[Laurilokki]

Got to stop that session a little short to avoid tilting. Nothing too bad here, but a few buy ins down. Shot taking in the plo50 as well. To this day I´ve yet to record a decent session at that level. Would appreciate some run good at some point there as well.

[Laurilokki]

I´m going to use this blog as a sort of study diary as well. Probably not going to be intresting to read for anyone else…

So, just started the week 2 of the transformation course. Jnandez speaking about the mental aspects of the game and success in general. A lot of it was something I´ve heard elsewhere, but anyway it´s always good to get a reminder. I know I can really get much better on this side of the life, so not going to skip any of thesse episodes.

[Laurilokki]

More studying. So far the course have been excellent. I really like Jnandez´s teacginh, he´s able to articulate some harder things very well, so that I can understand them.

The lesson was on GTO, and why we should build our strategy around that and then limit how much we are going to deviate from that. This is all quite basic, but thinking about these things on this more theoretical level is surely helpful; I´m looking forward to the course getting to the more practical stuff as well, which I´m it will.

The discussion around minimal vs maximal exploits is an intresting one, and that concept together with minimum defence frequency concept are the one´s most helpful to me to soprt of start to realize what the gto is; on the other hand when we are callers, it´s defending often enough so that the villain can´t start bluffing us too much and on the other hand when being agressor it´s bluffing often enough so that villain will have to give us value when we have it at least some of the time.

Coming from NLHE to PLO, on a lot of boards I think it´s much harder to find the bluffs to keep us balanced, and I think it´s a lot due to how the value ranges are almost alwyas so narrow; where as in NLHE a flush for example is almost always a value bet hand for 3 streets, often even if the board pairs, in PLO it´s pretty much only the nut flush and the second nut flush that are the clear value bets. (And especially in live poker, there´s plenty of players you shouldn´t even value bet the 2nd nut flush against). And because the value ranges are so much narrower, that also means that the semibluffs should be better as well, we don´t want to build the pot with bad draws. And to me this seems to lead to us having more of the sort of air ball bluffs, instead they really arenn´t because in plo the blockers are in much bigger part. But I find bluffing with a very little equity to be much more a thing in omaha than in nlhe. That could be just me though.

[Laurilokki]

A good session! Wohoo. Back at the regular level, plo25 rush.

Not too many intresting hands here, but it’s nice top be on the better end of variance for a change. Going to do some more studying today as well, and it seems styack off ranges are going to be the topic of the next lesson.

I´m still recovering from Covid, so I don´t have the strenght yet to do marathon sesisons, but when I am back at 100% condition I´m going to delve in to those as well. GG poker really drives me to those with the daily leaderboards. I´m also quite used to having to go at it for 24 hours or so being a live player and not having the luxury of gettingh to play always when you want to; sometimes you gotta play when the games are good and sometimes that has meant much over 24 hour sessions.

I am also considering putting a stream on for some of those 24 hour sessions and see if someone wants to come watch. Sometimes some vocal explanation during the playing will help me focus better, so even if no-one comes, it could be worth it.

[Laurilokki]

Quite spammy in my responses here. Sorry for that, but this is mostly for my own benefit anyway.

Got throught the week 2 material already. Coming offfrom two weeks of being quite sick with covid and not being able to really play (only played some tournaments here and there for the period) or study, I´ve found quite a bit of motivation now that I´m getting better. Tomorrow will also be the end of my quarantine so soon I will be able to join the live games again as well. Really have gotten a bit sour being just home with some of my family (I have 2 kids with my ex of which one has been here quarantined for two weeks and the other have been quarantined in his mom´s home, and then of course my wife and my son with her has been here as well), although I am thankful I´ve had them here anyway. I love live poker, it really is leisure and work for me at the same time so I´m really looking forward to joining the field again soon.

Anyway, more about the studies. End of week 2 lesson was about win rates and bankroll management and study/play ratios. I loved what Jnandez had to say about the study and play ratio and it really got me thinking. I´ve always dedicated too much time to my actual games and not study and that makes really low amount of sense given that I really strive to get in to the higher limits. The sad thing is that we really need income from my poker games at the moment as well, so I will not be able to study as high a ratio as I would like I don´t think. But I will up my study time for sure for the near future.

I track myu study and play time with this app called forest on my android. That also limits my phone use; because the app will discount my study or play time if I start to use my phone. And then if I deidicate to getting some amout of time done, I really don´t want to work extra because I got distracted.

By the way, I´m quite confindent I have ADHD as well, so I will have to use all kinds opf things to keep my focus, when I don´t self medicate. That´s it for this study diary entry. I´ll maybe start the week 3 today as well; I already glimpsed at it, and it seems that we´re delving in to pre flop pfr spots. Should not be much new to me yet still, but a reminders on the fundamentals is for sure a good thing.

I know I will also start (again) the mental game of poker by Jared, which was recommended on the course.

If someone else is reading this: good luck to your games, and you´ll hear about me soon enough.

[Laurilokki]

Just played a quick, two hour session, pretty much break even, but on a positive note I scored for the first time since my covid infection in the leaderboards. $40 dollars extra is nice on plo25.

I’ll post a few intresting hands here from today´s session #1:

Let´s start off with a hand from the start of the session, where I think I probably could´ve found a fold on the river. Passive fishy player pots the flop, blocker bets the straight bringing turn and then pots on the river again when the board pairs? Yeah I think this is mostly KKxx and we could fold? If we were against a regular we probably have to call but honestly I don´t find any bluffs here to a fish on the passive side, they could be value betting K3 or Q3 like this on the river for sure, but I don´t see him getting to the river here with much of that.

Then a small flex with a hero “call”, in that I didn´t raise the river. The pot sizing from Villain on the river here was such a tell, unfortunately as we´ll raise through the stakes these plays become impossible or harder. But let´s enjoy it here.

And the last one is the unluckiest hand of the session. Oh my redline 🙁

Finally stats of the session here as well.

And now some more studying. Gotta keep that ratio up 😉 Happy new week for everyone and may the force be with you.

Greetings

laurilokki

• This reply was modified 3 years, 1 month ago by  Laurilokki. Reason: typo

[Laurilokki]

Note to self: Don´t write the blog on this website. It has now happened twice that I´ve written down something and then clicked somewhere and everything disappears. Going to use word to write from now on.

In to the topic, talk about motivation! I don´t from where I´ve gotten it, but I sure have it at the moment. After today´s 2 hour playing session I´ve already done more than 2 hours of deep work on my game. This course is superb, I love how it is structured and have already delved myself in to the materials of the week 3. Working on pre flop, got it!

So I watched the videos and got to reviewing my own play according to the instructions. And yeah, I found some mistakes in my EP openings. More than I would´ve liked. Honestly some of the opens seem terrible and I wonder how I´ve done these. It must be that I´m still going on some sort of autopilot for periods of time. Most of these are probably not that costly mistakes, but anyway, I found 12 mistakes in my 55 opens from UTG in my last session, and that is for sure alarming.

Well, it´s still good of course that I spotted these, because now I can work to erase these leaks from my game. I´m going to schedule myself two 1 hour sessions of PLO trainer just focusing on EP opens this week. I’ll start today evening.

And then let’s see a week from now, if the mistakes are reduced in a session.

I think I also lack in my play against 3bets pre flop in that I´m probably folding too much; and part of the problem is surely here already; opening some hands that should’ve been folds.

I also went through my MP opens from the session, and there I found 8 mistakes. So let’s do some MP training as well. Actually, working two hours on one hour sessions for each of the positions this week would be ideal; I’ll try that. That would make 12 hours of PLO Trainer preflop sessions for this week, that’s got to help with the game! And then, if I have fuel after that, training some 3bet spots as well would be good.

That’s a lot of work. But I´m so well ahead of the course, my deadline for the whole course in only on may, so if this week is going to take a little bit more time, then that´s going to be fine with me.

[Laurilokki]

TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT TILT

Small rant incoming…. God I hate this game sometimes. I played a morning session, and it was shit.

How can I not string even a pair of decent sessions together? That´s how it´s felt for a few months now. I´ve had some good sessions, both live and online, but it seems every time that happens, the next or the one after that is going to be a disaster. That, or then the next 10 are going to be hard, break even or slightly losing sessions.

I know it´s normal and it´s variance and all that, but god damn this can be a hard game to gewt your head around.

Well, nothing too bad has happened, a few buy ins in the minus, but most of that is coming back from the leaderboards and rakeback.

By the way: going to be playing some live poker today! It´s probably going to be nlhe, but anyway it´s veryu nice to get some social encounters going again (with someone else than my wife and sons). Gonna go buy some doping for long sessions today as well, and then maybe tomorrow I can hold a marathon online session?? Let´s see.

Okay, so haven’t only played today. Also made some studying. Now I´ve done some training for my UTG game, andi it´s intriguing to see some results.

This was my system fro training: 100 hands in the plo trainer, mark the percentages and then do it again. The 2 hours I’ve done was enough to do 3 sets of 100 hands with some minor analysing in the between.

The results: first 100 hands 90,6% right decisions, second 92,8% right decisions and the last set was 94% right deicisions. Also the one’s that do go wrong seem to be very marginal. I like my UTG opening play. Will keep on doing these trainings in the future as well. Today I’m going to do at least the one hour of MP openings and then tomorrow morning the second hour.

[Adelaney]

Hey @laurilokki

Welcome to the community and the plo mastermind great to have you on board 🙂

How have you been finding the 10 week transformation so far in terms of the studying process etc?

I hope the recovery from COVID is going okay for you and you’re feeling better!

As you said, no need to apologise for posting a lot this is just as much your benefit so any thoughts/posts etc you feel you need to get down whether it be to vent or not if it’s going to benefit you and clear your mind post away 😀

Best of luck on the live grind today and look forward to reading more on your progress!

Ash

[Laurilokki]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

Covid recovery is done now, fortunately.

I´ve really liked the course! I´ve learned so much already, with the help of plo trainer as well.

[Laurilokki]

A few days of silence here. More playing than studying, but I´ve been going through RFI trainings in the plo trainer, as well as some vs rfi from the blinds. I´m now regularly getting +90% on each of these, so I think my preflop game is quite good already. Especially because the one´s that I do get wrong, are almost always very marginally wrong, or even hands that I´m pretty sure should indeed be folds in the levels I´m playing, because there´s multiple callers so often, even though they would be opens in a pure gto world.

I´ve still been getting the short end of the stick in the online games. Actually I think I´m in the middle of the ultimate worst run I´ve ever had in online poker. Hopefully that will change soon.

In the live games however, things have fortunately been going differently, and I actually scored one of my best sessions this year: +640€ in about 14 hours of 0,5€/0,5€. Even though I think the games at gg poker are quite good compared to many online sites, it´s ridiculous how much easier the live games are. There are some players that are so bad that it´s almost like they´re trying to give their money to you. An example here:

There´s two ultimate whales in the table, we´re playing 8 handed plo 5 cards, no limit (dealer´s choice table, no limit omaha is often choosed if there´s these megafishes in the table). Blinds 0,5/0,5€. Effective stack 220€. I´m in UTG and get dealt KQ976ds. This would normally be a fold, but with these two fishes I think it´s an easy open. So I open 2€. There´s two callers (one of them the other megafish on the BTN), and BB 3bets to 10€. Everyone calls.

Flop: 998 with a fd.

BB: All in 270€ (the other megafish covers him).

So yeah, this guy´s range here is like all over pairs, of course any 9x, and then I also think just a bunch of random draws he has. The ridicolous thing is that there´s a good chance the BTN fish actually is calling this bet with like any 8, definitely calling with any over pairs. I saw him making a call to a pot sized 3barrel against this other player with A5, on a board of 5678Q. Actually was good there as well.

So yeah, I call with my 220€ and hope the other better player in the pot doesn´t have the nuts. Everyone else folds. The board runs x, K and I scoop the pot with my full against villains QQ553, didn´t even have the flush draw. You just don´t really see these kinds of plays online.

There was an interesting hand against a good regular as well, in which I flatted his bet on the river with quads, and he did indeed have bigger quads. I´m quite sure my play was good, even not being results oriented:

5 handed omaha 5 cards, pot limit. Same blinds. Effective stacks about 200€. UTG opens, there´s three callers, villain on the BTN, and I flat in the BB w AT886ds.

Flop comes down K84 with a fd, I have the bd nfd. I check. UTG pots it, villain calls on the btn, and I call as well.

Utg I know is cbetting this board quite regularly even with this many players in the pot, but the call on the btn already had my alarts up; villain will often flat KK here (we´ve played like hundreds of hours together, so I know quite well how this dude plays). Of course he´s still calling a ton of other stuff here, like wraps or good flush draws, K8, K4 with some back up. I flat as well.

Turn: 8. Kazing!

Checked to the btn, and he bets 20€. to a pot of about 30€.

As said, villain has a lot of KK here. But villain can easily bluff here as well with blockers. He will often barrel with those hands on the river as well, and there´s not many cards that will ruin my value on the river, so to keep his bluffs in his range, I think it´s better to just call here. So I do.

River K.

I check, and villain bets 35€ in to a pot of about 70€. And we have a decision.

We have quads of course we should raise ?? Or maybe not. Villain could have K4 here, but they´re surely not calling all their K4 combos on the flop, probably not even most. I´m also not sure if villain would call the river here either with K4, he could, but I´ve seen him make hero folds before. So I just call. Villain shows KK and I get to tilt him a little bit showing my 88. What do you think? Is my reasoning good, or should we simply be raising here still? There is of course more combos of K4 thank KK…