Seacombe

First week done! Pretty rough end to it, hitting my 5bi stoploss at 20, but still up €70 on the week in total, running a few BI below EV. There are three things I want to mention;

1) I'm having a lot of fun with this. In the past, I've really disliked playing on sites other than stars. Software issues, no zoom, lack of player pool etc have always put me off, but once I got used to this after the first day or so, I'm enjoying it a lot more than I do stars. I can see myself continuing to play on these sites after this is over

2) I'm 5/60 days into the bonus period, but only 3% through it. I was expecting to be behind - as I push higher stakes, it'll rake more, so most of the bonus will be cleared toward the tail end of the challenge - but it's more behind than I wanted to be. I can try adding in some more hours but I'm already playing this full time. I can't really add more tables because there aren't many more to play (plus, I'm really slow so I'll lose significant winrate). So really the answer is to stab higher stakes a bit more aggressively. I think starting next week, anything over €600 can be a stab at PLO50. This is fairly aggressive BRM, but the €20 games are very soft so I don't mind playing those a bit short.

3) I'm not sure what to do about posting graphs. As I mentioned previously it only has hands I've put money into, so all the stats are wrong and it's really ugly and jittery, pretty impossible to read. I'll likely just post one every now and then to show authenticity but I won't be posting them regularly.

I generally play Monday-Saturday and take Sundays off, so I'll be back to this on Monday.

GLGL!

Pretty fun first day! Didn't have much issue getting action at 20 so that's good. Nice that I'm already appreciating rakeback, dragging me into a profit for the day at the end there!

The site only tracks hands you've put money into, so this doesn't include any folds pre outside of the blinds, hence why the # of hands is so low. In reality it's probably more like 2.5k, somewhere around there.

GLGL!

To begin, I will play on a microgaming skin. Using affiliate codes (I don't have one but happy to direct anyone to people who do), you can get flat 40% rakeback. For the duration of their largest welcome bonus, you can get 20% extra rakeback, upto €1000, with it paid in increments of €100, and two months to clear it. Assuming a low stakes high rake structure, it's realistic that this could add 8-10bb/100 to your winrate. I'll be able to give a more clear idea of how much it adds once I've put some hands in. Once this deposit bonus clears, I'll move to another site/skin that will allow me to use another bonus, and keep going like that to make sure I'm maximising rakeback.

In terms of stakes, I'll start the challenge with a fairly aggressive brm at PLO20. However, I may not be able to get enough volume here consistently, so I'll supplement it with some PLO10 games if necessary. I haven't decided exactly how I want to structure the BRM for this yet - it'll depend on a few factors, such as what kind of volume I can get, exactly how soft the games are etc. Once I figure it out I'll make that a post :)

Talking quickly about the welcome bonus - you're offered a range of options, from €25 to €1000. Each one has a 60 day limit and is paid out as 20% rakeback. The difference is the increments - you're paid in small chunks rather than constant, so someone who occasionally plays some 0.01/0.02 is unlikely to clear the first bonus of the €1000 option, so would be better choosing something lower. Whereas, the €25 bonus is paid in chunks of €1, so you're a lot more likely to clear a large amount of that.

It makes sense to choose the bonus one above the bonus you think you can clear. I have chosen the maximum bonus, which requires me to rake €5000 in two months. Playing a mix of PLO10/20 at first, this may be difficult to do, but I don't think I'd struggle to clear the €2500 rake for the bonus below this, so even if I fall short, I'll make more money choosing the maximum bonus. It's about choosing what is best for you!

Hi guys - I'm going to call this challenge early. I don't think people have much to enjoy from it, I'm not really enjoying it myself, and I don't want that to reflect in the content. I also don't think there's much to gain from it, which is why next week I'll be starting a new challenge, that's a lot more precise, and people can actually gain something from it - a $500 to $5000 challenge, showing how you can use deposit bonuses, good rakeback etc to build yourself a strong starting bankroll. I'm a lot more excited about this and hopefully that'll make it more entertaining and useful for you guys :)

If you have done HH for few years without getting improvement, the problem definitely isn't in HH work. It's in the way you have done it.

I learned how to do it in coaching sessions from you, and from spending a hell of a lot of time watching your streams/coaching periods during this period.

As for last treatment bias, I've been a part of every poker training site that I know of, I've had three private coaches (including yourself), and worked on my game in as many ways I could think of. I appreciate what all of them provided and what they didn't provide. I am saying, subjectively, that solver work is by far the most productive, and HH review is by far the least productive. I also didn't claim the progress came from work only with solvers, I just think it's a huge proportion of it.

Sure, for someone who is completely new and starting out, diving straight into monker might not be the best idea. I will accept my original statement was very blanket and situations are different. I tried to make it less so by saying "mostly", I'm sorry if that's not enough

I appreciate your input. When I write the full piece I'll be more careful with how I word it :) Potentially by stressing more that it's not a good use of time to ONLY study HH, I think everyone could agree that's much more fair

I play mostly on stars for convenience, but I'm also looking to move some volume away from it. I've been playing a fair bit on microgaming, seems insanely soft and the rakeback is really good if you're using an affiliate. I don't have a link myself but feel free to dm me and I can direct you to someone who does

We could go back and forth on this all day, I don't think a definitive conclusion would be reached. My opinion, based on my logic and experience, is that it's not an efficent way of moving up. I mostly studied HH as my method of study and stayed at the same stake for two years. I stopped, moved on to solver based work, and moved up three stakes in three months, and feel like my game has probably improved more this past month than it did in those two years. Sure, you could probably argue I wasn't studying HH "correctly", which I would disagree with, but even then I don't think you can take anything away from the progression I've had, and I'm certainly not the only one. Out of the group of people I work with who use solvers, if anything I'm lagging behind

You can talk positively about HH study all you like, because for sure there are positives, but I would challenge you to work with solvers for a while, get some solver based coaching, and come back and say that random HH review is the best way. Until then it's just mostly stabbing in the dark, because as far as I'm aware you haven't worked with the solver very much if at all. Everyone I've spoken to about it who has used it correctly would agree with me I'm fairly sure.

I'll get the longer version finished at some point, but the basic idea is that the impact on your overall game tree is incredibly tiny compared to how much time it takes. The focus is just incredibly specific, it's usually one or two specific spots, often turns and rivers, where similar situations happen very infrequently.

If you're posting hands on forums, it's nearly impossible to tell if any advice you're getting is good. I read posts on these forums and most replies on hands are just "pot" "check call" whatever, and a lot of the time I disagree. It's also incredibly easy to explain logic in poker for two opposite arguments and have them both sound good.

If it's a hand you're really not sure about and have been thinking about a lot, the chances are it's a reasonably close decision so we don't really care relative to other major holes in peoples games. The future EV for time spent studying is really tiny compared to better methods that look at a more broad scope of your game

It has its uses for sure. I look at my own hands every day, usually to try and identify tilt/lapses in concentration. And if it's with a coach/better player who is looking at a large number of hands and going through them, this can be really good for identifying any patterns, or as a medium for coaching how to think about the game in terms of ranges etc. There's probably other ways that it's useful too, I just don't think one person individually going through a couple of their own hands is the best use of time. Even using softwares like PJ to help, the ranges are outdated and it relies very heavily on your inputs being correct in terms of ranging to get the right output.

I'm not sure this is a topic that's worth delving into too deeply. I think some small adjustments should be made for rake considerations, but I think in general our goals are to climb stakes, not beat the micros, and focusing lots of time into beating micros is going to be wasted work for the most part going forward.

In general, I'm an advocate of the "play your game, let them play theirs" approach. A solid, balance based style will crush these games, and work you do studying this style while playing PLO2 will still be relevant at PLO2k, provided you're using the right sources.

It's also worth mentioning that players at these stakes can talk about how to adjust their game plan, when they don't really have a game plan to begin with. It's just not an approach that makes sense to me

I'm not saying I think exploitation is bad. I think it's an important part of any gameplan for lots of reasons. I just think it's better to develop our default strategy, as from there it's generally fairly simple to adjust accordingly in various ways if we understand what we do as a default.

Some rake adjustments are arguably important though, especially preflop. From the fact rake is crazy high, and that preflop isn't raked, I think general consensus is that we should be opening tighter, 3betting a bit wider, coldcalling quite a lot less. You could debate this forever though, as I'm sure a high stakes crusher can probably open 25% UTG and it be fine from how huge the postflop edge is. I'm not sure what a high rake GTO preflop solution looks like (for the reasons I've stated above).

The bankroll challenge curse is real. Pretty rough first day;

There are some positives to take from today for sure;

1) These games are soft. I feel reasonably confident (provided this doesn't happen too many more times) that I'll be able to get a decent winrate here, without having to adjust my game too much.
2) This is the worst runbad day I've had in recent memory, and I didn't tilt very much. I got a bit annoyed, sure, but I don't think my game was effected very much. This is pretty huge for me in terms of getting the volume in, as one of the reasons my volume has been quite poor recently is from tiltbreaking.
3) I'm really rusty and have a lot to work on. I took a longer break than I originally intended to over Christmas, and I'm feeling it in terms of my game. Hopefully with a bit of volume and some study hours I'll get over that pretty quick.
4) I need to stop autopiloting so much. There were quite a few spots where I was facing a river bet, trying to decide what to do without actually knowing what the action was. This happens to everyone from time to time I think, but it's a pretty big leak. I'll shorten my sessions and take more frequent, shorter breaks to try and help with this.

My biggest overall concern here is volume. In an ideal world, I'd like to get the 100k hands done this month, so 75k in January (as I already have 25k). For me, this is a huge amount. I've made a general schedule of how I'm going to do it, but I know it's going to be difficult. I'm looking forward to the challenge! If I do end up falling short, I'll either just stop in January wherever I land, or push it through depending on overall interest.

glgl

I'd recommend making a discord channel and linking it in here, that's probably the best way to make this happen

I don't really mind. My life expenditure is pretty low, and between travelling and christmas my volume hasn't been great recently, so this will be good motivation to get back into a proper grind schedule. That being said I do want to try and get it done pretty quickly

Hey guys! Gonna redirect this thread to here

Hey guys!

I'll do the first post after the holidays like it says in the original post. I wanted to leave it for a while to see if there was enough interest. There seems to be so I'll do the first post on discussing hand histories, with a graph etc.

Cheers :)