1. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298341 - I tend to play good trips with high kickers and an ace, very fast. I am like 40% against a boat and I am 57% against other trips, so usually it is a flip and once the pot is raised, we both have no choice. However, he is a bit optimistic with his 3bet.
2. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298372 - The short stacker goes all in and this guy minraises with 4 people to act behind him. Does he minraise the nuts here and give odds to every set and flush draw to chase? Does he minraise naked 74 unsure what he would do if raised? Does he minraise set? After these thoughts went through my mind and I pushed hopind that he has the hand he had and that he would fold. Unfortunatelly even though he is like 25% against a bare 74 and even less against 74 with blockers he called. Maybe my reasoning is wrong. I should try to play straight forwardly for a while.
3. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298380 - Terrible push by me. The guy was a maniac and has been betting and raising every possible trash recently. However in this spot every king has me crushed. I should find the fold button once.
4. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298694 - Another bad play. After the small check-raise I put him on a top two or set. I figure I have 6 clear outs and I can bluff flush cards. However now I see that 6 outs are too few. Anyways the turn opens more outs for me but I make another mistake and push. I see no point in this push, since he is already commited and never folding.
5. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298698 - My hand is the best one I can get against aces. In the worst case I am 40% if both my flush draws are covered. All I need is a bit of support from the flop, which I don’t get but still have close odds to try to outdraw aces. Pushing flop gives me some minor chance he could fold and I am calling anyways.
6. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298707 - Now this was an interesting spot. Paired boards are usually good for aces in 3bet pots. However a T,9,8 and J are the most probable cards in two hands that know are drawing against aces. I would say 50% of the time one of them has a T and I am hoping to have 6 clear outs. Against a random hand with T I am around 17% and I need a bit more than 20. Against good draws I am even a favorite, so I in total I fugure this to be an OK push.
7. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298716 - Serious leak noted. I need to play more carefully with weak trips. Here half of the range he raises with, beats me well and 99 is one of the few hands I am not such a huge dog against. I am not sure if I could fold the turn. He seems to have a boat and against most of boats which I have 3 outs. But then once I call the flop maybe I am commited. I am not really sure.
8. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298725 - I go for check/raise on flop, because there are a lot of cards that hurt me on turn and I would like to solve the hand on the flop. One of them comes, I am upset I gave a free card and lead. Someone clearly shows me he has T8 against which I am 23% and I call !?!?!?! I am pushing every paired river also
9. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298741 - It seems that I keep putting myself with the worst of it. Here I figure to have good equity against a flopped str8 (almost the same against set with str8 draw) and since it is even money anyway I push. However It is a bit of a losing play and I figure to lose like 10$ every time I make this play.
10. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298754 - Kinda failed 3bet and then I am not folding top two when I only need 0.33 ev
11. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298759 - Episode 1438743874 of me overvaluing the equity of overpair with weak draw. Even against naked two pair I have only 30%
12. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298773 - Check turn, reevaluate river, eazy game
13. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3298983 - I am completelly lost in this hand. Bottom set in limped drawy pot sucks. He might have good draw but generally he will have higher set often enough to make me want to play small pot. On the turn I decide to cut his bluffs and to price all the draws, he calls with position. I get a safe card that only changes the value of top two, but I don’t expect him to float turn with naked top two. I check to represent 54, he does not push but bets small. I am not sure I can fold here, but how often is he bluffing here. I am lost!!!!
14. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299000 - I get good hand on the turn and I chicken out not to get pushed off my hand from a KT. At the river the only draw hits and I still call ?!!?!? Disgusting
15. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299016 - Nice call, man.
16. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299022 - OK, some of these hands are like… WTF was I thinking? I guess I was tilted…Value town me, pls.
17. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299034 - His bet size on the turn, brought him another street of value. Honestly, who bets 12 here with str8. I guess it makes sence if he intends to fold it to raise and to charge draws, but still…but then I should be raising the turn for value.
18. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299052 - The calling station is back. Didn’t want to raise the turn, since he looked like set or str8, I didn’t have the guts to push the naked ace bluff on the river. I should have folded the turn.
19. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299076 - Both against aces and against his hand I have like 39% chance to win, which is approximatelly as 31$ to win 77.
20. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299086 - It seems that I seem to keep getting involved in postflop situation in which I am behind but have the odds to call an all in. Maybe my preflop style is too loose. Maybe I need to give up more hands on flop
21. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299119 - Such a miss of a second barrel should be punishable.
22. http://www.pokerhand.org/?3299135 - Jennifer Tilly was on my table, she just knew I had the kings

I am disgusted by some of the plays on this page. But now I think I know where did some of my money go I am going to do similar pair of reviews in a week. If you took the time to read through all of those hands and you have comments, it will be a loss for both of us if you don’t share them…

Stay tuned for some “losing” hands review soon…

There are many ways in which PLO is different than hold-em and here I will give a few of my ideas on the subject.

1. Patience.
   Yesterday, I played against a player, who for more than an hour sustained 100/80/3 stats. He actually ended up winning 7 buy-ins and tilting almost everyone at the table. I was immediately to his right. He was raising and re-raising me every time. I started by playing my 28/15 style, but then the first few hands got into some marginal spots against him and the loose players behind him that were calling everything and waiting for a hand against him. So I had to options: to leave or to tighten up significantly. I chose to tighten up and stick around for an orbit or two too evaluate how loose is he postflop. If he is too tight or too passive postflop, I was leaving immediately. I saw him stack a gutshot for 150bb on the flop and hit and I decided to stay. Every hand OOP I was very tight calling only my good speculative hand and folding most flops. However I had my moments when I have a good double suited hand OTB, I raise he re-raises and thus squeezes the other 4 players that limped the pot. The first time they called his 3bet(since we were all deep) and I pushed. Next two times they were just folding after his 3bet and I was playing deep pot against a random hand in position. However waiting for these good spots really required discipline, when you see the maniac splashing chips around and stacking bottom two on flush boards.
2. Folding the nuts, the second nuts etc.
   Now this is something that happens all the time: a limped hand, I am BB w 7753s, 4 players to me, I check and the flop is 864s. I bet, one player raises,SB re-raises. Perfect spot to fold the nuts, you never have good odds here. Or I raise QQxx ds OTB, only BB(a passive nitty player) calls. Flop comes low cards giving me a flush draw, I cbet, he calls, the flush comes on the turn and he leads PSB into me. I call, the river is a brick he PSB into me again. I fold. I could also fold K high flush here.
3. Folding to chasers that lead when a draw gets there
   This is related to the above point, when the only draw hits the river and your opponent who until now called two PSB bets OOP, leads for full pot maybe is time to fold your top set.
4. Know your numbers
   PLO is a game of numbers. The numbers questions come all the time, like: I raise OTB KQJ9s, the SB who plays 30/5 3bets me from SB. I call. Flop comes K73suited, without my suit. He leads for PSB, do I stack or not? What is my equity against aces with or without flush draw. Another example, I raise OTB J975ds, 40bb short stack calls from the BB, flop comes T65suited with my suit, he leads for 7.5bb into me, is this a good flop or bad flop for me? Should I want to push the remaining 36.5bb into the middle?
5. Aces, Kings and Queens are mostly speculative hands. Every omaha hand is speculative hand.
   In hold-em if you have AA, there are very few flops that will convince you it might not be good. In PLO, no matter what hand you have, at least half of the flops are terrible for it. However aces in omaha are special, aces are the hand which if you manage to get it in preflop, you are probably favorite or against other aces.
6. 3betting and 4betting
   On the lower levels, every 3bet is aces. On the higher levels people start 3betting lighter IP. The problem is that many of the raising hands from early positions are aces, many people raise only aces and even loose players will have aces often when they raise. Hence, no player can sustain a loose 3betting and 4 betting style as in hold-em since he will be against aces too often. This keeps most of the game postflop.
7. Stabbing
   To climb through the lower levels you need to see flops and wait for the nuts. Many of the players that go up the ranks and come to 1/2 or 2/4 keep this idea. They give up every hand that they don’t have at least 8 outs to the nuts. Hence there are a lot of pots to be picked up by stabs. When to stab? Stab on paired boards, stab when HU, stab when no one shows interest in dryish board, stab on connected non suited flops. And stab only if there are no noted calling stations in the hand, otherwise bet for value
8. Variance
   PLO is a game of variance. Most of the spots are 60/40, maximum 70/30. So it often happens that I play a 500 hands session, during which I play 4 pots for stacks and I lose all of them. One is AA against AA and I lose. Once I stack top set against flopped str8 and another time I stack top set against two other people on KT7s flop and they hit one of the draws. For desert, I am drawing to straight and flush against a top set and miss. And I finish my session, very disappointed with myself, thinking about my game, searching for mistakes, cursing my luck, checking pokerev and seeing that I had to be 2 buy-ins ahead and I am two behind.
   PLO is a variance game, I have been struggling for 3 months to get used to the swings. You need a large sample to understand whether you are losing because you play bad or is it just a swing and you are playing OK, however when you are on a swing you start questioning your game, start looking for leeks in the solid ideas that build your bankroll until last month.
   I have always played a tight, low-variance style in hold-em, results were coming regularly and I never had more than 2-3 losing session in a row. In PLO the style is looser, the variance is bigger and the swings are longer. At the end it is really a mind game with yourself.

OK, this would be the last generalization post for a while. I am going to focus on session review here more. Any comments are welcome

Which reminds me: I haven’t played NL since the last tournament. It feels strange, maybe some of the trill is back. I gotta try it.

Anyhow, after 4 hours of satellites I qualified only for the Party Poker 300k (spending more money on the 10 satellites than the actual buyin) and since It is not refundable I fired up a few PLO tables and started the 300k. I made a bad call early but then played standard and build a good stack until near a money bubble I got involved into a weird hand with one of the active guys on my table. I posted it on 2+2 and would like to hear your comments about it.

I busted 101st with AK vs 88 with 8BB.One of those days…

http://cts687.livejournal.com/

Here I want to discuss some of the hands from the session.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939265 This guy sat on the table like 5hands ago, played every hand and did the same 3bet minraise IP already once. So I decided to see the flop. He bets pot which he might be doing with bluffs and also with strong hand, so I continue with the hand, turn is a safe card and he bets very,very small. At this point I am either way behind or slightly ahead. On the river he pushed and even though I don’t beat any of his value pushing range I was seriously considering calling. At the end I decided to muck since I am trying to get rid of this habit of mine whenever I don’t have reads to call down lightly. However, later in the session, this hand happened http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939275

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939278 I have been experimenting with donkleading recently and it seems to work, against very aggro players and against weak players. It also seems to slow down reasonably aggressive players who otherwise would be double barreling often. My current approach is to use it with various range dependent on the opponent.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939261 The opponent in this hand is very aggressive and tries steals a lot. However, he likes to call 3bets IP. Given the last part maybe a call preflop here is also ok. On the flop I was seriously puzzled what my line should be, I tried to figure out my range and how would I play this with high aces and also with KK,QQ. However while I was considering my time expired and the stupid policy of party is to fold your hand if you run out of time.Sucks! However I am pretty sure I will bet here with aces going for flop and river value,maybe also with KK. I think my line with TT should be the same. There are very few hands ahead of me and he might fold JJ to a river bet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939266 I messed up this hand completely. Opponent is loose and has floated me light previously, so I figure he will float this flop often and then bet turn if checked to. However I didn’t have the discipline to raise his turn bet. Also on the river when he insta bet this fishy value size I should have just folded. Bad play, me.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939268 This guy was playing very loose. The minraise on a monotone board will be a bluff more often than not. However I want to keep in his drawing hands with high spade and that is why I 4bet small. Here I am very unsure how I feel about his play. Mainly because I will play my flushes and high aces with high spade hands exectly the same way. I will also play bluffs like this, that his play is folding. I will also probably fold good showdown hands like AJ without a spade and KQ with a spade, but with those I am more apt to call his minraise. In general I believe he is usually crushed by my min4betting range.

And to finish with my biggest PLO hand

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939282 Villain is probably a good player since I saw he was also playing some of the 400PLO tables. I have a monster on the flop and I am willing to stack against every raise. On the turn I still have my outs however, he keeps calling. The river bricks, he checkss to me and I have a tought decision. He doesn’t have a set, since he would raise me earlier. He doesn’t have two pair since he would check/raise me on the turn.So either he has a strong combo draw that is not strong enought to raise the flop or he had some mixed hand that picked up a draw on the turn.If he had 78, he would probably push the river, expecting me to call him with a set, I cannot see a hand with 32 or 37 often after flop and turn call, so I was left with the idea that he must have a combo draw. One of AKTx,KKTxKJTx,KQTx,KT9x,T98x probably with a club draw. Some of those have one pair, that currently beats me but cannot call a push for half pot, since I am representing minimum QJ, so I bet and he folds.

I have been experimenting with different approaches to cope with light 3bettors from the blinds.

One option is to call more liberally 3bets. And to counterfeit the fact that people cbet 3bet pots virtually every time you need to loosen your standards for when to stack postflop. I think that in some of those situations you should be prepared to push in with as little as overcard and gutshot, because the light 3bettors have general advantage once they put in the cbet that there is only one more bet to go in and you never have enough information unless you have a monster.

Another possibility is to 4bet lighter. My experience show that somehow 4betting small IP makes people push over you more often than fold. The reasoning behind it is that usually you would not do it with QQ+ and often you would do it as bluff when there is a history of light 3betting. Usually, the stack sizes do not allow 4bet push.

You could also decrease the size of the open raise from steal positions. This gives you more room postflop to use position, when you have playable hand. This will also make people less inclined to play big pots OOP against you. I haven’t experimented with that much though. I am thinking to start opening to 2.5BB like in tournaments, then a 3bet goes around 8BB.Thus the pot on the flop is 16bb and if cbet is 10bb, then we have more options. We might call for a pot of 36bb with 82bb effective stacks of we might raise the cbet to 28bb and still have room to fold with 36bb invested and putting a lot of pressure on the 3bettor.Hmm, I need to experiment with this one.

And of course, the ultimate solution is to tighten up significantly your ranges, but then you need to find other spots to open so that you don’t appear too nitty.

Not an easy one, but I intend to try a mix of smaller size open raise and calling more 3bets IP, I will report maybe in a month how does it work.

I qualified for the Sunday Warm-up, bought in directly for the everest 100k Gtd and also registered for 20k Gtd 20+2 on PS and 8$rebuy . I tried one satellite for the PP 350k Gtd but busted and apparently this was the last satellite for the day.

So this was my second time that I played major Sunday tourney, the previous was more than an year ago and there I qualified for the Sunday million and busted one of the first hands with 200BB put on AA. However this time I decided to play my standard first levels loose and afterwords very tight game.

I busted early in the second hour of the 8Rebuy by running my AQ into an EP raiser with AA. Bad play me. I busted the 20k Gtd by using my running my AA into 99 for 20bb preflop and he hit. At this point I was left only with the Sunday warmup and the everest 100k. The everest game was much different than the PS, people are very tight and the gameplay was much slower. I succeeded to enter the money with only 5bb. And since the bubble was going hand to hand I played only like 5 hands on the bubble from MP w small stack that because of the hand-to-hand become even smaller once the blinds went up. I doubled up against a light pusher w A8s >>T7o and then I was just searching for my spots, until an EP shortstack pushed for 10bb and I called my 6bb w 99. He had KQs, but unfortunately the BB woke up w KK and I finished 47/861

The Sunday Warm-up, I played a standard game, doubled up trough some good tourney regulars that make a lot of moves against nits like me and then with 205 left from 3500 I overplayed an A2 from CO and BB woke up with AJ. Overall a nice experiment and winning ~1k from these two cashes certainly feels good. However, I am still beating my head, because I could have gotten away from A2 hand.

Anyways, I might do this again when I have some time in the weekends, I like the trill of this big tourneys.

I will post here the biggest and most interesting pots:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2898091 - First hand on this table, I flop the nuts for my hand and bet it twice, on the turn he coul have 87, but on the river I am sure he is weak. He called me down for 50bb with middle pair and some backdoor weak redraws. WTF?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2898110 - The villain from the previous hand left after the hand. I open a new table and he sits agaist me again. We play 3-4 small pots and then this comes up. Again brilliant top pair +backdoor flush draw +backdoor str8 draw for stacks.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2898123 - Villain in this hand lost two stacks for 10 minutes with some crazy maniakish plays. On the turn I honestly didin’t see the QJ str8 and figured he cannot have J7 and any str8 he should reraise with the two flush draws. The bet on river didin;t make much sense but i trusted my read and was wrong.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2898136 - Bluff raise gone wrong. This opponent was playing maniakishly, so he cbets his entire range. Hence I decide I can get him off good portion of it and I have soem backdoor redwaws if I am behind. He had a very strong draw but i hold