[Payoffwiz]

Games have gone well so far. I’ve cashed the GG R&C Leaderboard 3 times this week and I took a break from poker yesterday to see some friends. I have watched the 10WT week 1 already and I am starting on week 2 today. I’m planning on watching the first four weeks in two weeks and then continue watching 1 week at a time. I have watched the first few weeks of 10WT already like a year ago and most of the stuff there is not too new to me anymore.

[Payoffwiz]

Weekly review

Well actually this is a review of the past ten days.

Hands played 12120
Profit $48,20
Rakeback $700

As you can see rakeback really makes a difference. In total I raked $700 during the past ten days and I got $700 as rakeback. Of course I was a bit lucky as I hit a straight flush two times and got $250 from it at gg. Anyways my ”regular” rakeback was $450 and thats really significant too. That was 7,5bb/100 for me during my sample. I actually think that the graph is a bit wrong. It seems like some of my profits from 50PLO rush and cash are missing. Might be that some hand histories have been lost somewhere.

Overall I am very happy with my progress during past days. I have watched the first two weeks of 10WT and have taken comprehensive notes on each episode. I played almost every day and maintained good focus during sessions. I think the fact that I didn’t upload my hand histories every day really helped with my mentality. That’s something I’ll continue to do so graph updates will be weekly here.

Also I managed to run deep in a few tourneys and profited $220 from them last week. Tourneys seem to be very profitable even though I don’t know too much about ICM and how that effects play in the late game. There are just so many players donking their stack away that with some improvements in my ICM and tourney understanding, they could be very profitable too.

Happy with the results last week. Managed to fulfill all of my goals for the week. On to the next week:

Poker goals
– Play 7k hands
– Will watch 10WT week 3 through and will do 1h study sessions on each of the topics with my own database and PLO trainer
– Will post 3 hand histories to the forums

Other goals
– 3 times to the gym
– Average time sleeping 8h
– Enjoy life and relax at least a few hours every day

This week I’m not focusing on the volume that much as it feels much important to focus hard on studying during the beginning of my journey. On to this week and fun times grinding and learning!

GL to everyone💰

[Adelaney]

Fresh year fresh start!

Like the plan you have set out and as you clearly said rakeback can play a huge factor in your earnings it’s very important to always factor this on a site and looks like you’re doing it the right way (nice job the last 10 days!)

How have you been finding the 10 week transformation so far?

Best of luck with the upcoming goals for this week look forward to reading your next update!

Ash

[Payoffwiz]

Thanks Ash!

Yea finally this week I’ve had more success with the winnings before rakeback and rakeback continues to improve the overall score.

I’ve liked the 10 week transformation a lot so far! I did watch some of it about 6-7 months ago and it feels nice to watch it again as I clearly feel that most of it I already know well and am implementing well. Looking forward to the later weeks in the 10 week transformation as I really think that they are the most important to my progress right know.

But otherwise I’m very happy with results this week. I’ve played a bit more at party with good success and also I had a few crazy pots at GG where I sat at a table with a big time fun player. I’ll post some screenshots of those too.

On to the weekend. Will be a nice update on monday 😀 💰

[Payoffwiz]

Week 2 done!

It was an interesting week in terms of work ethic and results. Games went brilliantly at the start of the week and continued to go well till the end. I kinda slacked on the whole study part of poker during the whole week. I noticed that when the games were going so well it was hard to start study sessions.

Hands played 6634

Profit $187,69

Rakeback $307

Also I ran about $300 under EV.

Rakeback still matters significantly even when I play less volume. This week I managed to turn the tide on profits before rakeback. It really came down to the realization that it’s much better for me to play deep at GG. I played mostly short before as I thought that I could exploit mistakes best that way. It might be a good strat for some but I constantly faced situations that where really hard to play. There might be some fish that was playing loose and a few bad regs at the table when I was 20-40bb deep and they played a line that basically never happened with those stacks in terms of GTO play. Then I tried to figure out what would be the best adjustment at that spot and often was correct but it wasn’t the easiest process. As the EV mostly comes from very precise preflop play I really felt that it wouldn’t be the most efficient way to gain edge there.

I really saw the value of playing deeper when one day I managed to get a few seats at tables where there was a lot of straddling going on. The whole table was playing very deep with the straddler being mostly 200bb+. I decided to play deeper to match his stack as well as I could. That session I managed to get all in 200bb deep versus the player a few times with 60%+ equity. That moment was like a light bulb lighting in my head. I ended up playing the rest of the week deep and had a few similar moments with straddling players and other fish.

At the end of the day I am very happy that I played short and learned to adjust stack sizes as you still face many short stacks even while playing deep.

So last week I didn’t manage to get any of my poker goals done even though the amount of hands was close. I actually on purpose didn’t hit that goal as I was playing sunday night and noticed that my focus was totally off so I ended my session short. Missing the hands doesn’t bother me as much as missing the goals on studying. That is something I will focus more on next week. I managed to train 3 times last week but my sleep was around 6h 30min per night which is obviously too little. That is also something I will focus on next week.

Next week:

Poker goals

– Play 5k hands

– Study 2h every weekday > 1h with preflop trainer and 1h videos

– Post 2 hand histories to the forums

Other goals

– 3 times to the gym

– Average sleeping time 7h 30min

– Read at least 1h per day

– Start to relax and end the day at 21

I think it is important for me to not set too high goals for the amount of hands as it will eat away my focus on studying and life quality. Better start slowly increasing the amount of hands then try to get everything now.

Pictures are from the start of the year and last week

GL to everyone💰

[Cfcfinlay11]

Hi Payoffwiz,

Good blog !!

Just out of interest you mention playing on PP and GG. Which have you found to be better for RB when you take into consideration leaderboards also ? interested to know.

Cheers

[Payoffwiz]

Thanks!

Well it depends on a few factors. First the overall rake level needs to be considered. In my sample I’ve paid 12,5bb/100 rake at party at 50PLO and 11bb/100 rake at gg at 50PLO. So at 100PLO most likely the rake is pretty similar or a bit lower at party and at lower stakes it’s better to play at gg in terms of pure rake.

Then rakeback. I would divide this into a few different pointers. Basic rakeback, LB value, other bonuses and other factors and optimization.

Basic rakeback

Party

At party you have the basic rakeback up to 40% per week and it depends on how much you have raked in that week. The first level is at $25 raked and is 20%. It goes up to 25% at $150 raked, to 30% at $600 raked and 40% at $1,2k raked. It is quite a generous and simple program. Basically at 50PLO you could get to $600 raked with about 10k hands in a week which is doable. I rake around $200 a week so I get 25% rakeback

GG

At gg there is the fish buffet which is based on PVI. If you are a winning reg your PVI will most certainly be under 1 and probably near 0,5 and lower. I haven’t counted my exact PVI but it seems to be around 0,3-0,5. You get the fish points based on your PVI so and the rakeback is calculated based on your fish points. So if a certain level tells you that you would get 50% rakeback, with a 0,5PVI you’ll get 25% rakeback. Also the cash prizes are awarded with chests that have somewhat high variance. I’m playing 50PLO and have decided that for now I shouldn’t try to move up my fish ranks and I chose to stay at black octopus for a few months. So with that I probably get around 35%*0,4 = 14% rakeback.

PARTY WINS with higher and more consistent rakeback

Leaderboards

Party

The leaderboards at party are decent. At 50PLO the top prize is $500 and requires $600+ raked on most days. The LB pays to 21 players with the bottom prize being at $25 and usually requiring around $100 raked. Now comes into consideration your playing style. At party you need to play at least 2k+ hands on most days to get the LB cash. If you get it then it is usually somewhere around 20-50% for most of the prizes that are not on the top 3.

GG

GG offers two different cash game leaderboards. One for R&C and one for regular cash games.

The R&C leaderboards play mostly like the party leaderboards with high top prizes and at least 2k+ hands required to get a prize in a given day. Also there the LB score means something around 20-50% rakeback for all but the top prizes.

The cash game leaderboards are a totally different game. There at 50PLO they reward the top 50 with prizes 16-50 being $10 and the top prize is “just” $150 or 3 BI. The prizepool is much flatter there. This is quite interesting because I’ve found that I can just hit the 45-50 spot with under 1k hands if played optimally. This LB score gives most likely something around 20% or under for all prizes.

I would say that GG wins in the LB rakeback comparison as the R&C and the party LB are almost the same but then at GG there is also the different and easier LB in the cash games.

Other bonuses

Party

Well this is a short list for party. Basically there is the black card where you can get 5-10% rakeback per week and there is also some promotions for example now there is a promotion called new years rush where you can win cash prizes or spin and go tickets. Otherwise the bonuses are slim

GG

At gg you can also get the black card though I am not able to get it. But there are other much more valuable bonuses at GG also.

First at the regular cash games you can hit jackpots which actually happen quite often. If you hit quads+ with at least 15bb committed before hitting the hand you will receive cash. For quads the you get about 60bb, for straight flush you get about 250bb and for the royal it was around 600-700bb but I’m not totally sure on the last one. I have gotten quads about once every 3-4k hands I would say. I’ve also gotten a few straight flushes but I think I’ve ran quite well in those.

Also GG introduced their new GGcare program which rewards you chips in to a 30k freeroll for any bad beats and coolers. I have managed to cash the tournament 3 times for $90 this year and as far as I now there is no extra rake being taken to cover the program. It is a valuable bonus also

GG clearly wins this category. It is hard to estimate the value of these programs with my small sample but I would say it is near 10% at least

Optimization

Party

At party there are a few things to optimize with LB being the most important one.

You are losing on so much rakeback if for example you are raking $200 a week and do it on four days equally. If you would play only on two days and on both days could get $25 LB score your rakeback for the week would increase by 25%. That is 3bb/100 with my rake paid level.

Also something that is important to note but not that hard to maintain is the levels where you clear the next payout. So for instance it is much better to rake just the $200 and not $185 as you dont get any rakeback between the 150 > 185 level and also you hit the lowest black card payout at $200. These are quite easy to maintain and don’t effect your rakeback so much but still good to know.

GG

At GG there is the same optimization with the leaderboards. It is a costly mistake to not hit them if you are playing proper volume. I would suggest to play at the cash games if you aren’t getting enough volume for the R&C leaderboard.

There really isn’t too much optimization in terms of the fish buffet except of course it is a huge mistake to miss the next fish buffet. If you cant reach the next fish buffet then it is better to switch to black fish. It also provides some certainty and safety as you get weekly payouts and know exactly how much you are getting.

At GG there is the happy hours time when you can get 1,5x points at cash games and 2x points at R&C. If you want to optimize your rakeback to the fullest you should play at these times if possible. I play my volume almost always during these times. I can get the 50PLO LB min cash with about 1,5h play during the 2h window which means usually around 800 hands and about $45 raked so it’s a solid fast LB score for me.

CONCLUSION

It’s quite clear that GG offers better rakeback and it makes the deal even better as at my level the rake there is also lower. The fish buffet gives a little but with the jackpot and GGcare bonuses and easier LB cashes it is in my opinion a better choice.

At party it is important to play enough volume to get the LB score. Otherwise for a 50PLO player it isn’t that good of a deal in terms of rake and rakeback. You can expect to get 30% week with black card and regular rakeback. If you play the LB optimally that can increase up to 60% for regular grinders who play around 5k hands a week (with higher volume this can go up)

I’d say the rakeback levels depend a lot on your situation. For example I cannot play a lot of volume know as I am neck deep in uni studies so with just 1,5h play a day I can get about 20% extra rakeback. I also prefer playing with steady amounts instead of 1-2 times per week. If you grind enough to min cash at party basically every day you play, then the difference is minimal between the two, but for the lower volume grinder I’d say GG offers higher rakeback.

Hope this provides some value 🙂

[Payoffwiz]

I’m back baby!

So last week I was skiing with my family and decided to take the whole week of from poker to reset and chill for a while. I will be doing a recap post on last month now and then will set some goals for this months grinding.

January

In total I played 22271 hands and won with an evbb/100 of 6,13. On top of that I got $1167 from rakeback and bonuses and won $221 from tourneys.

Studying lacked big time. I just didn’t have proper routines and then the motivation and inspiration by themselves didn’t do the job. Where the great profits mostly came from was the realization that 100bb+ strat works much better for me when playing at gg and of course I ran super good.

I am happy with everything else but the studying. My routines and life balance was on point during the whole month with a lot of exercise and some social gatherings with covid in mind. I played poker with a good and steady schedule and it fit well with my studies at university.

So with these in mind I will be focusing on improving study routines during February

February

This month will be my last month before going full time. I’m excited and nervous at the same time. I think focusing on studying over everything else will be the most beneficial for me in the long run. After February I can increase volume significantly so it is not wise to go in to March with bad study routines and having to spend a lot of time in to fixing them when I could grind much more.

Some goals

Volume 30k > This should be fine. I will need to plan in order to get this amount of volume but it will happen. I will be playing on GG and Party. Only on these sites for now because I don’t want to shop around the sites just yes instead I will focus on the process.

30h PLO trainer work > So this will be my effort on creating the studying routines. I will make a routine and an excel sheet to follow it. With it I can follow my progress on certain spots and will hold myself accountable. 30h was chosen for about 20 workdays with 1,5h PLO trainer work.

30h PLO mastermind videos and forum activity > This will mostly be video watching but I think it is important to set a goal for the forum as it certainly doesn’t come naturally from me. I’ll need to make a video watching plan on what I want to watch and what will be most beneficial for me.

Some other smaller ones that will be interesting to follow

– 3x week to the gym

– read 2 books

– average sleep time 7,5h >

I think that these are some good basic goals that I can thrive for. I will post about my progress here weekly with the recap of last week and some goals for next week.

Ok gl to everyone with your grinds this month!

Lets crush 💰

[Tractatus1]

Hey man,

Great blog, good luck for the month and I hope the transition to full time goes well

[Payoffwiz]

Thanks Tractatus! The transition is coming closer every day and I just cant wait for it to happen.

This month has began with a slow start. I played 2,5k hands last week with a decent profit after rakeback. It was bit hard to get back in to rhythm after a weeks break. I don’t mind the slow start to the month because last week was decent in many other ways so just happy to get back in to poker this week.

GG changed the structure of their leaderboards so that it pays out to more players 50>80, but now the prices are much smaller at the bottom. The last price was $3 for 80th place. This structure change isn’t good for me but there is some positive in it also. Now the prices increase steadily from the bottom to the top. Before places 16-50 got the same $10 price but now prices increase much more evenly and that then incentives to play more as the next price increase is closer. Thats good.

Also I created an excel sheet for tracking PLO trainer preflop training. The principle behind it is to have a huge amount of categories and then bit by bit do more of them. When I do the required 100hand session on some topic I put the results in the excel and grade it with colors. Green = >90%, Yellow = 80-89% and Red = <80%. Then I repeat the exercises based on the grade before. If I got a red I’ll do it again the next day, if yellow then I’ll do it in two days and if green then I’ll do it in 3 days. This way I’ll incorporate some spaced repetition which helps the studying.

This week

8k hands target

mon-sat PLO trainer excel with at least 1k trained hands every day

10 week transformation week 5 watched through

Gym 3 times and 1 cardio session

Sleep time 7,5h+ per night

GL everyone this week! 💰

[Payoffwiz]

Well this week has been quite tough so far. I have lost about 25BI while running 12BI under EV :/. This has been quite unmotivating and really has impacted my mental game. I just don’t really want to do any studying or playing when I feel like everything is going down hill.

In a way this is just great practice for me as I really haven’t experienced this fast and big downswings before. It is interesting to notice how hard of a hit this has been on my mental game. Mental game is something that still needs a lot of improvement.

Going to do a better update on this week on Monday 😀

[Payoffwiz]

Oh man the downswing is real. I lost 22BI this week in just under 4000 hands and ran 12BI under ev. I know that these swings are in the range of normal swings that can happen to everyone especially when playing deeper. Still it has just hurt so much and it is the reason why this week has been so unproductive in terms of poker progress. I just turned my energy to school when the downswing started to take place.

There are many reasons why this downswing is so meaningful in my mind, but I think that the biggest thing is the fact that I will start to play full time soon and this makes me think of the worst scenarios that might happen. In a way it is good that this downswing is happening now so I can train myself mentally for this and future swings.

But yea in two weeks my period in uni ends and I will be playing full time from March till September with some summer breaks in between. I have already thought of many things I will do to guarantee as high of a likelihood for success as possible. These things include environment design and study/play routines.

One way I like to think and prepare for this few month period is to think that it is over and I have failed. Then I will try to figure out what where the biggest reasons for failure. For me the biggest ones are lack of studying and volume. If I manage to study and play enough with the right mentality I am sure that I will be able to jump stakes and succeed.

And this current scenario where I’m not playing too much and studying almost at all is not looking too good :D. But right now I am not worrying too much about my poker progress in terms of volume and studying. I want to succeed in studying and the last few weeks of a period are always the most important ones. I have some ambitious goals for university studies also so I think it is much better to focus on them know and then grind hard on poker.

Kinda long rambles I know but just wanted to write these things out.

Next week

So I won’t be setting any too ambitious goals but just something small

Hands 5k (Should be doable if I’ll play 1k hands 5 times this week)

PLO trainer preflop 500 hands different spots 5 times

Will watch a few theory videos of 10wt

Ok so one last thing came to mind about the coming months. I have thought a lot about how to save time and focus on poker better and one thing that has came to mind is exercise routines. I have gone to the gym before about 3 times per week, but it has been so inefficient as my commute to my gym is about 25min and then at the gym I’ll need to change my clothes etc. Not efficient and with corona its not the most pleasant to go to the gym. So instead I think I will buy some kettlebells and start doing a short home workout everyday. I will get most of the benefits of going to the gym with using less then half of the time. Then I can spend my time more better on poker and recovery.

Well that is all for now. GL to everyone💰

[Nilez]

Hey man, i hate seeing giraffs like that i feel the pain!

One thing that comes to mind from my own experience is that allmost without exception around a big milestone or a big change i often experience lots of issues. It could be when im about to move up or when im switching sites or even just planning giant grinds. Sometimes it is just simple things like wanting to buy something or cashout or running great and glorifying/boasting a godrun graph.

For me personally moments like these can mentally change your vision of expected outcome and turn a logical/realistic view into something more wishfull based on emotion or ego.

The moment you create a situation where >>winning or NOT losing<< a session or buyin (shortterm) becomes more important to you then playing good/studying/improving/long term its really easy to get lost in tilt and these types of tilt a for me the most dangerous cause its a global tilt, not hand/session specific and can linger many sessions if left unchecked.

After experience this myself quite a few times now i try to be extra aware or concious of these moments and try to pay more attention to my mental state, could even be planned moments of reflection in your day/grind schedule. A routine in a way. Ask yourself every x time how am i feeling, am i still playing good, should i stop or am i still playing my a-game.

Also whenever i suspect or feel i might be going through something like this i try to move down regardless of my brm/bankroll for a set amount of hands/time untill i feel better or confident that im playing my normal game.

I dont know if this applies to your situation or will help you at all but you know 😀

GL with the grind!

[Payoffwiz]

Hey and thanks for posting.

You really described my situation well. I feel like my run good during January made me too relaxed and overly confident in my abilities. I was already thinking that this transition and playing full time will be a breeze, but then when this downswing hit I started to feel really unconfident and lost the good routines I had before. I still feel a bit of the don’t lose fear.

I have leaned on the study side this week and I was thinking of playing smaller to gain some confidence back. Dropping down is sometimes just so hard for the ego, but right now it is so much better for me.

Have you had any similar transitions like going full time or anything like that?

Thanks again for your post. Really hit home and made me think 😀

[Payoffwiz]

Well this week wasn’t that great either. I’m pretty annoyed by this run right now. I mean some of it has to be because I haven’t put the same effort in that I did in January but some has to be because of bad luck. It is just so hard when you don’t know how much is which.

Anyway I was thinking that I will not play almost at all this week. Better to just lay low for a while and do some studying without too much playing. I have a few tests coming this week so I have to use time to prepare for those.

This isn’t the run that I hoped for my start at the full time attempt, but maybe this is actually better. It really has forced me to think about my mental game and BRM strategy. Also just good to experience these swings and really document what will help me to get out of it for later use.

But yea I’ll post my graph for last week and will be posting in a week next time.

[Payoffwiz]

Hello guys!

Two months has gone by quite quickly. My goals for these two months didn’t really work out how I wanted to. I could have achieved the volume goal but my downswing really hit hard on my motivation. It was especially hard to motivate myself when I had a reasonable excuse of doing school work. Study goal on the other hand was failing from the start. Studying hasn’t really ever been a favorite of mine. That’s something that I will have to improve on.

I still am very happy with my results and progress during the past two months. I feel like my game improved and that my routines and habits around poker improved a lot. I am feeling good heading into full time grinding even after the downswing. Now let’s talk about my gameplan!

Months ahead

I have a 5k roll right now pretty evenly at gg and partypoker. I will continue to play 50PLO, but if I drop below 4k I will take a break from 50PLO and continue at 25PLO until I get the momentum back. So going with 50PLO for now. I want to be quite careful with my roll as those bigger downswings can really mess with my head.

I am thinking of playing around 50-60k hands a month for at least the next three months. I’ll study some of the courses I feel will work best for me, so CSSPLO, 10WT and mental game fundamentals for now. I will need to focus on getting a good understanding of theory and I will use PLO trainer for practicing the concepts of these courses. I have the yearly membership so I will have PLO trainer until mid may. I am planning on doing a rough 50/50 split with study and play for a few weeks at least and then evaluate based on results.

I will get a winning sample of 50PLO this month. Of course variance can hit in a big way etc etc, but I will do everything to try to make this a reality. I have already planned a good and balanced routine for myself and I know at least in theory what I need to focus on to make it happen.

Lets fucking go!!

I am super thrilled to start this journey. I really can’t wait to grind and see the results.

GL to everyone next month!! 💰

Here is my graph and stakes for GG and party during the past two months. GG is the one with more volume.

[Payoffwiz]

Starting of with a bang!

Well the first week playing full time went great. I basically hit all of my goals and ran especially good. I also felt like I made progress in understanding GTO theory and how to use it while playing. Great stuff

I played almost all of my volume on RC tables at GG because I felt like it was easier for me to practice GTO and proper theory there. People are playing much more standard or basically better then at the regular tables, but they are still making massive mistakes. Also the leaderboards are really incentivizing. I managed to cash for 140 from the LB with just 9k hands so that equaled to 3bb/100 which is really good. I think I will continue to play at these rush and cash tables for at least a while now. If I am able to shot take 100PLO I think I should do it at juicy reg tables first and after that at RC tables.

I watched 10wt week 5 and practiced the situations with the PLO trainer. I think I got at least few good takeaways from those videos. I have also continued my preflop training program with the PLO trainer and I am very happy to see that I have improved in many preflop spots.

Next week

So after this great start I was thinking of playing next week a bit more, 15k hands. I think it is a manageable level for me if I can nail my routine with playing and studying. I will play mostly RC games and will jump in to some juice reg tables if I spot them. In terms of studying I am planning to watch 10wt week 6 as far as I can manage. I will also continue my preflop training with the PLO trainer.

I’m really hyped about the upcoming weeks and the progress I will be making!

I’m also looking for some study partners, so if you would want to share hands and thoughts with me, then hit me up on discord. I’m greentea247 there.

GL to everyone on your journey!!💰

[Senselessapprentice]

Nice to see you turning it around!