Rebuilding an online roll at 1/2 Online Vegas PLO

Im a 1/2 reg on wsop, dm me if you wanna talk hands

Back from Cali Trip straight into Hell

Didn't end up playing any poker on my trip to LA/San Francisco. Came back and put out some pretty hard volume online but I'm getting absolutely whacked in all ins especially at 2/5.

48% all ins won overall is really bad esp when I usually get it in ahead vs fish, and having 39% all in won at 2/5 is absolutely brutal. Right around 51% all ins won at 1/2 PLO. But since I've run pretty hot since June, I shoulda expected something like this. I was joking with my friend that I should have moved down in stakes actually after my last month. -$6k isn't too bad though. Could be a lot worse for sure. I recall my biggest single session downswing in terms of buy ins was 28 Buy ins back around 2019ish when I was playing a ton on Global Poker. Luckily that session was at 0.5/1.00 PLO.

I don't think the player pool at 2/5 is particularly that strong. It certainly feels just as soft if not softer than the pool pre-Michigan merge. 1/2 PLO is still an absolute mega fish fest as always but the 2/5 pool has a few more competent regs that will grind it. I did have one day where it was just 1 fish and 5 decent players. Maybe I should try and practice better game selection some days.

Anyways, the rest of this post might just be a vent post for some of the bigger pots I've lost at 2/5. You can see that clearly, some of my opponents are not going to be playing their hand well at all. Names will still be blurred out to protect the identity of our precious fish/whales. Maybe this will be 50% whine, 50% strategy thoughts.

HAND 1

This whale finds and open here, and BTN 3 bets and I 4B and he somehow finds a call. It goes in on the flop at SPR < 1. He only had 3.5 BB in the pot after raising pre and so he had no obligation to call a cold 4 bet with KJ72 triple but I suppose that's irrelevant if you're opening KJ72 in the first place...

HAND 2

Reg fish 3b my UTG open with an obviously bad hand. I see a lot of bad players or newer players to PLO just 3 bet random single rundowns like this and its just not very good. 3456 double is just calling here and I believe the only perfect rundown that's single suited that should 3b vs UTG is maybe AKQJ. Anyways, flop plays itself with both our hands after I 4b very standard stackoffs postflop.

HAND 3

Everything is standard this hand. SB is a mediocre reg but no equilibrium errors this hand. SB 3b, I 4b, and we stack off on flop 150 BB deep. This one is just a whine post

HAND 4

So CO and BTN are both pretty weak players with BTN being a big whale. I raise pre and it goes 4 ways. I check flop and CO even though its 4 ways bets this combo which is pretty bad into 4 players, and maybe even worse is BTN raise with bottom 2 gutter. Generally a player betting 4 ways represents extremely strong ranges, KK is very common here and there should be a lot of TTJQ type hands betting as well. I Jam over the top of BTN and QJ53 has a very clear fold with naked open ender as many times he'll be up vs Set vs Wrap and has very few outs. Anyways, the field is soft and they both shove all the money in and we come in 3rd place.

HAND 5

So UTG 1 opens here and CO calls. I flatted here but it turns out this hand is a 3bet squeeze on the BTN. If UTG raises and you have this hand on the BTN, its just a flat, but if UTG raises and UTG+1 calls, the solver wants you to squeeze. Guess I learned something here. I maybe over-respecting EP raises and not taking enough squeeze spots to punish flatters which I'll have to make a mental not of in the future.

Anyways, SB action fish somehow finds a squeeze here with T863 and we go 3 way to the flop. He pots flop and I shove and unfortunately we get a horrifying run-out to lose the pot.

HAND 6

BTN is a decent reg I think. Should be winning in the games. I open he 3bets and I call of course. We are 130 BBs deep.

On the flop, BTN cbets 1/3rd and I check raise to 3x his bet. He flats.

Turn, I decide to just pot and he rips and we die.

So I line checked this with the solver because I originally thought this reg's line was bad but interestingly, at 100 BBs, the solver likes to cbet his hand and it will always check raise mine for about what I sized. But the solver chooses to rip the AA95 over my check raise here.

When I set the blind depth to 150BBs starting, it takes a similar line but it mixes flop flat and shove when facing a check raise from BTN's position. I guess in equilibrium theory, maybe his line here wasn't that bad but I think in reality, its not too great primarily for the following reason:

This texture is typically underbluffed by the check raiser. I think a typical human will have significantly less bluffs than a solver so it might be wise to overfold flop to the check raise. If I had to guess though, I personally probably have very slighly more bluffs than the average player but not by that much. 236 rainbow boards is just a type of board that you don't want to bluff because people just don't tend to give you credit on these boards especially if you have a tight CO range. I guess in the end, it kind of becomes a leveling war of he thinks I think...

HAND 7

Anyways... since this post is just me mostly crying, I'll leave off with a pretty funny hand I won. Unfortunately, this one was only at 1/2 PLO but this should demonstrate how absolutely whale-y the 1/2 WSOP games can be.

UTG opens, I 3bet, CO cold 4 bets QQj8 and we are 220 BBs deep... I 5 bet and he calls and he snap stacks off on this flop lol. Yea... PLO is still soft so I'm not overly concerned about this 2/5 downswing.

(RANDOM BONUS AA vs AA SCAM FOR FUTURE RUN GOOD)

Happens welcome to plo variance you’ll end up winning the same amount of times in the long run just don’t bust ur roll before then

Dealing WPT

The WPT is finally over at the Wynn and I was scheduled to deal from Dec. 8-Dec 22 for the series. When I deal, I actually keep track of everything so I thought it'd be interesting to release the data for how much I made during the series as a poker dealer on a spreadsheet.

Each column represents how many downs (30 min assignment) I was assigned to. 2 downs = 1 hour.

-Brush: is when I have to chip run for the cash games, luckily i had none of these. Base pay + tips.
-Dead Cash: is when I have to hold a cash table but it's not active so I basically don't make any money while sitting there waiting for a game to start. I only had 1 through the series. Base pay.
-Cash: when I had to deal a cash game down. Base pay + tips.
-Tournament: when I had to deal a tournament down. Base pay + tournament down rate.
-Break: when I am assigned a 30 min break, base pay.

For tournaments, the entry fees and stuff are all divided amongst the dealers and staff for the series and averaged out throughout the week to pay the dealers the tournament down rate for each tournament down a dealer has dealt. For the WPT series, this rate was about $24 this year although I recall last year it was about $25. This is on top of base pay. All other assignments only generate base pay. While I'm clocked in, I receive a base pay of $12/hr regardless until I hit overtime (past 8 hours) where I receive $18/hr.

During this series, it's heavily tournament focused so I dealt 104.5 tournament downs. I only dealt 13 downs of cash games earning $252 in tips from those cash games making my cash game down rate about $19/down. This is in line with what I typically make during other times when dealing cash games. Clearly, dealing tournaments at $24/down is preferred during WPT.

Adding up my total tips ($252) total tournament downs earned ($2508), and total hourly base pay including overtime ($986), I earned $3746 working 79 hours during the WPT. This comes out to a pre-tax hourly of about $48/hour.

As far as take home after tax, I seem to be taxed at roughly 20% so the final hourly will come out to around $38/hr. See pic below for Tax withholdings on my paycheck (pic only reflects my earnings during the period of Dec 8-Dec 15)

WPT is considered one of the better times to deal so during the off season, I estimate the pre-tax $/hour for dealers to be closer to $30-$35/hr. A lot of people ask me why I deal if my poker hourly is higher and the truth is, I just kind of enjoy doing it part time. Every time I go through a week or two of dealing, it remotivates me to put in a bunch of hours grinding PLO later. I find dealing enjoyable and relaxing as long as its not in huge amounts. I also like eating free food at employee dining. In 2025, I might give dealing in other places a shot, like the WSOP circuit, or a cardplayer cruise or something just for the experience since I've only ever dealt at the Wynn so far. I also think a lot of poker players who are struggling to go pro at 1/3 NLHE or even 2/5 NLHE should just become poker dealers as I think the $/hour earned as a dealer is just better than what they'll make playing and the stability is very nice. I think the transition from poker player to poker dealer is incredibly natural and easy.

PLO
As I mentioned, dealing has gotten me a bit more motivated to play PLO so I finally started putting in some hours at the casino again as I hadn't played a live session since Oct 4. Also dabbled some more online when I found the time and I've decided to stick mostly to 1/2 PLO online to just practice and rebuild the roll after having some rough variance at 2/5 the month before.

At Wynn, I had a PLO session where I basically got AAQ9 vs AK72 vs AKJ8 in a 5 bet pot and the short stack (AK72) ended up scooping the main and I chopped the side vs AKJ8 in an 8k pot. I find it kind of funny that in a single hand, I can win/lose an entire 2 weeks dealer paycheck in an instant. I also had a first hand at 1/2/5 PLO at the Wynn where I 3bet AAxx and ran into AQQX on a flop of AQQ and lost $500. Anyways, with poker dealing + online poker + live poker so far, its looking to head for another 8-10k month hopefully. I'm pretty motivated to put in a bunch of hours in 2025. As a side note, I need to start studying again as I've been putting off hand reviews and solver lines in the past couple months while still having a subscription to a couple market trainers. Might even resubscribe to RIO and catch up on some PLO vids and see what everyone is up to.

2025
I haven't decided whether I will continue to update this thread going into 2025. I feel like I've brushed off the rust I wanted to in PLO by starting this thread and I'm getting kinda lazy about updating now. My parents also found a home in Florida they want to retire in although for now they're only going to live there in the winter so they made a cash offer (since mortgage rates are kind of high now) and the seller accepted it. As to not take a tax hit penalty in their 401k, I agreed to put in about 130k of my own cash into the property with my parents and I will likely live in that house during the spring/fall when they are not there and check out the games near there as it's located between Tampa's Hardrock and Orange City's Poker Room. Orange City is the closer poker room and checking Bravo, it seems to have plenty of PLO action for me. Who knows, maybe I'll even apply to deal at Orange City if I like it there.

bro I just got KK. I'm all in.

edit. I won.

good luck with your goals in PLO bro.

In for more updates

best PLO blog of all time! gl 2025

nice read! sick run at 1/2 and dealing 😀

Should've bought the balenciaga gear

End of thread

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm probably done updating this thread. The point of this was just to brush off the rust after a very long hiatus from PLO and I feel like I've done that with the online practice and random study. 2025 I plan to grind a lot, especially now that I have motivation from closing on the Florida house with my parents and wanting to make some cash now. I'll leave this thread with one final update on how things are going in 2025.

Live 5/5/10 PLO at Aria
I basically live at Aria now grinding 5/5/10 PLO every day for 10 hours a day roughly. My time away from the live streets from studying and playing online has sharpened my game greatly and I feel better than I ever have at the tables. I actually started the month stuck almost 10k by January 5th after 44 hours and since then have gone on a 45k upswing. I have also kept track of every single All In i've played at 5/5/10 including the hand histories... At my worst, I was at around 31% all ins won. As of today, I am at 49% won over 159 all ins in 157 hours played...

Stats 4 days into the year (Jan 4 2025) at my lowest

Stats as of today (Jan 15 2025) exactly halfway through the month.

I had a friendly prop bet with a friend of mine that I'd grind 200 hours this month but tbh I just wanted a little motivation to start me off on a strong volume grind for the year. I actually expect to probably play 250-300 hours in January. February or March, I will likely head to Florida to help my parents with moving into the new house/furniture stuff etc. I am undecided how I will allocate my time between playing PLO in Florida and back in Vegas.

Hand Histories

Of course with 157 hours played this month and 159 all ins, this post wouldn't be that entertaining without a few hand histories so here are some more memorable ones...

HAND 1: Gross double runout

5/5/10, Straddle is on and MP makes it 80, BTN and CO calls, and I complete my SB straddle with J♠T♠9♣7♠

Flop ($320): 5♥6♠8♠
I donk lead this board for $275, MP calls, and BTN shoves about $900, I reshove all in and MP stacks off about $1.7k effective with me. We agree to run it twice and MP has A♠A♥9♠4♦ and BTN doesn't show but says he has naked red 579x.

First run out 8,8
Second run out 6,6.

MP scoops entire pot with running boats on both boards.

HAND 2: 6k pot at 1/2 PLO
UTG straddles $10, a few limps, I bump it to $60 with 5♦5♥6♦6♠ from the SB, BB and UTG calls, and our action whale makes it $300 and me and BB and UTG call. I am 2.3k deep with our action whale.

Flop ($1200): K♦5♣7♥
I donk pot $1200, BB tank calls off about $800, and our action whale shoves all in ($800 more to me) with NAKED AAT8 and he only runs it once.

Turn K, River K. Whale scoops 6k pot with AA.

HAND 3: Ok, one more stupid runout to keep with the theme

I am only sitting on $1075 at this point and a pretty active button makes it $100 after a straddle and limp. I announce I'm about to play a stupid hand and I call with 4♥4♠6♥8♠ from the SB. After 2 more players call, our limper raises to $600 and BTN calls. I roll my eyes and say ok I'm pot commited and call the $600 leaving myself $475 behind and it goes 3 ways with the limp reraiser and the BTN.

Flop($2000): J♥T♦6♦
I check, the raiser piles in $2k, and after a very very long think, the BTN shoves in about 2.6k effective. Now I only have $475 and I'm getting like 6 to 1. I think the first player will maybe jam any AAxx here and because of the BTN's extremely painful tank stack off, I don't believe him to have diamonds or a set or two pair or even much of a particularly strong draw. I decide i have more outs than usual and begrudgingly stack off and tell the table, "God, I need running 6's to win the hand."

Turn: 6, player on my right's eyes go wide.
River: 6. Whole table erupts as I instantly flip over quads. First player turns over AA34 no diamond draw to scoop the large side pot and I scoop the main in an extremely spooky spot where I call the exact run out as the entire table eyes me suspiciously. And they say ONLINE poker is rigged...

Hand 4: Massive cooler vs tourist
After a limp, I bump 6♦9♦J♠Q♠ up to $110 and it goes 5 ways.

Flop ($550): 8♦T♦7♦

I bet $150 and an out of town guy directly on my left asks dealer how much is in the pot and she says $550 and he just puts a giant stack of chips in front of him and says "i dunno, you figure it out". Everyone else folds and I ask what the bet is. Bet ends up being $1000, and contemplate whether to shove here or flat call. Shoving will fold out the naked Ad bluffs, but flatting might kill my action on a turn paired board. The player is about 3.1k deep with me and as I'm thinking, he goes "lets just stick it in and run it twice". This guy is newer to PLO and is super nice to me since this particular session both of us were getting whacked so we kind of were leaning on each other as the run bad victims of the table so I felt a little bad about this spot. When he said this though, I knew he was being absolutely truthful about what he was holding and knew he had the nut flush so I say "ok, I'm all in". He calls and asks if I want to run it once or twice and another reg at the table instantly goes, "it doesn't matter, he has the straight flush"

I show him the bad news and turn over my hand as he turns over his A♦J♦ in shock and again, I kind of felt bad b/c he was always rooting for me to win during my all ins that session but he took it pretty well and got up and says "well, I guess I'll be taking an early redeye flight home tonight". He wishes me luck and picks up his stuff and leaves :(

Hand 5: Since I never post bluffs in my threads...
I hate posting bluff hand histories b/c I feel like it exposes my game a bit more but I'll just post one here I guess and it's probably a pretty simple spot.

I call someone's raise with K♠Q♣T♠2♣ and it goes 5 ways.

Flop ($400): K♣3♦4♠
I check and the hand checks through.

Turn ($400) K♣3♦4♠4♣
Checks through to the BTN who bets $300. Now BTN is someone I consider not a particularly strong reg. His Cbet in these spots are way too high and that also means he will always cbet 2 pair + on the BTN in these situations. So basically, he has near pure capped in his range to just trip 4s. He's also a thinking player (or at least he considers himself to be) so he's capable of folding the 4 here. I check raise to $750 off of a $2.1k stack. The players in between the two of us are all extremely straightforward face up players and there is very little risk of any of them trapping with boats so this check raise should be printing in EV. It folds to BTN who tanks for a while and I also know he perceives me as a bit of a nit. He says "I'm honestly probably just drawing dead right now" and he folds a 4 face up.

Bonus Funny rigged live hand of the month

Top boat vs Turned straight flush into rivered quads lol. I've never seen this in my life live or online. If the picture's not that clear, player 1 has A♣Q♣Q♦3♦ and player 2 has J♣T♣8♥8♠

The board is showing Q♥8♣7♣9♣8♦

Yea... live poker has some shenanigans going on I swear.

Also here's the little heater I've gone through recently at 5/5/10 and 2025 Graph.

Have a good 2025 everyone, may your cards be live and your pots be monsters etc etc.

Good luck in 2025! Your blog updates will be missed. You have a captivating writing style that makes it really enjoyable to read. I think your thought process / approach to PLO is well thought out so I hope the results continue to follow. [emoji41]

great reading! hope you come in the future to update us. Congratz for the great work

Good luck and nice results.

Please stay off the wsop 200plo tables.

Thank you for this blog zefa. Selfishly sad to hear you will no longer be posting. GL in Florida!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Cmon Zefa if ur not gunna post YT at least keep up with this thread (,:

Ok fine one last update
It's 6 AM on a wednesday and there's no 5/5/10 plo list and I'm wide awake so I'll kill some time with another update. Last update and I really mean it this time.

It's come to my attention that many regs at aria actually stalk this thread of mine so that's another reason I'm hesitant to post too much as the info I put out can only benefit the limited player pool I play with and only potentially hurt my win rate. But the last 2 weeks have been a super wild ride and there's some good hand histories and stories so I'll share one last time.

Short Buying
I was complaining at the table about short stackers and one of the regs at the table basically goes "who cares, 95% of short stackers are terrible" and another reg at the table laughs and emphatically agreed. I thought about this for a little bit and I had to agree with that statement. Most short stackers in the game buy in short and just try to find spots to hit and run or rathole or just aren't too confident in there game and want to splash around a bit. But it's a pretty well known fact in the PLO world that short stacks have a natural advantage by simplifying the game tree and leveraging the deep stacks depths against them to be forced to play around the short stack's existence at the table. After mulling over it for a few days, I decided, I'm gonna be the best short stacker at aria (as the bar is very low lol). However, unlike all the other short stackers in the game, once I get deep, I'm more than willing to play 3, 4, 5 or even 10k stack depths. Doing this for the last few weeks has actually been a very fun experience for me. PLO has become a lot more interesting as I need to start thinking about multiple different strategies at different stack depths and I think this is partly the reason I've been able to put in so many hours this month. I'm eager everyday to wake up and see how big I can run a $400 bullet up to.

All-In Tracking
I have written down on my own private discord server every single All in I've played this year. And since short stacking, the # of all ins have gone up an absurd amount and my all in win rate frequency has plummeted. The way my system works is I give +1 point on the Win column if I win the all in, and +1 point in the Lose column if I lose. For run it twice chops, I give +0.5 and +0.5. If I quarter someone it counts as a win. If I get quartered I count it as a loss. Pretty simple system. I only count all in's before the river when both players have some equity in the pot.

Here's an example of my all in counter as of 1/16/2025.

At that point, my tally is 82-85 so winning close to about 50% of my all ins.

Here's my all in counter as of today...

183.5-267.5

So out of 451 all ins this month, I'm running at 40% all in win rate.

As I've been playing so much, I just go home every day and pass out immediately leaving next to 0 time to study any spots. Fortunately, because I've jotted down every all in spot, I can go back and run the numbers and start refining my short stack jams. I did a very brief review yesterday morning and ran into some interesting number crunching.

Here's an example of what I call the "dream" short squeeze spot. It involves a raise and 3 callers. In this situation, if you can get isolated, you only need about 38% equity with the dead money in the pot for it to be +EV.

In this scenario, there was a $75 raise, and 3 calls, and I squeeze ripped about $400 with QT95 double suited, and one of the callers ends up repot isolating me. I've put in $400 to basically win $1050 which requires 38% equity for break even. I find myself in a close to 48/52 spot which is pretty massively EV+. If you run numbers for something as awful as 9852 double suited vs AAxx, it is still a theoretically EV+ squeeze under the assumption you get isolated HU with the dead money.

Once people start seeing these "monkey" plays from me as some regs have called it, I find myself in a lot of good spots where they start isoing me super light when I'm short so we're just flipping a lot for dead money.

Few examples...

6 Flags Roller Coaster Rides
I've also gone through two of my most insane session and a mega downswing after my last update. Firing $400 at a time, I was in a game one night for $12.7k. It was my 2nd session that day and I believe in that particular session, I won 5 all ins, lost 30, and chopped 4. 30 bullets + a couple small $100 top offs = in for $12.7k, out for a tiny bit of change so -$11k session. I thought that was once in a blue moon run but literally 2 days later, it happened again. The 3rd session I went 5 wins 27 losses and 8 chops. In for 11.4kish and out for $1600 for a -$9.8k hit lol. Fortunately, we recovered a decent bit of it the next few days

All in results counter (wins)-(losses)-(chops)

$400 buy in swongs.

Action Player Woes
There's been a super action player playing at Aria this month. Any reg reading this thread will know exactly who I'm talking about. He's gone through insane sessions (one session he had to borrow $100 and he ran it up to $27k as we all watched in horror). This guy is a massive action junkie and unfortunately has my number. I believe this month, I'm stuck almost $20k to him alone. The session where I was stuck $12k, I had 19 all ins vs him alone, I won 4 of them and lost 15 of them. He accounts for probably 6 of my top 10 biggest pots this month and I've taken an absolute beating in those spots.

Here's an 11k pot I lost vs him to give you an idea of the kind of gambler he is

Ironically (and probably stupidly), he's also the player I ran my biggest bluff against.

Bluff Hand 1
Preflop
I open A♥K♣T♣6♠ and our action player 3 bets to 225 and it goes 3 way. I would normally fold this hand but I have position and this guy is action so I flick in the call.

Flop ($690): K♥ T♥ 8♣
It checks to me and I fire 350 into 690 and both players call. Standard so far.

Turn ($1740) 6♥
I fire 850 and our action player calls and other player folds.
So here, I feel like our guy's range is pretty wide so this turn barrel is a bit mergy as both a bluff or protection against straight draws or whatever. I think the other guy in the pot will have decent equity hands like QJ9 type stuff but i also think he will fold most flushes here as he must think I will not bet into our action VIP without having the nuts as it should be perceived to be pretty suicidal.

River ($3440) 3♦
I mentally sigh and shove about $3300 into 3.4k and he has me covered and is sitting on about 4.5k and he goes super deep into the tank. In my head I already think this could be suicidal as I've seen him just snap off many spots with 9 high flushes and stuff. But he's also a player who cares a lot about how large his stack is relative to the rest of the table. This session, he's "chip leader" at the table and calling off this 3.3k would really mess up his status as table captain/bully and I'm hoping this will dissuade him from looking me up. If I lose this pot, I have to start over at $400 lol and tbh I'd probably just go home. Anyways, after what feels like 3 minutes, he finally shows me black 97 for the straight and says "ok franky, I'll let you have this one" and folds. I go ahead and show him my bluff to get him riled up and also cos he always shows all his bluffs to the table and he definitely gets fired up and makes it a point to come after me for the rest of the session. The very next session is where he gets me in the 11k pot so worked out for him I guess lol.

Hand 2, how to get unburied in one hand
As is typical for many of my recent session, I'm in for 10 bullets + when this hand comes up.
Preflop
I limp AAT5 no suit off a $950 stack and someone makes it $100 and 3 people call!. I of course limp reraise to $600 hoping to go HU but every single weasel calls and I'm 5 way to a flop with the bottom tier AA.

Flop ($3000) A♦7♠8♠
Lol, I have $350 left and I get ready to jam... but not before the 2 players in front of me jam first. I put in my last $350 and somehow the 2 players behind me also stick all their money in. Live poker is a circus. While the dealer is making 3 different side pots, everyone just goes ahead and shows their hand

Player 1: 87xx
Player 2: Q♠J♥T♠2♥
Player ME: I don't show and tell the table I have trash
Player 4: Q♣Q♥T♣T♦
Player 5: 4♥5♦6♥6♦

Turn is 6♠ so basically all my boat outs are gone and player 2 makes the flush.

River is of course the A♣ and I make quads to scoop the main pot. Easy game easy life.

Deck Mate 2
Playing over 300 hours this month has made me slightly lose my mind. I've started brewing up a lot of conspiracy theories while at the table. Don't worry, I still believe we landed on the moon and I think the earth is round. But I also walk around the room each morning looking at all the table to see which seat has most of the chips and choose to sit in that seat when PLO opens as that is the destined "hot seat" of the day.
Results: inconclusive

I've also started logging into the system as "Guest" instead of swiping in my players card.
Results: I seem to run slightly better as Guest. More sample size required.

I also have a lucky pair of sneakers that I usually win in, and a pair of other sneakers I have never won in so I no longer wear my more expensive unlucky sneakers. I have a black hoodie I stopped wearing b/c I have a 100% loss rate on. I might burn it or toss it into the trash. I also have 2 lucky sweatpants I wear and 1 unlucky one that I keep losing in... Don't worry, i still change my underwear every day though.
Results: Wear white nikes, black sweatpants, and gray sweater for best results.

Ok all of this stuff is just nonsense really... but one thing I genuinely don't like is the shuffler machine that the casino uses. The Deck Mate 2. There's actually been a bit of controversy over this machine if you google it. It's hackable, programmable, has an internal camera and that just opens it up to have potential security flaws to manipulate the deck. I strongly am in favor of having the dealer add a single riffle when it comes out of the machine because as of right now, there is 0 human randomness or entropy introduced into the deck shuffling and the deck is 100% generated by the deck mate 2 sorting algorithm. I personally can riffle a deck in 2-3 seconds, so long term, at 20 plo hands an hour, we're adding like 40-60 seconds an hour to the table while massively protecting the integrity of the game and shuffle.

The main argument I hear from people is that the dealer cut is enough, but it really isn't. Decks can be sequenced in a manner to always make a single player or position win. Decks can be sequenced in a manner to make "bad" hands win more often vs good hands. Deck sequence data can also be accessed and relayed to a player if they somehow hack the shuffler. Literally 1 riffle, protects against all these cases.

Here's an example of a deck sequence where the UTG player will ALWAYS win no matter where the dealer cuts the deck. 9 handed NLHE, go ahead and try it. Don't forget the 3 burn cards for each street.

In case I don't see you, good morning, good afternoon and good night
Anyways, graphs and results for January so far. Lets see if we can make this a cool tree-fiddy hour month.

Just wanted to comment as someone who’s going to be playing live PLO soon for the first time that your YouTube videos were super entertaining and informative to watch, and planning on watching them again.

Gl in the future!

Just felt like hopping in to give a 2025 update as I'm sitting in front of my computer and there's only 1 table of PLO6 running... that's right, I have a new addiction and it involves 6 cards.

But first, going month by month:

January: This was where I left off. Had a good month around +30k and but in an insane 350 hours.
February: I continued the live PLO grind and put in a whooping 288 hours live but ran pretty bad live and ended stuck on the month like -11k.
March: Only played 55 hours (-3k) and the burnout kicked in. I go through periods where I take a full month or more off poker and just bum around and play video games which is what I ended up doing here. My parents just bought their retirement home near Orlando, FL so I ended up flying out there for a small family reunion/celebration. The closest poker rooms to me with PLO were a card club in Orange City and Tampa Hard Rock. I ended up going to Orange city for one day to check it out and liked the room so I told my buddy that we should make a trip out there next month and we could stay at my parents' new place just to get a new change of scenery from Vegas so that's what ended up happening.
April-May: I don't know what possessed me to think a road trip was the play, but that's what we ended up doing. A 33 hour drive from Las Vegas to Orlando. Our initial trip got delayed by several days when we had to turn around in Arizona b/c my car engine kept screaming engine overheating. Took it back to the dealership and found out my coolant had a leak. Had to wait almost a week to get it fixed and then we tried again so technically the road trip took over 37 hours of driving. We made one overnight stop in Canton, TX and powered the rest of the way to Florida. Listened to an Audiobook "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. Highly recommend and it seems they're gonna release a movie sometime next year.

Anyways we grinded slightly over a month from April to May at Orange City Card room. The room is pretty good action with PLO running everyday with the main game being a 1/2/5 (500 max) and a 2/5 (1k max). Occasionally a 5/5 PLO with 3k max would run as well as maybe a 5/10 sporadically but I mostly stuck to the 2/5. I had only brought 10k with me on the trip and the trip started off decent but I had a string of 2 days where I got demolished for -10k, and -5k so I had to do a drive of shame to reload at the local Bank of America.

This was the biggest pot I played there:
Preflop: Double straddle is on and I make it 75 with AAJ3, one player calls, Another player makes it 250, another player cold calls, I make it 1150, All 3 players call (with 2 of them being all in.).
Flop ($4k): is J♥7♥6♦ and I rip 2500 and the initial 3 bettor calls off with A♠T♠7♣5♦, turn 6♣, River 7♠, and I lose a 9k pot

Thought my trip was ruined but then went on almost a 30k heater near the end of the trip to salvage. Would have stayed longer but Wynn scheduled me to deal during the WSOP summer so we left Florida May 20. Impressively, we did the full 33 hour drive back straight with no hotel stop. Florida Graphs and Results below:

June-July: Didn't really do much except deal here and there during the WSOP summer. I played a total of 1 MTT at aria only because they had an overlay and I barely put in PLO sessions. Most summers, I take it easy and deal because I hate the chaos of the strip during the series. Now sometime during the summer, I heard it was maybe Memorial day, WSOP released an update where the client now offered 5 and 6 card PLO. A lot of casinos in the US spread 5 card PLO so I figured I'd go ahead and log online to try and practice some 5 card as I had 0 experience in the game. That way, I could at least feel comfortable jumping into some juicy looking 5 card games if the opportunity presented itself. Unfortunately, when I deposited and logged on, the only thing that was running was 4 and 6 card. So I figured... what the heck, 6 cards is probably close enough. Immediately got addicted to 6 card PLO and that's pretty much what I've been doing since.

I deposited 8k into WSOP and put in a bunch of hours grinding the 1/2 online PLO games (2/5 just almost never runs) and in 2 months, I had made almost 30k over 384 hours played. Kept a spreadsheet of all my play times, player level, and profit so here's a snapshot of where I was at 300 hours in.

I made a post on Reddit about PLO6 so you can see some hands and comments over there.

https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/...

August: Midway through August, I got burnt out on poker again and took on a new addiction: Tennis. I played 6 and sometimes 7 days a week and I still do though now it's more like more like 4-5 days a week, 2-3 hours per session. Other than that, I basically took another month off of poker and spent the majority of my time bed rotting, watching YouTube, and playing some video games. I also cashed out about 35k out of my WSOP account and yolo tossed it into $CROX stock lol. CROX, WMT, and an Argentinian airport stock CAAP are now my 3 biggest positions in my portfolio as I have over 130k allocated in these 3 stocks. Disclaimer: I have no clue what I'm doing. Anyways, Didn't really do much in August but be a bum. Did play like 18 hours of live poker and went +8k due to a pretty hot session at the Wynn.

September-Now: I got sick of bed rotting and there was a new reload bonus on WSOP so I fired up the grind again mid September with a new starting online roll of 5400 (5k + 400 reload bonus) and that's where I'm at today. Oh and played like 12 hours of live poker for -$1.4k.

My hourly stat has fallen due to traffic being down a little bit and me just willing to grind 1 or 2 tables where as before, I would only really play if I could get 4-8 tables going. It's just very comfortable grinding 1/2 PLO6 online and the hourly rate is decent enough where I think the trade off of potentially higher hourly live vs being able to grind online at home watching YouTube or TV shows makes me prefer 6 cards for now.

This month, I will fly out to my sister's wedding in Chicago, and she told me her and her fiance are planning to move to Troy, MI afterwards and are looking at houses. I started researching the area and told her to buy as close to Detroit as possible so I could crash at their place and grind at MGM Detroit lol. So maybe sometime this month or this year, my buddy and I will make another trip out to either MGM Grand Detroit to check out the PLO games there, or we were also thinking of trying Legends poker room in Houston as that's been on our bucket list of places we haven't tried yet. Tampa is also on our list if we decide to go back to Florida.

I really wish there was somewhere in the US that we can play 6 card but there isn't. The only live venue I've heard that runs it is in London and I don't think I'll be making it out there any time soon. I've asked the floors at Wynn and Aria if they would ever consider running at 6 card game sometime but it seems they are very adamantly against that idea. It kind of makes sense as the game can really only be run 5-6 handed, a dealer would have to pitch a ton of cards to the player which slows down the game (less rake), and people will probably get very confused constantly looking at their hand (again, less rake). But 6 card apparently is all the rage in London, and with 6 card finally breaking through in the online market on WSOP, and GGPoker, I still have faith some poker rooms will come around to that idea in a live casino. And when that time comes... I'll be ready.

Good to see you finally posting.. didnÂ’t know you were killing the game..I have played couple sessions with you on 6C PLO in September.. the game is way more fun than 4C but it needs one or two action player otherwise itÂ’s very nitty game imo.. I think you can play 6C in Maryland if IÂ’m not mistaken.. itÂ’s popular in that area last time I visited couple years back.

I’d guess a major reason most live poker rooms will stop at 5c is bc you can only play 7h wo doing things like shuffling mucked hands back into the deck. Generally most rooms want to fill seats. Almost everywhere other Aria runs their 4c games 9h…I tend to think other than maybe 1 or 2 cities that adopt it 6c games will probably not gain popularity.

Fortunately for now, the pool seems like an endless supply of action players. I have never seen or heard of 6 card running in Maryland. I've only heard of 5. If there were ever a room in the US that runs 6 cards consistently, I'd definitely head over and check it out.

Yea, I acknowledge that there is a big logistical barrier to dissuade card rooms from even trying to run 6 card. But all it takes in the future is just a room here or there to give it a shot and I think big action players and whales will very quickly get hooked onto it. I think the primary catalyst that would be required for this to happen is for more online sites or apps to introduce 6 card PLO to the players. Apparently, 6card is pretty popular on GGPoker and since GGPoker basically will become the new owners of WSOP and WSOP.com, that's probably why 6card has been introduced on that client. But anyways... I'm just mostly rambling out of selfishness as I think I'm currently very much ahead of the curve in 6card strategy and I'm just wishing I could transfer my current skillset into a live setting where the games play bigger. But if all I got is 4 cards available to me live for the time being, so be it.

October Update
Here's october progress...

Had a nice little upswing the past week after going on a pretty annoying break even stretch from hours 550-590. I also keep track of every 100bb+ pot size all in (pre river) so here are my October all in streaks in those categories.

Oct 1: 6-7 (+$345.35)
Oct 2: 14-17 (-$390.23)
Oct 3: 11-13 (+$918.94)
Oct 4: 7-9 (-$161.26)
Oct 5: 17-15 (+$921.83)
Oct 6: 13-23 (-$1153.35)
Oct 7: 15-9 (+$2711.69)
Oct 8: 19-12 (+$2414.68)
Oct 9: 17-21 (+$1773.59)
Oct 10: 18-20 (+$1785.43)
Oct 11: 8-12 (-$131.72)

For a total of 145 wins and 158 losses or 47.855% all in (pre river) win rate. This is a bit lower than my lifetime average which has been hovering around 50%. I typically get it in very good vs the field, but due to the amount of multiway all ins where I should simply be happy having 35%+ equity, I think expecting an overall all in win rate of around 50% should be satisfactory. For a pretty decent volume day, I typically expect to play around 30-40 all in pots which is pretty crazy if you think about how NLHE players maybe play like 2-3 all in pots a day.

Hand Histories
I probably won't post too many strategy posts here as the player pool is very small and I don't want to give out too much free info in a game where I don't think there are many good resources available. But I felt like this one was a bit too interesting to not post.

Preflop: CO pots 3.5 BB, I make a slightly wide 3bet deep to 12 BB, and he puts in the 4 bet to 37.5 BB and I call

Flop, Turn, River: It goes check check, check check, check check.

My read on this player is that he's pretty competent and also views me as a pretty tight solid reg. We are pretty deep and he is out of position and he should perceive my 3bet range to be pretty tight so his 4 bet range should be almost always double suited AAxxxx. He takes some tricky trappy lines so its not too surprising that he checks the flop here as his hand just flopped basically the world. I think a lot of players would put in a bet here with my hand having top 2 pair, a wrap, and 2nd nut flush draw. But these players get lost in the tunnel vision of their own hands and fail to realize that villain's 4bet range is double suited AAxxxx. A♣ is on the board and I have A♥. That leaves villain to nearly always have A♦A♠.

On the turn, he checks again taking a trappy line and again, I refuse the bait.

On the river, he gets super tricky and checks a 3rd time and I actually do contemplate throwing in a bet here but really there's just no point. I check back and see him showdown the most logical hand he could have in this spot. Kind of boring post flop action, but I think there's a lot of underlying fundamental range concept that forces this line in this hand that I think 90%+ of the field would miss with my hand in this spot.

Insane whale punt
No strategy here. Just an example of an action whale with a super punt.

Preflop it went 3 ways. On the flop the whale bet and I just call here, my hand is strong vs this player but I have no diamonds and I just want to fade the diamond or potential straight cards on the turn before I start raising. On the turn both players check to me, I check back to try and allow some sort of KK or AA or JJ to catch up as I can not lose the hand at this point.

On the river, he pots, I repot to 64BB, and he for some reason min reraises to 112BB as seen above. At this point, I'm very confident that I mega coolered him with quads over quads as this is the only way this type of action should play out. I rip expecting quad 2222 and he snaps it off somehow with Q2 lol...

Standard Hero Fold

PreflopI been experimenting with min raises so I minraise here on the button, SB 3 bets to 7bbs, BB cold calls, and I put in the 4bet with kinda crappy doublesuit AAxxxx to 28bbs and both call and we go to a flop.

River: Flop and turn check through and on the river, BB leads here for about 3/4th pot. Now SB and BB have played with me a TON and they're not brain dead and should absolutely put me on AAxxxx here as a 4 bettor. I am 99% sure BB ranges me on AA here so for him to be leading river, the bottom of his range is QQ. K♥J♥ and J♥8♥ are also possibilities that make my hand 4th nuts so I actually think I have a very easy fold here. The funny thing is, if BB checks, I think my range and hand is just so face up, I may check back AA full here or go for an extremely small value bet like 1/10th pot but I think checking back is best line as vs these 2 regs, I don't see how there's any value here when they are both so aware of my range. Anyways, I folded and BB took it down so I guess we'll never know (but deep down inside we know he had it).

BTW, I've never played on ClubGG or GGpoker before but I see a lot of players playing 6 card on it. Does anyone know if I can access that as a resident of Nevada? Would I need a VPN or something?

Nice blog and update! I need to get a spreadsheet going myself of either my total session or each table/stake, something. Playing on sites without a tracker sucks but I feel it does make the site softer.

Great results and thanks for the analysis here and on Reddit on PLO6. I really love playing PLO and been trying to improve, lately at PLO5, a little PLO6, but I got crushed recently and tucked my tail between my legs and limped back to NL for the time being until I build up the roll a bit more. I did recognize some of the mistakes you mentioned so maybe I'm not absolutely terrible at it at least lol.

October wrap up
Played around 230 hours online in October breaking my level record by getting level 1628. Up around 11k coming off of a really bad stretch the last 100ish hours.

Recorded 847 all ins this month in PLO going 412-435 which is a 48.64% all in win rate.

Since July 1, I have 2031 all ins going 1022-1009 with 50.32% win rate so felt like I ran a bit below par for all ins this month. Multiway all ins are kind of messing with my all in win rates so next month, i'll be recording HU all ins and multiway all ins separately.

November will be my final month where I go pretty hard at PLO online. If my caesar's app is accurate, I'll need about another 1600-1700 levels in November to hit 7 stars status so I'd probably need to grind another 230+ hours to do it and if I come up short, I guess i'll be hitting December slots if they have some 10x tier credit multiplier days to get it. Fortunately, WSOP has some nice promos to kick off the month tommorow so I'll be going hard at it this weekend and I'm ambitiously planning to do 25+ hours of grinding on the weekend to take advantage.

50% rakeback promo + 40% natural rakeback + reload bonus... If I can get to level 250 by sunday night, I'm looking at maybe 2.5k-3k worth of rakeback for 2 hard days of grinding.

All ins
There's a player in my pool who basically 3 bets me every other hand when he's at the table. Whenever he is on, I will have my swingiest sessions easily swinging +/-3k in a session. On October 16 I played all day with him setting a record 75 all ins in one day which I thought would remain the record for a while to come. But then I played another monster 15 hour session on the 23rd with him and had a mind blowing 94 all ins that day. (Note: I only track all ins where the pot size is at least 100BB+).

All In Records:
Oct 12: 7-7
Oct 13: 18-11
Oct 14: 26-28
Oct 15: 12-12
Oct 16: 41-34
Oct 17: 17-20
Oct 18: 10-8
Oct 21: 8-5
Oct 22: 15-11
Oct 23: 41-53
Oct 24: 10-10
Oct 25: 18-15
Oct 26: 12-13
Oct 27: 14-22
Oct 28: 3-7
Oct 29: 3-3
Oct 30: 4-14
Oct 31: 8-4

Meh... short post. Gonna go to the grocery store and prepare my meals for the next 2 days so I can be a gremlin staring at my screen for 30 hours.

Just a note but 7 stars is invitation only; even if you pass the point restriction there is no guarantee you'll get the tier upgrade. I say this from experience, just wanted to give this input as if you're not playing the online casino/ sportsbetting hard I think it's doubtful you'll get that upgrade.

On the PLO front, that is some crazy impressive volume