POT! 25K PLO Hands & Weed Detox, December '25
TL;DR
I am a live PLO player who lost a lot of his roll recently on the felt and buying my first home. I deposited $1K on ClubWPTGold when they released PLO and only managed to play 6,000 hands in a month (10/20/25 - 11/20/25). I am setting my sights on the month of December to get 25,000 hands in throughout the month. I also have a terribly disgusting weed habit that recently got worse, so I'm going to also attempt to quit weed cold turkey in December.
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Current stats (no graph cuz ClubWPTGold)
In for $1K...
Up $502 ($2 of promo money):
6621 hands of PLO10 and PLO20:
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About me:
I'm a 31 y/o working in the healthcare industry. I've been playing PLO live in Texas for the past 4 years and have won about $40,000. I documented winning $25,000 in a year and a half in a previous blog. My hours and play have been abysmal since 2023. I made $7K in 2024 despite losing $2500 on Venetian's PLO stream, and am down $3K through about 250 hours of live play in 2025. I used $20,000 to put a down payment on a house with my fiancé this past August and used about $10,000 to start a vending machine business. I don't have the roll I used to have, and financial responsibilities seem to be increasing for me every day, so it doesn't seem wise to grind these deep Houston games for now. $1K for PLO10 and PLO20 online seemed best.
Now the shameful part: I am hopelessly addicted to cannabis (or the dopamine hit cannabis gives me, however the hell you want to look at it). A day doesn't go by where I don't have at least three joints, probably 2.5 grams, between work ending and me going to sleep. This has been the case since I was 20; I've essentially spent 11 years factoring weed into my life and schedule. As I venture further into my career, desire to grow my side business, desperately want to be a good man for my fiancé (getting married Saturday), and be a PLO boss, I know weed is getting in the way. And yet, here I am sitting in my living room next to my dog just having smoked a J after a pickleball tournament. It's purely pathetic and I know some will roll their eyes at either this addictive behavior or the demonizing of weed, but this is my reality right now. It would be a huge win for me to put weed behind me in December, so that's what I'm going to try and do.
I feel dealing with the swings and also potentially being significantly more irritable due to weed withdrawal may result in some fun content. Also, this thread ought to help keep me accountable.
I will spend the next few days getting married, spending time with my wife, and really locking in for December. I will play hands in November that I will share here, but the 25K goal (or the weed goal) will not start until 12/1.
So far, the PLO10 and PLO20 on ClubWPTGold has been solid. Similarly to live, the main population leak is just playing too many hands. I feel really strong pre and on the flop, so I am working on my turn and river spots more recently (have PLO MM & Galfond's 'This Is PLO' course).
I was wondering why the other thread slowed down. Having been a part of the Htown scene, its def all bankroll to withstand the swings.
I have a friend who is doing well at a card club there.
I was never a real smoker, never had a cig but I dabbled in the weed but preferred blunts, don’t really know why. I have seen many many poker cats I came up with essentially daily users of marijuana and I don’t know how many of them I can say it has a positive outward impact on, it may be a positive inward impact for anxiety etc. but there are addictive aspects for sure.
I was wondering why the other thread slowed down. Having been a part of the Htown scene, its def all bankroll to withstand the swings.I have a friend who is doing well at a card club there.I was never a real smoker, never had a cig but I dabbled in the weed but preferred blunts, don’t really know why. I have seen many many poker cats I came up with essentially daily use
Thanks H2H; hoping all's well. Yep - just can't name anyone who credits a decade's worth of heavy weed use to their success. Inversely, I've never heard of anyone quitting weed and things going downhill for them afterward. It has been too long and it's time to move on, I say.
Been trying to get rid of bad sources of dopamine; deleted YouTube & Instagram off of my phone a couple of weeks ago along with cutting down on weed. I think my brain is comfortable on 2+2 even if I'm not looking at Omaha content. "It's poker, so it's ok," my subconscious tells itself as I scroll the classic Degen Stories thread, old posts from The Well, and mrwong's post history. The truth is it's the same quick dopamine hit those other distractions give me and I need to cut it down all the same. It's too bad the Omaha hand review thread isn't too active and also contains 5c & 6c action (fine of course but irrelevant to me).
Here's some gold that I found from mrwong yesterday. I was howling with laughter on the toilet reading this:
yes life and poker are the same its random events.say u in the mall having Chinese food you bite into egg roll then you see LA lady smile at you then she look at her phone you crunch egg roll soy been falls on your mexx pants you chew she types she looks up you say... are you texting me baby she not hear so you yell out ..you texting me baby she looks confused you take last bit
I'm also trying to follow his advice on resetting your "nitric" oxide with his breathing technique that he mentions early in his new thread. I only need it for poker though, not the ladies; I got married today.
Hadn't really considered it but next month will be a test of how much time my wife will want to spend with me while I attempt to 4-table (4-table max on Gold) to 25K hands. Probably should lay out a plan for myself and share it with her before I get started. She doesn't say anything but I know she doesn't like my weed habit although she's cool as hell about poker, so hopefully she'll be stoked to hear that I'm going for these two goals next month.
Haven't played a single hand in a few days now. I am ok with this; I know there will be plenty of playing in December and I do have some pretty major life updates going on.
Along with getting married, one of my two current vending machine locations is very high-maitenence. It's at a doctor's office and the nurse manager and one of the physicians have really been on my ass about it. Apparently one of the physicians in the physician group did not agree to the vending machine implementation while the rest did, and the nurse manager does not care for it either. They've reached out to me about everything from items I should/should not offer, complaints about pricing, and the machine "not working" (it has been user error and a declined debit card so far). I tolerate this so far since my agreement with the doctor's office is completely free; the rest of the doctors and staff appreciate that it's there and use it frequently.
My other location is at a pickleball facility and does extremely well, but I owe the facility rent per our agreement. I'm also on the hunt for a third location.
It seems imperative at this point to design some kind of schedule, perhaps for all of December if I'm going to be serious about this. I want to give my work and my vending business they attention they require & deserve while also not having them interfere with my goals for the month.
Although the hands won't count toward the 25,000 total, I'll be grinding Saturday in preparation for December. I have a schedule outlined now and will put it to the test starting Saturday. Will post some hands here. Driving to Austin this Sunday to visit some friends, and off of work Monday to come back and begin the grind. Did some multiway flop training in PLO Trainer tonight. Really need to grind some of the videos I haven't seen yet on PLO MM. I also set up Streamlabs to stream 4-table cash, but we'll see if I decide to stream.
ClubWPT Gold has "flash freerolls" going on Saturday as part of a promo so I'm going to hop in them as I can while playing cash. There will be a limited number of seats and the freerolls will be announced just 5 minutes before they start, so I'll have to be looking at their social media while playing to try and get in. I'll probably continue to avoid all variants other than PLO cash through December for the challenge, though - no tournies.
On the weed front, I have managed to cut down to 1 joint per day which is significantly less weed than I have been using. Not much more to say about it.
Session 0 today; again, focusing on a routine today in order to achieve my December goal. These hands do not count toward the 25K.
Started with $1K, up to $1504 after 6621 hands at PLO10 and PLO20. Made $111 this morning playing 479 hands in about 2 hours.
Hands: 6621 -> 7100
Roll: $1504 -> $1615
I feel compelled to show that I still only have one single deposit on the site since I will not have a graph for this challenge. No PT4, WPTGlobal doesn't allow HUDS or tracking, so I have to track by myself. Feels good to be up sharply 7K hands in but I know this winrate is merely an illusion until I get more volume in.
Fun hand, all-in on turn and freerolling 😃
Weird one - R KK84 2 callers, sb donks flop 1/3rd, 1 fold, we call, turn sb B50 we call, river sb B50 we call. Villain is 90% VPIP and 30% PFR. Fold anywhere?
Villain limps, we raise QQ99ss from BU, calls - cbet K82r flop?
479 hands in 2 hours makes me feel great about this goal initially; I can definitely do 25K in December. Stopping smoking will be the hardest part to be sure. About to break, review hands, another break to hang with wife and eat dinner, then grind again later tonight.
Evening session was pretty mild other than playing HU 400BB deep at PLO20. Ran it up at an 8max table and everyone left after about an hour, but before I left the table, another player sat with 150BB. He felted me in about 15 minutes. I lost $29 total through the session.
372 hands played in about 1hr 20min; again, feeling great about the 25K goal at this pace with this schedule.
Roll: $1586
Today made me really excited and motivated for December from a poker perspective! I love this schedule I've laid out and am excited to follow through. Early gym, breakfast, PLO Trainer/study, session 1, review hands, lunch, family time/dinner, evening session. Everything just felt right.
477 hands this morning. Felt very lackluster, like I was playing my C game. Lucky to only lose $40. Need to dig back into A-Game Poker by Elliot Roe and get my pre-session routine down. The macro routine feels good, but I was unfocused today and I know I could tighten up my pregame routine, so that's what I'm gonna do. Gonna get one more session in tonight before the challenge starts tomorrow.
One thing in particular I need to be careful of that I noticed today is drilling preflop in PLO MM and using the learned ranges to the PLO10 and PLO20 games. The most obvious adjustment needed for this stake is to play tight as hell preflop because we need to be so damn strong due to plenty of multiway spots. Can't be opening the entire range from the PLO50 GG Poker 6max sims.
Current roll: $1546
Hands played in 2 days: 1328 (doesn't count for December)
The challenge begins! Got a 4-mile run in this morning in cold, rainy conditions. Just ran 1200 hands in PLO MM. Now for breakfast and to get this show on the road.
We are starting with 7,949 hands played so far on WPTGold, so the magic number for the challenge is 32,949. Again, this is the only way of tracking hand count on WPTGold aside from manual effort, so it's important I know how many I have now before starting. Roll's at $1546 after starting with $1K on the site.
I don't have any weed or paraphernalia at my house to help with the weed detox portion of the challenge. I smoked last night around 10:30 PM - hopefully for the last time this year.
Here we go...
Session 0 today; again, focusing on a routine today in order to achieve my December goal. These hands do not count toward the 25K.Started with $1K, up to $1504 after 6621 hands at PLO10 and PLO20. Made $111 this morning playing 479 hands in about 2 hours.Hands: 6621 -> 7100Roll: $1504 -> $1615 I feel compelled to show that I still only have one single deposit on the site sin
Congrats on getting married and love the blog!
Am playing on golf as well. How do you get to this hand history screen?
Kk84 I would play the same and qq99 I would x flop
Congrats on getting married and love the blog!
Am playing on golf as well. How do you get to this hand history screen?
Kk84 I would play the same and qq99 I would x flop
Cheers, buddy 😀
I looked up the K82r flop in PLOTrainer sb v bb. We check this flop with like 92% of our range in sb if I recall and QQxx and 99xx are nearly pure checks
The HH is not intuitive to acess so no worries. Click "Hands" then the arrow in the HH pop-up (screenshots below)
Also, you must look quickly as the HH pop-up is within the playing window. The HH pop-up does not go away when it's your turn to act! I have to take screenshots immediately and get back to the action to avoid missing the hand.
587 hands out of 25,000 complete... and Jesus Christ, I could not win a ****ing all-in to save my life this morning. I was also 3b IP a 95% VPIP pretty lightly multiple times and got stacks in with him a lot and couldn't win. Probably overplayed some of those. I lost $268 this session in 200 BB PLO10 and PLO20. I only copied 2 hands to review later from the session. I stopped taking notes because I was tilting at the losing and me playing poorly. I will continue to play 2 PLO10 tables and 2 PLO20 tables, but if the roll dips below $1K, I'm just going to fire PLO10 until building it back up to $1200 for PLO20.
Hands: 587 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: -$267
This is an example of one spot I'm not comfortable with: having lower SPR and just piling flops in 3b/4b multiway pots.
8-handed PLO20
folds to 95% VPIP / 40% PFR in LJ who raises POT (11.5bb).
I 3b AJ98ss from the HJ and get 2 callers (BU, LJ). I have 1.2 SPR on a 10c8s3s flop; LJ checks and I pot. Thoughts?
Spoiler
Hands: 1012 / 25000
Total Win/Loss: -$197
Ran much better in my evening session although there are many factors to consider. I'm thinking about how much better the games were this evening instead of this morning, a freakin' Monday morning (duh) and also not playing immediately after a 4-mile run like I did this morning.
Although the challenge hasn't started out the same, it feels good to be up in these games since starting on WPTGold but I know my winrate is worth nothing without more volume. Also feels good to have clawed back $70 from this morning's abysmal session. On we go.
Other than right after my afternoon session, I did not yearn for weed today. I finished up my earlier session around 3:30 which is the same time I'd normally wrap up work and go spark up. So that along with the very poor start to the challenge made my brain crave some easy dopamine and that cozy high feeling. Managed to avoid it for today, though I have nearly a whole month left to screw it up :^)
Regarding your weed addiction which sort of remind me of this book. https://a.co/d/2F6icj0 . Think it might help to change the habit, I definitely struggle w a bunch of vice ex drinking. Was thinking of switching to doing weeds but a lot of people tell me don't and reading your story sort of scare me. Gl w plo I recently start learning it definitely fun game.
Also "Weird one - R KK84 2 callers, sb donks flop 1/3rd, 1 fold, we call, turn sb B50 we call, river sb B50 we call. Villain is 90% VPIP and 30% PFR. Fold anywhere?" I find pop tendency will just under bluff paired board by river so much. You need to fold even AAxx there when there also straight possible. I actually find that even the mega whale will have at least trip.
this hand "Villain limps, we raise QQ99ss from BU, calls - cbet K82r flop?" I would just always check. Let say people over fold this spot at low stake. but you just going to build bad habits. every solvers will always k/b QQxx on Kxx flop. It better to bet w nothing then start w a hand that benefit from k/b.
My win rate improved so much once I focus on max value betting and focus less on hero calling. Think about it if it were reverse how many hero call has you seen fishes make that were lol bad when people are under bluffing in certain spots.
My win rate improved so much once I focus on max value betting and focus less on hero calling. Think about it if it were reverse how many hero call has you seen fishes make that were lol bad when people are under bluffing in certain spots.
Yes - I have received this advice before and am grateful to be reminded by you. Thanks for linking the book! Dopamine is definitely a topic that has interested me within the past couple of years as I began to notice that I struggle with it.
Didn't play at all yesterday. I took 12/1 off from work and came back yesterday, 12/2 and had to play a bunch of catch-up related to the Thanksgiving holiday and the day off. I didn't feel like I could access my A-Game after a more arduous workday. Also, before I decided on this challenge, I agreed to play in a pickleball league last night with a friend of mine, so my day was pretty compromised. When I got home, I ran some flop c-betting IP hands in PLO MM and watched videos about c-betting monotone boards and playing 3bet pots OOP, but I still didn't feel like playing was a good idea. Trying my best to get more than 1,000 hands in today after work to get back on what I consider to be a good pace.
Didn't think about weed yesterday until after getting home late from pickleball. I feel totally fine without it writing this now and don't have any desire for it, but I've heard that there is a bit of a honeymoon phase when quitting where one tends to feel like they're over it only for the cravings to return a week later.
Hands: 1,012/25,000
Total Win/Loss: -$197
HUGE morning session today. 669 hands played and up heaps; nearly back to breakeven on the challenge.
I am so uncomfortable with flops when 3betting/4 betting OOP. Feels like I always get AAxx combos in the sb; poker gods trying to help me get comfortable with playing big hands OOP, I figure. This hand was all-in pre; if only they were all this easy to play...
All-in on turn here (this time IP) for 600BB. Some of the showdowns on this site are nuts; very comparable to live games, even
December Hands: 1,681 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: -$23
In for $1K on WPTGlobal, 9600 hands of PLO10 & PLO20 and I am still up sharply with a $1523 roll... Since some of the games have straddles, I have been using .30 as my BB size when calculating bb/100. If you take the amount I'm up and the number of hands that I have and use .3 as the BB, my current win rate is 18 bb/100.
Love being back on the grind and love it more when I feel that I'm present during my session and of course running well. I know you guys love graphs, but this is what I am able to use for proof playing on WPTGlobal; thanks for understanding.
Got 661 more hands in and had another awesome session. I'm now in the green for the month and continue to crush the PLO10 and PLO20 games through 10.2K hands total on this site. With so many multiway spots and population's tendency to not fold pre, I'm feeling like this grind is basically AAxx simulator. Lots of my profit, I'd imagine, is from AAxx AIPF.
December Hands: 2,342 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $118
I noticed that I'm able to more easily fall asleep only having been off of weed for three days. Oddly, my wife and I went to bed at 6 PM today after an early dinner. I woke up at 9 and started to play. She woke up around 10:45 and called me over to take a look at something outside, and I folded AA66ss while I was afk. The board flushed out and someone else had the nuts, so ran good on the tables and in life tonight.
I would love to find other folks who are grinding PLO10 and PLO20 on WPTGlobal at a significant clip; preferably other winners. Reach out if you are also playing in these games.
Hands: 2,602 / 25,000
Total Win/ Loss: $204
Another solid session tonight albeit quick. Feels nice to be 10% done.
Bluff on the river into two players with nut blockers; it got through.
This one... villain 85%VPIP c/r pots flop after I B20. I jam; he calls. He has KK63 with no flush possibility. Holds.
Roll is peaking in the challenge and in my time on the site. We'll just keep grinding PLO MM for spots we question and keep getting hands in. Thinking about moving up in stakes once I double my deposit and hit $2,000.
I'm fully set up for a weekend of grinding after work tomorrow. I thought about weed briefly after work today but then just spent time with my wife and dogs. There has never really been any serious moment where I was going to get in my car and go get some so far, and I'm hoping it stays that way.
Date night with wife tonight and going to see my mom tomorrow for lunch. I really need to put volume in this weekend to avoid falling well behind schedule for completion of the challenge. I know there will be days this month where I'm committed to family and I can't keep letting the days I don't grind add up.
