THISPLAYISBAD- PLO cash game journey
Hello all,
My Sn on GG is THISPLAYISBAD and I am starting this thread to document my journey of moving through the ranks of PLO. I transitioned from NL to PLO almost 2 years ago and started from micro stakes and am now currently playing 200 and 500. Before transitioning, I had never had any coaching or studied poker at all apart from watching youtube videos; I was very much a tough fish, finding moderate success in low and midstakes NL games. When transitioning to PLO, I decided to take it seriously and find out how good I can really get at poker so I enrolled in a CFP and had some private coaching on the side as well. About 8 months ago I had a 500K hand sample of good results at 200 and decided to then quit my job and pursue poker full time. I have found the decision to be a good one but also quite isolating as I have zero friends who take poker seriously and am very much alone in my endeavors as a new "professional" player so i am hoping that making this thread will open some doors in terms of networking and making new poker colleagues/friends. I also believe the thread will simply be tons of fun as I plan on sharing results and the ups and downs for you all to enjoy. Some short term goals:
- Finding more life balance and being more disciplined with my schedule. (I tend to be extremely obsessive about the game and struggle to take breaks and enjoy life as much as I should)
- Being kinder to myself (I am a perfectionist by nature and am very hard on myself when making mistakes at the tables. If I look up a hand in solver and solver tells me my play is even slightly negative EV I obsess about the spot and focus on never making that mistake again and have a very negative inner monologue with myself. I realize this way of thinking is unhealthy and I am actively working on correcting the thought process)
- Lowering the amount of tables I play and focus on playing as well as possible every session. (I have an issue with wanting to plow through hands and variance and will overload myself with to many tables, especially if they are good ones. I can play well with a lot of tables but it inevitably always causes a misclick or suboptimal play and a 50 BB blunder occurs. My goal is to limit my tables to a maximum of 6 and simply play longer hours to get volume in (30-40) hours a week.
- Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker" by Jared Tendler. I am about half way through it and so far I have really enjoyed it and feels like it has helped me with my mental games.
My goal with poker is to simply be the best I can be, I am highly competitive in nature and foresee myself not stopping until I reach the top OR the top of my ability. I am 36 years old and recently married so i do have pressure on me to make this work which is scary but I also think it is a massive advantage in many ways.
There are no rules for this thread and please feel free to ask me anything and I will answer all questions I am comfortable answering. I will try to make updates with graphs once a week at minimum.
Made it to day 2 of the PLO Venom on ACR on first bullet, should be a good sweat!
Things are going very well in cash games still but disastrous in tournaments, just running below BB/chip ev, and getting screwed near the bubble in a lot of spots, although there were 2 questionable plays I made on the stone bubble in spots where the min cash was only 2X buy in but if I win I am in commanding lead which has value when it comes to closing out tournaments, especially in bounty formats. Nitting it up trying to min cash and having zero chips to fight with is not my style, could be a huge leak, not sure. The main thing is that i feel that I am playing very very well and focusing on what i can control so i am happy about that. I have accepted a spot in a CFP stable and had my first coaching session with their head coach which was pretty cool, he pointed out a couple of glaring leaks that I had in certain nodes and the coolest thing about it was that I could almost instantly fix them. Database analysis is super powerful and if you have someone who actually knows what they are doing there is a lot of value in that. CFP deals are not for everyone but I do think it is the best way to get the highest value coaching considering the coach wants to you to improve otherwise they are wasting their time. In a paid per hour agreement, the coach could care less how you perform. I just know I want to be one of the best players in the world one day and having a coach who coaches some of the best players in the world currently seems like a good investment considering what my future goals are. Updated cash and tournament graphs are below.
Hit a minor 5K downswing but quickly bounced back and I am happy to report that the upswing continues. I was most happy about not tilting or being mentally weak during this minor downswing. I definitely had thoughts of impending doom and the illusion/fear that a massive 50 buy downswing MUST occur because I have been upswinging so hard lately. I am very aware that these thoughts are part of my detrimental mental programming and I believe it is derived from deep down feeling that I do not deserve
just wow, that's some very honest stuff here Sir ... congrats on being so open, even being able to talk about it ... i'm sure this is mental strength that is showing, so keep up the good work, all is well and deserved.
just wow, that's some very honest stuff here Sir ... congrats on being so open, even being able to talk about it ... i'm sure this is mental strength that is showing, so keep up the good work, all is well and deserved.
Thank you very much from the kind words, definitely appreciated!
Running 40 BI below EV so far this year and just lost 25 buy ins straight over the last few 2 days. Still a profitable month so I can not really complain I suppose. The twisted side of me actually enjoys this part of poker, losing I mean. I enjoy the challenge of getting crushed and knowing that I have to maintain control or the downswing will only get worse. I truly feel I am getting more and more desensitized to the swings the longer I play and while I do feel emotions of anger, frustration and injustice while playing I am able to take a deep breath and make the right play and my game is effected very little. Granted, I am only human and every human has a breaking point, tilt control is not about perfection, it is about creating a mindset and environment that allows you to increase your threshold for tilt triggers as time goes on. The better you are at it, the less negative variance and others things outside of your control matter to you. I hate losing but I am looking at my graph and cashier balance and really not caring much, simply because I know I played great (by my standards and current capabilities) and that is the only thing that i can control and the only thing that matters. Graph for the month is below:
EV has not quite caught up with me for this year, currently running 45 buy ins and just north of 30K below EV so far. I was cheated a bunch at Ignition which is annoying so I am done with that site but I am still winning for the year so very grateful for that and I will not complain to much, the EV will always catch up eventually. I have been struggling a lot lately with ego at the tables. It seems like it was just yesterday I was struggling to beat 200 and beating 500 seemed nearly impossible and 1K was more of a pipe dream then anything. I now sit at the tables and find myself truly bored with the level of play I see at 500, and now even 1K. Very few players make it necessary to think very deeply in certain spots and I am amazed how almost every reg I come across only 4 bets AA...LOL It is becoming harder to get action so I do find myself playing a lot more reg battles, which I think is fine because if I truly want to be one of the best in the world one day I must get used to this notion. To be honest I enjoy the battling and seeing if I can figure out what the other guy is doing, it is the spirit of competition I love the most about poker, with the monetary gain being a close second. With all of this said, I do not like the fact my ego has gotten slightly out of control so I will work on reeling that in quite a bit. I do not think I am a great player by any means and I know I have a ton of leaks and there are much better players than me at my current stakes. When you have positive results for quite some time it can be dangerous as it has the ability to poison your mind and make you believe you are better than you actually are and I am sure that is what is going with me now. I will strive to be more humble and grateful moving forward. Another thing I need to work on is playing to many tables, this has been a huge leak of mine for a very long time. I do believe I am "talented" in the skill of multitabling, however, I know I am giving much away and tons of EV by playing to many tables. I have achieved double digit win rate for last 150K hands while playing 8-10 tables at a time, but I imagine if I lower my table count that will do wonders for my game and brain. I do often feel exhausted and drained after playing so much so this leak will be my primary focus going forward, along with keeping my ego in check. On a completely different note, I have decided to take back my former job in finance. This job is unique in the sense it still allows my loads of free time and is pretty laid back, but still pays well. I am taking the job back to supplement my bankroll as I want to move up the stakes as fast as possible, not to mention my wife and I are wanting to start a family and she just lost her job so the stable income will be appreciated. The job will not affect my poker so much, I plan to study during the day and play at night per usual, I will just have to work a little harder I suppose but it will be a temporary situation. The plan is to go right back to poker full time after wife finds another job. Anyways, ty for reading this post and following my journey, I hope you all do great things and are running well!
Graph since blog start:
Graph for year:
Results for year in dollars Actual/EV Difference:
1K Results:
Hey,
Your blog is quite inspiring, i do have similarities IRL with you. I'm playing PLO200 and aiming to move up. I'm very interested in CFP, if you have some time to chat about it could you please add me on discord ? (bobobowser.)
