I've taken huge swings since I started playing 10/20 PLO. My 5/5 NLHE numbers have been pretty constant, but the PLO numbers are a little scary. Something about the game itself (as this is the first time that I'm encountering it live on a weekly basis) has almost fried my brain as at home i can talk to myself, I guess. I take a smoke/walk around break every 50-60 when I play. I'm wondering if I should break and make a note of some observations while I smoke every 35-45 minutes instead. I'm only logging about 6-8 hours a week of it, so would these breaks, lowering the amount of hands that I see hurt me or should I just give it a whirl.

I have been trying to play this game in 5 hour sessions, but I just can't do it as times. I hope more breaks will help me with that. I've never had an endurance problem like this at the casino before. Maybe it's the shitty weather coupled with winter break being over, and the high times of the bowling tournament season and football season. I don't know. What's weird is that my profits have been great, but I've been drained after every session in ways that haven't happened before since I came back from my 2 week poker break in November. My play has been really choppy and somewhat inconsistent in PLO as of late as well.

I'm takin' a couple of weeks off from drinking. That should help. I'm on day 6 and my sleep schedule is in chaos.

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I kind of hinted at this in our other discussion on PLO, I think you are a little loose. My guess is that you feel by taking chances you can make real big scores, but what you are seeing in your variance is the effect this has not only on your profit, but on your mind.

The fact that you even brought this thread up shows it is waying on your mind. I stopped playing $75/$150 O8 at foxwoods for this reason, not because the game was too tough, or I didn't have the proper bankroll, but because the volatility in my swings as well as the mental stress was too much.

I have actually perused your PLO stats on poker ledger before and i saw what you are seeing, too many swings. If the games are as soft as you say they are you shouldn't have these kind of swings.

my advice is the problem is 1 of 2 things

#1 a flaw in your strategy (I think you are too loose) remember poker is not about taking chances for big paydays it is a boring game played for money.

#2 mentally you are not prepared for this type of pressure. I know what this is like, if you poker stress follows you throughout the rest of your day this is not good.

I'm not trying to be critical, just helpful.

you may want to go back and read all of Rolf Slotbooms archived articles in cardplayer and on pokerpages, he has some great stuff on PLO.

Our main argument with the Omaha thread wasn't about me being loose. I just don't like the "if you're gonna play it, raise with it" because I just see getting into a lot of trouble with this in bad position because your hand changes so much on the flop.

I agree with your hand selections. I'm tighter than any other Omaha player that I've played with on a consistent basis when it comed to hand selection. I just select to never be aggressive in early position before the flop and seldom in the middle. This could be an argument for me being too passive before the flop and maybe I am.

The only hand that we disagreed on was 5677 and I said that i would play it late and cheap, but not for the 77, but for the 567.

I re-read that thread where we went at it ("Omaha Starting hands") and here's the link: omaha starting hands

What was loose about my theory? I am up for suggestions by all means. I have the BR to switch it up a bit for a month and my main poker goal for this year is for this game to come as natural to me as Stud and Hold 'em do because I believe that pounding a game into your nature is the best foundation for developing a strong game.

My starting hand selection is one the first page on this thread and the rest was me not dumbing down hand selection as I tried to get across in one of my last posts in that thread. My objective was to highten the importance of position in how one decides to play the hand.

People have said to me that I miss some oppurtunities to bet hard on my hand and I'm just having problems on picking more spots to be aggressive and build my pots.

I have read all of Rolf Slotbloom's articles and thanks for the idea. I probably should re-read them. I did just finish re-reading Championship Omaha also.

And no, I'm definitely not prepared for the mental stress and that's why I don't log many hours of PLO. Hold 'em and Stud 8 just don't give me the headaches, but it's hard to really compare because Omaha's relatively new to me. I just started playing the game last summer on Poker Stars and UB and had only logged a few sessions of 5/10 and 10/20 LIMIT Omaha and LIMIT Omaha8 live before hitting this PLO game in early December.

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I think you are putting too much stock into wrap straight draws with your top hands, other than AAJT.

don't get me wrong these are great hands but they are not the best.

the 789X and 9TJX hands are where I think you are too loose, you are playing 3 cards in a 4 card game, you're not exactly bringing a knife to a gun fight but you are bringing a 6 shooter to an uzi fight. You really, REALLY need to be a great shot to do this(in poker terms your post flop play has to be flawless).

Just wait for 9TJQ instead of playing 9TJ5.

these hands will beat many other players but will get you in a lot of trouble when someone has you duplicated or has 1 extra out

like when you have 89T2 with a flop of 79J or such, and your opponent has 89TQ or something.

JQKX
TJQX
9TJX
89TX
789X

I don't think any of these hands are playable outside of the blinds.

I will do that. The game is prone to big pots and I always say with Hold 'em that if the game is producing big pots, there no need to rush, the money's already there. For some reason, I haven't been incorporating this into my Omaha play.

Here are my stats in this 10/20 PLO game:
Time Played:
32h 41m

Average Duration:
3h 37m

Overall Return:
$-878.00

Average Return:
$-97.56

Overall Win Rate:
$-26.86/hr

Average Win Rate:
$-50.76/hr

Standard Deviation:
$1,039.59

Win Rate Standard Deviation:
$297.35/hr

So, appartently, I was misreading my stats and was disillisioned by my overall win rate that included the NLHE games and the Mixed games. I'm basically down a little under one buy in. I definitely can't handle my sessions like I do others and will start taking notes during all of my breaks.

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This is a very small sample and this isn't the sole basis of my concern. I know that there are bugs in the system.

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I'm by no means an expert in this game. You might want to go to Rolf's website and send him an e-mail about this. He's a great guy and will almost assuredly reply, I have spoken with him numerous times.

But i should warn you he is tighter than I am!!!

32 hours isn't much so being down 1 buy in isn't all that bad, what i would be concerned with is the volatility. I remember when I viewed your log there were a lot of -1200, +1700, -2000 type #s. correct me if I'm wrong. where are the +200, -150 #s???? there should be a lot of these.

I used to play a 5/5 pot limit hold em game a lot, and didn't have many wins over $500 (4) or losses over $200 (6), in 62 sessions. I am the definition of a grinder though.

I'm not sure what your bankroll is but if it is in the 20 buy in area 3 or 4 bad sessions could really hurt you with the variance you have, possibly 1/4 or more of your roll. If this does happen you could start playing with scared money as well compounding your problems.

anyway I hope our conversation gets you back on track, GL.

My bankroll's over $32K and will be larger when I cashout from betonsports.com after the football season's over and I've exchanged e-mails with "Ace" a good amount of times. I mostly look to my grandfather or Bob Ciaffone. General motiviational stuff, I've emailed Scott Fischman a lot and Daniel Negreanu a bit. They both have very uplifting personalities no matter what the people on the internet have to say about Fisch.

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