A lesson at PLO100

Thankfully, I am not as results oriented as I once was because I took a hit Saturday and it has hardly affected me.

I was on the wrong side of a couple of PLO100 coinflips early and found myself down 2 BIs and onto my 3rd. I was also being outplayed, but learning. A more disciplined approach would have been to stand up but I made a conscious decision to battle through for the education of overcoming a tough game.

A mix of good cards and aggression seen me win back the BIs to the big stack at the table, on $340. Then came along "postmand" from Denmark (I googled him to find significant WCOOP cashes). He stood out with his exceptional selectively aggressive style. He won almost every hand at showdown. His stack grew rapidly to $290, none of it at my expense.

My focus was good as my stack was always under threat OOP. I felt like I was playing my A game and breaking even at a tough table with the big stack. A seat became vacant to postmand's left and I quickly moved into position. Several orbits later he left and I still had my stack intact.

Now for the bad news, the table got extremely fishy and I chased easy $$$s. The deck cooled and after a period of overly loose and surprisingly passive play for me (I knew I was narginal at best against calling stations), I found my stack whittled away to zero. In retrospect, this is perhaps where I should have left as I was playing far from optimally.

There is no doubt that the $300 retrospective educational budget would have been better spent on CardRunners, but I am convinced that my PLO game has gone to a new level as I had an awareness for the game that I have never experienced before.

As Stars is a new site for me, I must now work out how to retrieve and review the key hands more objectively with hindsight.

Knowing your Limits - The "Coin Flip" test

It struck me tonite when I thought about playing 1 table of NL200 or 4-tables of NL50 that there is a very good game selection litmus test for me.

Basically, how do you feel about coin flipping for your stack pre-flop AK v QQ, or similar? If it was NL1, I can't see you giving it a 2nd thought. But NL1000 for me, that wouldn't be my idea of fun, or skill.

As I get increasingly aggressive though, I'm finding that it is essential to be willing to coin flip to avoid being 3-bet off strong marginal hands in position. Playing too weak there can be exploited easily (and its costly - 20+ nit hands a pop).

My last live game, I short stacked for $100 in a NL100-NL250 game, just so I could play comfortably and gamble if need be. I'd never thought about it before. Can you relate to this?

Needless to say, I took the multi-table option tonite, scored a relatively easy $16 over 1 hour of 3 NL50 tables, no risk, no stress and I've even written this post when grinding it out.

PS As if to prove my point, I'd unclicked Autopost Blinds and was in SB with QJ on one of the tables. Bet pot and LAG BB raised pot to $5.50. I shoved $50ish expecting a fold but got called to my dismay by AK. QxxJx - woo hoo! A nice +$73 session in the end. Goodnight!

Moving on up - NL100

It was Sunday night and I settled down to play a couple of hours of poker. Not sure why, but with $2000+ now in my bankroll and on a good run, I decided to try 4-tabling NL100. I promised myself that I'd drop back pretty quick if I wasn't feeling OK with it.

It seemed fine. I could still steal quite a few blinds. I seemed to make reasonable decisions on the flop. I stab a lot and then get away from it on resistance. Doyle Brunson wrote in Super/System that people think he's lucky when he sucks out, but that in reality, he's freerolling because when they didn't have it, they'd folded. So between my CO and c-Bet stealing, I was involved a bit with a few chances to play for stacks.

After 3 hours of 4-tabling at a higher level, I was breakeven. Unfortunately no rakeback / bonuses etc which would ave left me up. I'm now officially a King at Party though, just when I wanted to leave.

Before bed, I thought that I'd have one shot at NL400 just to see. I lost almost $200 early but had my money in when ahead, so reloaded. 100 hands later, I'd won two biggish pots to finish up +$300.

I think I'll stop giving updates on my bankroll, because I know that a downswing is just around the corner. Until now though, it has been relevant, because I started with a goal of moving up the limits within my bankroll (I've strayed outside occassionally and got lucky).

The focus that the blog has provided has helped my play. I'll now move up to NL100 for a period and see how that feels.

Over the next few posts, expect Risk of Ruin and the Future of winning poker to be discussed.