Introduction

• Our two comparison groups are named “Crushers” and “Regulars”. We at PLO Mastermind believe that to become the best players we can be; we want to learn from the absolute Top Players in the field. Therefore, we will focus on three players with a relatively low sample (90k hands) and compare them with a wide range of regulars.
• Even though we are working with a low sample size, the conviction that these are the top players in 2023 is very high. All three players have stood the test of time and have been crushing the highest-stakes games for years. They belong to the biggest winners of Online PLO in the last 5 years.
• That being said, these high-stake crushers have been battling very tough competition. This, in return, incentivizes them to play a bit more defensive and balanced, which most definitely won’t be the best strategy for the average mid-stakes grinder.
• We want to learn from the best but keep an open mind for which exploits work best in the meta we are playing (stakes, competitions, stack size, reads, skills, etc.).

🐐 Crushers 2023 (3 High Stakes Players on ACR)

Non-showdown winnings: -1bb/100 hands

🙉 Regulars 2023 (100 Players across ACR, GGPoker, Pokerstars)

Non-showdown winnings: -12.5bb/100 hands

Conclusion

• The Average Regulars loses 0.8 bb/100 across the three most prominent platforms. This is heavily influenced by GGPoker’s rake structure, which makes winning before rakeback less feasible for the average severe grinder. Especially at $10/$20 on GGPoker, there are plenty of losing regs or at least regs who don’t win before rakeback and break barely even after rakeback. This is not meant in a derogatory way against regulars. These games are very tough, and the high rake structure doesn’t make it easier at all.
• The biggest takeaway from our side is the difference in “Non-Showdown Winnings,” which was expressed in bb/100 below the graphs. The difference in bb/100 is close to the total difference in winrate. This leads to the question of the research team: is a neutral or even positive redline the strongest indicator of a high winrate? If true, even short samples, say 1000 hands, could lead to conclusions about how competitive our strategy is, which would lead to faster improvement.