POT! 25K PLO Hands & Weed Detox, December '25

No smokey smokey at the party - and I did have a moment where I thought I was gonna cave. My brother (a former prolific stoner and current light smoker) showed up from Arizona and surprised me; I haven't seen him in a little over two years. He had a vape with him but I declined. I let a couple of vodka Red Bulls and a couple Dos Equis drive the ship, and quite frankly, two mixed drinks and two beers are more than enough for me.

Back of a magazine - LOL. Earlier this year, about 5 members of my company's 70-person team were let go, and that sparked some motivation within me to start looking for a side hustle. I just Googled side businesses and looked at several Facebook pages dedicated to specific side hustles like dropshipping, local reselling, vending machines, Amazon Flex, etc. What caught my eye about the vending game was actually the machine itself; I was hooked and ready when I saw a demo of the machine I currently use at my two locations. I found a Short on YouTube that shows how to use it.

https://youtube.com/shorts/Z695nHdLl9g?s...

After seeing this, I just thought that these machines are a significant improvement on what everyone currently thinks of when they hear "vending machine" and that they still aren't available in many places. I ordered my machines from a dealer in Dallas, brought them down here, and went to work on finding locations.

Cool! Are you able to then sell the email addresses to spammers, haha?

I was just gonna do straight up credit card theft and cut out the middleman but this might be the safer route. Thanks, Mark!

Just sharing my plans for when I join you in this venture!

I'm around online usernames a lot having history playing online poker and tons of gaming, so it's not often these days that a username makes me react. This one, I thought, was particularly funny:

Unfortunately for "google was my idea", He ran his... runner runner J-high flush draw and pocket 2s into my top set all-in on the flop, and I spiked quads on the turn - perhaps the most unnecessary quads hand ever made.

Another thousand hands down and another winning session. Nearly halfway done with the challenge and the month is nearly halfway over. Right on schedule and absolutely dominating the pool so far.

December Challenge
Hands: 12,006
Total Win/Loss: $1197

Club WPTGold Stats
Hands: 20,054
Total Win/Loss: $1743

Bluff-catchaaaaa

UTG open I 3b from MP, UTG calls

Monotone flop, c/c. Turn also same suit, he leads - he doesn't have to have it at all here esp with 4 low diamonds on board. I call. River c/c and I'm good vs KKxx with dry Kd.

Was thinking about how being jealous of the live Houston regs during my time grinding online is useless. Also, frankly, I can name about 15 people I have played with here in Houston within the past 5 years that would even have a chance of playing 20,000 hands on this site and be +EV; probably more like 10 or less. I firmly believe this. It motivates me and makes me hungry to keep building a roll and improve dramatically at PLO for my eventual return to the live cash grind. Still plenty of leaks to plug on my end, and my confidence will not make me lose sight of that. Always a student; always wanting to learn more.

Did not grind yesterday evening; played pickleball instead. Got in 1,000 more hands this morning; challenge officially over halfway complete! Going to take a break now for lunch and get 1,000 more in before the evening. My wife gets home later today than usual, so I have a bit more time to grind. If I'm feeling it, I may also try and get hands in tonight, but we will see.

December Challenge
Hands: 13,024 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1272

There are plenty of valid complaints to make about Club WPTGlobal's software but I'm just wishing I had some data for tracking and review. Along with lacking a hand database for review of stats and specific spots, it's just so stupid having to manually track and calculate a bb/100. On top of that, any calculation I make is a mere estimate since I've played 3 different stakes now with no way to differentiate how many hands I have played in each of them.

Played about 500 more hands and wasn't running well for the first 400ish, then completely started to play too aggressive and punt the last 100. Called it quits earlier than planned when I realized I wasn't playing well.

December Challenge
Hands: 13,515 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1151

Just under 11,000 more hands to go in the challenge. Played 500 more hands tonight and lost a couple more BIs. These two sessions today and my first session of this challenge are the only sessions in the challenge where I've lost. Just trying to be mindful of the journey... it is easier not to get down on yourself after a bad 1000 hands with a much larger recent history of winning in the same games.

December Challenge
Hands: 14,016 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1095

Tonight, I must admit that I really want a joint. This is probably the moment so far this month where I've wanted to smoke the most. My brain is saying, "You busted your ass today working, lifting and getting 2K hands in, and you've gone two weeks without it. Come on; give me that sweet dopamine, baby!" I am not going to get in the car to get one, though. Just going to play some video games for a bit and go to sleep.

I like to think of myself as strong-willed, but if I am having this battle, how mentally capable can I truly be? So disappointed in myself. I am not religious, but I pray that this is indicative of my addiction and not of my whole self, and that this disappointment and desire that I feel will go away the further I get from weed.

Congrats on all of this journey. Winning at a game is great. Winning at life is even better.

As for the weed, cold turkey seems very difficult. A very long time ago I saw some documentary about a fancy Hollywood type rehab place for drug addiction and the thing I found intersting was that they were cool if you replaced a bad drug addiction with something less bad. They were cool if you got off drugs by smoking the free cigarettes (old times) they provided or all the free coffee you could drink. So cut yourself a break and replace the urges with an awesome piece of pizza or some other healthy vice.

Thank you!

You are so right on all counts; if someone asked me "Are you going to smoke after the challenge?" right now the answer is unfortunately yes which I think speaks to the difficulty of quitting cold turkey. I don't see myself maintaining the willpower not to at this point after December... and I hate even typing that because it doesn't align with the kind of man I want to be. So to your point, it does seem totally imparative to have a system set up afterward if I want to really quit forever including outlets for those moments where I really want a hit. For now I've just been gaming and having snacks when the urge comes on.

Taking the evening off to play in a singles pickleball league. Despite doubles being the more popular form of pickleball, I prefer singles over doubles to get more cardio in. You might even call singles pickleball the PLO of pickleball. Conveniently, the league is at my gym so I'll get a lift in beforehand.

I had a shower thought last night about something BERRI SWEET did during his HU match vs. AmSoGood, and I decided I wanted to do something similar. To spice things up, I will take the first 4card hand combo someone replies with in the thread and RFI or 3b pre the next time I get it. I'll post the hand history and ask for another combo once I play it.

9-6-4-2 Badugi...

I LOVE IT, baby! If I can't find the 9642r after awhile, I'll do the same with 9642ss

Horrible update on the weed front of this challenge... I still haven't ingested any cannabis this month in any form but a huge opportunity to do so is brewing. My wife wants to go see the new Avatar tonight; I haven't seen the first two movies in the trilogy, and I just looked up the runtime for the third: 3hrs 10min. UGH.

Also, as I'm typing this, I am minutes away from wrapping up a major project at work for which the deadline was suddenly moved up, and then I'll be promptly heading into the weekend. The stars are aligning for a classic time to get stoned before seeing this flick that I probably won't care for. Feeling grateful that I got rid of everything before the challenge, because I know for a fact that if I had weed at the house, I would use it after work, therefore losing the challenge. Again, I feel utter shame and embarrassment writing this but it is just my reality.

I'm just reminding myself over and over that the man I want to be does not yearn for a vice, and that is motivating me to be happy with the idea of not ingesting any cannabis far beyond this month.

Unless I feel insanely awake and motivated after the movie, I will likely not grind. This will be the third night in a row that I don't play, so it is once again imperative to really get hands in over the weekend. Grinding at night into the wee hours of the morning and chilling during the day have really resulted in some solid weekend night sessions, so I'll probably lean into more of that this weekend.

December Challenge
Hands: 15,346 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1,028

Less than 10K hands to go to complete the challenge. Grinded from about 11:30 AM - 5:30 PM today with a couple of breaks. Another losing session, but I'm chilling. My current winrate is still inflated anyway. Going to see my grandma this evening and will have some dinner. More hands tomorrow!

December Challenge
Hands: 15,804 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1,079

Spent most of the day with family and feeling exhausted, so cut the session short despite being up a few BIs. Yearning for weed seems to have really cooled off over the weekend and I'm hoping it continues that way. 21 days clean; I think the last time I went 3 weeks without it was 2 years ago if I recall correctly.

December Challenge
Hands: 17,427 / 25,000
Total Win/Loss: $1286

Club WPTGold Stats
Hands: 25,376
Total Win/Loss: $1832

Bankroll is peaking on the site again after passing 25,000 total played hands since October. Feel like I'm playing quite well compared to the pool still... just a matter of getting volume in and sharpening all areas of the game as I go. 8 days to go in the challenge. Still just playing PLO10 and PLO20. The challenge only has a few hundred hands of PLO50. I know I want to move up in stakes eventually, but I guess what I'm learning about myself is that I'm a bankroll nit. Hell, it's the main reason I'm playing online instead of live PLO in Houston, so I guess I'm not too shocked at the behavior pattern.

I am struggling with wanting to pat myself on the back for good results after 25K hands vs. PLO variance and a strong desire for so much more in poker than to crush PLO20. I want to dominate PLO100 and beyond, and build up a roll to play in these live Houston games again, and keep climbing stakes from there. Why allow much more than a moment of happiness when what would make me truly happy is not even close to conquered? Gotta keep working and getting volume in.

I was watching JNandez today and he was talking about how video gaming is a potential huge detractor from poker success. In many video games, our brain is making decisions, strategizing, etc... therefore, we may be inclined to rest instead of getting a session in if we do lots of gaming, or not give our best effort if we do decide to play poker. This rang true to me as many games I play have a great deal of strategy involved. I spend a lot of hours gaming, so it's something to consider if I am taking poker seriously.

Still haven't seen 9642r! I got dealt 9842r and 9652r tonight... so close!

I am going to get my wife a foot massager at CostCo tomorrow morning for part of her Christmas gift. She wanted to give each other 3 things: something we needed, something we wanted, and a homemade gift. I got her a massage the day of our wedding party as her need, the foot massager is her want (she has said she wants it when we're shopping), and I booked a painting/drinking date for the homemade gift portion.

Thank you!

For the first 8K hands or so of the challenge and all my hands prior to December, at least 2 of my tables were always 8-max 3 blind games. After progressing a bit in the challenge this month, I thought that the EV between the 6-max and 8-max games were about the same, and since I'd get hands in faster, I decided to just stick with the 6-max tables moving forward. Not much to say about those tables in particular that you can't say about the rest of the site... Tightening up from GTO ranges is already mandatory to beat low stakes PLO in my opinion and the 8-max games just exacerbate that. People are raising way too large pre and cold calling far too often, so we just need to make our opening ranges even tighter at 8-max.

As for next year's challenges and goals, I think 25,000 hands in a month was actually easy in hindsight and not really challenging me like I wanted it to, so I'll probably go for something like 30K in Jan... Would be cool to join a study group with other winners; perhaps get more involved in the PLO MM community. I will need to iron this out sometime before next week so I can hit the ground running/keep the momentum going.

Christmas gift from the wife for my office. How sick!

Edit: she made it herself! Maybe an Etsy venture in her future?

Homemade?

Homemade! How about that, eh?

Nice. I really love that gift plan you guys have. Pretty cool.

Awesome gift.