So I thought that it would be fun to put up a journal for my PLO grind over the summer.  RIO has by far been the place that has helped my PLO game so I thought that it would be fun to start the poker journal here.  Also I will be posting a lot of my hands here so it will just make cross posting easy and I am hoping that with the journal, hand posting and membership here I have a nice little one stop shop before & after my sessions.  I am really hoping I can just play a ton of hands over the rest of the summer and propel myself into a sweet spot to grind out the winter months in the cold of Montreal.

I currently have about 1k online at Stars and really want to grind this up.  Typically MTTs are my bread and butter game but I have such a love for PLO and I think that it’s a great game and want to continue to strive and play it full time.  I do focus most of my play at other sites for MTTs so I took out a lot of my Pokerstars roll for vacation and expenses for the next few months and thought that this would be a great time to focus and grind it up.

So with the 1k I will be starting at 10PLO.   I have decided to start this low mainly because I want to focus on improving my volume while identifying some leaks.  Going forward I will probably grind up a roll to about 70 BIs at the current stake and then take a shot with ten buy ins for my next session at the stake above.  I think that I will use this strategy for 10PLO and 25PLO and at 50PLO I will grind out my supernova bonus.  If the summer goes great then I might even be at 100PLO before September.

For the first few weeks (hopefully days) at 10PLO I am mainly looking at some PF leaks and want to try and play a little more TAG style of play.  I am also getting use to using Table Ninja (which is a great piece of software so far).  I have had a few hiccups with it at the start and that is to be expected when making change, but in this instance change is progress and these few steps back will definitely propel me in the future.  I kind of feel like one of those pull back hot wheel cars.  At the moment I am getting pulled back, but I am going to shoot ahead ten times as far.

Currently I would characterize my play as loose passive PF and as such I play a lot of F/T/R.  I would like to trim some of these marginal hands from my range in order to maximize my hands per hour.  This will likely move me more to a TAG type of play and increase my hands per hours.   And the biggest goal of my challenge is going to be to increase my volume.  In the end I think that I should probably be able to increase my hourly while at the small stakes.

I would like to get in 100k hands for the end of July and try for 200k in August.  If I can get my H/hour up to about 1k then I think that I should be able to get to my volume goal in August.  I am a little unsure if I will be playing a lot of the tournaments during the Montreal poker festival but this could get in the way of my volume goal.  After this month I will have a good idea if I need to trim tables in order to maximize my hourly but time will tell.  I do think though that getting in a ton of hands will help me to identify some of the auto pilot and B & C game leaks that I have.  Also I have had a lot more multi way pots in the first 10-20k hands that I have seen at 10PLO and I have already had to make some big adjustments in my game.  It is a little hard to get a true representative of my play but I have had some problems with my 3b range and have really cut out a lot of the weaker (ISO raises) and I do want to start to 3b wider and for value.  I actually think that the point is to have a lot more of the high card/pull type of hands that you flat in position to take multiway into your 3b range because often the blinds call anyhow.  This will be something that I want to work on over the rest of the week.  I think that I will look at hands that I have started 3B at the micros to post this week.

This is my graph so far for the month.  There is a lot that can attribute to the bad play (if you look at the EV line).  I think most important was that I had a poorly constructed three bet range and also flopping really badly.  Also the first 15k type of hands have been at trying to get use to TN2, trying to up my max table, hands per hour, and I actually just got back from vacation so a lot of the play was not at my usual set up.  That being said I am pretty sure that I should be able to mass multi table the micro and small stakes.  At the least I think that I will be able to really improve my auto pilot game and from there I can move down the table numbers and start to increase my bb/100.  I do think thought that I can probably get my game in shape and make the most out of small stakes by mass multi tabling.  

GOALS FOR JULY

100k hands

+ EV bb/100

TN2/ HM2 HUD / note caddy notes: That I use (not ignore and pretend that I use)

Roll to grind 25PLO

Post on the forums each day to improve/think about poker (get out of my auto pilot mind)

I am really hoping to be at 45k hands before Monday.  This Saturday is the Pokerstars VIP live party in Montreal and I am looking forward to it.  Think it will be important to get a good jump on volume since I will be there Saturday night and probably hurting on Sunday.  I will be getting in an updated graph before the party.

Good luck on the tables everyone.