After a rocky start, yesterday was a lot of fun. During the first two levels, I felt kind of overwhelmed. Although I have a fair bit of PLO8 experience, including final tables in UBOC and PCA events, I haven’t played it in a while, and during those first two hours I felt lost. Everyone else at the table seemed to have a lot of split-pot experience – they were all instructing the dealer on the proper procedures for dividing the pot, reading boards with relaxed confidence, etc. – while I was trying to figure out how to look at four cards at once.
What really threw me was that these seemingly experienced players were playing in a way that seemed incorrect to me, splashing around in a lot of pots, confidently calling down modest bets with one-way hands, etc. Meanwhile I was card dead and folding damn near everything, and I started to wonder whether my approach wasn’t just off-the-charts wrong. I ended up making the classic error of check-calling big turn and river bets with little more than the nut low, justifying it on the grounds that everyone else was doing it and I had a blocker (ie I was playing A22x, that pair of deuces being the aforementioned “little more” that I somehow convinced myself had a shot at winning the high).
Thankfully it was a small pot and a sadly needed reminder. I cooled off, sat back, and let the others go broke all around me. The next time I played a big pot, it was 25/50 and I tossed out a black 100 chip as a call, hoping to limp-reraise my double-suited AA54. The action folded to the big blind, who, thinking I’d raised, tossed out 50 more chips. That reopened the betting for me to pot it, which he reluctantly called. He called off the rest with 8765 or something like that on a QQ5 board and I had him in pretty bad shape, ultimately scooping the pot.
I started to find a rhythm after that, and as the blinds got bigger the situations in which I found myself started to feel more and more familiar. I was able to read hands, semi-bluff, check for pot control and deception, and just generally feel like I was playing poker instead of waiting around for premium hands and then blindly jamming the pot. Best of all, I was having fun!
As we approached the end of the day, I had run my starting 4500 up over 40K. They announced that we’d play just three more hands and call it a night – just in time for me to avoid paying the big blind! On the second-to-last hand, I raised AA94 suited in hearts and diamonds. Mark Gregorich called from the small blind, then potted into me on a 7c 7s 8s flop. The SPR was only 1.5 when we saw the flop, so there was no question of me folding, and I got it in against his ATT3 with a spade draw. He drilled the low on the turn and the flush on the river to scoop a 25K pot.
I wasn’t rattled. I still had a roughly average stack of 30K, and I’d had my share of luck throughout the day. I calmly wished as well, folded my next hand, bagged my chips, and drove home to relax and prepare for a tougher day of competition tomorrow. These kinds of frustrating things happen in poker, and it’s important to keep your cool when they do. Even if you’re upset on the inside, it’s important to keep a professional demeanor. Wish your opponent well not only with your words but with your heard. Smile, and you will feel the resentment float away like a burden liften from your shoulders.
Today is another day. I am calm and collected. I am water.
I had to go look up the equities in the AA54/8765 hand. The other guy had >14% equity! I know it’s pretty hard to flop your opponent into worse shape than that even in hold’em, but somehow it seems like you deserve even more than 85.5% for managing to crush him in so many respects here.
Isn’t tossing out the 100 chip to call the *exact* angle-shot that RayJ discussed on your most recent podcast? Brilliant!
I had to disagree with Ray J on that point. It’s really common for someone who genuinely intends to raise to 100 or 500 or whatever and throw in one chip forgetting to announce a raise. It seems like everyone does it at one time or another.
At the same time it’s really common for people to call with just one over chip. They may not have anything smaller or for some reason don’t want to use any ante chips they’ve won (some people think of them as a badge of honor or something). The person acting next has to know this.
There was no angle shooting here, and I would put the odds at greater than 100 to 1 that if you see something similar there’s no angle shooting involved.
Oh, I was 100% joking in reference to AB. But I think this sort of angle is somewhat more common than you suggest, although I agree most instances of it are not angles.
I think that was in the small blind MG v BB. Here AB is UTG v the field without the illusory one chip already ‘out there.’ You know that phrase ‘plausible deniability?’
O8 makes me feel like a robot.
When I play O8 I feel I use a simple model of equities where input is my hand,board,spr,narrow range of my opponent.
The model makes overall my decisions trivial and analytic.
However there are few hands where I need to disregard spr and engage in a narrative to make fold.
When I play NL Holdem I need to tell myself all the time a narrative-story that leads toward decisions.The story makes my decision difficult because frequently forces me to disregard my hand,board,spr.
When I play PLO I try to combine analytic (board driven) model with the narrative.
Unfortunately frequently in PLO I have problem to construct good story.