topping up to that level. $200 is a very short bankroll to do this, but I had an initial expectation that I had 2 or 3 attempts available if I went bust in the early stages.

The reasons for using two levels simultaneously was primarily driven by the Daily Cash Game leaderboards that were running at Stars at the time. They subsequently disappeared for a little while (as Stars seemed to alternate them between cash and Spin&Go leaderboards at the time, but they've been available consistently again for a while now). These leaderboards are not skill-based in any way, as they simply rely on the value of your first 300 hands dealt at each level on any day, so they are a good incentive to ensure that I at least put in 600 hands of volume on a daily basis.

The general aim of the early part of the challenge was/is to basically try not to go bust, with an aim of breaking-even at these stakes, while using any bonus/rakeback monies to maintain a viable bankroll and potentially start the road to increasing it. If the bankroll got too short, then I would remove the PLO25 play and replace it with PLO5 to maintain the 600 hand daily challenge. However, this would be a last resort option, as it's essentially switching into an even higher rake environment and I'd estimated that PLO10 was probably the lowest available limit where break-even play was a realistic target.

Next update: September results

Originally posted by Eduardoooo
Looking forward to read more, on why you have deiced to play PLO...

Thanks for being the first to reply. Hopefully you're not the last and this becomes a worthwhile read for a few people.

When I first started playing poker, one of the essential habits that quickly became 2nd nature to me was to keep meticulous records of sessions and bankroll movements, which I did religiously. When I started to play infrequently, this no longer continued. I'd be content to have the sessions captured in HM3 or PT4, and would invariably then not maintain the same database when I returned to play again, having now bought a new laptop, etc.

Keeping records is therefore an essential part of this challenge, and I'm doing so within a simple Excel spreadsheet which is being reconciled after each session to the on-site balance. HM3 is generally tracking most things pretty well but I'm regularly getting instances where the session result is missing a small balance, typically a small or big blind, which I presume arises from incomplete hands being uploaded. The results I quote in this blog will always track the actual cash movements, rather than the database result.

September Summary:
Days played / Days Available: 18 / 19 (challenge started on 12th Sep)
Starting Bankroll: $200.00
Hands played: 9,606
Result from play: -$1.02
Bonus/Rakeback Earnings: +$75.00
Net Result: +$73.98
Closing Bankroll: $273.98
Highest Balance: $415.57 (27/09)
Lowest Balance: $133.77 (23/09)

For someone aiming to play break-even poker initially, whilst earning bonus monies, the first month pretty much followed the template exactly. Initially, I settled into a routine where I would play the 300 PLO10 hands first, on two Zoom tables, before switching to play the PLO25 hands after this. This was effectively a method of tilt control, where logically if I was playing badly, the loss would be limited to the lower stakes and I would always have the option not to play the higher stakes if I wasn't in the mindset for it. This lasted for a few days and then the records show that I played exclusively PLO25 after 19th September, no doubt a consequence of early over-confidence, but also due to the rakeback progress being so much quicker at that level, in terms of the goal requirements.

Variance wise, things started quite steadily. The low point was a balance of $133.77 on 23/09, following a $67.01 loss at PLO25, but the next session played pretty much restored this straight away. I then went on something of a heater over the next few days, eventually peaking at $415.57, before a run of 5 out of 6 losing sessions ended the month and brought things to a close.

Ultimately I was happy with the progress made, particularly as I'd not been in any realistic danger of going bust.

The rakeback/bonus results also confirmed my thinking as to the viability of the plan, with $75 earned in total, of which $30 was from the regular chest prizes (the chests that trigger automatically with either a cash award or StarsPoints when cleared), $20 from the opt-in challenges offered separately (i.e. earn so many points to open a rakeback prize chest) and $25 came from Daily Leaderboard prizes (a $10 and a $15 prize for minor place finishes within the 20 places that are paid on each leaderboard). For 2/3 of a month, with a $200 bankroll, that's quite a significant addition.

The catch up posts are intended to be relatively quick summaries to get the blog upto date, so I haven't dug into any hand details as yet. I may look to post some interesting ones separately, but this will more likely be when I'm posting real-time updates. However, I would like to think that I've developed my game further since then as, with the benefit of hindsight, I can pinpoint numerous adjustments I've tried to make since then, so hopefully any hands (both good and bad) are now consigned to history.

The playing split by game was as follows:
PLO10 Zoom: 1,669 hands, result -$28.22
PLO25 Zoom: 7,775 hands, result +$46.60
PLO25 Non-Zoom: 162 hands, result -$19.40 (experiments as to whether having consistent opponents was preferable to Zoom, normally as a second table to a Zoom equivalent)

Next update: October summary

Hey what a nice read, I'm as well in the middle of maybe starting to switch to PLO as well...

October 2021 Summary:
Days played / Days Available: 29 / 31
Start of Month Balance: $273.98
Hands played: 16,197
Result from play: -$285.09
Bonus/Rakeback Earnings: +$320.69
Net Result For Month: +$35.60
Closing Bankroll: $309.58
Highest Balance In Month: $439.26 (13/10)
Lowest Balance In Month: $70.43 (23/10)

Split By Game:
PLO10 Zoom: 4,908 hands, result -$49.64
PLO25 Zoom: 10,095 hands, result -$197.40
PLO25 Non-Zoom: 307 hands, result +$38.64
PLO50 Zoom: 887 hands, result -$76.69
Total: 16,197 hands, result -$285.09

Bonus Breakdown:
Rakeback Challenge Chests Cleared: +$160.00
Regular Chest Cash Awards: +$20.00
StarsCoin Redemptions (From Regular Chests): +$70.00
Daily Leaderboard Prizes: +$70.00
20 Free Casino Spins Played: +$0.69

It's interesting to be posting this month in hindsight, rather than as real-time updates, as typing out the summary was a real eye-opener as to how quickly I deviated from the original plan, with some PLO50 hands forming part of the results.

Pretty much the first half of the month shows me playing PLO25 exclusively and, judging from the hands totals for the day, I suspect this included a period where the Daily Leaderboard for cash games wasn't available, as not all days show 300 hands being played. From 3rd-7th October I had a run of 5 losing days in a row, followed by a similar run of winning days, which is a pattern that has become familiar to me since then. During this time, the bankroll dropped as low as $120 and but had returned to a new high point of $439.26 by then.

On the 14th, the familiar pattern of PLO10 and PLO25 returns, suggesting that the leaderboards were back, which coincides with an awful day's play result of losing $220.95 across the two levels that day, which I prop up by cashing in Stars coins earned to add $50 back to the bankroll. This is the first time during the challenge that I've opted to cash in the StarsCoins won from rakeback chests. If they are paid as points, then the strategy is to stash them until needed, as the chests seem to randomly resolve as cash, StarsCoins or a mix of each, but always to the expected value for that chest. From a mental perspective, having the StarsCoins in reserve serves as a method of tilt control, as it provides something to fall back on when the bankroll drops.

I continued to play a mix of PLO10 and PLO25 over the next few days but, in an attempt to improve the leaderboard chances, there are a couple of shots taken of also playing PLO50, in an attempt to add another leaderboard to the list. I recall treating this as a shot-taking attempt at the time, and playing very tight throughout, with the intention of using the cashout option liberally. The first couple of sessions go OK, producing small profits of $54 and $10 but attempt #3 results in the inevitable $140 loss (mainly from typical PLO all-in situations where I end up on the wrong side of the run-out, each costing me pretty much the $25 min buy-in), which swiftly puts an end to that experiment.

Whether or not this affected my mental game afterwards is open to debate as I then went on a further 5 day run of consecutive losing days, which sank the bankroll to a new lowpoint of $70.43 whilst in the middle of it. However, at this stage I was close to clearing a rakeback chest worth $80 so, after a day's break from play, I continued at PLO10 and PLO25 to clear it. In all honesty, having a winning day of $4.20 felt almost as precious as the $80 chest at that point.

I then ended the month with 7 consecutive winning days, including the $4.20 session, which restored the position somewhat, albeit the wins are relatively small and don't make up for the previous 5 days of losses. This means that I made a small profit for the month, in terms of the bankroll challenge, as a result of the bonuses. However, in pure play terms, I've already bust the original $200 bankroll via cumulative playing losses of $286.11.

At this stage my focus had been mainly to get into a routine of regular playing volume, with relatively little study time beyond reviewing significant hands from each session. I still didn't have enough hands to make any assessment of my play, although I was already trying to eradicate too much pre-flop passivity which I felt was creeping in, in terms of late position calls in single raised pots, rather than 3-betting or folding.

In terms of the challenge, October highlighted to me just how bad a month of play I could sustain whilst still recouping the losses via rakeback and bonuses. In particular, picking up 3 more daily leaderboard prizes (2x$15 and one for $40) re-inforced that the general aim of 2x300 hands per day at the two limits was proving to be worthwhile.

Now if only I could eradicate those playing losses!

Next update: November summary

Yes yes yes, everyone join the dark side!

November 2021 Summary:
Days played / Days Available: 29 / 30
Start of Month Balance: $309.58
Hands played: 18,288
Result from play: -$228.32
Bonus/Rakeback Earnings: +$195.00
Net Result For Month: -$23.48
Closing Bankroll: $286.10
Highest Balance In Month: $358.13 (15/11)
Lowest Balance In Month: $72.57 (26/11)

Split By Game:
PLO10 Zoom: 9,134 hands, result -$136.90
PLO25 Zoom: 9,141 hands, result -$92.28
PLO25 Non-Zoom: 13 hands, result +$0.86
Total: 18,288 hands, result -$228.32

Bonus Breakdown:
Rakeback Challenge Chests Cleared: +$120.00
Regular Chest Cash Awards: +$10.00
StarsCoin Redemptions (From Regular Chests): +$50.00
Daily Leaderboard Prizes: +$15.00

On the face of things November results were largely similar to those from October, with the exception that this was the first month where the overall result was a small loss, as the bonus monies didn't quite cover the loss from play.

I did do a much better job of sticking to the overall plan of attack, in playing only PLO10 and PLO25 for through the entire month, and the playing volumes for each were roughly equal. Towards the end of the month I changed my approach from playing playing the PLO10 hands first, followed by the PLO25 quota. Instead I started playing both side by side so as to concentrate more on the volume and less on the individual variances at each level.

The pattern of swings continued, with the first 7 days of the month all recording daily losses, then 8 out of next 10 days showed winning sessions, followed by another run of mostly losses for the remainder of the month. By the end of the month I was looking more closely at my play, alongside continuing to study (mainly via working through Dylan Weisman's PLO Launch Pad programme) and working on ways to make fixes. Primarily, the main two likes I'd identified were pre-flop passivity (no doubt impacted by the losing streaks, where calling pre-flop instead of 3-betting became 'a way to lose less money'). Additionally, I was calling down too many river bets when I knew I was likely going to lose, but 'had to prove myself right', which I inevitably did.

Whilst I was determined to continue to maintain the volume challenges, I was doing so knowing that I was playing sub-optimally for many of the sessions. The switch to starting both levels simultaneously was one way to tackle this, but by the end of the month, I had resolved to attempt a few drills to try to fix some of the obvious leaks.

Towards the end of the month was a low point in terms of my desire to maintain the challenge, and the final few days of it were literally a case of hitting the 600 hands and then quitting for the day to focus more on review and study.

I'd expected to identify myself as a losing player to begin with, but by the end of November I was starting to feel some alarm at the scale of the playing losses I'd accumulated to date. Much as I'd have love to blame it all on variance, I knew that there were fundamental leaks that I needed to address, More importantly, I needed to ensure that the challenge didn't start to feel like a chore.

So full marks to myself for maintaining the volume requirements, in the face of some challenging sessions, but with a big question mark about how well I was actually playing and, more importantly, how well I was actually learning the game compared to falling into familiar playing habits from before.

On the plus side, there was still more in the bankroll than I'd started with, so the theory of the challenge was solid, but this was not the expected way in which I'd hoped to achieve it by this stage.

December 2021 Summary:
Days played / Days Available: 31 / 31
Start of Month Balance: $286.10
Hands played: 34,056
Result from challenge play: -$117.62
Result from non-challenge play: -$-21.15
Bonus/Rakeback Earnings: +$595.00
Net Result For Month: +$456.23
Closing Bankroll: $742.33
Highest Balance In Month: $895.54 (15/11)
Lowest Balance In Month: $301.10 (29/12)

Split By Game:
PLO10 Zoom: 10,002 hands, result -$93.96
PLO25 Zoom: 23,582 hands, result +$38.96
PLO50 Zoom: 472 hands, result -$62.62
Total: 34,056 hands, result -$117.62

Bonus Breakdown:
Rakeback Challenge Chests Cleared: +$240.00
Regular Chest Cash Awards: +$115.00
StarsCoin Redemptions (From Regular Chests): +$0.00
Daily Leaderboard Prizes: +$225.00

I entered December with an intention to address some leaks in my game, and the motivation to get in good volume came from the monthly rakeback challenge email, which offered 2 x $120 chests in the month, provided I could clear the necessary points by 28th December. Unlike in other months, the prospect of having time off work over Christmas meant that there was a feasible chance I could hit this, if I kept up momentum.

The very first transaction in the month was to open a Daily Leaderboard chest prize of $15 earned on the final day of November (the day ends for each leaderboard at 5am UK time, so any prize is only confirmed when I wake up the next morning). This moved the starting bankroll to $301.10 before I'd played a single hand and, as the summary shows, that ultimately proved to be the low point of the bankroll for the entire month.

I started the month's play applying a drill to my sessions where I essentially ruled out making any pre-flop calls. Any decisions, other than genuinely exceptional ones, had to be either a fold or a 3-bet. This was to address some of the passivity (driven by the mental game challenges of a run of consecutive losing sessions) that had impacted the November results in particular.

The impact was immediate, resulting in winning days being recorded on 7 of the first 8 days in the month. More importantly, there was a noticeable change in my stats on those days, with VPIP dropping a little, but with a near-doubling in my 3Bet%. This was the first meaningful attempt to take on board some of the review/non-play learning I'd been doing, and it was encouraging to get such an immediate impact, no doubt also helped by a bit of run-good at the same time. By the 8th December, the bankroll had grown to $565.86 and the upturn had been driven by profits from play, rather than bonuses, which improved my mindset greatly and made the plan to increase volume for the month much easier.

Naturally, I then started looking at other adjustments to work on, mainly with regard to some post-flop issues, and took my eye off the ball with this pre-flop drill. The 3Bet stats started to drop again and the daily results started to turn once again. Whilst not quite the consecutive run of losses seen previously, 9 of the next 12 daily results were losses, with the winning days being relatively minor ones, and the play result during that time was a loss of over $300. However, I'd also cleared the first rakeback chest in this time, so the bankroll position hadn't suffered too badly by the end of this, closing on 20/12 at a figure of $383.02.

By this point I was staring at another monthly cumulative play result showing a loss, which was irritating me. I resolved to address this over the final part of the month, and the next few days over the Christmas break saw the result gradually being eked back towards a break-even position. By 30th December I was slightly in profit, and was tempted to not play on 31st December to keep things that way. However, I told myself that this was absolutely the wrong approach to adopt, and subsequently managed to record a single day loss of $128.18 on the final day of the month, condemning me to yet another month with a negative result. However, the way that this one had come about felt very different to the previous months and, whilst frustrated, I was much happier with my play across the month as a whole. It felt like a couple of things had 'clicked', with a higher proportion of good decisions, relative to the proportion of howling errors, than in previous months.

I also managed to have an unexpected piece of luck on 21st December, when my PLO50 leaderboard score of 9,955 was enough for 2nd place that day, resulting in a $200 prize chest being opened the following morning. This, plus the usual benefits from the increased volume during the month, generated a total bonus amount earned in the month of $595. I also (just) managed to move up to the next rank of standard chests, hitting the final one needed on the 28th day of the rolling cycle. Instead of now needing to earn 10,800 points to get a $20 award, the new level now requires 37,500 points to get a $75 chest. The rakeback rate is slightly better from this and my volume of play will enable me to maintain this level with zero chance of advancing to the next one without a move up in limits.

One key change I made to my play setup during December was to switch the 2 Zoom tables to show big blinds, rather than cash totals, as I played the two separate limits side by side. This really helped me to focus on solid decision making on both tables without thinking about which was was the higher/lower stake table. The bankroll position was more stable than in previous months, so there was less immediate danger of playing with a seriously short bankroll, as at some points in earlier months.

Whilst I think this change has been a positive step, it did result in a couple of schoolboy error moments in the month, where I inadvertently opened a PLO50 table in error, and didn't spot the mistake until well into the session. This explains the 472 hands of PLO50 play in the month which, unlike the shot-taking attempts for the leaderboard in October, was a case of misclicks not being spotted immediately, due to the intended aim of having the side by side tables look identical.

Overall, I exited the month feeling much better about my general play. In particular I took some comfort from the fact that the results at PLO25 were significantly better than those at PLO10. I exited the month approaching a cumulative total of 50k hands played at PLO25, with a fighting chance that the cumulative result could soon be back to break-even. By comparison, I seem so far to be unable to get close to a break-even position at PLO10 in any individual month. My immediate focus is to get the PLO25 result in the right place without worrying too much about the PLO10 one, albeit I want to do a bit of a deep dive at some point into whether I'm doing anything fundamentally different in my decision making at each level, particularly in an environment when I'm trying to make it as difficult as possible to differentiate between the two when playing.

Anyhow, that's the completed months summarised so far (probably more than I'd expected to achieve from the first day of blogging). I just need to bring the picture upto date for January before we can get to the task of making this a real-time blog, with a bit more scope for variety in the posts once we've reached that point.

I should have mentioned in the previous post that the non-challenge play recorded in the summary was from low stakes tournament play that I did for a bit of variety. The December figures were mainly attempts at the Neymar Jr Hyper SnG's which, whilst a bit of fun, are too much of a grind from the $1 buy-in level to hit the meaningful games at the higher points of the ladder. I'd started reading Dara's and Barry Carter's new book at this point, and they were a good way to do a bit of ICM practice when I wanted a change of focus from time to time.

January 2022 Summary (to 10th Jan):
Days played / Days Available: 10 / 10
Start of Month Balance: $742.33
Hands played: 9,184
Result from challenge play: +$342.58
Result from non-challenge (MTT) play: -$-42.98
Bonus/Rakeback Earnings: +$101.80
Net Result For Month To Date: +$401.40
Closing Bankroll: $1,143.73
Highest Balance In Month: $1,155.42 (10/1)
Lowest Balance In Month: $677.11 (1/1)

Split By Game:
PLO10 Zoom: 3,062 hands, result -$47.46
PLO25 Zoom: 6,122 hands, result +$390.04
Total: 9,184 hands, result +$342.58

Bonus Breakdown:
Rakeback Challenge Chests Cleared: +$0.00
Regular Chest Cash Awards: +$0.00
StarsCoin Redemptions (From Regular Chests): +$0.00
Daily Leaderboard Prizes: +$85.00
The Deal Jackpot Shares: +$6.44
Free Casino Spins Credited: +$3.36
Free Sportsbook Bet Winnings: +$7.00

The summary above brings the position upto date as of first thing this morning. It also brings the novelty, for the first time in this blog so far, of reporting a PLO play result that's positive, albeit including the seemingly mandatory loss at PLO10.

As reported in the December update I feel like my decision making has become more consistent in the last few weeks, and the PLO25 results in particular are a reflection of that. There's undoubtedly an element of run-good in the month to date, but there are also an increased number of post-flop folds where my equity isn't robust enough to get to the river which, in earlier months would have seen me continue for at least one more card.

The most pleasing aspect of the month to date is that my cumulative play result for PLO25 Zoom is now positive after 56.7k hands played so, at the limit that I'm playing most frequently, I've now achieved the initial goal of break-even play over a meaningful number of hands. I'm being generally very cautious about giving myself too much credit just yet, as there are still many issues to work on, and the PLO10 cumulative result is a reminder of that.

The rakeback/bonus position for the month is still fairly immature, as I'm currently part-way through clearing both the larger regular chest and the monthly challenge requirements (which this month is a $200 credit requiring 2,500 redemption points, for which I'm trying to maintain a pace of earning 100 points per day).

I have had a bit of run-good on the Daily Leaderboards so far, having picked up 4 prizes totalling $85 in the first 10 days across the two limits. I'm assuming this promo won't be around indefinitely, but it has been a worthwhile incentive in the early months of this challenge, so will be sad to see it go if and when that time comes.

The immediate goal is to just try to maintain focus and try to keep things as consistent as possible. The recent upturn has included sessions where I've lost several buy-ins in the first few hands and, as this is becoming something I'm getting used to, it isn't adversely impacting my continued play as much as it was in the early stages of the challenge. The consistent volume I'm generating for the first time in several years is bringing back the old familiarity with variance, and I'd like to think I'm much better at dealing with it, in terms of maintaining consistency of decision making, than I was a couple of months ago. Time will tell if this is the case, but I'm starting the real-time portion of this blog from a positive place. Most importantly, after 87k hands since starting the challenge, I'm still enjoying it and it doesn't feel like a chore to play, even when I've been in the middle of some of the more recent downturns.

I'm also approaching one of my initial landmark goals in terms of bankroll, being the $1,250 mark which would represent 100 x 50BB buyins for PLO25, but also 50 buyins for PLO50. This was the target at which I'd intended to consider a few more shots at PLO50, whilst also potentially looking to drop the PLO10 limit. I'll be giving this some more thought until such time as I hit the target as to whether the benefits of doing so will outweigh the potential downsides, most notably significantly greater swings than I've currently been experiencing to date.

Although the results to date show a small overall loss for the attempt, I've also been enjoying playing a few of the Winter Series MTT's this month, all at the lowest buy-in level, and all of them non-hold'em formats (i.e. PLO, PLO8 and HORSE). I've long since been a fan of the main non-hold'em formats and I enjoy playing them in MTT format. For now, it's simpler to record everything within the overall challenge results, as this is minor element of my overall play. In the event that there was ever a result that would make a meaningful difference to the overall picture, I'll look to separate it out from the challenge totals at that point.

Nice the results look good, what would you say have been your biggest adjustment for the new results?

So for the benefit of anyone who can't be bothered to work through all the text-heavy updates above, attached is a graphical representation of the challenge to date, taken from results tracking spreadsheet, and the HM3 graph for the play to date (shown by hand). On the spreadsheet, each row is a separate data point, so a PLO10 session and PLO25 session played simultaneously count as two rows, while a bonus award and a $1 Neymar Jr Hyper would also account for 1 row each. I'm tracking two datasets within it, one for the overall result and one for the results from PLO cash-game play only, which at it's low point was close to a $700 loss (as the start point on the graph is the $200 initial bankroll). As stated in the initial post, the bonus monies were always likely to be a required part of the challenge, and the graph shows just how essential they have been to get to this point.

Originally posted by Eduardoooo
Nice the results look good, what would you say have been your biggest adjustment for the new results?

As I mentioned in the December results catch up, I'd say the start point was a few days of applying the drill to eliminate pre-flop calling as much as possible, which was specifically aimed to getting me to 3-bet more frequently, and deal with the post-flop consequences of doing so.

During December, I'd also paid for an initial month of access to two pieces of software, so that I could work on my pre-flop game - the PLO Matrix and the PLO Trainer Web App. Of the two, I much prefer the flexibility of the PLO Trainer Web App, and I've worked with this throughout the month to review my pre-flop play, do training drills of various pre-flop scenarios and generally look in more depth at the pre-flop GTO strategies. This has improved my intuition in pre-flop decisions, but most of the major errors in PLO are made post-flop, so it's been a relatively minor part of the overall picture. One benefit of paying for limited-time access is that it motivated me to do a higher volume of off-table review and study, and it's something I'll look to do again. For now, I've let both subscriptions lapse and there's been a notification that the Trainer Web App pricing is about to double in the next few days, which is certainly an unwelcome development from my point of view.

Much as I like the content of the training sites and tools, the pricing of them is prohibitive relative to a micro-stakes bankroll (although in my case I'm not using the bankroll monies for subscriptions). Consequently, I'm dabbling with them to the extent that it's economical to do so, without committing to the longer-term cost for now.

Beyond that, I'm learning to read the heuristics of the tables better than I was previously. There are certain common lines adopted by the general population that are becoming increasingly 'face-up' and I'm starting to trust my reads of these more, particularly in terms of facing turn and river bets. I suspect a big element of the improved results is in money saved from a more selective approach to continuing in these spots.

I'm not planning for this blog to turn into a daily update of every session, but I did joke to myself yesterday that reaching the point where it started to become real-time updating, rather than a catch up of known events, would likely prompt a massive downturn just at a time when results had started to pick up. The first session I played in that situation certainly did it's best make me think it was going to happen.

The session played yesterday to clear the 300 hand requirements from the PLO10 and PLO25 levels turned out to be one of those sessions where it felt like you were never going to win a meaningful hand.

During play, I'd marked some hands of interest as they happened, as being possible ones for the blog, and this exercise in itself felt quite worthwhile to be thinking about during play. For the session in question, the summary below is probably a simpler way to articulate things, as it was one where pretty much every all-in showdown (all of which were fairly standard spots that you see on most days) seemed to fall the wrong way. The picture was 'ruined' to some extent by the QQT9 winning hand that's second from the top, which happened after I'd clicked 'exit table on next BB', and broke the image of consecutive red numbers that I'd seen growing through the session.

However, it does also highlight the logic of why I've adopted a 50BB strategy for the early part of the challenge, as it makes these types of session easier to handle than for their full buy-in equivalent (allowing for the fact that some of these individual hands might have been played differently with a 100BB stack). A $64 loss for a session of this length classes as being a fairly bad session, but the full stack equivalent where this type of session swing would be over $100 on a fairly frequent basis would be far more difficult to deal with in a challenge that started with a $200 bankroll. Switching to a 100BB buy-in strategy is something I'll need to consider as part of the journey through the limits, but I don't plan to deviate from 50BB as a starting strategy at any new limit.

Just in terms of explanation of the general play tactic, if I double up the original 50BB I'm not typically 'rat-holing' the winnings (which Zoom tables allow) and re-starting with 50BB again. Instead I'm continuing to play the stack until such time as it potentially starts to adversely affect my play. Typically, I try to look out for signs of this once I'm sitting on a 250BB+ stack, as I'm focused on playing optimal 50BB and 100BB strategies and the experience to date has shown me that I start to call more bets sub-optimally when sitting on a stack that gets significantly beyond this. Yes, it potentially means I miss out on a huge double up from another massive stack, but I think the likelihood is that the net result of doing this too often would be negative in the game environment I've set up.

As is fairly typical for my current play pattern, I did return to the tables later on in the evening to try to keep up the momentum towards the 100 redemption point daily target. I played just over 300 hands of PLO25, winning $30, before I started to feel my concentration slipping and called it a day. Consequently, the day ended with a loss of $34.28, which is well within the typical range of daily variance.

Wow, that is a not-so-nice EV difference.
GL in the challenge now and enjoy the challenge-badge!

Originally posted by SvenBe
Wow, that is a not-so-nice EV difference.
GL in the challenge now and enjoy the challenge-badge!

Thanks.

Thankfully it was only for a short session. I do ride the other side of that EV line from time to time too.

According to the Stars website the Daily Leaderboard promo is ending on 16th January. If this is the case I hope it's only a short-term absence, as in previous months, as it is proving to be a good contributor to the bankroll building challenge so far.

January has been particularly good in this regard, in terms of frequency of payouts, as I've now accumulated 5 credits in January from Top 20 finishes on the two leaderboards I've been playing. The latest one was a 3rd place credit of $60 on the PLO10 leaderboard, which takes the total for the month up to $145. December's total was $225, but achieved primarily via a single $200 credit for a 2nd place finish on the PLO25 leaderboard, so January somehow feels more satisfying, due to the frequency of winning days.

In the meantime, and aided by the leaderboard credit, I've managed to reach the $1,250 target goal at which PLO50 shots can commence. I'm not sure how much time I'll spend there, but an initial motivation is to add in a 3rd leaderboard shot each day while they're available. I played just over 300 hands there yesterday, losing $11 in the process, but I'm treating this very cautiously for now, and it will only be supplementary play once PLO10 and PLO25 targets have been completed first.

I don't know if the leaderboards will disappear for ever, or just a short time -- but I suspect that they will be replaced by another promo,
Best of luck in whatever that turns out to be