My first PLO8 MTT win and Sydney Champs

What a difference a day makes. The deck must have read my blog and resented my flippant lack of appreciation for running good. Exacting revenge, it has just slapped me about the face repeatedly. Not one for bad beat stories, let me share with you that the Winnings line has plummeted below my AI EV line, which rose significantly overnight. Good news is that I didn’t Tilt, for which I credit HEM with its visual confirmation that it was just variance.

I was four tabling, with 2 tournaments and 2 FR PLO100 cash games on the go. A tad ambitious or irresponsible perhaps. I almost got ITM with my PLO tourney and came first in the PLO8 one that I was playing in which had 128 runners. Being my first ever PLO8 100+ player tourney win, overall it was a very good evening and another step forward in my pursuit of being an all-round poker player.

My Poker Ranking for the year was 98.71% before last night so I’m keen to see what a small stakes win contributes as I’d like to poke my nose into the top 1%, if only for a day. Not sure of the formula for the rating system, but I know that my ranking has been flattered by running good in a couple of low buy-in events. Having had my fair share of being smacked around the face, I’ll take anything that’s going.

The Sydney Championships are on and there is a $770 PLO Tournament which I would have loved to have played in. In the end, I have decided not to. As I’m off to Vegas on Friday, my $$$s are being conserved to be invested in the cash games over there.

I estimate that I'd be close to neutral EV given the amount of dead money and was really torn between giving it a go or not. Unfortunately, $770 weeds out a lot of the casual dead money that even $550 would attract, so my expectation may well be lower depending on the field size. Less than 100 players would be a pretty strong field, I think. Over that, there just aren’t that many great Omaha players available in Sydney on a Tuesday night.

The deciding factor in the end was the realisation that, for those close to me that don't fully appreciate the variance of poker tournaments, the utility of losing which is the most likely outcome greatly exceeds the utility of a min-cash which is the next most likely scenario.

If I was single, I would give it a shot just to get a chance to pit my wits against The Croc and Eric Assadourian and gauge how far I still need to improve. I know that a lot of the bets that I made last night with the click of a “pot” button, I couldn’t have done live and even if I could, there would have been a million and one tells in the physical activity.

In the end, I'm pleased that I appear to lack the gamble to just throw bankroll requirements out the window and give it a go.