Road back to HS PLO
ABOUT ME:
My screenname is portemilio. I've been playing Poker since I was 16. I started off playing poker on Runescape gambling sites where you'd buy coins ingame which had a $ value and deposit them on runescape poker sites. I found myself obsessed with the game since I was young. I specifically loved the HU format. At 16 i ran up 100$ to 20k when BTC was around 1.4k playing 6 max and 9max nlhe but ultimately got destroyed headsup because i lacked a lot of discipline and had major ego issues wanting to be the best. I always wanted to be the best and would get extremely angry when dealing with variance on top of the fact that I was an unstudied player. In college I transitioned to PLO. I got staked and coached but I wasn't winning no matter how hard I tried because of my serious BRM issues. I'd run up a couple of thousand dollars then instantly shot take 5/10 and lose it all and then go back to the lowest stakes to rebuild, rinse, and repeat. My senior year of college I decided I really wanted to give it my all. In class I'd bring my laptop and drill spots and this was the first form of studying I'd ever experienced (other than hundreds of hours of youtube videos and poker content that I consume). I significantly saw a change in my game. I've always been a highly intuitive player but with the baseline theory I developed I quickly skyrocketed though the ranks. I still had really poor mental game and not great BRM but I was able to run up my first 30k ish month in April of 2022. Unfortunately, I lost it all back shot taking 10/20 on ACR (very commend trend in my poker career). I had to take6 a fifth year of college because of a couple of other reasons but I always knew I was going to end up being a poker player. I dreaded school and felt it was the reason I wasn't succeeding because I still had to commit so many hours to school (studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Fluid Mechanics). I come from an Arab household and poker was not accepted at all but that didn't deter me. My fifth year I had the same routine where I'd study in class and play countless hours when I was back. I was also gaming a lot (League) so i decided to cut that out because I figured it was a waste of time if I really wanted to succeed. After I graduated (May 2022) I moved to Lebanon where my parents lived. I finally had no obligations, nothing holding me back and barely any expenses. I devoted all my time to poker (literally 15h days). After 6 months playing 1/2 - 10/20 on mainly bovada and BOL I made roughly 170k in profits. My mental health really suffered. I longed for social interaction; I had none of my friends in Lebanon and I started to not care about poker anymore. My health declined heavily and I felt despite the fact that I was winning that there was a constant judgement surrounding what I was doing. Once I showed my parents how much money I was making they couldn't complain about the journey I was decided to take ( as much anyways) but they were still greatly against it. My biggest mistake came when I decided to shot take 10/20 on Bovada. I was absolutely crushing Betonline and Bovada midstakes for atleast 8bb/100 over a sample of 400k+ hands, but when I played 10/20 nothing I did worked. I got absolutely crushed. My mental game was very strong at this point and I wasn't disheartened, I just figured it was variance. I ended up losing 45 ish buy ins (90k) running 70k below EV. This was almost 2/3 of my roll. I had heard rumors about collusion and cheating rings going on at 10/20 Bovada but I just figured that was bad regs crying about losing because the same was being said about every stake that I was consistently beating. I will never know if I actually got cheated as I have no definitive proof but I highly highly suspect that I did. At this point despite convincing myself that the loss of the money didn't affect me in reality my play began to change because nothing I did was working so I thought i had to deviate. I ended up going to EPT Barcelona in 2023 because I felt the need to prove to myself and everyone that what I was doing was a real job. I had around 50k to my name. I ended up losing 20k there playing 25/50 live (brm issues started coming back I really began to chase what I lost). Once I returned back to the US, started paying rent I prolonged into a 4 month period of break even/losing. I really thought at the time I was playing well I dont know maybe it was variance but looking back at it I had basically given up. I was playing 3h a day max and not putting in any volume at all (20k hands/month max). I'm using this 2+2 thread to hold myself accountable. I'm not going to give up on poker because I know I truly have a talent. I'm at a crossroads right now because im 24 and have little to no job experience so If I want to get a real 9-5 I'd really have to start looking now. I have a couple interviews with some investment banks just to appease my parents but it isn't something I'm taking seriously. On top of that it's really hard to explain to friends and family the journey I've been on because they don't understand variance at all. I'm not saying I didn't make any mistakes I definetly did, but to lose that amount of money is definetly gut wrenching I finally made it and saw it gone at the blink of an eye. I have a lot of fuel in me now and I'm ready to play atleast 50k hands/month. I'm not going to let anyone pressure me or feel the need to prove to anyone (online or IRL) that what I'm doing is valid, I'm just going to do it. It may get lonely but this is truly what I love and I know i will get rewarded.
I'm going to attach this month's results. I had very little money to my name, I moved to my uncles house where I'm paying no rent and felt a lot less pressure on my bankroll. I started at .5/1 and 1/2 and slowly started to shot take 2/5 and very little 5/10 volume. I played almost 72k hands this month, which is the most volume I've ever put in in a month in my life. Attached is the graph. Eventually when I fix my old computer I'll export the DB to my new one and merge them. I will be posting interesting hands and lines I play here as well as weekly-monthly updates. I want to hold myself accountable no matter what and am interested to hear people's thoughts. I only have the last two months of my play tracked I'll post them shortly as I had to buy a new computer
GL ME!
Oh hell, I will be a little helpful and say that the two bet sizing choices for humans are mostly just a headache. You are staring at your answers pretty easily in this example if you get past the noise.
EDIT: These list of choices don't even scroll off the screen so you are staring at your answers without even needing filters. Time yourself. Give yourself only 2 minutes to do as I suggest. Group the 1/2 pot into the much more preferred pot sizing so that your only choices are to call or pot. Now in 2 minutes or less tell me what you are doing 100% of the time. And whatever you are not doing 100% of the time go super simple and say the rest is 50% call and 50% pot. Times up. Now you can have more time and improve on the super simple 50% call and 50% pot and add in or replace with a 75% one way and 25% the other way. Write down what you thought up quickly here. This is mostly what a human should be doing by trying to figure out what to do 100% of the time and at best also include a 50% - 50% and/or 75%-25% mixed strategy.
action btn open sb call i call in BB. flop btn bets 1/2 sb fold i call. turn he pots pretty fast i call. river i pot lead. tanked pretty long on turn to figure out what rivers im leading. i decided on turn im leading 2,5,7, 9, Q. checking all hearts. undecided about an A. Thoughts? He called me pretty quick with a set of 3s no blocker just unblocking hearts
seems like equity no good for turn call so u try to craft it to be better by doing those river donks which probably wont work out as he start barreling it off 3 way with a nutty range and as its anon a fish (which it might well be) probably folds 0% of hands which he did bet the turn with and u dont block any of his value hands slightly block straights but not even 55/66 type of blockers ... judge it its a spew
I'll tell you if you promise to only play live. I was 4 tabling Ignition PLO500-2k around the time of your recent hands and we probably crossed paths.
my gift to you is that i dont play 2k because im too scared to get cheated! you're welcome 😀
And regarding your solution, just to sum it up you do randomize the 50/50 ones and the ones that in my mind i dont think are 50/50 i should just cbet.
seems like equity no good for turn call so u try to craft it to be better by doing those river donks which probably wont work out as he start barreling it off 3 way with a nutty range and as its anon a fish (which it might well be) probably folds 0% of hands which he did bet the turn with and u dont block any of his value hands slightly block straights but not even 55/66 type of blockers ... judge it its a spew
probably not a good bluff only bc of anon fish part. i think its a good bluff in theory not holding nut flush blocker is very good. more likely he has it (he has some auto folds) but anyways regarding what youre saying about equity on the turn i have bottom wrap, nut gutshot, and a weak FD. Sure its not an OP hand but i only need 33% equity to continue and i think i have more than that anyways vs his range. if hearts comes on river then im probably folding if he pots for sure but he checks a lot anyways everytime he doenst have a flush. this hand is way too strong to fold on turn. I do see what ur saying though because he did bet MW its not a srp pot. still tho if the case is that hes an anon fish who probably is only value betting (and the way he did it, potting the turn pretty fast), then hes more weighted towards value anyways and less nut flushes making this an even more profitable call on turn. and imo 7 is a really scary river even for some fish! the main straight draw on the flop got there.
im trying to study this spot and see which combos of kt73 pot raise (which bdfd, the weaker ones, the higher ones etc), 2bdfd, 1 bdfd. Whats the best way to filter out the data here and understand the pattern?
I'm not saying to always combine two bet strategies like this into one, it is better to run a single bet size sim of whatever is that scenarios preferred sizing, but here we can just add the 1/2 pot strategy into the pot bet strategy. You will see that if you have two backdoor flush draws you bet pot 100% of the time. The super simple human version is to then say the one backdoor flush draws are a call 50% of the time a a pot bet 50% of the time. This will have you playing better almost everyone. And you can improve on 50% call and 50% pot by also including a 75% - 25% of the time as well on the one that clearly lean more one way than the other. But a human sticking to 50% call and 50% pot for things that are not 100% is still simple but highly effective and deployable. And the mental coin flip to bet pot 50% of the time is Wesley Snipes' rules from Passenger 57, "you always bet on black." The first card was a club or spade so you bet here in the 50% call and 50% pot scenario.
I'm not saying to always combine two bet strategies like this into one, it is better to run a single bet size sim, but here we can just add the 1/2 pot strategy into the pot bet strategy. You will see that if you have two backdoor flush draws you bet pot 100% of the time. The super simple human version is to then say the one backdoor flush draws are a call 50% of the time a a pot bet 50% of the time. This will have you playing better almost everyone. And you can improve on 50% call and 50% p
love it great advice thank you!
action btn open sb call i call in BB. flop btn bets 1/2 sb fold i call. turn he pots pretty fast i call. river i pot lead. tanked pretty long on turn to figure out what rivers im leading. i decided on turn im leading 2,5,7, 9, Q. checking all hearts. undecided about an A. Thoughts? He called me pretty quick with a set of 3s no blocker just unblocking hearts
I think turn is almost certainly a call seems like way too many outs. The river seems fine intuitively.
I think it’s good to work in river leads in those line so what id do is pull up the exact rivers in trainer and just observe the ev of those bluffs with various combos.
Then you can say, ok 7 river is a bluff in theory but it’s only by 0.5bb, and so if villain is even slightly over calling it’s bad. Then you can make those theoretical bluffs more relevant.
3b pot 130bb ish effective i cb 3/4 and x jam turn. thoughts? he folded, and guy was stab heavy vs "weakness". but not rlly sure if just potting turn and going with it at 2 spr is better than check jamming or even check calling then deciding, still losing to QT a lot of rivers just suck for my hand and theres still a decent amoutn to play for
Overall your thought processs is good.
This spot is about river playability, equity denial and blockers.
Blockers:
If we hold AAQ3 what is our opponent weighted towards? KQJT and 56 interaction.
Vs that range our river playability is obv not great as we rarely improve but an enormous amount of rivers help villains range. If we pot it won’t be much behind which helps, at 100 we can just rip. But it’s still dicey
Equity denial: since we are also crushed here sometimes we aren’t denying equity that well.
How do we play if we check? Also kinda terrible but vs said villain jam seems like the only choice.
If all options are bad here and would be for most turns for this particular hand did we make a mistake on the flop? I don’t know much about 4c, I guess at 100 this is a great flop and we just pot it a lot? What about at 130? Maybe we should either pot or c/jam this combo on flop. It’s great for check jamming but not great for a “smaller” cbet.
This is easily one of the more difficult spots in the game but very common so you want to hammer this in trainer until it’s rock solid and sub conscious so you can focus on player adjustments instead of trying to figure out what to do on the spot.
Okay.. quick first week update. Yeah i am so rusty. The things that came to me intuitively just don't really come to meso easily anymore. I'm hoping its just a it takes time sort of thing, but yeah long breaks from the game really discourage me because i have really bad long term memory. I'm by in no means bad or anything it's just the small things I was doing (timing, probing in spots people are weak in, I'm not really feeling like I'm taking advantage of them anymore).
I primarily played 2/5 this week and averaged aroudn 3-4 hours a day. I dont know how I used to play like 12h+ days i think that's just something too that I need to get accustomed to ive found it super difficult to play for extended periods of time. I'm gonna stick to what im doing and re-start drilling spots consistently, I think it's just a confidence thing and studying will get me back to peak performance. I used to pride myself on instantly knowing what to do in a spot but im finding myself second guessing myself a lot, especially in deeper spots.
With all that being said, it's gonna sound like im crazy given my results this week because i did well i won like 20 bis at 2/5. I ran really well, which im also just not used to lol. Just barely put in enough volume for this sample to matter. here are the results for the week!
"3b pot 130bb ish effective i cb 3/4 and x jam turn. thoughts? he folded, and guy was stab heavy vs "weakness". but not rlly sure if just potting turn and going with it at 2 spr is better than check jamming or even check calling then deciding, still losing to QT a lot of rivers just suck for my hand and theres still a decent amoutn to play for"
Never really understoon 75% C-bet. Why do we have it?
Anyways just wanted to ask your guys opinion. If we pot turn, how often does draws reraise. They ofc should x amount but what would you say in reality is the % of draws vs flopped sets and QT when villain re-raises your turn pot size bet here?
Anyways just wanted to ask your guys opinion.
If we pot turn, how often does draws reraise. They ofc should x amount but what would you say in reality is the % of draws vs flopped sets and QT when villain re-raises your turn pot size bet here?
If we had potted the turn, then most people I know are only re-raising with some combo draw containing a set. Top set can be without backup.
Second set might need some backup. And any other set probably need a flush draw and a straight draw in the combo draw to re-raise here.
If we had potted the turn, then most people I know are only re-raising with some combo draw containing a set. Top set can be without backup.
Second set might need some backup. And any other set probably need a flush draw and a straight draw in the combo draw to re-raise here.
This is extremely far off. It’s a 3b pot with 4SPR. Jamming range will be way wider than that.
Subbed, gl!
heres an example of the spot i was talking about the other day of understanding the pattern. i figured it out! this might be a useless spot in this one instance but in a vacuum ive found it helpful! With this combo, it only cbets a BDFD triple suited OR the combos with 2 BDFDs. all other combos get checked. It didnt take me too long to figure out just had to play with it for a couple of mins but it felt pretty good to get it. Also im starting to feel pretty confident again. My aggression is starting to go up in spots I wasn't. it gets harder when the board is two toned to understand which suits are preferred, the bottom middle or top card, but im sure there are certain explanations . Obviously as a human I can randomize but in my free time figuring this stuff out is fun
Also just a social life update - I'm doing a lot better. I just need someone to actively give me the daily attention I require so i dont lose my mind and can just focus on poker. I went out with my high school buddy who lives here who i havent seen in 8 years and it was surprinsingly really fun and he has a pretty big group he said he would start inviting me to things which is nice. The breakup sucked and still does but i actually met this new girl on bumble whos pretty cool. I'm taking her on a date pretty soon. IM travelling to NY tomorrow and crashing at my friend's again so the date will have to be around the time I'm back. It's my brothers birthday tomorrow and im just gonna stay the week until Halloween. Also, im fostering a cat when im back from NY :-)
Also just a social life update - I'm doing a lot better. I just need someone to actively give me the daily attention I require so i dont lose my mind and can just focus on poker. I went out with my high school buddy who lives here who i havent seen in 8 years and it was surprinsingly really fun and he has a pretty big group he said he would start inviting me to things which is nice. The breakup sucked and still does but i actually met this new girl on bumble whos pretty cool. I'm taking her on
Thats something youve gotta look for within bud. Sorry it didnt work out with the Missus, time to rebuild.
i open btn calls sb 3b i call btn calls. sb TANK cb 1/3 i call btn folds. he then TANK checks, disregarding timing which i'll get into later - what do we do here with our range?? this spot is hard! i decided to split my range between 1/3 and pot given its literally 1 spr. i chose this is 1/3 category
So I’m a 4c noob so could be off but here’s what I make of it
So his 3b range here pre is a lot of AA obv.
He will probably cbet near range checking maybe a few KKJTds kinda hands, sometimes AKJTds kinda hands. Rarely strong.
On the then for 1SPR his range is either top set, weak tp, or tp with combo equity like 2p+draws etc, weak or strong.
Some of his top sets that are vulnerable prefer ripping. Some combo equity can play as a check to protect that range. Essentially hands that are not folding but also don’t mind seeing a river. A897 i.e
The most important factor here is that people will just rip away any hand that can to make life simple making their checking range weighted towards weak tps and just not enough hands to call down with, occasional super nuts but that’s hard to make obv.
Playing OOP balanced here involves checking quite a few hands that are just too tempting to shove for players.
Vs that range we like to bet a lot. Ripping some equities, betting small with some stronger hands.
Actually if his range is mostly weak tps, which we also heavily unblock, I like checking your hand to let him river 2ps.
Also I limp ur hand pre a good bit
Back in the 5/10 mix woop woop. Ran super bad at 500 past 3 days lost like 13 bis back there, and was down like 5 bis at 5/10 too. Recovered all at 5/10 yday and today. Ill post some hands later i wrote down a bunch. Started using the randomizer to channel my frequencies it actually saves me so much of a headache. Only using it in spots where im not really sure, if i have a good reason not to use it i wont.
Ffs, purchase some monitors so you don't have to play with tables overlapping. Didn't you buy a new computer just a few weeks ago?
Ffs, purchase some monitors so you don't have to play with tables overlapping. Didn't you buy a new computer just a few weeks ago?
Nah i actually like them super close together so im always paying attention to all the action on every table i find that if theyre too far apart it hurts my eyes to constantly go back and forth between tables. ill separate them when i send screenshots tho lol
I think I was at your $4,000+ table if you got most of that stack putting a boat over boat on someone that couldn't get away from it.
