State of the $1/$2 nl/plo games

So I guess you’re probably wondering why I’ve been AWOL the past month and where the hell your monthly strategy post is. Well the truth is I actually wrote two strategy posts in November but decided not to publish them for now. I’ve done my best to monetize this site without completely selling out and paying someone else to write my entries for me obviously, but I’m making way less than $50/month at this and for the amount of effort I have to put in to those posts I think there are much better (and more profitable) ways to publish my content. So for now I’ve decided I’m going to write two articles a month and save them up for a book/e-book. So ya, be looking for that to come out in like 2013 when I finally get enough content, haha!

A whole lot has happened in the past month I’m not sure where to start. Pokerwise I ended up having a good month, I’ll post detailed results next post, but it started off really poorly with me digging an $8k hole or so and busting my stars account. Big thanks to Btimm for loaning me some stars money for a bit so I could grind out a $4k bonus there 8 tabling $1/$2 which coincidentally took quite a bit of the month. I started off 8 tabling NLH, but switched to PLO after a couple days after I realized how bad the NLH games have gotten even at the $1/$2 level. Here are my thoughts on both the games at the $1/$2 level.

$1/$2 NLH
The typical regular plays like the following: Relatively tight opening standards (but once they open they are not folding to a raise) and on a lot of tables. I’d say 22/18 or something and has a completely unpolarized 3 betting range. So instead of 3 betting JJ+,AQs and trash suited hands, they 3 bet 77+, KJo+. They love to flat 3 bets with pairs and set mine or peel a cbet on the flop. They love to flat 4 bets with 88 or KQ or even JTs from time to time. They also cbet too much.

To combat this I eventually adjusted by:

4-betting larger and for value – If they want to call my 4 bet with JTs or 99, fine, but it’s going to cost them 1/3 of their stack. No more 25-27bb 4 bets like I’d make at 5/10 or 10/20 where people usually shove or fold. Gotta get that extra 8bb where you can.

Betting bigger for value on the flop and turn – This is sort of an extension of the first adjustment because the $1/$2 regs love to call and peel on the early streets to try and hit their hand, but when the big bets come out on the river they are pretty passive and actually folded quite bit. So you need to punish them early in the hand for the maximum.

3-betting a wider range for value and less polarized – If they want to call my 3 bets with 33 100% of the time to try to spike a set, fine but that just means I don’t really want to be in there with the J7s as much as I’d like to have 88.

What this all adds up to is me putting in a lot money in the early streets of a hand. This does not play to my strengths as a poker player in my opinion. I used to say and think playing postflop and especially turns and rivers was where my edge came from but before I started playing a lot of PLO I’m not sure that was the case. Now I know for a fact I play better on those streets than the vast majority of players, but playing 100bb deep against $1/$2 regs I just don’t get a chance to use this skill very much and my edge diminishes drastically.

Another area where I believe I have a big edge is adjusting to my opponents. 90% of regs don’t adjust their game at all to who their playing and just play “their game” the vast majority of the time. Well I found that when I was 8 tabling I had a hard enough time keeping with all the action let alone adjusting to my opponents, so I found myself very much auto piloting and there goes another one of what I believe to be my edges out the window.

The reason I think PLO is such a great game is there isn’t much edge to be had preflop so it’s much harder to play a cookie cutter game given to you on a preflop hand chart by cbetting 90% and win. I think a great game would be ante hold’em where everyone antes, is dealt two cards, a flop is dealt and THEN the betting action begins. But such a game doesn’t exist so to PLO I go.

$1/$2 PLO
The typical $1/$2 PLO reg is extremely loose passive. He plays 40% of hands or more preflop and never folds anything postflop. I would strongly advise against bluffing, like ever. I can’t tell you how many times I would fire 3 barrels with nut blockers only to be called down by the 12th nuts. If you follow this advice you will do well. I could go into more specifics, but it really does just boil down to bet your good hands and check/fold or check down your weak hands.

Okay well enough poker strategy what else did I do this month? I made it out to Tulalip Casino about 30 mins outside of Seattle for the first time. I went with a couple of my non poker friends so we just gambled it up with some low stakes $10 Blackjack, Pai Gow and craps but I checked out their poker room and I’m not really interested in playing there anyways. Washington state law forbids you from betting more than $500 per hand link, so the highest NL stakes they had was $5/$10 which is basically cap NL with 50bb which I’m not really interested in playing and the highest limit game they had was $4/$8 which I’m definitely not playing unless there’s plenty of booze involved. Overall I ended up breaking even, but got a good two hours of gambling entertainment in. I was a bit disappointed that the drinks were still $5 a pop even when you’re gambling but I guess this is standard everywhere but Vegas from my experience.

I bought the New Super Mario Bros for wii this month. I’ve been playing a lot of it lately with my gf and I definitely think it’s the best mario since the SNES version. Imagine that version, but four people can play at the same time.

I discovered a new, ultrasecret, completely natural way of increasing my stamina and attention span: yawning

This video got me thinking of all the different ways you could unlock a lock (voice activated, whistling, fingerprint, your iphone, possibilties are endless). Are keys sooo 20th century?

Completely mindblowing. We are in store for a bizarre 21st century IMO.