Road to crushing high stakes PLO

Happy new year everyone.

2024 gonna be my year! One simple goal: 500k+ in profits.

This week played a lot of 50/100 and some 100/200. Unfortunately ran a bit cold at the big game and lost 2BIs quickly. Will stick to 5k and 10k for now as 20 is a bit too massive.

Overall playing very solid, starting to loosen up more and deviate more in spots when my intuition calls for it.

Im still making an occasional massive blunder in big pots. This is where my inexperience in the format still shows as I have less than 50k hands in total. The other reason is that my brain is still quite inflamed and foggy all the time so I’m always playing while tired. Things are slowly getting better in that regard and I’m just gonna have to accept that I’m not playing my A game much.

As for the inexperience part, as an exercise I will start playing bomb pot sessions to train myself to deal with chaos/non standard spots.

glgl, will follow!

Im sure you are aware of the risks, but be careful at ClubGG. I played a small sample in 4 card $200-$400 equivalent buyin tables and felt like the collusion was rampant.

Seemed like the tables were super soft but big fish very often making the correct decisions, never seen something like this. Weirdest thing was when you sit down the table instantly filled up with very loose guys, was funny, like fish was chasing me.
Couple of friends tried too and felt the same and quit aswell.

I know there are tonns of different clubs, just sayin.

I spoke to crimsonchin and he said I could make a post > I'm his agent that he speaks of a few posts up. Wholeheartedly agree there are some scummy spots (as of the last time I dealt with them) that still have a lot of action (Pokerworld365 union, Israeli Poker Kingdom union, UTG union, whichever union that the club Vdara belongs to). If anyone has any doubts of whether they are playing in one of those unions, as each of them have MANY individual clubs/rooms making up the union, can message me and I'm happy to compare your lobby to mine in one of my inactive accounts.

Anyone that is even remotely interested in app games can send me a PM on here with their Telegram/discord/skype/whatever information or shoot me a message on one of the social media platforms (slayerv1fan on almost all of them).

I myself raked more than $1mil in app games in 2023 and battled all over the place and am super connected with most clubs/unions and have some very nice spots to play and nice deals to offer. My knowing ~ everyone + being known for my high volume + my reputation has paid off nicely since entering the app game world in 2022 after concluding my days of being a $500 spin reg

My partners and I work tirelessly day in and day out to keep ourselves informed and keep our players, whether a top pro like crimsonchin, or a complete fun player, satisifed with the deals + level of service they receive

@OP: I need to catch up on my end of 2023/start of 2024 backlog so we can start studying together! Know you're going to crush it this year and excited to be along for the ride!

Ya, I say this because I love online poker, I don’t get any get any referral money in any way for this.

Apps are here to stay and in these games have far more traffic than mainstream sites.

The way to avoid getting defrauded and cheated on apps is for everyone to stop working with agents that facilitate and profit from it to begin with. Only work with people that seriously care about game integrity.

So far my experience has been great with that, while you still have to be careful, which with the whole moneytaker scandal you have to be on main sites too, overall I my poker is largely free of too much worry over this.

In your poker development at what stakes did you get "stuck"? Or was it mostly smooth sailing up to HS?

I started in 2008 so times were a bit different but overall I still think poker is not as tough and competitive as it may seem. Basically anything under 25/50 is not super tough.

I got stuck initially at like .5:1 or 1/2. Then I met with a brilliant early high stakes player and we got drunk and talked poker all night and that talk inspired me to free myself of all dogmatic thinking and be creative.

I think when you read the forums there is too much emphasis on playing gto and answers in strat threads are given as a black and white thing. For me hands are always contextual to the opponent and many hands I would understand what to do in game but not sure what best is when just reading a hand history.

This is coming from someone who has spent more time studying solvers than 95% of the field. The most effective insight that it should give you is how other regs are going to deviate.

From there smooth up to 10/20, but 25/50 has always been a different animal and that requires very strong poker in all aspects.

Funny story about that high stakes player.

Made 500k in his second year in poker. Super talented, brilliant mind. Then quit to play WoW. Never heard from him again.

Hello!
Is everything going as planned?
One question - do you use hud/tracker on the applications and if so, which ones?

Thanks GL!

Unfortunately I’ve had a six month set back from having to battle this horrible Lyme disease. The damage of this interruption to what I was working towards is huge.

I live out of my truck in the god foresaken mountains because it is the only way my symptoms managble.

But ultimately there is a choice to make and that is to focus on moving forward.

I’m angry now. Let’s channel the frustration to make up for the lost time.

Just put in the first 3hrs of play and study this morning. I’m sharp and the rust is not bad at all. Solid fundamentals study pays off as it sticks well.

The goal: 50-100k/monthly winnings within 3 months time. Let’s see if we can do it.

glgl, you can do it in 2 months 😉 good to see back in action. Post hands or send hands(can be even all of them lol)

Thanks guys appreciate the kinds words and support.

Blog update:
Still been getting a lot of physical rest but my brain fog is starting to clear out. Small milestone: I played an 8h session 3 handed reg battle at 10/20 6card yesterday. This is very promising for my ability to focus and grind. Played good poker, a few sloppy mistakes like misreading my hand and still room for improvement.

Also a personal milestone: I lost 14BI and felt close to zero tilt or frustration over the session and kept playing strong poker.

How I study after a session like that:
Mark 20 hands during the session. Go deep on all of them before playing again.

For example, sb v btn 100bb 3b pot. I’m in the sb with AKT762ds. A34r flop. Cbet, call. Turn 7 with an SPR of 2. This is a fairly classic situation. A good flop for us OOP as the 3bettor and the nut worst turn for our range since IP clear has all the 56. For 2SPR I did what most people would do with my hand: close your eyes and rip it.

This is alright for given combo but it we go deeper into the spot we see that betting smaller, like half pot, is a better strategy here. The reason is that on such a straight completing turn we are mostly going to have hands like sets, two pairs and a few straights and lots of weak/mediocre one/2p type hands.

If we decide to just rip our good hands we allow our opponent to play perfect vs that size and more importantly we leave only weak hands in our checking range. Intuitively I expect most but the very best reg to be guilty of this mistake.

A better strategy is to barrel a balanced mixed of strong hands that can play rivers (2pairs with a nut gutter or straight blocker, sets with a straight blocker, straights) and check a few good hands as well like sets without blocker or even 2pairs with a straight blocker.

More importantly, if we assume most regs intuitively make the same mistake how can we best exploit that in this situation? Can you think of other board textures where this pattern would be similar?

this is a huge punt. i would imagine a 6c solver would high freq check flop actually.

You are mistaken. This is a near range bet in 5c otf. While we run into more straights in 6c, we also have more AA and we will have more random connectivity to back up our other hands.

On the turn bombing top two with a straight and fd blocker will likely still be a low frequency play. Just consider the range: we can bet straights, we can bet sets with blockers and redraws. Our bluffs will be top 2p with blockers. While a small size is better, ripping it is a 1-2bb error at most.

I took a look and stand corrected. Thank you

Are you mainly focusing on app games? Think it will be worth your while to focus on the regular sites and more 4c. Gl gl

5/6c in a good spot rn for midstakes imo, and only getting better as time goes on.

hey best of luck, I played a lot on ClubGG mainly NLH and saw how great the plo5 games were. Definitely a flip fest with the antes and short stacks and such but I was thinking you could make a ton of profit there.

Btw, I would definitely recommend using asian hand converter w ClubGG. It will track player names and rake paid correctly so you can get a better understanding of winrates. glgl

Thanks! I started using asianhand converter along with DriveHud which is the best tracking software I’ve ever used. I’m not good with configuring software and h2n was always a nightmare to use. Drivehud is intuitive and user friendly the way an iPhone is.

Update: we’re gaining momentum. Right now I’m crushing 10/20 which I feel very comfortable at. There is a common viewpoint that the difference between 10/20 and 25/50+ is mostly a matter of bankroll and emotional management. This could not be further from the truth. While I feel extremely confident playing reg heavy line ups at 10/20 that confidence gets crushed when I sit down at 25/50.

The regs at 5/10 and 10/20 are quite predictable, unbalanced in spots and lack a certain killer instinct. But at 25/50 everyone is extremely aggressive and even if they make fundamental mistakes here and there they are all tough. At 10/20 I can tune into my reads and exploit quite far out of range. But at 25/50 attempting to do so backfires and the proper approach is to exploit more at the margins.

Confidence can be a dangerous thing, it can make you arrogant and this can make you vulnerable.

The proper approach now is humility: continue the process, play the pool at 10/20, carefully game select to ease into 25/50+.

There is that Warren Buffett quote in investing: investing is about waiting for the right pitch. You don’t have to swing at every ball.

I’ve found the same to be true when it comes to reads and exploits. Whenever I try to exploit my opponents to hard and make genius poker happen I just end up spewing. You have to play solid poker and wait for the openings to show themselves. Stick to your gameplan and wait for the next exploits to show up.

What do you think about 1k and 2k on major unions? Diamond, paradise, RGS and Panam. GL on breaking through to 5k!

I have no idea what any of those are, are those club unions?

I play mostly just CGG and have a great relation with a trustworthy agent that finds the clubs for me. While you should be very careful on apps (and online poker in general) I have a level of trust with my agent where I can feel confident in outsourcing that job entirely to him.

Update:

Almost have 10k hands in since starting back up, overall feeling very good at my level of play and it’s been well over expectation. That said there is of course still plenty of room for improvement and my study routine has been good.

Results -50bb/100 over those hands… yikes. I got slightly tilted from runbad in my last session and ended up making a gto river call that I knew was likely a losing call. I quit after that but should have quit before it happened. The most dangerous is when we are feeling confident.

The key to beating plo and how to study

The key to beating midstakes/other regs is understanding how their range constructions lead to imbalances by the turn and especially by the river. This is actually something the old school players pre solver were good at because there was no other way to win but I feel that it’s something people have become worse at.

Particularly in plo you should largely forget about the theoretical notion of I have to call x/y/z part of my range to this size bet on the river. For starters ranges can not be so easily broken down in percentages vs sizes in plo but more importantly the way all but the very best players construct their ranges leading up to the river leads to heavily distorted ranges on many run outs.

This holds true for any form of poker but particularly so in plo and even more in 5c/6c.

When studying with trainer/solver the goal should be to understand how range construction should work and how different player types will deviate and what the implications are on later streets.

What you should not do is mindlessly take an isolated line of the game tree and hammer out the actions for each combos/blockers in trainer. While this can be helpful within a larger framework by itself this will not lead to great poker.

They are pokerbros unions. ClubGG has felt quite nice yeah.