Hi All,

So a bit of background on me:

25 and from UK. Got back into poker during lockdown last year and fell in love with the game again. Played PLO for just over a year spending a combined time investment with videos, solvers and playing of just under 1k hours. It dawned on me about a month ago that I could not beat PLO, I was playing on GG at PLO50 and PLO100 RNC, I felt as though no matter my time investment, my winrate was not improving. Could be running bad but, to quote Mycroft Homes “What do we say about coincidences? The universe is rarely so lazy.”

It dawned on me that either I continue breaking even/slightly losing for a while or re-evaluate. I had a week break in order to make sure I didn’t make any rash decisions just because I might not be running great at the time. I concluded that the most important element for me and poker was the competitive aspect, I love competition and while I could start another sport or game such as chess which I had dabbled in quite a bit but it does not have the same allure as poker. Secondly, the potential money-making aspect is very appealing, and this offers something chess does not. A competitive and strategy-based game that you can make some profit at is very appealing to me.

As mentioned, PLO Cash ultimately did not turn out how I was expecting considering the workload I put into it. I accept my failure in this, it could be that I just am not good enough to succeed or my brain is not wired for the game. Either way, I will shut the door to PLO. I could move to Mixed Games but the games are not very liquid particularly at low stakes.

This leaves NLHE. I think the advantage of this is that typically, new players use this as a base to learn about poker resulting in a greater scope of money to be made. Taking my experience in PLO Cash, I am concerned that my poor results are due to the cash game format and do not want to simply translate the results from PLO to NLHE. Hence, my game of choice with be NLHE MTTs.

Poker is Fractal and while I understand the broader scope of what a bad strategy at NLHE is generally and what to avoid as a result, when going down a level into the detail, my understanding is extremely limited. I accept this and hold no ego towards my exceptionally narrow knowledge at NLHE. With this in mind, I will start at very small stakes, applying knowledge I will learn in the ‘From the Ground Up MTT’ series to begin with, before transitioning to trainers and solvers thereafter once I have understood the content to a good degree.

I learned many lessons during my failings at PLO Cash and will be using these during my new journey in order to not make the same mistakes again. These will appear as I progress and will call them out as I make changes.

I shall start with 45 player Turbo SNG’s on stars (these are a very similar in structure and player count to the tournaments my local casino runs which is very soft and will be good simulations). 100 SNGs at $0.50, $1.50 and $3.50 each. Once reaching this point, I will review my results and decide whether to stick at this or transition to larger tournaments and larger buy ins.

As for other areas of my life, I am actually very happy with and am already where I would expect myself to be in most areas so I will not be making goal on these during this thread.

I am happy to answer any questions and will post results hopefully weekly 😊

• Play 100 $1.50 MTSNG
• Play 100 $3.50 MTSNG
• Complete the FTGU MTT Course