The Galfond Challenge So Far

The Galfond Challenge has, of course, been the greatest advocate of Galfond’s skill in the four-card game. Some of the world’s best players have taken on Galfond, only for luminaries such as Chance Kornuth, VeniVidi1993, Bill Perkins, ActionFreak and Brandon Adams to come up short. Galfond’s current opponent is Daniel ‘Jungleman’ Cates.

“I love any action I can get,” said Galfond “and Jungleman is as fun of an opponent as I can hope for. The perfect combination of toughness and excitement.”

That’s for sure. Cates is not only known for his off-the-felt antics but also his propensity to crush in mixed games, including PLO. He is the back-to-back winner of the $50,000 Poker Players Championship, after all.

It’s time to see if the falcon can survive the jungle

My #GalfondChallenge vs. @junglemandan finally begins!

We’ll play this Thurs-Sat from (roughly) 8am-Noon PT.

You’ll be able to catch me streaming on: https://t.co/95rCI2yhQt

Sub so you get alerted when we go live! pic.twitter.com/lUGQN6RvSj

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) January 30, 2023

Welp, I started out down $115,000 to @junglemandan today, feeling good about my play the whole time! (Sorry, @Farah_Galfond )

Managed to turn it around to finish down “only” $35,000.

Totals:
-$77,500
~2,250 hands

~5,250 hands left to play in this #GalfondChallenge.

— Phil Galfond (@PhilGalfond) February 4, 2023

Play PLO Within Your Means

Galfond’s knowledge of PLO is so vast, and he’s been playing the game so long. A lot of the mistakes players make can be eradicated by Galfond’s course but the variance is bigger in PLO, so a huge part of how someone moves from profitable to professional is how they can cope with those swings.

“I think it’s extremely important to play within your means,” Galfond says. “People try to do this, but I think they often fail to realize just how small they need to be playing to maximize their EV while minimizing their risk of ruin.”

Part of the This is PLO course teaches players to think like a solver rather than act on the basis of solver answers. But what does that mean in real terms for an intermediate player who is looking to become a crusher in Pot Limit Omaha? Humans aren’t computers.

“It’s impossible to memorize solver strategies. The only way to truly succeed in learning from solvers is to figure out how to transpose the solver outputs into human logic that they can digest and then draw on in any situation they find themselves in at the table.”

READ MORE: Bracelet Winner Nathan Gamble Reviews Galfond’s This is PLO

Heads-Up and Multi-Way Pots

Heads-up PLO hands vary hugely from multi-way, of course. Some of the easiest lessons to learn about the changes to make between hands boil down to a simple formula that Galfond is happy to crystallise. He goes into it in a lot more detail in his Run It Once Training course.

“In short, multiway pots create more incentives for small betting, including to clear up equity for pretty good hands.” He says. “In heads up pots, it’s more about getting the amount of money into the pot that your hand wants.”

Making a consistent profit in PLO is tough and this course really gets to the heart of this exciting variant of the game of poker – the ‘four card’ game so named because you receive four hole cards rather than two. What makes it so fascinating for Galfond is how a poker variant develops.

An Event Horizon for PLO

Galfond can see that PLO is approaching a kind of event horizon, a place where it cannot be improved further. So, what’s next for PLO?

“I think we’re already close to our final point of understanding in PLO, much like we are with cash game No Limit Hold’em,” says Galfond. “Solvers can tell us so much already, but the most successful people will be the ones who can extrapolate from what the solvers are telling us.”

Remembering His WSOP Bracelet Victory

Galfond has enjoyed a stellar career at the felt, winning three WSOP bracelets to date, two of them in Pot Limit Omaha. The first time he won a WSOP bracelet was in 2008, when he took down the $5,000 PLO event for over $817,000 – still Galfond’s biggest tournament cash. It’s not surprise that this is still his fondest memory playing the game live.

“It has to be the 2008 WSOP $5k PLO rebuy bracelet event that I won,” he agrees. “The table was star-studded, and it was my first big live poker score. And obviously, the bracelet meant a lot to me.”

Galfond is dead right when he says the final table was packed with stars. Players who made the final nine include Brian Rast, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, Johnny Chan and David Benyamine. It’s a huge honor to have put the hard work he’s put into PLO over the years into practice, and is closing in on $3 million at the live felt, let alone the millions he’s won online playing PLO.

This summer, Galfond will be heading back to Las Vegas in effort to put the nuggets of gold he teaches via his This is PLO course back into practice at the felt at the World Series of Poker.

“I’m not sure what this summer has in store for me yet, but I think I’ll likely play quite a bit!”

We can’t wait to see Phil Galfond back at the felt, online battling in the Galfond Challenge, and at the WSOP competing for gold again.

• 2 Tables of Heads Up Pot Limit Omaha
• Established number of hands (between 10,000-35,000 hands)
• Galfond would lay odds

Phil is a perfect 5-for-5 against some of the top players in the world including Venividi, ActionFreak, Chance Kornuth, Brandon Adams, and Dan “Jungleman” Cates. Combined, he is up over $1,500,000 from his opponents between the poker and side bets.

What does this have to do with learning the great game of Pot Limit Omaha? Simple: Phil has turned his hundreds of thousands of hands into a course for his Run It Once Training site called This Is PLO. In it you’ll reap the rewards of his having broken down thousands of hands and running them through the solver, then sitting down to record his thoughts of how to play PLO.

For all intents and purposes, there are two ways to learn any type of poker: through intuition and through studying. Intuition lends itself to watching others play, feeling out the right time to bluff, watching what hands win at showdown, and figuring out how to manipulate situations to your advantage at the table in order to win the most with your best hand and win when you have the worst of it. Many modern players, however, lean towards studying and putting in work away from the table in order to understand the fundamental mathematical reason and the why behind every decision at the table.

Who Should (and Shouldn’t) Buy the Course?

This Is PLO is for the truly serious poker player who wants to dig into the depths of the game and uncover every nuanced reason for being in Omaha. Phil has put together a course that covers over 15 different segments of the game tree. Each segment of the game tree is broken down into four different branches, and each branch has 3-5 separate leaves. If the conversation of a game tree and the multiple facets of decision that fall off it leaves you scratching your head then it’s recommended to look elsewhere to learn the fundamentals of PLO. A wonderful spot to start this journey is through the more beginner level PLO course From The Ground Up on RIO. But if you’re serious about taking your game to the next level, this is the course for you!

As you can see illustrated in the screenshot below, each tab is broken out into Dynamic Boards, Straight Boards, Flush Boards, and Paired Boards.

The first few videos within the course are all about the fundamentals and delve into the math behind calling ranges and Minimum Defense Frequencies required to call down your opponent based off their bet sizing. It is very dry, it is very much like a professor walking his class through a problem on the chalk board. It is what’s required to win.

You will need to break it up in to multiple sessions and probably go back and rewatch it to make sure it sinks in. This section of the course is also inherently necessary to understanding the base level strategy in order to lay the foundation for your entire game so that you don’t have any fundamental flaws or leaks. You are going to need to understand terms like MDF, 1-A, and also want to learn from a mathematical perspective. In short, you need to be prepared to go back to school and unlearn all of what you thought you knew about PLO.

This being said, Galfond actively encourages the student to learn from a solver, understand the whys and hows of what it recommends, and then understand how to incorporate it into your game and deviate accordingly. It’s more than plugging situations into a computer; it’s also understanding the information that comes out. Naturally, it would also be sensible to have some working knowledge of the Run It Once Vision GTO Trainer tool in order to get the most out of this course.

READ MORE: Vision GTO Training Tool Review

In order to deviate from proper play, you must first know what proper play is. Once you make your way out of the fundamentals there are still plenty more lessons to dive into and Phil uses real life examples of hands he played in his heads up matches and explains his reasoning behind each of his decisions. This, coupled with some solver work to help provide clarity to the fundamental approach, enables Phil to provide a holistic answer on how and why decisions are made in PLO. Sometimes he follows what a solver would do, while other times he walks his own path, but there is always a what and a why for the play at hand.

To paraphrase one segment of Galfond’s videos: I’ll simplify my strategy slightly against what a solver would do and it may lose EV but it’s easier to implement in the long run, which means it’s a better strategy as I can stick to it and know what I’m doing across all situations.

The vast majority of This Is PLO material is based off of Galfond’s Heads-Up play from his challenge but don’t let that dissuade you; all of the fundamentals crossover and will strengthen your PLO game no matter how many players are at the table. If that doesn’t convince you then keep in mind there is also a 6-Max section.

Galfond pairs up with Richard Gryko for 20 different videos covering the nuanced differences between playing PLO Heads-Up vs. multiway. Gryko has multiple solo videos where he breaks down the theory of different spots and, to quote a friend, “Richard Gryko is an amazing player but isn’t the best teacher”. The theory videos are akin to going back to college and trying to stay awake during your 9am Physics class taught by your least favorite professor.

They are extremely dense in knowledge and, as such, if you want to truly ingest the information, you’ll need to watch it multiple times. With that said, they are important and are going to help you build an overall strategy if you give them their due. Thankfully the other 75% of the 6-max coursework is much more palpable.

Phil sits alongside Grkyo and they banter back and forth about situations: what Phil would do, why he would do it, what the theory dictates, and what his counterpart actually did in reality. It helps drive home the concepts and the differences between the two worlds; as much as some players may buy this course and think they can skip all the Heads-Up content and dive solely into the 6-max videos, I would challenge this idea and suggest that it would be detrimental to their overall learning. Spend the time on all sections and allow this section to sharpen your overall game.

Clearly This Is PLO is for professionals who look to make their living by knowing how their four cards interact with their opponents ranges and a variety of board textures. If you play PLO as more than a passing fancy online at stakes of $2-5 or higher or live at $5-10 and above, you are doing yourself a disservice by not buying this course and putting in the hours away from the table to become the best version on yourself at the table. It is a time commitment, as well as a monetary commitment, but it will reap huge rewards in a very short time. Plainly speaking, the $2,499 you invest will be a distant memory as your hourly increases and pays for the course in all but a handful of sessions.

Phil Galfond’s This is PLO: Pros vs. Cons

Pros:

• Most knowledgeable coach in the entire world
• Extremely extensive material, hundreds of videos broken down in a comprehensive manner
• More material being uploaded regularly

Cons:

• Expensive
• Helps to have a basis in solvers to learn faster, mathematically based

Let’s be clear: Phil Galfond’s This Is PLO isn’t for the faint of heart. If you buy it then you’re committing to hundreds of hours of video content, thought experiments, and familiarization with new terms and concepts. You truly have to want to get better at your Pot Limit Omaha game and that isn’t for everyone. There is a purity to the game that will be stripped away and the notion that it’s “just a game that you can gamble on and get large amounts of chips in willy-nilly” will vanish. But then again, everyone around you will still have that notion and you’ll be left picking up the free money that sits down on a daily basis.

READ MORE: Phil Galfond Discusses This is PLO, His First Ever Full-Length Course for Run It Once

That latter bit has always been celebrated and admired in the poker world, but only recently has Galfond gone all-in with his talents to have created his first ever full-length course for Run It Once Training entitled This Is PLO.

For many serious poker players, just hearing that one of the game’s greatest-ever players and instructors created the new course was enough to have insta-registered. Others have chosen to wait on the sidelines a bit for some testimonials before deciding whether or not to take the plunge and purchase the course, the priciest one in the company’s history.

In this exclusive interview, we sat with Galfond himself to get a better understanding of the process that went into his creating This Is PLO and gain insight as to what guided his preparation and content production. We’ll also hear his true thoughts with regard to whom he feels would benefit most from the course and why it’s a worthwhile investment for players who want to improve their Pot Limit Omaha game.

While you’ve run one of poker’s best training sites for years and have created tons of videos and training content as an instructor, you’ve never created a full-length course of your own up until This is PLO. What drove you to want to do that in the first place?

I had the idea a long time ago! When I began my challenges, I immediately had the goal of creating a course out of the process. As the challenges played out, I realized that I didn’t have the time and capacity to create a course while I was playing them, so I put the idea on the back burner, never sure if I’d ever get around to it.

Prior to beginning to produce the videos, how did you decide how to structure the course’s content in the first place? Did you make any tweaks to your original structure along the way?

What stood out to me in the way that I learned and improved was how segmented the different board textures were. When I studied my delay c-bet strategy on paired boards, it had absolutely nothing to do with my delay c-bet strategy on unpaired flush boards, for example. So, I wanted a way to address every significant part of the game tree with that separation between board textures.

I wouldn’t say that I changed the plan once I started, but I did keep adding more and more videos than I expected to because I realized that there was more and more to cover.

For the most part, each of the course’s videos is approximately 20-30 minutes in length. How did you decide on that particular timeframe? About how long did it take to produce each video?

I aimed for 30 minutes a video, but because I separated things into so many different specific scenarios, occasionally the strategy for one of the spots was quite simple, especially once I simplified it from the solver outputs (which is a theme of my course), so I stopped short when I felt I’d be wasting students’ time reiterating the same points.

Some videos essentially took me just the recording time to create, while others took as many as 12 hours to plan and record.

How long did it take from initial conception and deciding you wanted to create this course until you released it in January? Did you sort of have a daily/weekly routine re: how much you worked on it, or was it more of a side project?

It took about four months. I decided to finally create the course because we (Run It Once Poker) were so occupied with the process of selling the company that I was unable to play any poker in between my obligations relating to that.

Essentially, I worked six days a week, 10 hours a day, making videos whenever I wasn’t actively working on RIO Poker deal responsibilities.  There were a few days that I recorded over 10 videos!

What would you say were some of the biggest challenges you faced during the creation of your course content?

The sheer number of videos was the hardest part. That, and perfectionism. I would have never made a course if I didn’t force myself to get comfortable with just going for it, rather than waiting around and planning until it was perfect.

A big part of the reason we launched it in ‘early access’ was because it made me comfortable getting the course nearly finished, knowing that if I have some new ideas to round it out, I can continue to add to it.

Content creators often have an inner circle of people to bounce their raw work off, hoping to get constructive feedback in order to polish the final product. Undoubtedly, This Is PLO is your magnum opus. With that said, are there any shout-outs you’d like to give to some folks who helped you refine it along the way (and in what way did those individuals help)?

The entire RIO team was extremely helpful in facilitating my ambitious timeline of getting all of the videos edited, prettying up my PowerPoint presentations, etc. I actually didn’t bounce my work off of anyone from a strategy perspective. I had a very clear vision in my mind for how I wanted to teach what I’d learned.

This Is PLO’s landing page’s states that: “This course is for anyone who wants to improve their winrate at Pot Limit Omaha or who wants to think about the game at a higher level” and “You should purchase this course if you’re looking to improve your PLO game or if you’re interested in seeing how Phil Galfond, one of the best PLO players of all time, thinks about the game.” Realistically speaking, I wouldn’t expect a low-stakes PLO grinder to be shelling out $1,500 for any training course. So let’s ask sort of an inverse question: what “categories” of PLO players are not yet ready for a course like this?

I honestly think that players at every level above “I don’t know what a wrap is” can learn from this course, but the two major questions they need to ask themselves are:

• Is improving my game going to be worth this cost given my current level, my ambitions in poker, and my bankroll.
• If Heads Up PLO isn’t my focus, am I willing to learn key concepts in large part through examples of Heads Up PLO, and apply them to 6-max or 9-handed PLO, or will I find it unmotivating to see so many examples of a format I don’t play?

If you haven’t checked out This is PLO yet, here’s what you can expect from @PhilGalfond‘s course. pic.twitter.com/2BGfO7VexR

— Run It Once Training (@RunItOnce) March 4, 2022

One of your stated goals with this course is for it to act as kind of a shortcut for serious students, saving them hundreds of hours of solver study by training them to “think like a solver” in the first place. Similarly, you aim for players to “not have to rely on charts or solver outputs”. Is that to say that even players who’ve NEVER used charts or solvers to study would be able to make the most of this course, or is some basic familiarity with charts and solvers a prerequisite?

I don’t think any familiarity with charts or solvers is necessary, but realistically speaking, if someone has no familiarity at all with solvers whatsoever, they’re likely not at a stage in their poker journey where it makes sense to spend this much on a course.

Some of the course’s content includes you explaining how to use Run It Once’s Vision GTO Trainer. Please explain how this fits hand-in-hand with the methodology and approach to PLO that you’re advocating, rather than being in contrast to it.

I think that learning from solvers is integral to becoming an elite poker player, but I don’t think one needs to spend countless hours trying to memorize solver outputs. Instead, they need to turn solver outputs into heuristics that can be applied to whatever situation they might find themselves in. In this course, I walk them through doing just that, and I share my conclusions from my own solver study.

That said, I still believe that anyone looking to be great should study with solver tools, even after taking my course. I just believe that most people spend too much time and energy on it because they’re doing it the wrong way.

At $1,499, This Is PLO is by far the most expensive course that Run It Once Training has ever offered, and word on the street is that nonetheless sales have done really well since you launched it (congrats!). You’ve said that “when broken down by the number of hours, it’s very little per hour” and it’s quite clear that a serious student prepared to make an investment like this will undoubtedly recoup it swiftly at the tables. With all that said, $1,499 is still the “early access” price, featuring a $1,000 discount. Could you give our readers some sort of estimate as to when you expect the course to be offered at its full price of $2,499?

I’m working hard now with the goal of putting the finishing touches on the course before the World Series of Poker begins. That said, I decided to work with others to add some more 6-max focused content to the course, which could take some time and will be not fully within my control.

While This Is PLO is still available at the “early access” price, you’ve been gathering feedback and suggestions to decide what areas of the game tree to go even more in-depth on. What’s the nature of the feedback you’ve been getting thus far?

The feedback has been great, and I haven’t been asked for as many specific additions as I expected to be. The main thing I’ve been learning, not as much from those who’ve bought the course, but from those considering it, is that people want to see more 6-max focused content. So that’s my plan!

I’ll also be adding session reviews against multiple challengers and some 4-bet pot videos, which I haven’t yet covered in the course.

We’ve released the first video of @PhilGalfond‘s This is PLO on YouTube. Check it out to discover the structure of the course and how Phil will help you maximize your EV. https://t.co/PxcXpnAtAK

— Run It Once Training (@RunItOnce) January 28, 2022

You’re 4-for-4 in Galfond Challenges, and you’ve said that playing in those challenges was one of the key ingredients in you coming up with the material for This Is PLO. People used to ask Doyle Brunson back in the day if he was worried about giving away too many of his secrets in Super System. By the same token, is there any part of you that’s just a little bit concerned that some fellow online crusher is only too happy to pay for this course and use your own skills to their benefit in a future Galfond Challenge?

I was a little bit concerned about that, yes, but I have been struggling to find more challengers lately. Maybe this will make some people confident enough to step into the arena with me!

As far as paying for the course, I noticed that you currently offer three options: Skrill, PayPal, and credit card. In the future, will someone be able to purchase this – and other Run It Once Training materials – directly from an account balance in the eventually-relaunched Run It Once Poker client? Will any other payment options be added in the future?

At this time, we plan to stick with those payment methods, but we always welcome suggestions from users who can’t find an option that suits them!

Poker is constantly evolving, and players are constantly improving. Why do you feel that This Is PLO will “stand the test of time” and remain a top-tier poker training tool for years to come?

I think that the core concepts taught in This Is PLO won’t be invalidated by future advancements in the game. While study tools will continue to progress in the years to come, today’s solvers give the “real answers.”  The advancements in the future of solver tools will mostly be related to speed, ease of use, and ease of drawing conclusions.

So, while I’m not saying that I’ll never progress as a PLO player, I do believe that I had all of the info that I needed to teach concepts that will stand the test of time.

In your public video on the This is PLO landing page, you say that the course is “the culmination of nearly two decades playing and teaching.” Does that mean it’ll take another 20 years until we see the next course by Phil Galfond?

Haha! Honestly, maybe. This was hard work!

In all seriousness, the response to This Is PLO has been phenomenal. It seems like the poker world can never get enough Phil Galfond. In the event you DO someday decide to create another full-length course, what niche of poker do you think it would most likely cover?

The only other course that interests me right now would be a beginner course… teaching concepts that I believe all poker players need to know and that few are taught from the start. Let me finish this one and take a little break before considering it, though.

Of your 33 HendonMob live tournament results, 26 are from the WSOP, with your last non-WSOP result being almost a decade ago. Your last live WSOP result is from 2019. You’ve obviously got your hands full running the business, being an active father and husband, continuing to build out This Is PLO, etc, but with your fire to play poker newly lit once again, can we expect you to return to the WSOP this summer? If so, will you be playing a full schedule or just focusing on PLO events to try and claim bracelet #4?

Great question that I honestly don’t know the answer to! My passion right now is playing heads-up matches, so if I were to find one that excited me, I would probably even skip the WSOP entirely for it.  That said, I haven’t played WSOP (other than 2-3 small online events) since before the pandemic, so I miss that a little bit, too.

I go into every summer with a plan, and I leave every summer having done something different. We’ll see!

I’ll likely continue to skip non-Vegas-based events, just because I prefer being home with my family.