[Randomdemon11]

So, here I go. I am a 24yo half-British, half-Chinese Maths teacher in England, aspiring to become a full time PLO player. I have sunk hours in the past 4 years into Hold Em. Learning about the game, learning how to use PIO solver, putting in hundreds of thousands of hands into zoom/rush on different sites and learning about the realities of the game through practice. I never became a crusher, really. I never dedicated myself to the game fully and believe this has led to me only achieving short term successes and ultimately, I am just a breakeven player. Many of my friends see me as a crushing player, but reality has hit me. I need to dedicate my life to learning about the game in order to truly crush it.

I’m a breakeven player because:

a) I am not good enough. Yet.

b) Losing 10 buy ins pains me, and I have not yet overcome this.

c) The sites I used to play on had either high rake or little rakeback. I used to think I could be good enough to beat the players that I shouldn’t care about the rake/rakeback, but I see now this is ridiculous thinking. Even the best players could earn more money simply by playing on a site with better rake/rakeback.

Why PLO?

I’ve talked about my Hold Em experiences so far, so the switch to PLO seems random. Let me explain.

PLO is a new game. Hold em for me has become a little stale. As JNandez alludes to frequently, I crave challenge, inspiration and motivation and believe learning a new game like PLO will serve me greatly, on a personal level. I will learn about a completely new game and love it, because I am a passionate learner – as proven to me by my obsession with PIOsolver and the strategies it recommends.

Secondly, a new site I joined has recently offered a promotion, where if I play a certain amount of hands in PLO, I can earn daily rewards. This also exists for the Hold Em streets, but it’s much more competitive. By switching to PLO, I can earn the top prize (which is the same as the top prize for Hold Em) much more easily, and I have no doubt that the players will also just be far worse at PLO than at Hold Em.

This second point is already an action taken to move to the softer game, which is something JNandez fully approves of. This is a tactic after all, to avoid the harder competition and play against softer pools. In order to make the switch successfully, I recognised I must study PLO like I have studied Hold Em to give myself the largest edge possible. I knew the JNandez had a course and sought it out immediately.

My goal is to complete the 10-week transformation course and put in the required volume on this site so I can win the prize DAILY. Not only that, I want to become a crushing PLO player at the selected stake (25PLO – 10c/25c blinds).

My next goal would be to crush 50PLO over a large sample, but I want to focus on the first goal of beating 25PLO first.

My overall vision for myself is to become a profitable PLO player and earn enough money to eclipse my earnings as a Maths teacher to fully justify my career change. I love playing and learning about poker and it has been my dream to pursue this career since 4 years ago. However, society has a way of telling you to choose conventional paths. Being a Maths teacher is certainly the most acceptable career path in terms of societal values, however, I KNOW being a poker player will make me happier, richer (hopefully) and give me more freedom. Though I love teaching, there are certain drawbacks to the career that poker does not have. The biggest drawback is I have to answer to my superiors. This sucks, straight up. I want to be my own boss.

Ultimately, I would love to combine my love for poker and teaching and become a coach someday, maybe. But for now…

Let’s crush 25PLO.

[Randomdemon11]

So, after around 15k hands played now at 25plo, I am certainly enjoying the game. I can definitely see the field is much softer compared to the 25nl field, even though that field was still quite soft. The regulars at 25plo are showing questionable hands at showdown with seemingly face-up actions postflop, eg. 3b pre followed by instant pot on the flop screams AAxx and in some player’s cases, KKxx (I also feel like KKxx is overplayed massively by the field – some play it like KK in hold em). What I need to do now is take maximum advantage of these players’ leaks. I am spending a fair bit of time in the lab; this is a necessity as I need to understand theory well enough to know when to deviate from gto. Here are my study goals to keep me aligned:

– Learn UTG RFI ranges. RFI ranges is a basic fundamental. If I get this nailed, my postflop play becomes more accurate. I state UTG specifically because once I learn this range, learning MP’s RFI is much easier – it’s just a little wider, and I would need to learn which hands are added (or in this case, maybe it’s more accurate to say “what % of certain categories of hands are added”). Learning which hands are opened from UTG serves as a base minimum – pretty essential.

– Learn MP, CO, BU, SB ranges. This is my goal immediately after learning UTG RFI. As I just stated, these ranges should naturally follow on from UTG, so I think I could learn these ranges much quicker compared to UTG. I could be wrong however, I’ll remain flexible.

– Learn vs 3b ranges for each RFI. The natural follow on from learning RFI ranges. This is a bit in the future in terms of my overall progress, so I won’t explore specifics just yet, but I know this is where I will be headed.

– Learn vs RFI (3b, cold calling) for MP, CO, BU. Defense is another important fundamental and these positions are strategically similar to each other.

– Learn vs RFI for SB. The most unique position. I’m used to playing 3b/f in hold em, I’m looking forward to seeing what the strategy should be in PLO.

-Learn vs RFI for BB. The most complex defense, at least in Hold Em, that definitely took up most of my defense study. I also look forward to this.

For all of these goals, I will be using a combination of the Crushing Small Stakes PLO course, Jnandez’s Crushing 100 PLO course and small stakes Play & Explains, as I personally learn through theory accompanied with example + explanation. I am pleased to say I am already pretty far in learning UTG RFI ranges, as I have downloaded the Preflop Chart for PLO50 specifically (rake adjusted + accounted for likely multiway and OOP scenarios when we RFI from UTG/MP) and made notes.

I just cannot wait to improve my game and use my newfound knowledge in the 25PLO streets!

Let’s get it.

[Adelaney]

Good stuff so far!

Yeah you’ll definitely notice this a lot in the smaller stakes games certain hands being way overplayed like they hold the same value as they do in hold’em as you pointed out these are the players that you should be aiming to take maximum advantage of and you’re going to be way ahead of in terms of knowledge just by knowing very basic things such as preflop ranges so good to see you’re diving deep into that.

I would also recommend using the PLO Trainer as you can play around with all preflop ranges from different positions very easily allowing you to see RFI ranges from all different positions, if you haven’t tried using it so far I would definitely recommend doing so.

Keep up the good work and look forward to your next update 🙂

[Randomdemon11]

Thank you for your reply, I’m so glad you’re continuing to read my blog! For some reason, it makes the journey of becoming a better PLO player more exciting and involved, haha.

I haven’t used the PLO Trainer. This is definitely something I will look into. Thank you for the recommendation!

[Randomdemon11]

This is gonna be a short one compared to my first couple of posts.

I have just played a short 2 hour session of 2 table PLO Rush (the zoom variant on GGPoker) after a deep 3 hour dive into preflop range study using the Excel charts from the CCSPLO course. I wanted to play 2 tables instead of the usual 4 to really focus on applying my study, rather than put in the volume. I *feel* like the knowledge I’ve gained just from knowing RFI and proper defense has made SO MUCH difference! Though I am nowhere near perfect in my RFI frequencies, I’m already a lot cleaner than 2 days ago. One little thing that helped was I kept getting it in pre and postflop with a pretty large edge (65%+) and I finished the session up a couple of buy ins, which felt really good, almost like it justified my study. Of course, this is an extremely small sample and it’s purely emotional, but it sure felt good.

I’m going to get some more volume in, then study preflop ranges in more detail, then maybe… I can look into some postflop stuff.

But preflop comes first.

[Randomdemon11]

I have downloaded PLO trainer. I love it.

The trainer tool is definitely the tool I value the most as it allows me to practice RFI ranges in the form of a quiz (100bb, 50PLO rake) – makes it very interactive and it even allows you to see the ev loss caused by your mistakes!

One instance of this was: EP RFI 50 hands, all hands. I score 46/50 with a combined ev loss of -0.18bb from those 4 hands I played incorrectly. This gives me a benchmark to work with. I am less worried about the number of hands I get wrong. I am more worried about the ev loss after the quiz is over. The reason for this is if I get 4 questions wrong, but they were all -0.01bb mistakes, I can safely say I’m quite accurate, but if I get 1 question wrong that leads to a -0.3bb mistake, that not only means I’m quite inaccurate for this hand, but potentially other hands in the same category.

My worst mistake so far was opening KsJs9c2c, which is a -0.29bb mistake, and this one stuck with me because I found this result so surprising! This means I have a notion about these kinds of hands that needs to be adjusted to be more profitable, which leads to player growth.

I definitely will be using this tool regularly to train my preflop game. Once I master preflop, I can move on to postflop.

Thank you @adelaney for suggesting this tool, I would not have downloaded this otherwise, at least not for a long time!

[Adelaney]

Glad to hear you’re loving the PLO Trainer so far and that you’re noticing certain mistakes on a quicker basis!

Keep plugging away at the preflop game you’ve already began to notice the difference it can make at the lower stakes now it’s time to crush them!

good luck this weekend, look forward to the next update.

[Adelaney]

Hey @randomdemon11

Welcome to the community and best of luck with the transition over into PLO, how are you finding things so far?

You’re definitely on the right track in terms of game selection etc finding the softest sites with the softest games that also offer rakeback/some form of rewards now we move to crushing those games moving up and getting you to where you want to be a full time player and doing what will make you happy and being your own boss!

Good luck and look forward to following along with your journey!

[Randomdemon11]

Hi @adelaney .

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! You must be so busy with how active you are in discord AND you’re reading people’s blog posts?!?! Crazy! I fully appreciate you replying in such an enthusiastic manner.

I have just played a 5k hand session 4tabling zoom on GGPoker where I lost around 10 buy ins. I definitely feel the variance in PLO compared to Hold Em, as the difference in all in ev was… 10 buy ins, haha. Such a small sample size won’t mean much for my true win rate, I know – however, I am bursting to get better at this game. It seems so complex and I truly love the challenge of improving at such a game.

I am making my way through the 10-week transformation series to improve my skillset. I can definitely *feel* some leaks in my game preflop and postflop. How much of this feeling is accurate, I have no idea, truly hahaha, I am just so new to this game. I think the main thing I will focus on (at least right now) is preflop rfi ranges.

I hope you stay interested in my journey haha, I would love to keep in touch with the Mastermind community. Allies and like minded people are definitely the way to progress.

<3

[Adelaney]

You’re more than welcome, that’s what i’m here for 🙂 it’s great reading through new members stories and where they want to end up after joining the PLO Mastermind, and I know for sure it definitely motivates and inspires others too which is great for the community!

Haha yeah the variance is certainly a bit crazier than NLH but you’ll get use to it and as you said small sample sizes become irrelevant in the long term. If you have the determination and the ethic to improve and crush this game like you do you’ll be fine!

Yeah it’s hard to know, generally someone transitioning over from NLH will play a lot more hands than they should be because of how certain hands look a classic case of ‘oooooh 4 cards how can this be bad’ and then you check it but you’re on the right track 100% focus on preflop for now as in the lowstakes just having strong preflop fundamentals will set you miles ahead of the general field!

I’ll definitely continue to pop in and read your progress, keep up the good work and have a great weekend!

[Randomdemon11]

Just a small update to note that I have developed a routine to my training sessions using PLO trainer. I will do a 50q quiz then take note on which hands I get wrong, in particular the kinds of hands I get wrong. Then, I will look at these kinds of hands to change my perception of how strong/weak these hands are. After that, I will retake the quiz. Repeat process.

The result I posted here is my personal best for EP RFI: 49/50 correct with a 0.01bb ev loss. In layman’s terms, the only question I got wrong was a 0.01bb difference between fold and open, so I can conlude I am becoming a lot more precise with my understanding of EP opens (at least at 50PLO rake structure and 100bb stacks).

Once I can reliably replicate this kind of result, I will allow myself to move on to MP RFI.

Peace and happy studies 🙂

[Randomdemon11]

Another quick update

I have continued my use of the PLO trainer to train my RFI ranges. After using it to train my EP RFI ranges, I found I was averaging around 0.2bb ev loss every 50 hands, so 0.4bb/100. From here, I had two options. Continue to study the types of hands I make mistakes with, or move on to MP RFI. I figured I would move on to MP, since the improvements I can make at MP RFI stand to be more meaningful than sharpening my precision at EP RFI. So, I moved on.

I found I also averaged around 0.2bb ev loss every 50 hands here. I attribute this to knowing that slightly -ev opens from EP are likely to be slightly profitable opens from MP. So, I moved on to CO RFI.

Here, I also found a similar ev loss! This was great, I thought. I can apply what I know about EP RFI to MP and even CO! So, I moved on to BU RFI.

This is where I am at right now. Here, I am averaging around a 0.45bb ev loss every 50 hands, or 0.9bb/100. I will have to study the kinds of hands I am making mistakes at if I am to lower this error rate to the same standard as my other positions, then I can move on to the SB and then will have to decide if I want to sharpen my RFI game overall or move on to “vs opens” ranges.

Let’s keep studying!

[Randomdemon11]

I am now consistently achieving a -0.3bb ev loss every 50 hands from all positions for RFI.

I think the next step for me as a player to grow the most is to look at defense. My order of study will be:

MP vs EP

BU vs EP

SB vs EP

BB vs EP

BU vs CO

SB vs BU

BB vs BU

BB vs SB

Good luck me!

[Randomdemon11]

Just finished my first quiz on MP vs EP without much prior study to see how good my intuition is. Safe to say, it’s not up to scratch haha. I lost 4.13bb in ev over those 50 hands. This score is absurdly high, especially compared to my RFI ev losses of 0.3bb. This spot will require my attention.

[Funkarello]

I think it’s normal because it’s less obvious than rfi EP. I think I have to work these spots me too

[Randomdemon11]

Yeah perhaps it’s normal. I’m not using that as an excuse though, I want to be as good as RFI at these spots. I’ve been studying this spot and trying to spot patterns regarding which hands want to 3b/call/fold.

[Randomdemon11]

OK. I have spent most of yesterday and today studying and practising all defense spots. I started with MP vs EP. My first quiz saw me losing 4bb in ev, so I really took the time to learn the patterns in the hands. I saw several such patterns:

– Double paired hands usually call, only the weakest ones can fold
– Hands like A765ds love 3betting
– Hands like K765ds love calling
– Hands like Q765ds love 3betting
– Most AAxx 3b. It has to be really disconnected to be calling
– A lot of the 3b range that isn’t AAxx is double suited. If my hand is double suited and has blockers/connectivity, like AQJTds or 8765ds, I should look to 3b
– Hands like AK65ds love calling

I’m sure there are other patterns I’m missing here that I learned, these ones just came to mind immediately. In learning this patterns, I managed to get my ev loss down to 0.4, just 1/10 of the error rate I started out with!

I took this to the other positions as well. BU vs EP, SB vs EP, BB vs EP, BU vs CO, SB vs BU, BB vs BU, BB vs SB.

Each position had its own characteristics.

BU vs EP was similar to MP vs EP, just a bit wider.

SB vs EP had almost no calling range and a similar 3b range to MP vs EP. In order to call, I would have to have a hand that just loves to call, eg. QJT9ds, QQJTds, KK98ds.

BB vs EP saw a big change in 3b patterns. Now, we are inclined to 3b a lot more mergey. We are also only calling around 15% of the time, so I had to really consider which hands qualify as strong enough to defend.

BU vs CO returned to MP vs EP characteristics of 3betting, but much wider. Now, a lot of the KKxx want to 3b, compared to call/fold. This was the most obvious characteristic I noticed.

SB vs BU is similar to SB vs EP, just a bit wider.

BB vs BU saw us defend way more hands compared to BB vs EP.

BB vs SB saw us fold very little. It almost became a case of “if my hand has any connectivity, I defend”. We also 3b a mergey range.

In taking the same study approach as I did for RFI practice, I managed to secure a -0.7bb over 50 hands error rate over all defending positions. This number could certainly be improved upon, but considering I started just 24 hours ago as a -4bb/50 hands player for defense, I am so very proud of my progress. For reference, my RFI error rate is about -0.25bb/50.

I look forward to improving this score and also moving on to responding vs 3b.

Good luck me!

[Randomdemon11]

Hi all.

I have spent the last few days really trying to learn preflop. I have made myself a “trainer tracker” which is just a sheet that keeps record of my ev loss scores for different preflop scenarios. This way, I can look at where I’m leaking the most and improve on those. I even have a “notes” section where I jot down hands I am making massive errors in so I can study them in detail.

I have attached the trainer tracker below.

In the picture, you can see my first “set” as it were. These are my scores after a quick study of each position, averaged out for each spot and for each concept overall. I also have a second set, where I aim to improve upon my first sets’ scores. This will always give me a goal to aim for. In repeating this process over and over, I aim to be more precise in my preflop game. As you can see, I have done training on a lot of preflop scenarios with the aim of covering all outcomes. For example, BU vs EP RFI and BU vs CO RFI should cover BU vs MP RFI by choosing a strategy that is somewhere in the middle of vs EP and vs CO.

I will post a follow up to this when I have studied the spots I am leaking in most and am excited to post my improvements.

Peace.

[Adelaney]

Keep up the good work, noticing you’re putting in a lot of hard work with the plo trainer to truly nail down the preflop side of things it’s great to see, keep at it. Like the look of the tracker too which can be used as a motivational tool as well to show yourself that you’re constantly improving each time!

Keep at it, it’ll all be worth it in the end that’s the main thing!

Have a good week and look forward to seeing further updates on your progress.

[Randomdemon11]

Thank you for replying! Yeah, I am sure it will pay off, I’m already feeling much stronger as a player. I’m ready to be even stronger with more study and practice!

[Sammayy]

How you’ve broken this down is great!! I definitely taking inspiration from this as I work on preflop too. Thank you for sharing 🙂

[Randomdemon11]

Thank you so much for your kind words! Good luck with your own study 🙂

[Mirin]

I have been recording since last week, referring to this post.

[Randomdemon11]

Highlight:

25PLO, winning a 350bb pot – my biggest win in a single pot so far. Notice how nobody else has AA :O

[Adelaney]

Welcome to GG Poker 😀 congrats on winning your biggest pot!

Hope the sessions have been going well for you.