[Ewan]

Hi

Good luck ! I will follow you progress. I have a goal of 100k hands before changing stakes 🙂 Ran pure myself in the beginning, but hopefully we dont tilt and try to win it back on higher stakes when the bad run comes 😀

[Lichu348]

Wow – well I am writing this after a very bleary eyed few hours sleep. Cash games have continued to be good, still sun running at over 40bb/100 which is honestly almost upsetting as the inevitable come down is going to be so much harder to deal with! Still very happy indeed to have started the PLO50 journey so well!

However this post is about a tournament run. I have played PLO MTTs for years, and they are almost routinely depressing, as they never have the same level of guarantees to their NL counterpart (don’t we all love the great game!?).

It was 11pm and I was railing a close friend who is a NL MTT semi-pro, he had stacks all over the place and as I am currently doing sweet FA I wanted to rail. On Stars they have a new 50/50 series which is 95% NL but the opener was a PLO event – 2 hours into late registration I saw that only 400/1500 remained and 270 cash…still had 30bb on entry must be worth a shot at an easy min cash while I rail.

Fast forward a few hours my friend has busted everything and gone to bed, while I am building a decent stack in this 50/50 event. Managed to build the chip lead with about 50 or so left, and retained top 3/4 all the way to the FT, at which point it was 6am and I could barely see the screen.

Luckily for me I was able to play small ball and ladder while maintaining 30-40bbs until 3 handed. This is when the horseshoe didn’t just fall out it catapulted to my opponents. I am still a noob with adding hands in here, but the key hand was this:

PokerStars – 250000/500000 PL Hi (7 max) – Omaha Hi – 3 players

Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3 : http://www.holdemmanager.com

BTN: 30,670,773 (61.3 bb)

SB: 21,716,569 (43.4 bb)

Hero (BB): 22,612,658 (45.2 bb)

SB posts 250,000, Hero posts BB 500,000

Pre Flop: (pot: 750,000) Hero has 7h 6d 4d 2s

fold, SB calls 250,000, Hero checks

Flop: (1,000,000, 2 players) 3s 4c 4h

SB bets 500,000, Hero calls 500,000

Turn: (2,000,000, 2 players) 2h

SB checks, Hero bets 1,000,000, SB calls 1,000,000

River: (4,000,000, 2 players) Td

SB checks, Hero bets 1,500,000, SB raises to 5,500,000, Hero calls 4,000,000

Results: 15,000,000 pot (0 rake)

Final Board: 3s 4c 4h 2h Td

SB shows 9h Ts 4s Ac: (Full House, Fours full of Tens)

(Pre 58%, Flop 61%, Turn 23%)

Hero mucks 7h 6d 4d 2s: (Full House, Fours full of Twos)

(Pre 42%, Flop 39%, Turn 78%)

SB wins 15,000,000

Getting check raised on the river made me tank forever, but just hoped he was trying to pressure, but I do think this is a spot where we should be finding a fold, as play was just so passive leading up to this point that I do not think he is taking a super aggressive line without the stones.

This coupled with Aces being cracked on back to back hands meant I had to settle with third…still $5k locked up it was very hard to be too upset! I think overall I played ok, ran very well and then made a few mistakes 3 handed…but at 8am it is not all that surprising!

Back to the transformation course now I guess – so much I learned already getting put into play…feels great to be making waves so quickly! Bring on week 4!

Peace.

[Lichu348]

Going to title this one – why do I never learn.

I am a huge poker fan, have been ever since I played penny poker with my family, and the strategy has always fascinated me. When I got into the game in 08 I read every single poker book I could get my hands on, explaining to a bemused mother that Super System 2 was going to be a worthwhile investment (it actually ended up costing me 5k in my first year of uni…story for another day!).

However as I have gotten older I just switch up my study for playing time, telling myself that I am good enough to beat low stakes so why bother to learn – and tbh this is a view that has cost me a significant amount over the last decade mostly because I am no where near as good at the game as I think I am!

Now I find the PLO Mastermind – I dive in, enjoy the early videos and the one thing that is fundamentally clear to me…I suck at this game on a granular level, I love the study I get a bit better, I go on a heater and I immediately start to revert to plays that I know are -EV but are more interesting. Mostly involving VPIPing in spots that are just burning money – but I am good now right? Forgetting it was the tighter more paired down style that helped with the heater.

A bit rambly – but essentially my brain is very good at telling me what I want to hear – do not bother to study, stay lazy and bum about in the micros for even longer than I need to. NOT THIS TIME! I am going to finishing this transformation course, with notes and a plan for taking on 100PLO and hopefully 200PLO before the year is out.

Good luck to all of you, and I hope your brain is more disciplined than mine!

PS. MTT heater continued, shipped the 2 day $5 APAT PLO 7 max for $450…not quite 5k but I will take it!

[Lichu348]

Inspiration from others.

Reading all of the blogs of other members really gets me fired up to try and make my own blog writing more consistent. This last month I have played more hands in one month at one stake than every in the last 10 years. 50 PLO on Party is an interesting mix of Good regs, Regs who play splashy as hell to try and clear leaderboard points and then the et al who are variable from bad to worse.

I would love to know if I am considered to be good or bad by the regs, there are a few of them who have absolutely crushed my soul (not going to name names!) but overall I hope I am an annoying thorn who is improving all the time.

I still struggle with some tilt issues, and end up playing higher stakes than I want to – really wish Party had a feature where you could block a certain stake level! I spent all of last week trying to climb out of a hole, I decided to take a 3 BI shot at 100 PLO and it went badly, fast. Sadly I found myself losing about 6 BI before I managed to pull myself away, really need to be more disciplined but I still really struggle to go to bed on a losing day, just want to keep grinding into the night. As they say though, nothing good happens after midnight, especially not when you up your normal amount of tables and start dropping stacks left and right!

Would love to hear from any grinders who are playing 50/100 PLO and would like to discuss the Party pool or hands in general, haven’t yet managed to make any connections who are keen to study and improve as a team! If you would like to be part of a new team (currently of one!) then hit me up!

For now enjoy my PLO 50 graph, so much pain here but really happy to see it on an uptick…for now!