PLO8 - Time to get serious

I'm not sure that there is any shortcut to winning poker. I've often read that it is an iterative process requiring a lot of table time. My PLO8 journey started well and then a little bit of variance and a big bit of bad play has jolted me back to the study. Well, given that I jumped straight in at $100 buy-ins and no study, more accurate to say start my study.

In my library, I came across a Split Poker book by Ray Zee. He starts by saying that poor PLO8 players can go a long time before realising that they are losing players. Given that when the book was written 30 hands per hour of live poker was the norm, at its most generous, I've certainly survived a month or so of casual play. Still not very long, sigh!

This was the wake up hand ...



... it isn't the $100 that was the jolt, just my bad play on the low side that left me so exposed. I should have known when my steal was met with a min re-raise. Position, position, position.

I never regret being outplayed, just look to learn from it. When I read Ray's book further, the chapter focuses on playing tighter and tighter. It turns out that Edward Hutchison was right and I was wrong after all - surprise, surprise.

So here I am back to the drawing board. Without the 500 hands I played, the chapters would be boring and I wouldn't have picked much up. I'm already finding that I had intuitively discovered a lot more than I gave myself credit for. Looking forward to further study and hopefully not being the fish for too much longer.

PS I actually nipped into becoming a very small winning player up $5 immediately prior to the hand above. PokerEV tells me that I was running very hot though. In Sklansky Bucks, I should be down $200.

Why choose stress?

At one point, my daughter had wanted to do Family Law as a career. Thankfully, she is now planning on a different career path. As a parent, my immediate reaction was, why would you want to surround yourself with that much stress and heartache?

And so it is with poker variance. Why do we choose a pastime that in the short term is inherently stressful and highly likely in the bad times to affect our general persona through a variety of internal feelings? Presumably it must provide us with other benefits.

For me, I benefit from a heightened ability to make risk-based decisions at work. I feel more confident making significant decisions in a timely manner with incomplete information. I'd love to receive comments on what value you derive from your poker journey.

First ever session of PLO8

Inspired by a recent PokerRoad Cash Plays with Andy Bloch discussing Stud 8-or-better, I got to thinking that it is a much more complex game than I had imagined. The more I discover about other games, the more that I realise that NLH is over-rated. When Doyle and the boys were on the road, there is no doubt that it justifiably earned the reputation as the Cadillac of Poker. Since then, it makes for good lowest common denominator TV viewing. Online, it is falling into the category of HU poker, academically solved. Hence it is difficult to exploit the young kids with far more time on their hands than us oldies to perfect the game.

Omaha is a great gamble game. I still feel so naive compared to some of my opponents but I'm holding my own reasonably well. With a bit of study, I may even get to be a winning player. Tonight, I moved on again, this time to PLO/8. Adam from the 2+2 PokerCast often talks about it and the importance of scooping the pot in split games.

A2xx is a great starting hand if it makes a qualifying low, but you can lose money with the nuts when you get quartered. Also, if an A or a 2 comes you need to be careful that the low you make with your kicker is deceptive in how it can be beaten. Strong PLO hands with no low value, if you can limp in, can scoop if there is no qualifying low. Aces are gold, playing high and low. Beyond that I don't really have much of a clue.

I'm hardly bankrolled for PLO100 so jumping in to 2-tabling PLO8 at 100 was crazy to say the least. I guess I reconciled it in my own mind that I would get to experience it the way that it was meant to be played. Interestingly, after my small sample size of almost 400 hands, I have the impression that the variance may be a lot lower than PLO. In PLO8, you know when you are beat for sure. You know when you are putting a lot of money in HU with the prospect of getting half. Lots of opportunities to get away from hands on the flop. Similarly, you know when you have the nuts.

One of the many skills that I haven't mastered yet which is deciding whether you want to bring callers along for the ride or close hands out with a pot-sized raise. This isn't as obvious as it might sound. Anyway, after my first session, I lost just over $25, to be expected I guess, first time up. My PTO Stats showed heaps of leaks.

The first and most obvious one is true for any beginner, I've seen significantly more flops than anyone else - 46.88%. Average for the table was 25%. An interesting stat was WtSD, all those with >40% were winners, those below were losers. Makes sense really, winners decide on the flop if they're ahead or not. A bit like Limit poker ... I'll see you at the river. Another interesting observation, winning players seem to never fold their blinds to a steal. Maybe there aren't many steals, hence 0%.

To see whether I had been lucky/unlucky, I fired up PokerEV. If you haven't used this program before, it's pretty cool in that it works out your Sklansky bucks and tells you if you are running above or below expectation relative to when the money went in for hands that get to showdown. How did I fare? Actually, I ran pretty hot, so at least now I know that my almost breakeven flattered my performance.

Then, I remembered that I have my Hutchison system Prefloper application. I fired it up and played a lot more sensibly. I made a comeback from that point. I did ignore it quite a few times, almost always to my detriment, again I reasoned with myself that it was experimentation but in reality we all know that it is the desire to see more flops and get lucky. As PokerEV confirms, I did get lucky. If only I had the discipline of BCG and the Blindman, I reckon that I would turn a healthy profit at this game. Maybe next week :-).

Trip down memory lane

"A year in the Life" is an entertaining blogs by a guy in London with an equal mix of poker and life stories. The ex-Snowman's latest post has him reminisce on leaving his hometown which reminded me of a similar experience back home recently. If you don't know me you may wish to move to the next post now, even if you do, you still might.

For what it's worth, I grew up in a town called Downpatrick in Northern Ireland, population 9,000. Then "The Troubles" started and almost overnight the town grew to a population of 17,000 as people were moved out of their homes in Belfast to satellite towns like ours. It changed the culture of our wee town overnight. No longer did we know everyone. Those that we didn't know were displaced and often to be feared. Over the years, it has all become fully integrated, but our wee town has never quite been the same.

I had the chance to take my 17yo daughter around last month for pretty much the first time. We parked tha car at the house where I was born and starting walking. My mum and dad moved there only weeks before I appeared. Back then it was all families and fun; now it is all broken glass and many would find it intimidating. I wanted to show my daughter the back lanes that we played in but they have been all bricked up, presumably to stop sniper movement at one point. Doesn't look nice at all with angry barking dogs everywhere.

From there we walked up the back to my old school which has hardly changed. I naively thought that as an ex-pupil from the other side of the world that I'd be able to stroll about the school but I felt like rip van winkle. Ireland has caught up with the rest of the UK with its pervasive and over-zealous regulatory compliance that conspires to take the fun out of life. Having signed a Child Protection document, I was allowed around the corner to see my year photo. I'd forgotten a lot of my classmates but with the photo the memories all flooded back. From there we walked through the grounds which now sported a very high perimeter fence coated in Anti Climb Security Paint. I'd never heard of such a thing, seems like a pretty cool product, check it out.

Passed my house in "Cornflake Hill" (GBP3,900 in 1970, I really do need to find the pound symbol), so named because everyone else ate toast for breakfast. Then walked Aunt Sally's. She always had an open door policy and kept all of us cousins, neighbours and friends fed between our adventures. From there on to Samson's stone (Samson threw it from the Mournes years ago (folklore) / Glacial movement (science)). The Council have tried to make tourist spots with nice stone walls and paths. The alcoholics, druggies and glue sniffers seem to find them quite homely. Then on to the local hospital where my Aunt was being looked after by my cousin with another cousin in the neighbouring room. It was around about now that it was really sinking in what you give up when you leave a small town to the other side of the world with no extended family.

From here I visited Brother Justin, an aging Christian Brother who inspired many of us with his love of mathematics. He's losing his memory and spent most of the time trying to recall me. He did remember that Stevie Stockdale was a one-footed footballer though and I very much enjoyed his company. He was always a relatively gentle man unless you didn't hold the corner of the paper exactly 1.5 inches each side when he was stapling for the class. That was one of my earliest introductions to real pressure with a task where there is really no excuse for getting it wrong. We all loved the tension of queuing up and on average there were about 1.7 clips around the ear per queue.

Scotch Street was also the home of Allie M where we had our first big regular poker school. We would have been 9 or 10 at the time and played for all of our spare coppers. Allie was no good at maths or poker (great soccer player) and always done his dough. The pub next door was always full of old guys playing darts and Allie was great at darts. The same routine played out over the years. Allie lose his money, I'd lend him some, he'd go next door and win heaps playing darts with the old guys (in retrospect they may have let him win) and he'd return with more money for the game which he'd duly lose. Needless to say, this is where I built my first illicit bankroll that I hid in the base of my Seiko watch. The role of notes eventually bacame so fat that it wouldn't fit. That was about when I turned 14 or so at which point we all proceeded to spend it on alcohol. It's funny, even then I never used any of the profits, the winnings was always just a scoreboard. Another +EV regular is now a doctor. He was a top chess player so we never gambled at that. What we did do though was teach ourselves backgammon solely for the purposes of heads up gambling - earliest introduction to extreme variance with our loose doubling gambles.

Now this is a great tip for any golfers out there. Next time you want to gamble on the game, introduce the concept of the doubling cube on each hole. Starting at only $1 per hole, you'll be amazed at how many $64 putts you'll need to sink. Give it a go, you'll love it!

On to the St. Patrick Centre which tells the story of Patrick who is buried in Downpatrick. Was very interesting except for leaving out the part about where they decided to bury him. Not sure if this is folklore or I made it up, but my story goes that when he died, they couldn't agree where to bury him, so they put him on a donkey and where the donkey stopped that was it. Unfortunately for the poor donkey, each time he slowed down the neighbouring villagers would come and create a commotion to keep him moving toward their town. Eventually the poor donkey died in Downpatrick with Patrick still on his back. As an aside, buried with Patrick are St Brigid and St Colmcille. From there, we went up to see his grave which is covered by a stone that I'm told my great grandfather helped transport. Again be wary of Irish folklore.

Walking down the hill, we popped into Denvirs a traditional pub/hotel where I would play chess representing our town as a schoolkid against the adults. I always played Black in seat 3 or 4, and always tucked myself in for the night with the Kings Indian opening. I was aware back then of table image and took forever pretending to think about my moves (40 moves in 90 minutes timed, with an additional 15 to finish the game if required). I'd complicate the middle of the board and offer a draw around move 30 which was surprisingly accepted way more often than it should have been. I was a grinder back then inching my rating up, 1 draw at a time.

Then back to pick up my car. As it was getting dark, I was pleased that it was an old Toyota that my sister had lent me for the week.

No place for this kind of post in a poker blog I know, but one day I'll be even older than I am now and may stumble it myself. Thanks to the ex-Snowman for the inspiration and apologies to anyone who made it this far. Almost as boring as folding 84% of hands, I'm sure. Back to poker next time where I ran really good last night 4-tabling Omaha with a PLH Tourney on the side.

Freerolling on Pittwater

This was the venue for our latest Home Game on Nathan's boat in Pittwater. We pushed off at 4:30pm and landed again at 4:30am. Picking up on the Blindman's comment on the Durrr stalemate, if we'd been at the casino, the rake would have had us all broke. As it was, I ended up $170 after losing a few pots late on, including a rare significant river bluff with air that didn't come off. Good news is that The Serpent was the recipient and he looks after me. That said, I'd loaned him $50 to get back into the game a couple of hours earlier. He proceeded to turn that into $700, nice score.

Anyway, given the surroundings we were all freerolling and as always, no-one got hurt.

Durrr Challenge update

Just listened to the 2+2 Pokercast where they mentioned an interesting point. With all of the variance inherent in HU PLO and after $33M invested (including blinds), Durrr and Patrik were within $15K. Pretty amazing really. Just checked and since then my man has pulled away again, including this cool hand exemplifying playing your big PLO draws fast ... http://www.highstakesdb.com/view-hand-history.aspx?GameID=311025.

UK Trip Report

After a couple of weeks in cold but sunny Ireland, I have just arrived back in Australia to find that winter approacheth with the end of daylight savings. It's funny that even though the weather here never gets too bad, most people tend to still hibernate a little for winter with fewer barbies etc. This period of indooredness augers well for us poker nuts and explains why the Scandanavians kick our butts online.

My trip home was eventful to say the least and there was a lot to do. It wasn't particularly hectic, but mentally challenging all the same. I played some online poker toward the end of my trip and experienced a significant downswing. This was totally due to bad play on my part and I'm not sure if any of that can be blamed on my state of mind. Either way, I am hoping that the next chapter is much more positive and that my confidence returns. I did get the opportunity to read a few magazines and read a few 2+2 posts which provided me with a few more insights. There isn't actually a lot written about PLO yet, so my table time is allowing me to differentiate the quality of what little is out there.

One great find though is a little utility called PokerEV. PokerEV automates the analysis of the Sklansky Bucks concept on your hand histories - HE or Omaha. I fired it up and was amazed to find that I was running away ahead of expectation. The truth is that my first 10K hands I didn't actually play that well probably - I just ran good. The last 5K hands have seen that situation reverse and normal variance is catching up on me and bringing me back to earth. Like a golfer that deconstructs and rebuilds their swing, I am hoping that I can go through a period of analysis and work on my PLO theory and refine a consistent winning style that doesn't rely on running good. As I'm holding my own at 6-max PLO100 already, I'm very optimistic for the future if I can knuckle down and do the study. TAGgier style here I come.

Live action has been a more positive experience for me. I had 3 sessions when I was home, one in Banbridge and two in London. The Banbridge Bridge Club was an all nighter which worked out well because my Dad said that the country roads are dangerous at night. There was a Tourney running with 22 runners where I was chip leader with 4 left only to fall away and take 3rd position. We then started SnGs with ever diminishing numbers of players until 6 of us watched the sunrise. I managed three 1sts and a 2nd of which I was very pleased. They play deep stacked with slow blinds, so it was relatively straightforward to play a Harrington style and avoid marginal decisions for my stack. I also got an edge by claiming in the early hours that Hold'em wouldn't keep me awake so we played a PLO SnG and a mixed NLHE/PLO SnG where I had a big edge in the PLO games.

London I managed to make it to the Vic Casino which lived up to its reputation IMHO. The staff were both knowledgeable and friendly and the tables were well laid out and the area was very spacious. It was an afternoon visit and it was very quiet with the regulars grinding it away on a 5/5 NLHE table. I got on the first 1/2 NLHE table to open (which is actually a $2-$5 table in Oz). The dealers were on the ball and incident free. You are allowed to buy in deep, from memory 400GBP which seems ridiculous. I bought in for 200GBP and was a medium stack. I could only play for 2 hours so I had another 200 in my pocket. I was dealt a few half decent / speculative preflop hands in position and limped, missing my trips etc. Stack dwindled slightly but insignificantly when I found QJs in one of the blinds. The board came T95r and the preflop raiser c-bet to which I called again and found myself in a decent 3-way pot. The K was a dream card for me and I checked OOP expecting a raise but it was checked again. River blanked and a surprising thing happened - the old regular to my left couldn't wait to get his chips in, 40 of them. I hadn't acted yet and they were in already. The dealer directed the play to me and I thought about it. I checked hoping that the 3rd player would come in too (I had the nuts). He folded and now I had the option of raising which I did AI. I was insta-called (presumably trips) and tabled my straight for a healthy double up. The only downside was that the preflop raiser told me that he slowed down on the Turn because he could see that I was very happy with the K. I know that he was telling the truth so I need to work on that. Anyway, my first trip to the Vic resulted in a 186 profit or in Aussie terms almost $500.

I then met up with Stevie, Kate and Indi for dinner near Leicester Square at Browns, I highly recommend it if you are in the area. We have been friends for years and had a good old laugh mixed in with a healthy smattering of opinion and philosophy etc. The wine was flowing but I was abstaining as I planned to stay up late at the Empire. With a flight to Sydney the next morning, I like to pull an all nighter and then sleep throughout the journey. Also, hangovers on a long haul flight are no fun at all. So off we toddled about 10pm and got a table almost immediately. I was the only one playing and sat at a table of dour grinder pros which wasn't at all what I was looking for. Where are the drunk tourists? Anyway, I played a couple of orbits before exercising my table selection right and headed to the bar with my friends to people watch the casino floor. It never ceases to amaze me the amounts that people routinely gamble on -EV table games. As it neared midnight, I returned and found a much better table. Alas, I was relatively card dead and tread water for most of the session. The table broke around 4am when it goes to self-dealt (rake free), sweet. I offered to deal for everyone but the game dwindled to myself and a German online/live grinder. He wanted to play heads up but that was a boring losing proposition for me. He agreed to PLO and we played back and forward with no big pots when the table started to build up again and revert back to NLHE. Throughout all of this, I doubt if my stack went outside of the 100-300 range. Around 7am my patience paid off (I would have been broke otherwise as I really had unbelievably bad cards all night) when I was dealt KK UTG. I limped as it was pretty loose at this stage. Next player who had been ultra aggressive (partly drunk) raised to $10 and got 3 speculative callers. With $200 in front of me, I made it $50 which wasn't even a pot-sized bet. Drunk makes it $200 to go, presumably to isolate but I'm not sure that he thought that far ahead and everyone folded. His hand range was so wide, I reckon that AA was about 10% of his range and I called AI. He showed 88 and I was just trying to avoid a suckout, which I did. From there, I was able to loosen up my starting range as I was deeper stacked and I enjoyed the last hour before heading to the airport.

All up, my live play netted me over $1000 in Aussie money playing what could be considered the lowest available stakes in Europe. The joys of living in Australia. In the context of my immature loose PLO downswing, this was a big positive and a timely reminder that nitty is a hard game for others to exploit. What to do with my offline bankroll is my next challenge. The ANZPT is coming to Sydney this month and there are a number of tournamenets that I'd like to take a crack at. The Main Event is outside my bankroll and the others are probably -EV as I don't think that I'm good enough yet to place unless I run above average. That said, I've had quite a bit of casino table time and online tournies so it is probably time to combine the two and see how I go. Anyone else interested in travelling to Sydney for the smaller buy in events? It would be good to meet up. Maybe we can even pool bankrolls and winnings to reduce variance. This time next year, I hope that there will be a queue of people trying to buy a piece of my action, maybe even Stars themselves. Until then, as always, all advice and support welcome.