Is PLO37.5 my level?

Poker is such a deceptive game in terms of short term results and false reinforcement. Last night I had a session of PLO50 where I probably broke every one of the Hutchison System starting requirements repeatedly. I had a little calculator running alongside for the first time and I kept ignoring its guidance which was 80% Fold and 20% Limp. I only seen 1 Raise advice the whole session and the flop missed on that hand. I on the other hand was fairly aggressive preflop. Still passivish after the flop. One area I did improve was my river value betting.

So after ignoring the Hutchison advice, I turned $50 into $200+ in a couple of hours. Did I run good? Was it the deception that my wide range provided that allowed me to win the big pots? Has my post flop play and board texture reading improved? Alas, I really don't know.

What I do know is that my results are PLO25 (+$337), PLO50 (+$220) and PLO100 (-$240). In BB/100, that appears to be +25, Zero and -7 respectively. It would appear that I am between a PLO25 and PLO50 player for now.

For the record, 6500 hands averaging 9.74PTBB/100.

So where to from here, grind it out at PLO25 for a profit and experience. Or continue to take shots with any excess until I crack the $100. As I have exceeded expectations already, turning a profit at PLO25, I think that I'll continue taking shots as long as I'm not getting too hurt.

Two Good Results

Footy tipping is an Australian pasttime. I'm in a $50 comp with about 25 others tipping the EPL soccer. I'm an out of touch Liverpool fan (went to Uni there to watch them in the 80s), so my only fighting chance is to defer to the wisdom of crowds, otherwise known as Betfair, and pick all the favourites. It is a proven system. With 3 spots paid, I've come 2nd then 1st in both previous seasons. I don't really know the guys so I offered to step out but I keep getting invited back.

Well, this season it has been upset after upset. Also, from a bookie perspective, the draw is never a favourite and there has been draw after draw, which had seen me drop off the pace. I never lost faith though and ground it out, inching up week on week, only to get smacked back down. A couple of weeks ago, there were 5 draws, ouch. Anyway, got up this morning and 7 out of 7 favourites won overnight. I leapfrogged a couple of leaders and found myself in 1st spot. Woo Hoo. I'll keep you updated.

Now my other Sunday report is my Fatroll weigh-in. Pleased to report that I lost another 2 kilos this week. Now 78kgs, just 4 more to go!

Home game blues 2

My offline bankroll is diminishing. 3% last Friday, I dropped another 2% this week. Last week, I played bad, this week I had 4 tough spots. A 2-outer and 7-outer smack on the river followed by over analysis that I got wrong twice.

First one I had A2 on a flop of A27r. A LAG bet out and in position I called. Turn blanked and he fired a 2nd bullet, I called again. When the river blanked, he shoved again about $120 into an $80 pot. As there were no feasible draws and 72 was unlikely I somehow managed to put him on 77 or 22. Discretion being the better part of valour, I folded my 2-pair to TPTK, bugga, and a big mistake how could I overlook TPTK or any other 2-pair for that matter.

Other bad decision came on the very last hand. We'd agreed one last orbit and I'd joked that this is the crazy part of the night - usually is. First 3 hands were fizzers, 4 handed. Then the last hand where I was dealt QQ when I'd straddled for the first time of that evening to $5 in a 50c/$1 game.

Call, Raise $10, Call then me to act. I decided to raise to $35 and consider releasing to an A or a K post flop. Fold, call, call. $100 in pot. Flop was sweet for me TT7, 3 handed. Check, check, standard cont-bet $50 to attract skeptics. Fold and a surprising AI for another $140 on top.

I went into the tank and thought of a few things:
- 1st he was not the sort of player to lose his stack on the last hand.
- then I realised that he knew that I could c-bet light, so he may have AK, med pair or similar.
- then I knew that he was risking his original buy-in which had been set to the side for over an hour.
- He looked comfortable but when I asked if he had something he looked genuine in believing that I hadn't even looked at my cards (which he confirmed after was true).
Split 2/2 - but in reality 1 and 3 were the most reliable observations.

Anyway, I reasoned that his range included AK, 99-QQ and the obvious Tx. Curiosity may have got the better of me. Needless to say it was AT and I lost a chunk that I was ahead. In the grand scheme of things, these are just part of the learning process. But it still can be lonely when it happens and you have no-one that understands to discuss it with.

Most pleasing part of the night was a comment after my 2-outer AI for a big stack earlier. When I lost, a few hands later one ex-semi-pro that I respect told the table that the character of a poker player was how he handles bad beats. That made my night as I've never once lost my temper at any table. I can tilt internally like anyone else tho'.

Thanks for being there folks and letting me vent ...

Aggression / Discipline experiment

Last night I tried single tabling to try out a combination of never raising pre-flop no matter what I hold and increasing my post flop aggression.

This is an acknowledge PLO strategy as PLO is primarily a post flop game. I still tried to restrict myself to the better hands when limping and was positionally aware. The second part of the experiment was to work hard on not calling. Either raise or fold. (I think I failed this bit eventhough I tried really hard.)

Results went well early doubling my stack and then selectively picking small pots up post flop on raggeddy boards with a tight image and large stack. I must admit that I got bored with the single table and started a second. This provided the balance between being able to think about each decision and enough hands to provide a realistic range of situations.

I then got cold decked a little (I think) and found that my stack dwindled but not nearly as much as it may otherwise have done. In fact, my usual style may well have lost my stack a couple of times. Giving up less with smaller pots at stake, I was able to get away from a few draws that I would otherwise have gambled on with a smaller SPR. The final result was 1 BI profit over 400 hands.

The most interesting thing for me was that my Aggr Factor was still only 1.55 and that was me trying my very hardest to be aggressive. Looking closer at the calculation, I believe that it isn't that I am not aggressive enough, it is a case of bloating the denominator with crying calls. All comments on my stats welcome ...

Flop 4+20/13 = 1.88; Turn 6+18/17 = 1.41; River 2+13/14 = 1.09; Total 1.55

Hopefully, that can be my focus for the next couple of sessions, "fold earlier when I think I'm beaten or am chasing a coinflip that is probably a crooked coin".

Too results oriented

Having got my diet off to a flying start in the first week, I've found myself hoping (Freudian slip) on and off the scales at least once a day. Needless to say, a watched kettle never boils. No positive movement to report.

It would be very easy to give up. I also had a massive apple crumble treat the other night with ice cream which was one of only two deviations. The next morning, no difference. That was tilt material as I felt like going back to my old ways if nothing was making a difference.

I'm now going to stay off the scales between Sunday weigh-ins and focus on just making correct dietary decisions one meal at a time. Does poker mimic life or the other way around?

PLO playing styles

I decided to have a closer look at the playing styles of the winners and losers. In a very unscientific manner, with a small sample size of 150 or so players with more than 50 hands each, I counted the winners and losers in each of the PTO playing style categories. A more comprehensive analysis would have included the $ amount won / lost, maybe later.

Anyway 7 categories had winners and 5 styles were losing. Legends for Tight, Loose, Semi, Passive, Aggressive. Brackets are probably anomolies as there were only 4 in each of the TA categories. In order of success:
- winners (TA/P), LP/A, SLP/P, SLA/A, TP/A, TP/P, T/A, and
- losers LA/P, SLA/P, LP/P, SLP/P, (TA/A).

Moral of the story is that Passivity post-flop isn't good. Sad to say that I am in the losing LA/P category. Not surprisingly, I have the same problem in NLH. Something else to work on. Any ideas on why I am LAG pre-flop and passive post flop in either game? I'm a wee bit baffled.

More winners and fewer losers in PLO?

I've always been interested in the maths of poker. Short term variance can be very misleading when we rely on experiential learning. Plays that come off can seem right and those that don't we can shy away from. Maths can help us gain a more profitable understanding of the game quicker.

One stat that I read early and have since observed to be very true is that only 5% of poker players are long term winners, the other 95% feeding the economy. In my early Poker Office days I would scroll down the list of observed players overall results and eventually, sure enough, about 5% would play big volume as winners and there'd be a long tail of small users.

I also know that in NLH we can be presented with opportunities that represent large edges pre and post flop, maybe 80/20. In Omaha this is more rare, the norm being closer to 60/40 as an edge that you want to push. So what effect does this have on the distribution of winners and losers?

After a very small sample size, just over 5000 hands observed, the winner/loser split in my PokerTracker Omaha is exactly 40.06% and 59.94%. If anyone has a larger sample size, perhaps you can share with me if this phenomenon holds true. If so, inferior players can be fooled more by short term variance into thinking their strategy is good. Just look at my recent premature entries.

In terms of my recent PLO results, they have slowed down to 9BB/PTBB. Last nights session was very LAGGY and the variance massive. I dropped 2 BIs early and recovered by the end of the session.