Road back to HS PLO
ABOUT ME:
My screenname is portemilio. I've been playing Poker since I was 16. I started off playing poker on Runescape gambling sites where you'd buy coins ingame which had a $ value and deposit them on runescape poker sites. I found myself obsessed with the game since I was young. I specifically loved the HU format. At 16 i ran up 100$ to 20k when BTC was around 1.4k playing 6 max and 9max nlhe but ultimately got destroyed headsup because i lacked a lot of discipline and had major ego issues wanting to be the best. I always wanted to be the best and would get extremely angry when dealing with variance on top of the fact that I was an unstudied player. In college I transitioned to PLO. I got staked and coached but I wasn't winning no matter how hard I tried because of my serious BRM issues. I'd run up a couple of thousand dollars then instantly shot take 5/10 and lose it all and then go back to the lowest stakes to rebuild, rinse, and repeat. My senior year of college I decided I really wanted to give it my all. In class I'd bring my laptop and drill spots and this was the first form of studying I'd ever experienced (other than hundreds of hours of youtube videos and poker content that I consume). I significantly saw a change in my game. I've always been a highly intuitive player but with the baseline theory I developed I quickly skyrocketed though the ranks. I still had really poor mental game and not great BRM but I was able to run up my first 30k ish month in April of 2022. Unfortunately, I lost it all back shot taking 10/20 on ACR (very commend trend in my poker career). I had to take6 a fifth year of college because of a couple of other reasons but I always knew I was going to end up being a poker player. I dreaded school and felt it was the reason I wasn't succeeding because I still had to commit so many hours to school (studying Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Fluid Mechanics). I come from an Arab household and poker was not accepted at all but that didn't deter me. My fifth year I had the same routine where I'd study in class and play countless hours when I was back. I was also gaming a lot (League) so i decided to cut that out because I figured it was a waste of time if I really wanted to succeed. After I graduated (May 2022) I moved to Lebanon where my parents lived. I finally had no obligations, nothing holding me back and barely any expenses. I devoted all my time to poker (literally 15h days). After 6 months playing 1/2 - 10/20 on mainly bovada and BOL I made roughly 170k in profits. My mental health really suffered. I longed for social interaction; I had none of my friends in Lebanon and I started to not care about poker anymore. My health declined heavily and I felt despite the fact that I was winning that there was a constant judgement surrounding what I was doing. Once I showed my parents how much money I was making they couldn't complain about the journey I was decided to take ( as much anyways) but they were still greatly against it. My biggest mistake came when I decided to shot take 10/20 on Bovada. I was absolutely crushing Betonline and Bovada midstakes for atleast 8bb/100 over a sample of 400k+ hands, but when I played 10/20 nothing I did worked. I got absolutely crushed. My mental game was very strong at this point and I wasn't disheartened, I just figured it was variance. I ended up losing 45 ish buy ins (90k) running 70k below EV. This was almost 2/3 of my roll. I had heard rumors about collusion and cheating rings going on at 10/20 Bovada but I just figured that was bad regs crying about losing because the same was being said about every stake that I was consistently beating. I will never know if I actually got cheated as I have no definitive proof but I highly highly suspect that I did. At this point despite convincing myself that the loss of the money didn't affect me in reality my play began to change because nothing I did was working so I thought i had to deviate. I ended up going to EPT Barcelona in 2023 because I felt the need to prove to myself and everyone that what I was doing was a real job. I had around 50k to my name. I ended up losing 20k there playing 25/50 live (brm issues started coming back I really began to chase what I lost). Once I returned back to the US, started paying rent I prolonged into a 4 month period of break even/losing. I really thought at the time I was playing well I dont know maybe it was variance but looking back at it I had basically given up. I was playing 3h a day max and not putting in any volume at all (20k hands/month max). I'm using this 2+2 thread to hold myself accountable. I'm not going to give up on poker because I know I truly have a talent. I'm at a crossroads right now because im 24 and have little to no job experience so If I want to get a real 9-5 I'd really have to start looking now. I have a couple interviews with some investment banks just to appease my parents but it isn't something I'm taking seriously. On top of that it's really hard to explain to friends and family the journey I've been on because they don't understand variance at all. I'm not saying I didn't make any mistakes I definetly did, but to lose that amount of money is definetly gut wrenching I finally made it and saw it gone at the blink of an eye. I have a lot of fuel in me now and I'm ready to play atleast 50k hands/month. I'm not going to let anyone pressure me or feel the need to prove to anyone (online or IRL) that what I'm doing is valid, I'm just going to do it. It may get lonely but this is truly what I love and I know i will get rewarded.
I'm going to attach this month's results. I had very little money to my name, I moved to my uncles house where I'm paying no rent and felt a lot less pressure on my bankroll. I started at .5/1 and 1/2 and slowly started to shot take 2/5 and very little 5/10 volume. I played almost 72k hands this month, which is the most volume I've ever put in in a month in my life. Attached is the graph. Eventually when I fix my old computer I'll export the DB to my new one and merge them. I will be posting interesting hands and lines I play here as well as weekly-monthly updates. I want to hold myself accountable no matter what and am interested to hear people's thoughts. I only have the last two months of my play tracked I'll post them shortly as I had to buy a new computer
GL ME!
i don't know what to say about all of the cheating allegations apart from i'm not convinced you're playing it straight. you do have to motive (desperate to impress overly concerned parents after failing to do so) and i found your defense to be quite weak. also, your braggadocio aligns quite well with a lot of other confirmed cheaters.
that graph shows some extraordinarily variance free money! especially since you play a lot of deep games and also HU. hmm... i hope they're wrong about you.
either way, very nice graph! 😀
ok tbh im probs done with the thread idc anymore this is becoming more of a detriment than something beneficial. I started the thread at a really low place in my life and I'm really happy with how far I've come. Don't need this much negativity in my life. I had 3k to my name 2 months ago and I've grinded my ass off at .5/1 and 1/2 to finally reach mid stakes. I game select good games i dont ego battle and im playing my ass off. I'm not trying to prove myself to anyone but myself but when bad regs are constantly attacking your results and all the work youve done to get where you are yeah its definetly frustrating. So ggs yall won its ur loss i was having fun with this thread but ill just go back to sending hands to my buddies on discord.
Best of luck to the really talented american o7
This thread was easily worth half the time it took to read.
good luck at the tables
I miss posting so I’m gonna start posting again :-) probably not as much strategy anymore but more just a documentation of the process.
Starting to play some live games again, heading out to Parx tomorrow. I’m also in a live private game an hour and a half away that is very very good.
I ended up last month + 6 figs online so really happy with that.
Everything is going well rn so hoping it continues. I’m started to get a bit tilted on non anon sites the psychological warfare is real , I think that’s why I’ve performed so well on anon sites cuz I don’t let anything get to me but when a reg consistently owns you and has it vs you or coolers you it gets to me for some reason. Need to work on that
i know its only 1 pair but i feel like this is a nut calling hand. id rather call this than some random 2p
good start to the month. including a lot more bol and acr volume this month so gonna be upping the table count
Gl whats ur acr sn? We've probably played vs each other
Hey man. Thinking of switching from GG to ACR because of the rake. How are the 200 games there?
Hey man. Thinking of switching from GG to ACR because of the rake. How are the 200 games there?
Last time I played ACR they were absolute aids haven’t played 200 on ACR in a minute though . Any stake below 500 is a cringe nit fest with sucks. I’m not sure how GG is but given the rake ACR is probably better. Maybe try global it’s probably good if you have access to it
Headed to Parx in a bit. I bought an iPad with cellular data so I’m going to be playing online while playing live lmao. Probably 1-2 tables max. If people are actively talking and having fun I’ll probably get off but seems unlikely in a public game. Gonna be playing some 10/10/20.
Also. I wish live was less players like 9-10max is kinda cringe but the games are way too good
how do u not fall asleep playing 9max plo [emoji23]
How were the games at Parx? GL
the games are really good. the vips are opening 80%, i had one guy to the left of me who was pretty good and was an online winner, the rest were bad regs and fish. really easy table given im battling way better players online consistently this game was a piece of cake.
i booked a small win didnt really make many hands but ya gonna be going every tuesday. got really tired on the way there so im gonna have my brother chauffeur me and im gonna stake him for some 1/3 . well im just gonna give him money to play without a profit and if he loses it rip
Booked my biggest online loss in a while -12k. Played pretty bad ngl was rlly unfocused but also ran bad, but a lot of the plays were avoidable
Will lowered rake and higher RB at BOL make you play more volume there?
Tbh I think Ive been overworking myself. Taking the day off I just feel like **** and am so tired . I don’t wanna get burned out and I’m still thinking about how bad I played yday because of my current state so I think the time off will be good
UPDATE for the month...
grinded a lot back today so hopefully it will be looking better tomorrow. stopped playing 6-7 tables that was my main tilt factor once i played 4 im back to normal
ok won like 15k at 5/10 today. we back. will post upgraded year graph tmr. also have another private game tomorrow an hour and a half away from me... they havent settled my debt from last week yet tho but i trust them just a tad sus
The private game got canceled ended up grinding at home instead.
I bought a new macbook pro. I installed windows on it as well so now I can have everything on one computer. This computer is so sick by the way by far one of my favorite purchases. M3 chip w 36gb unified memory and 500gb of storage. probably couldve bought more storage but its good enough for now.
I transfered all of my hands from PT4 on my windows PC to my new mac. Im getting different results which im kind of confused about, so im assuming that there was a mistake with the ignition card grabber (which i had suspected) that was duplicating hands that made my results seem better than they were (but it would also go in the other direction in the sense that if i lost it would double, but maybe i had more wins than losses). Anyways, I had stopped using the grabber for a little over two weeks now and just downloading hands the next day because I didnt want my results to be skewed for my own sake to track my own progress. So it seems like PT4 on my mac took all the hands with the same hh number and turned them into one which is great. These results seem a lot more accurate. So turns out i didnt have a 6 fig month last month :( but very close to it!
Just gonna keep grinding. Hoping to run better in live, going to Parx again next Tuesday.
mp vs btn vs bb, i lead flop, b turn 3/4, river comes board pair i think this hand just has to bluff. flop lead is already iffy without bdfd or flush blocker. i think turn bet is standard once i bet flop. can probably check too not a hand i wanna be building that big of a pot with but also want to deny a lot of equity so not sure. i think this line plays the "easiest" but def gonna look into it
