Hey guys,

I'm going to provide a brief summary to start this thread and then for those who are interested I'll let you read a little more in depth in the thread I'm going to link on 2p2.

The goal of the thread: Beat 0.10/0.25 PLO on stars.

Why: Stars is making all kinds of terrible changes to online poker and using the excuse of "we're trying to improve the quality of the experience for recreational players" as cover for it. The idea is to show that the micro stakes of PLO is nearly unbeatable for someone that is capable of playing and indeed even winning at 1/2 up to 10/20 PLO. The rake is so insurmountable that almost no people win which is the real reason behind why the user experience for recreational players has declined over the years and not that there are pros (largely competing against each other and a small set of recs at higher stakes). If stars is genuinely unaware of this then I'm hoping we can make some positive changes. If they are already aware at least it will force them to declare their true intentions/reasoning.Most people are trying to combat these changes via strikes which I believe will prove to be very ineffective.

Why me?: To begin to answer this, we must first answer, "Why anyone". I believe it's truly important to show how unbeatable these games are. Generally speaking, most people who claim the micros are unbeatable due to rake are either micro players themselves (and I was convinced 200NL was unbeatable for a while... until I beat it), or they're high stakes regs looking at a table of rake paid by stake in bb/100 dismissing the game as unbeatable. Unfortunately, not only do these regs have incentive for this to be the case, but it's also easy to forget that just because people are paying large numbers of bb/100 in rake that that doesn't necessarily make the game unbeatable. When you're accustomed to playing 25/50z PLO where the rake is neglibible and winrates are still tiny due to edges being small it's difficult to remember that there are live games being run where the rake is astronomical but people still win because of how poor the quality of the play is. As a result, despite agreeing with the ascertions of both these groups of players, these anecdotes do not qualify as hard evidence. This is what I'm hoping to provide with some reasonable degree of certainty.

As to the more specific question of, "Why me". Well, I'll be studying for my LSAT the next few months so I wasn't planning on going to war every day at the highest stakes anyway. I can comfortably grind a few thousand hands of 0.10/0.25 and literally no downswing/bad beat etc will phase me.

Second, I'm a scientist at heart. Poker has never been the end goal for me. I've always viewed it as being a stepping stone for me before the next parts of my life so if the data truly shows that the games are beatable I'm not afraid to post it. If I were someone who's only option in life was PLO or bust, I'd have a pretty strong incentive to cook the data. Best case scenario I'll be playing poker for a few more years maximum even if the changes we've seen are reversed so I think I can be relied upon to give my best effort and take an honest and unbiased look at whether these games are beatable.

Lastly, I'm a good poker player. Sure, I'm not the best. If you play me at 10/20 I'm likely one of the weaker regs at those stakes and I'm probably somewhere in the middle at 2.5/5 and 5/10. I don't even bother to sit 25/50+. However, I'm not trying to prove that I'm the greatest player in the world with this challenge. I'm trying to prove that these games are unbeatable for any new player to poker with even above average intelligence. I've played for three years and have also coached/made videos and have a good enough grasp of PLO/Poker theory/Math/tilt control/variance/How to use a HUD etc that I represent a quality of player head and shoulders above that of those that can be expected to jump into these games. If I fail to do anything short of absolutely crush these stakes it should prove fairly definitively that there is a serious problem with the structure of the games.

Worst case scenario, should this fail to inspire any change I hope that it will at least shed some light on how reasonable it is to play and win at poker in the micros in this day and age.

All that being said, I'm going to post the link below. I'll comment semi regularly in this thread so feel free to post questions/etc but the majority of my posts will be in the official thread on 2p2 (where I post as North Squad).

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/apotheosis-beating-0-10-0-25-plo-convincing-amaya-theyre-doing-wrong-1570733/

Chris