I ended up having a massive week from Jan 4-8. The graph is below, and I am pretty positive that it is by far my biggest week ever at PLO. I feel amazing about my game since switiching over to Stars and cascading the tables. The thing that I am probably most happy with is the steady uptick in my "all-in EV," which we all know is a slightly flawed way of representing how well you are playing/running, but nonetheless it is the best approximation that we have.

On top of that, I ran like Usain Bolt and could not be more pleased with the results. I took Friday-Sunday off completely, and I now have not played a tournament in about a month. Tourneys are just such a grind and you have to dedicate so much time to them. I will admit that there are few things sweeter than winning a tournament, but I am starting to think that I will only be playing them on occasional Wednesday nights and Sundays. Graph below is at 2/4 - 5/10 plo on stars 6 handed from last mon-fri.

During the holidays, I essentially gave up poker for the longest stretch in recent memory. It was about 10 solid days of not playing at all, and I had a nice relaxing time during this where poker didnt even cross my mind. I came back today and put in a big session, and it was awesome. I played well, ran hot, and overall just felt really comfortable. There truly is something to be said for taking breaks from time to time. My mentality was always to just keep on trucking but this opened my eyes a little bit. Graph from today is below, 5/10 and 3/6 plo.

Last Sunday, I had one of my bigger tourney scores when I chopped the 100r on Stars for $27.5k. This was pretty huge for me, financially and confidence-wise. I had been feeling really good about my tourney game, but it had been a while since my last solid score.

After getting that extra $ on stars, I've been doing most of my cash game play there. I thought about the fact that I have always 'tiled" the tables while I play, as opposed to cascading them. I always wondered how some people could play so well while playing so many plo tables. Today, I tried cascading them for the first time, and it worked out awesome. I was playing 12 tables of 2/4 and 3/6 and felt really comfortable. I probably tightened up a bit pre, which is actually a good thing. Another added benefit of this is that I dont even see what happens when I get all in, which is huge for keeping my tilt in check. Below is my graph from today. I played really well, ran pretty poorly in most of the big all in pots, but still looking forward to trying out 12-tabling more in the future. GL at the tables.

I just had a pretty huge week at the plo tables, which was much needed. Ive basically just been playing 2/4-5/10 hu and then the deep ante 2/4 and 3/6 games, which play pretty huge. Those games are fun, and I really like my edge in 200+bb plo right now. Graph below is mon-fri of this week.

I had a pretty solid month. My graph from this computer is below. Also, I played like 14k hands on my other comp and profited like 15k, so it was a good month. I have been playing the 2/4 and 3/6 ante plo games lately and doing quite well I feel. These games play pretty huge and the swings are naturally large as well. I am still running below EV across the board but this has gotta change soon right? Its been incredibly long since I have profited above the all in EV graph.

I played little to no tourneys in August, and I dont think I played any sundays. There are too many things to do out here in Chicago in the summer to be stuck at my comp all day on sundays. However, the WCOOP is starting soon on stars and I plan on playing as many events as I can. There are some gems in the lineup.

Unfortunately I was the one that got worked. I know I keep singing the same sad song, but there is no way around the fact that I have run miserable for months. Plastikcards, who I think is a very good and well known nlh player, challenged me to a 4 table hu match. I obviously jumped at the bit, as I think I have an edge over most people doing this and I love the competition. I thought I played great, but once again I managed to lose every single big all in pot before he quit me. The graph is shown below and it is disturbing. I got in marginally good in most big pots and had to see every one shipped his way. We were playing 4 tables of 3/6 deep and stacks were really deep. This is a big hit on my br and I probably had no business playing 4 tables of this. I thought he played really well too, and the cards just fell in his lap. I feel really good about my game, and I have been crushing the 2/4 ante tables pretty well so I will just have to grind back up at those.

I just felt like showing what the last 5 months have been like. I probably play only half of my poker on this computer, but these graphs tell a big story. I have run way below expectation for a very long time. Each of the last 5 months has been brutal and seemingly getting worse. April was a huge month for me, but since then things have been pretty terrible in plo. It was pretty eye opening for me.

I had some friends in town last weekend so I havent been able to play any of the FTOPS events yet. I am probably going to hit it hard this week and play as many as I can. I was bummed to miss the $535 6handed PLO event, but oh well.

I havent played PLO since Friday, and my longish HU session is shown below. Despite losing $, I'm really happy with my play lately and know that I could go on a big rush in the near future.

I had a really good session playing hu just now. Game selecting is so key for me. I was playing one guy at 2/4 for quite a while, and he was playing 4 hu tables the whole time. I wont give away his name, but he was playing super aggro preflop oop, and it basically reminded me of myself when I am on tilt. It kind of opened my eyes to how easy it is to play someone who is 3betting 80% of the time and trying to win every pot. I took him for like 6 or 7 buyins.

The new ante tables at 1/2 and 2/4 are great. I never got into them when they came into play at 5/10, but well done FTP on this. The stacks inevitably get real deep at these tables, and it can create some really profitable opportunities. Most people still seem to struggle big time when they get 3b preflop from someone with position on them. If you have a soild player who 3bets a ton preflop on your immediate left in a deep stacked 6 max plo game, it is almost not worth it to play.

Here is my graph today playing strictly 1/2 and 2/4 hu plo.

I decided to grind the Sunday tourneys on FTP for the first time in a couple weeks. I basically played every tourney $24+ from the 13:00 $75 to the Mulligan (excluding the 150rebuy). I played really well throughout the session, which is probably because I've been playing less lately and my head was in it. There were 720 runners in the $75 6handed tourney, and I finished third for just over $5k. I play really well in the 6handed tables, and was near the top of the leaderboard for the last couple hours. 3 handed was tough, as Pokerccinni and Raidan are both solid MTTers. Ill post 2 hands below from the tourney.

www.pokerhand.org/
Without explaining too much, this hand is an example of knowing what your opponents are capable of and how to understand what they are trying to do in terms of their bet sizing. The biggest thing you can learn in tourneys is how to be aware of everyone's chip stack and how it impacts the way that everyone else will react to it.

www.pokerhand.org/
Fairly standard hand at the final table.

www.pokerhand.org/
This was my bustout hand. Pokerccini had not really been limping at all, so I never see him doing this with a hand that can call my 24 bb shove. I am doing this because I have the best hand 95% of the time and I am perfectly happy to take the blinds and move on. Raidans call here is laughable imo, but of course he spikes the river. Oh well.

Then I got deep in the $22 200k tourney that FTP runs on Sundays. I never used to play it because of the low buy in and mine field atmosphere, but it was incredibly fun to get deep in a tourney like this. I was near the top of the leaderboard for the last 4 hours or so of this. There were a ridiculous 11,000 entrants, which is bigger than the main event. I was running over everyone until Vivek 'psyduck' Rajkumar got put on my immediate left with about 50 people left, and he stayed there until we both made the final table. This unfortunately caused me to tighten up my opening range and sb shove range because he is the only one at the table who would react optimally to it. Anyway, I busted in 7th for like $4,500 which was quite unfortunate because first was $35,000. Stacks got really shallow at the end, and everyone had a 10-25 bb stack. On my bust hand, the BTN opened to 450k at 1/200k and I shoved my 4,000,000 chip stack from the SB with A9. He tank called with AT, which shows how inexperienced these guys were. Flop was A9X, turn T. I had like 100k left after this hand and inevitably busted.