Poker

I only played a few hundred hands yesterday. Ran pretty good and made a buy-in. Ran above EV this time, though.

I think I’ve already briefly mentioned it in this blog, but one of my biggest problems from moving to SnGs to PLO cash is my bet sizing. I usually bet way too small, and I still have to work on this.

I’m going to play a short session soon and I will be trying to pay attention to my bet sizing as much as possible. I especially bet way too small in multiway pots. But hopefully not today!

I’m slowly getting better at PLO. When I first started playing, it was hard enough to know what hands I had, never mind try to figure out the ranges of my opponents! I feel like I can finally start thinking about ranges when I am in the middle of post flop hands. Obviously many of my ranges will be really inaccurate at this point, but at least I am considering them now. Finally I can move out of 1st level poker 😛

It occurred to me that not being able to achieve 2nd level thinking doesn’t mean that I can’t achieve 3rd level. Does that even make sense? I felt like even though I had no clue what my opponents had half the time, I was still able to guess what my opponents thought I had. Enough that I could at least pull off some decent bluffs and value bets where appropriate.

I played around 2k hands since I last wrote and broke even. The encouraging news is that I ran 4 buy-ins below EV in all-in pots. Never have I been so happy to run badly! Hopefully this small sample is the start of significant improvement and better results.

I’m going to play a short session right now and try working on some of that elusive level 2 thinking. Good luck me!

What a silly post last time I wrote. Today I smartened up and did some review 🙂

I’m going to play a short session in a minute, and this is what I’m going to work on:

1) Give people credit when they bet. People bet for value/protection way more frequently than they bluff (at the level I’m playing at)

2) c/f more often on the turn

3) 3bet more often when stacks are deep and I am in position

4) Stop being a nit when I have nut draws

5) Think more about raising in spots where people fold a lot

6) Stop calling the flop with (lots of) equity only to fold on the turn

That seems like a lot to work on. Maybe I shouldn’t have listed so much stuff but so much came up while reviewing. Hopefully today goes well and the next time I play, I can work on the stuff that didn’t get done today.

To date I’ve played 7.4k hands of PLO over a number of short sessions consisting of 400-800 hands each. I think I’ve been profitable for two sessions so far? That’s A LOT of losing.

Sighhh

I didn’t play much PLO this past week. I reviewed a few hours, though, and found that I was having a lot of trouble with my bet/raise sizing post flop. I basically was never betting enough. Actually, I don’t think there was any spot where I bet too much. So basically, bigger is better?

I found time to get some hands in today, playing ~850. I was really nitty today for some reason, seeing way less flops than previous sessions. It feels like I ran quite badly, although I think I might have also been overenthusiastic in some hands. In the end I lost 4 BI.

I knew I was losing money during my session, and I definitely felt some frustration at not being able to win. Most of the frustration came when I kept losing money to this one fish that had my number the entire time. It wasn’t too bad overall, though. The good thing is that I didn’t really tilt over bad beats at all today.

I’m apparently really enjoying summer, seeing as I’ve barely played any poker since it started. I have another busy week coming up, but I’m definitely planning to play and review at least a little bit.

I ended up running hot on Friday and winning like 8 buy-ins in less than 600 hands. That session showed me what it’s like to hit everything and to have everyone pay me off. Needless to say, I enjoyed it quite a bit!

Today I played a couple hours and lost a buy-in, but I thought I played okay. I’m improving a lot when it comes to non-showdown winnings, something that was causing me a lot of trouble when I first started PLO. The first 4k hands I played saw my red line slope downwards at a 45 degree angle, which I have to assume is pretty bad. My red line was pretty much horizontal over my last few sessions, and hopefully I can keep it up.

I’ve been under the weather with something that’s been going around the last few days, so I haven’t been playing any poker. I’ve managed to review and read a bit, though. I finished reading most of Pot-Limit Omaha Poker for the second time to refresh myself on starting hands and straight draw equities. I also got help from a friend and went over some hand histories to figure out what I’m doing wrong.

During my last session I lost 6 buy-ins, and it was really frustrating because I felt I had played better than usual but couldn’t seem to win any of the big pots. Upon review I confirmed that I had gotten my money in good in most places, so I was happy about that. I’m still obviously terrible and leaking chips everywhere, but the improvement is encouraging.

I don’t feel 100% today, but I’m probably going to play a bit still. The great thing about cash is that if I decide that I don’t feel well enough to keep going, I can stop anytime 🙂 I’ve also been playing short 2 hour sessions anyway, since I like frequent breaks for eating and going to the washroom.

The good news is that I’m really enjoying PLO so far, despite all the money I’ve lost. I haven’t thought or used my brain this much playing poker for years, so it’s definitely a refreshing change.

Operation Punt at PLO is well underway. I’ve only played slightly over 3k hands so far, so I still have no idea what I am doing.

While I’ve certainly donated stacks by overvaluing hands on various streets, I think I’ve also been too quick to fold in some spots. I’m mostly talking about heads-up pots when I’m raised huge on the flop. I think I’m folding too much in fear that my opponent has the one or two hands that crush me instead of realizing that I am actually in decent shape vs the types of hands he probably has.

Something else I also have to figure out is how much I should be continuation betting. I am used to c-betting a lot in SnGs, and I suspect I might be betting flops too often.

My last thought is that I think I’m losing value on many rivers because I’m never sure how relatively good my hand is. For example, if I have a small flush on a paired board and it’s checked to me, I think I should be bet/folding but I’m not always sure.

I’ll be reviewing and reading a lot this week, so hopefully I answer some of my questions soon and stop donating so much money!

Things are different than I would have expected last time I updated. The short version is that I somehow got talked into switching from SnGs to PLO cash games.

I’ve always wanted to learn to play PLO. I donked around in it a bit a few years ago after reading Pot-Limit Omaha Poker by Jeff Hwang. I never got even close to competent at it, though.

The biggest thing holding me back from giving PLO a try right now is my opportunity cost. This year I’m making ~$50/hour playing SnGs which isn’t making me rich, but it’s more than I’d be making at any regular job. I guess I’m basically afraid of wasting time learning a new game when I could just be making money playing a game I already know.

After thinking about it a bit, I decided to give it a shot. I’ll probably play it for a couple months and then re-evaluate and see how I like it. I am not hard up for money at the moment, so I can afford to lose money for a few weeks.

At the very worst I figure I’ll become competent enough to play PLO donkaments online if I should ever choose to do so. At best, I become decent at cash games and exceed my SnG hourly.

I’m starting at $50PLO. I’d really like to get out of these stakes ASAP because I think the rake is owning my soul, but I’m not sure what a realistic time frame is. The games are obviously ridiculously soft at this stake, but I am also ridiculously terrible 🙂

So far I’ve played around 7 hours and reviewed/read strat for like 3 hours. I expect a larger-than-usual fraction of my time to be dedicated to reviewing rather than playing at the start, mostly because I’m trying to limit my punting as much as possible.

I’ve definitely still donated a solid number of buy-ins to the $50PLO regs so far, though. Hope they’re enjoying it while it lasts!

Today I played my first real session of sngs since June 15th. It seemed smart to take it easy, so I played for only 4.5 hours and limited my table count to around 6 where possible. For the most part games were very slow to fill at 6m, so I played half my volume at 18m.

I lost money playing 6m, but ran insanely hot at 18m and ended up making like $30/game. I felt really good the entire session, but I don’t know whether it’s due to my extended break or due to the fact I was running hot.

I don’t think I made too many mistakes due to being rusty. I made a couple bad all-in preflop calls vs regs, but other than that I think I played mostly fine.

I had quite a few icm spots that I wasn’t sure about today, though. Usually these spots come on the bubbles and itm of 18 man sngs since icm is really important in these games. I have a lot of hand histories to go through tomorrow.

A big reason why I am writing in this blog again is to reflect on my mental state while I was playing each session. As I’ve already said, I ran very well and didn’t really have much chance to get tilted today. Obviously I had my share of 3-outers and various other bad beats, but I usually don’t get tilted by those alone. I would say my biggest problem with tilting is when I get bad beat several times in a row in a short period of time, and I luckily didn’t experience that today.

In The Mental Game of Poker, it says that it is very important to recognize that you’re getting tilted before you go into full blown tilt. To be able to do this, you need to know what sort of things tilt you. I obviously have an idea, but I think it’ll become even clearer if I write about everything that tilted me at the end of every session.

Next session is tomorrow! Probably another 4 hour one.