Quote:
Originally Posted by Parallelflux
I kinda stopped playing PLO because switching back and forth makes me feel like a fish.
There is a serious drawback to playing multiple games that I think is extremely rarely (if ever) discussed and if anyone plays competitive video games, they might know what I'm about to say. If I take even 1 week off from playing League of Legends, hell if I take a few weeks off of
playing a specific character in the game (they only have 4 abilities each!), I perform
significantly worse until I get back into the groove. While poker is not quite as bad because it's not mechanically taxing, it definitely still is a factor.
Re: Hand 1. I was in 9 seat and he was in 1 seat lol. I think turn is a fold for most of the reasons listed by myself and everyone here. I bet small to try to induce a raise from any pair instead of a call since I thought BTN looked like a thinking player who plays a lot of poker and might think my hand looks like AK (I mean that's what I would think an unknown would have a decent amount if they raise pre and cbet 1/2 pot here).
Re: Hand 2. 4-betting QQ is bad vs. an unknown villain unless you're playing in aggressive games such as LA. People's 3-betting ranges are just way too tight to do it for value and it's possibly the nut worst hand you can turn into a bluff due to no blocker value + high hand value.
I think my postflop line is 100% fine, I think his postflop line is 100% bad. No turn bet makes river a mandatory raise in his spot. I mean would you raise with A2 on the river if you chose to play it that way? It's the exact same hand value except it blocks *one* combo of quads that's already extremely, extremely discounted by since I raise/called preflop and just called the flop. I guess it also blocks combos of me having unpaired 2x hands but those hands are just insanely unlikely.
I guess my question in this hand is, should I just fold pre vs. an unknown. For 2/5 grinders who have seen thousands of 3-bets in their lifetimes, what percentage of 3-bets are KK/AA from unknowns in microcosms* (even young reggy-looking guys?). Anyway I didn't want to be results oriented at the time I played the hand, but fwiw I later saw him showdown A8o and JTo + a bunch of non-SD hands after 3-betting in only a few hours of play so yea in hindsight I have absolutely zero issue of how I played the hand.
So yea tldr: hand 1 was misplayed, hand 2 was fine
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*A note on microcosms. Sandia is a small poker room with just like 4 tables of NLHE like hours away from any other poker room, so all the regs there kind of homogenize their play. This is the case in any similar poker room such as my beginnings in Oaklawn, but not the case in bigger places like LA/Vegas/AC (although the effect is still there, east coast players are much tighter where getting in 150bb with TPTK is probably in general -EV from what I've heard whereas you're usually good in LA).
Anyway, the point is some microcosms make all the regs absolutely horrible at poker, like to the point that people who haven't experienced playing outside of LA/Vegas/AC can even believe. However sometimes, like I suspect in Sandia, it's the other way around and there are too many 2+2 readers that make even the worst players (at 2/5 NLHE) there decent and they played reasonably balanced ranges with floats/bluffraises/hero calls/thin value bets. So yea if you're in one of these locations it's really almost not even worth playing (except recreationally of course), just get online somehow.