The shine wears thin

Had a really rocky month this month. Losing overall at all sites.

Again I thought I'd turned the corner at Everest a few days ago having had a really good winning streak over 500 hands playing a relatively LAGgy style. Recovered all loses and looked to be heading off my 500BB goal to move up a limit.

Settled down to a session the next day and BAM! Lost it all again and more over the course of the next 500 hands.

Think I may not be able to break through at all unless I learn to hand read better. Sessions with low W$SD totally kill any chance I have of making it to higher stakes.

Wierd thing is... why is this happening now? How comes I had 3 or 4 months of good results? Is variance really this cruel?

Hollywood Poker upgraded to OnGame P5 Engine

The upgrade was announced about a week ago. Roll out to be incremental. Finally filtered down to my account today. Looks like an Adobe AIR application.



The new lobby looks crisp and clean.



The tables are responsive but I’d prefer them without the avatars and perhaps a little less animation too. Not much is configurable at the minute.




Bye bye HUD and session imports into HEM for the forseeable futue.

the lucky PLO hand in full

Party Poker $2.00 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 9 players - View hand 145462

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $2.67

CO: $7.58

BTN: $0.92

SB: $6.14

BB: $4.04

UTG: $2.99

UTG+1: $6.55

Hero (UTG+2): $2.25

MP1: $0.82

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is UTG+2 with J 8 K T

UTG calls $0.02, 1 fold, Hero raises to $0.06, 1 fold, MP2 raises to $0.10, 4 folds, UTG calls $0.08, Hero calls $0.04

Flop: ($0.33) T K J (3 players)

UTG checks, Hero bets $0.16, MP2 calls $0.16, UTG folds

Turn: ($0.65) 6 (2 players)

Hero bets $0.32, MP2 raises to $0.64, Hero raises to $1.99, MP2 calls $1.35

River: ($4.63) 3 (2 players)

Final Pot: $4.63

Hero wins $4.40

(Rake: $0.23)

Say hello to PLO

Having been on holiday and divorced from playing Limit Holdem for a while, I found myself browsing PLO (Pot-limit Omaha) videos on DeucesCracked. Happened across a video series by Vanessa Selbst (2x6 - two times the cards, six times the fun) aimed at beginning players.

The first video includes some pre-flop hand range guidance so after watching it figured I'd have a quick go at micro stakes.

Hopped along to Titan Poker armed with $3 to try full-ring PLO $0.01/$.02. Main objective was to see how many hands arrived that met Vanessa's starting hand criteria. VPIP came out around 22%, playing some hands that Vanessa had not advised.

Played very much weak-tight. Didn't care too much about being exploitable since I knew I was a big fish. Main worry was unstable wireless internet connection.

Initially maintained a break-even stack winning some very small pots then overplayed top two pair and lost a third of my stack.

Luckily another fish stacked off with A555 single-suited and helped me repair the damage. However, in the cold light of day, I had again gone to war with a fragile top two pair hand and could have easily been left with nothing. Decided to quit after that as I was way out of my depth.

Some observations:

• some reads/knowledge from Limit poker translates well to this form e.g. aggression, vpip, stacking off, position.
• I should probably cut down the number of stats shown since I have no idea how to interpret anything beyond broad VPIP ranges
• You need a better understanding of the math than in limit as you have to put a lot more at stake with each play. pots can quickly grow to put you all in so calling down with the worst hand is a much bigger mistake in PLO than LHE.
  
• Hand-reading is a nightmare !?! I'm useless at this with two cards so four cards?!? ugh!

Watched second video . Didn't find it added much for me - she's coaching a high-stakes no-limit player to play PLO and he does allsorts of stuff I wouldn't even think of trying so most of it was over my head. I did get some useful into on bet sizing though and there are other tidbits in there for a careful naive listener like me.

Not entirely convinced Vanessa's series is of great benefit to me at this point but I've since found that a PLO book I bought months ago looks to be a good supplement to Vanessa's series.

Definitely would like to get into PLO a little. The additional risk of losing your stack does worry me and it's the reason I've avoided no-limit holdem. Also, bet sizing adds another variable into the mix and complicates the game a little more.

I don't want to sacrifice my limit game especially since I'm still effectively struggling at LHE short-handed micro-stakes. However, I think a certain amount of diversification will make for more robust poker playing.

Results for May 09

May was a big test of resolve. Here's the chart.


As you can see, I started to pull it back over the last 1600 hands. Have been on holiday for the last week and haven't played at all so hope all the insight gained sunk in rather than slipped away on the beach.