PLO

Originally posted by ittapiros
wish me luck.

Good luck

Wow it feels like months after my first post, sorry for not being more active.

Anyway I felt making a separate post to write down my experiences of the first month only to be fair. Not a big secret, I would not have started this blog if november would have been disasterous and I have gone broke. Thankfully november gone pretty much according to plan so far, actually a bit better. I think the hard work is playing off I've been correcting a whole bunch of leaks though I still play pretty poorly I think, it is more than enough to beat PLO10 I've realized. I've been running a lot above EV but I don't mind that really as soon as I can leave this rake situation behind the better.

This actually bring me to a point I wanted to make, people keep complaining that micro plo is unbeatable because of the rake. Thank god this time I've listened to the few who convinced me that it is not so, as pretty much half of the players on micro PLO are recreational players of fishes/whales. I've found it to be beatable for now, though its a small sample I'm confident about that.

I've used to be a very tilty player so I've used some of the time I've had to learn ways to prevent tilt, donating money and just spewing the hard earned BR. I've watched every motivational video on pokerstrategy. Also I've spiced it up with some of Jared Tendlers material and it shocked me a lot. I've always though I'm a psycho who tilts worst than others and I'll never be able to coop with it. In one of Jared's videos he pretty much pointed out all my weeknesses and that gave me a lot of confidence when I realized these can be conqured. I think I have been doing a very good job so far improving my strategical & mental game and attitude.

As for my PLO specific experiences:

Amazing to see myself progress. I think that if I were to play the 18K hands I've played from november 1st as I would now, I would make about 30% more profit or more, just by better understanding certain spots. I'used to defend too lightly vs 3bets, limp too much, and I've have extremely poor flop stack off decision making. (Needless to say, extreme leak.) I'll do my best to make sure this improvement does not stop.

As Skodljivec said in one his videos swings in PLO can brutal. Sure enough last week I've experienced my first downswing in 4 days of about 20 BI or so, and it crushed my motivation. I was not just running bad, running bad made me commit tilt mistakes and I've played a lot when I should not have been. This just made me loose more. Since then, I'm applying stop loss to my game of 3-4BI per day to make sure I don't decapitate my motivation again for no reason. This badass downswing was followed by a pretty much identical upswing, so PLO being swingy got justified pretty quickly.

I had the good run for 2 days, and thankfully I've eliminated a big leak before in my game wich was fear of losing the money I just won. If I were to stop playing a session after winning 3BI that particular day I would have missed out the other 9 BIs or so I won that day. Another good tip was justified that day. Stop playing when running bad, Keep playing while running well.

Also amazing how diet and excercise effect one's mental endurance. Aint a lot to say about that I did put it to the test and sure enough it worked.

These are the most important things I would have liked to mention, I'll post current graph this evening.

Until then, Good luck!

As promised result of november so far:

Considering all the leaks in my game and the way I mostly ran I have nothing to complain about, still a lot of work to go. I'm looking forward to it!

Too strict and too many goals imo.

Here's some alternative suggestions.

Learning:

I often pick up a short term goal daily, usually while playing, and execute it after the session. Without a specific need, random database analyze or watching videos isn't worth it. Focus on something, then learn it. If you have nothing to focus, usually playing is your best bet.

Volume in hands:

I would have an absolute minimum per week volume goal in hands, nothing else. Timeframe and the volume are something you still manage. Weekly > monthly > daily > yearly goals.

A-game, ending sessions:

I play until I have a reason to quit. Then I decide amount of time I'm continueing to play, minimum of 10 minutes no matter the conditions (feelings, needs, opponents..). That allows me to change my mind after the initial timeframe if the conditions have changed. It helps learning to change mindset either from chasing losses/protecting winnings or playing based on the feelings, into the fact you control your playing. You don't have to control your feelings or the level of your play, control the time. Don't quit because you're playing bad, quit because your time is up. Controlling time > controlling anything else.

Tilting:

Accepting the fact I'm going to tilt once in a while made me a better player. Loving tilt > improving tilt handling > not tilting. Usually players think the opposite, they are wrong.

Limits:

Long term goals with absolute minimum of 1 month ahead are a must. You need a vision where you are heading, not a set time when you are going to reach it. For example my goal would be to reach and maintain playing Pl50 until the end of the year if I'd be shotting it now. Or to have a plan to add another site early next year. ..>..>..> winrate goals. For sure some pros can rely on this but there's not many.

"The best goals are the easiest ones that are hardest to reach."

Yeah I sort of thought my goals are too specific and ambitious for now (what can I say, very first time I did something like this heh), but I won't back out now, none the less I will deninetly take everything you've said into hardcore consideration, and thank you for your reply.

Uh gosh, I've been busy.

I guess the carrier of every self comfessed poker professional must come to a point where he realizes that he can learn most from his own mistakes. I've played PLO10 on 6 tables in november which made the game pretty swingy indeed. In retrospect this seems a pretty ballsy move (more like stupid if I'm being honest.) I'm simlpy not the kind of fellow who can concentrate on too many tables especially while still in learning phase. As planned I've had a big enough BR to start playing PLO25 when december started and I've altered my goals to play 4 tables mx if possible. Less hands played for sure, but I'll have more time to think about each individual hand making learning a lot easier.

The result: (I'll let you figure when I switched to PLO25)

December has been a lot of fun, I've spent a lot of time analyzing some of these hands. I haven't posted any on the hand evaluation forum though. To be quite honest, after I'm calm I'm pretty sure where I have fckd up.. : D I'll be a lot more active from now on as I switch to PLO50 from tomorrow.

Thigns are pretty much going as planned so far. ; )

A lot of thanks for the community for all the support!!!!