Honestly, $2k is just not enough of a BR for 1/2 PLO. You're going to get into a lot of spots where you're flipping with a bit of dead money, or have 40% in a 3-way all in, etc. Go play if you like, but even if you're a winner you can't expect 2k to be sufficient. Note I'd say the same thing even with the $5 bring in, which just makes the game a bit bigger.

playing PLO with 10 buy ins is absurd.
It's absurd for nl also, but plo is like absurdly absurd.

500 hours is nothing. 1k hours minimum and even then you don't want to extrapolate from actual results but rather feel how you stand in the game. 2k hours is I think where you start to get a reasonable sample.

I agree. I was winning around 12-13 Bb/hr for my first 500 hours and I was terrible for the first few hundred. I’m currently on a streak online where in my last 9000 hands I’m winning around 33bb/100, even adjusted for all in EV. That’s about 300 hours of live play.

As much as I respect Garick's opinion, I think he slipped a decimal somewhere. In about 1500 hours at roughly 30 hands an hour, (45,000 hands) I have been set over seated probably 40-50 times... roughly once every thousand hands.

After the first twenty times or so, I stopped trying to set mine 55- and it seemed to slow down a little bit.

These rare events like set over set are so rare that one guy's limited experience is not at all equivalent to a Monte Carlo evaluation but it does make one question the "15,000 hand" statement.

Not sure what my opinion has to do with the above?

Lots can happen in 500 hr blocks. Big heaters/nasty coolers/etc. However, after loggin 5 hunnit hours you should "know" how much edge u got.

I no longer coach - but when people would ask me for coaching I would have them write down on paper either in essay format or bullet points EXACTLY where their edge comes from at the game they play. The response would give me insight to their thought process and how best to tailor their training sessions.

Their responses also happened to really correlate to their w/r - which obv makes a lot of sense.

Point being - if you are @ 500 hours and are unsure if you are any good...you prolly are not. Cuz after 500 hours if you are stomping the game (regardless of how much you have won - you know it). You can literally talk for 45+ minutes as to how you exploit every player type and where exactly your edge comes from. You will seldom get lost in hands or be confused etc.

This is pure gold.

Im sorry but I do not believe this.

Don't believe what exactly?

People (myself included) tend to exaggerate their run bad and downplay their run good

I dont believe he was set over setted 40-50 times in 1500 hours. I'll start with the fact that its so mathematically improbable that I dont believe it, but lets add in the fact that he says "probably 40-50 times". So he obviously didnt actually count (which I do by BTW). Hes just thinking back and trying to estimate. When someone tries to estimate and comes up with a number that is THAT statistically improbable (especially something that isnt a positive situation), Im calling BS.

+1


Excellent points Squid, i totally agree.

40-50 set over set in 1.5k hours... wtf would be the odds of that

Set over sets seem to happen every 200-300 hours for me. I don’t really worry about them.

Now KK < AA on the other hand is the one that annoys me and will likely never even out in my lifetime. 35:5 against and 0/35 when holding KK.

Je suis le sad.

I did the math once and IIRC set over set happens once every 350-375 hours (ish). Lets not forget you should also be on the high side of set over set the same amount.

Ive only had 1 AA vs KK that I know of so far in 2018 (458 hrs). I believe it should be like once every 125 hrs....each way.

Mike: my friend experienced being set over setted 7 times during a 200 hour span on our last Vegas trip, and he was on the wrong side all 7 times.

That is some decent runbad i guess we could say based on your estimates on set over set happens once every 350-375 hours?

Yeah thats really really bad. As I said I got set over setted 3 times over 25 hours in Feb. Those are my only 3 this year in 458 hours so far and I havent been on the right side of set over set yet in 2018.

The silver lining was that in those 3 set over set hands I only lost $300.

One hand was a huge 3 way pot and I lost $300 to the guy with the bigger set but won $400 in the side pot from a deep stacked guy. So I actually won $100

The next day it happened again but I only lost $100 because the guy was short stacked and there was some weird runout like 4 to a flush.

The last one I doubled the guy up for $300 but at least thats all he had.

I guess you could say I ran good within a runbad scenario.

Yeah, +1, imo

Off the top of my head, I only recall being involved in 2 set-over-set situations in my last ~2 years (~1000 hours), although my memory admittedly isn't great so it's possible I'm missing one or two (although set-over-set is typically quite memorable and I remember the 2 cases exactly). Admittedly the last half of those hours I haven't been playing small pairs in EP, but still, 40-50 times in 1500 hours does seem outrageous (and, again, my memory fails me, but I'm *positive* I've never even seen anything remotely close to that many involving the whole table in 1500 hours, let alone involving one player).

ETA: I'm currently 50.5 hours into an experiment tracking hands where a set is tabled at showdown. I've only seen one set-over-set case (a flopped set being rivered by a bigger set).

Gnotbuyingit,imoG

People don’t always table their hands for sympathy so you won’t always know when you set over set someone.

I'd guess that most people sympathy table set-over-set cases, but yeah, admittedly not always.

GcluelesssympathynoobG

MikeStarr is always worth listening to. I am not offended that he finds my estimated "set over set" experience statistically improbable.

No, I didn't count. But let's estimate together.

We make a set (rounding to make the numbers easier) about one in eight times we have a pocket pair.

Our opponent does the same.

We have a pocket pair about (again rounding) one in 12 times. When we do, someone else at the table will have a pocket pair (again rounding) half the time. (Might actually be more than half the time, but the entire estimate is really "roughly".)

Very roughly, someone will set-over set us, or get set-over-set by us, approximately every 8 * 8 * 12 * 2 hands. Multiply by two because we are trying to estimate only when we are the underset. That's about once every 3,000 hands, not 15,000. Or about every 100 hours.

The engineer in me will also not be offended if some truly egregious flaw is exposed in my imprecise but still representative methodology.

First of all, you get a pocket pair closer to once in 17 hands, not once in 12 hands. The rest of your math is way off also

Not only is he saying it happened 40-50, but he's saying he was set-over-setted, implying he was on the negative end 40-50 times. Makes it that much more astronomically unlikely.

In Nozsr's defense, using similar math (admittedly using slightly incorrect math of chance of someone else showing up with pocket pair at a 10 handed table being 9/17, and assuming everyone is always seeing a flop with a pair, which I know isn't exactly correctly but it's ballpark and should be close enough, no?) with the more correct estimate of 1/17 chance of being dealt a pair, I come up with a set-over-set case every 78 hours (assuming 30 hands an hour). But I sucks at the math, so show your math if you think that's way off (which it might be).

So in 1500 hours, you'd expect to be involved in about 19 set-over-set cases, and with fair being fair, expecting to be behind ~10 times or so. So while 40-50 does seem outrageous, it's probably not outside an outlier example. My example of believing I've only been in 2 set-over-set cases in my last ~1000 hours seems almost as outlier, although I admit my memory sucks.

Course, this all hinges on my very shaky math (which you're free to correct).

GcluelessmathnoobG