You said you think the game is trivial so offering to play with no incentive would be reasonable and offering 5 points is just a topper. At $20/pt that's $1 per hand. OFC isn't poker it's a math game, there's always a perfect move. The edges of one good player vs another will be small. But it's a fun game with lots of skill involved.

I think you're agreeing with me for the most part. If you were challenging someone who has never played, let's say PLO, pot limit badugi, 2/7 TD etc., the equivalent "topper" would be way higher- this speaks for itself on the triviality of the game.

In fact, your statement about it not being poker because there's always a perfect move speaks even more about how simple the game is because you're basically assuming your opponents are playing so incredibly well that the GTO move is the "perfect move" whereas in NLHE or PLO you would never call the GTO play to be "perfect", heh

to be fair though I walked around the Rio and observed boatloads of atrocious play at all sorts of limits, so maybe we just differ in our definitions of "trivial" and "lots of skill"

Don,

You are a big proponent of PLO being a much more profitable game than NLHE.

Could you do a breakdown of your NLHE win-rates versus your PLO win-rates? How much higher is your winrate at PLO than NLHE? Obviously, you are very skilled at both games, so it would be nice to see the PLO vs NLHE win-rate comparison from your stats.

Yeah I would also love to see the std dev comparison

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Yes I agree with the majority of what you wrote and you hit the nail on the last paragraph. I think you have the aptitude to be really good at the game but I suspect you are underestimating the learning curve and overestimating your current ability to just use logic and common sense to figure the right move in most spots. That's why I agree that vs good players edges aren't real big. But vs mediocre players they are still quite big. The thing is the game is so new to everyone that I think many people don't realize they aren't good so the potential earnings are high for the time being.
To give you so e perspective, I play one guy who just sucks and can't get the hang of it. I think I have a long term wr of 1.5pt/hand vs him and in the past I played others like this. At $20/pt that equates to probably $180/hr. something that I welcome with open arms considering i play at the table or in bed.
Vs my average opponent now (my friends have all gotten a lot better) I think my edge is between 0.25pt /hand that's a wr of $30/hr with lots of variance. I play these guys because its so fun.
I have one opponent that I'm not sure i even have an edge anymore because he is very smart and has become good. But even he who is a math professor (Matt) and poker pro sucked balls for a long time (6months+). So I'm just reiterating that i think you are underestimating the time and effort it takes to become good. It's also a game that you can't leakfind yourself. The move you make seems good every time unless someone points out its flaw.

Heh well I would definitely not be surprised at all if your long term wr is at least 1.5pt/hand against the guy I last saw you play against at the Bike (not gonna say the name, I think you know who I'm talking about). Seems nice!

I guess if you play on your phone it's worth it. With you I have no trust issues but I'd rather not even get into that, I've heard too many stories about people cheating the app (by like turning off their phone if they get the wrong card or something, I don't know details), and furthermore too many stories about people being owed tons of money from playing over the phone app and never getting paid.

I extremely, extremely, extremely strongly disagree about the leakfind thing too. I think it'd be vastly easier to leakfind yourself compared to any other game, every time a respected villain makes a move I pay attention, and I would have played it differently then I'm going to mark that spot down and study it later on. Obviously fish don't do this but yea.

ehhh I have no idea to be honest. I've never kept my records separate although I could go back in this thread and check (would take awhile, not going to right now).

I don't think win-rates in PLO are inherently higher than NLHE, but the player pool is just so much worse on average. For example the most recent 5/10 NLHE table on LATB that I commented on, I would say it was like a 4 out of 5 stars in terms of how good the game was mainly because the 4 worst players averaged 55% VPIP.

When I'm at a 5-5-10 PLO table that where the worst 4 players are averaging only 55% VPIP, I look for a table change where the worst 7 players are averaging 85% VPIP.

When was the last time you saw a fish at 5/10+ stakes go broke for 200bb with K4o from UTG on KQTdd in a multiway pot? I see equivalent plays not on a daily basis, but on an hourly basis in PLO (see post #1700 in this thread for some specific examples).

Oh I almost forgot my session update. I have some hilarious hands to report.

I played 1 hour of 1/2 Big O and was up $435.

First hand I was involved in, I had Q9 and bet pot on the flop, pot on the turn, and pot on the river- final board is Q95Q8, I'm hoping villain can't fold a straight. She tanks... tanks... looks like she might call... she folds her hand faceup. She has A5xxx for flopped bottom pair.

This same lady later bets $10 into $75 on KQ95, old man ships, I call with a double flush draw, she says "fold and hold" because she wants to show us her hand after. She had JTxxx!

Another hand she bet into 4 players on KT9r, and announces "I have the straight" as she bets. Everyone obviously snapfolds.

Good times.

Another funny/extremely relevant comment about the profitability of various games. There was one guy who sat at my table and folded his first hand. I immediately groaned in my head because I knew that fact alone that he folded a random hand made him like an 80% favorite to be the 2nd best player at my 9-handed table (it turned out I was right). I would NEVER get the chance to say that at any NLHE table.

Las Vegas total: +$30076, 70 hours.

Sick thread man. Just finished reading the entire thing. Congrats on everything you've accomplished. Stay level-headed and keep it going. Cheering you on from afar.

Ill just expand on one point. Yes you can identify mistakes of opponents and look into that spot. However if you deem a play to be correct there's no easy way to figure out its wrong without somebody telling you. You might not be considering the right things.
An example, lets say when choosing a card to pick for the middle in mid game you chose a card that was fairly live but did you notice that one of the available cards of that rank is the same suit you have a 3 flush of in back? If you don't plan ahead to that extent you will be giving up edge to somebody who does. When you pull the card of the suit you will have to play it in back instead of using it for a middle pair. This is the small, but the type of mistake you probably would miss on self analysis.

I just care about win-rates. Even if the PLO players make a lot of fundamental mistakes, I just care about how high my hourly win-rate will be. One good thing about NLHE is that you get more hands/hour.

If I would have a higher win-rate at PLO, I would play. If not, I would just play NLHE.

Anyway, I hope that you take the time to re-filter your stats to do the compsrison beteeen your NLHE win-rate versus your PLO win-rate. I know a lot of your fans would love to see it too because they are contemplating making the transition to PLO from NLHE.

Well, still if you know someone is really good and you decide to mimic their play, I feel like it's not too hard after you play a significant number of games with them. Compare to NLHE where fish literally get to see like 1 or 2 showdowns per hour from a good player and probably aren't paying attention anyway. Furthermore, there's balancing and every situation is much more different so it's much harder to extrapolate that to useful data.

For example I mentioned I open folded AQQJT in Big O. Later I saw Bart Hanson play a similar hand, then I started playing them because I assume he's better than me in the game so I'll try to mimic what he's doing for now.

Stuff like the example you quoted seems fairly trivial to me but yea I definitely feel like the majority of the people I've seen play at the Rio for up to 25 a point are making mistakes. Of course it's possible I'm the one making the mistakes. If I get more serious about the game I'll definitely take you up on $10 or $20 a point games as basically "cheap lessons" but probably still not interested in locking in a 100 game set.

Can you comment on the possibility of cheating on the phone app? I heard if you get the card you don't want you can just turn off your phone and get a new one, etc. Stuff like this makes it fairly tempting when it's so easy, even for generally stand up guys.

Thanks for the in depth comments Zach.

Honestly filtering my personal stats wouldn't help that much because lol-sample-size. Furthermore I bought in for $300 for a really long time *and* I was worse at poker when I played NLHE, now I regularly buy in for over $2000 when I play PLO.

One good way to calculate your winrate is to figure about how much other players are losing at the table. For example, there's an Indian guy in the Bike game who has a winrate of probably -$1000/hr on average at 5-5 since he just straddles to $100 and stacks off with everything (even if he quadruples up and is deep). Hard to find fish in NLHE with those kind of stats.

Well, you could just filter your stats for 2013. Forget about 2012. That way, you don't get the baby NL games from last year hurting your NLHE win-rate.

I finally played a 5-5-10 PLO session at RIO on Thursday (had played NLH most of the time I was in town). Amazingly loose action as OP reports. I saw three guys get all in on the turn for 3K+ apiece on a K455 board, two hearts. They ran it twice and AA with nut heart draw won the 9K pot, beating a guy with K4 and second nut heart draw and what must have been some kind of low straight draw or maybe the same K-4 (he didn't show, but he was talking after the hand and said "I knew they didn't have much"

Another good point about having much more SD info to use for mimicking better players.
That's why we agree its not on par of longevity of win rates vs poker. To me it's a really fun gambling game that I think I'll have a varying degree of win rates to marginally high to slightly negative. Overall it adds up to some expected income and fun over the year. I believe the game will lose tons of popularity within 1 more year not because its boring but because there will be less super newbs.

As an aside, my friend Bryce (not sure you know him) has switched to playing almost strictly OFC for high points. $200 to $500/pt. He thinks his edge is huge. I believe he is one of the best players in the game with an edge over most but I think the high wr he has is due to variance and it will drop. He has killed it this year.

Regarding cheating, that loophole you are referring to I believe has been fixed. However there is almost always a way to cheat if you put your mind to it. The people I play with I have to trust that they will honor their debts and won't cheat. Most of the guys I play with are poker friends which fit this criteria. If you start seeing things that look suspicious or if you just keep losing to one guy who seems to play bad then quit. Even if you don't catch them just the fact you aren't winning is a sign that either they play better than you think, or you are getting cheated. It could be run hot but quitting isn't going to cost you much in ev. This concept is in Barry Greensteins Ace on River.

Yea bryce was telling me about playing 400 a point or something against a guy who set his entire top/middle rows with his entire bottom empty. Wtfff gold mine.

My 2013 stats for NLHE is probably less than 200 hours, completely useless sample compared to only somewhat useless sample for lifetime

Thanks for the comments everyone!

hilarious. A lot of truth to this point.

Similarly, I think nits/rocks do a lot better in live PLO than they do in NLHE. Not that being a rock is optimal... I just think the approach makes more sense in a PLO game than it does in NLHE.

Just did the biggest Dick move in Abe's game. Someone straddles to $40, blind call, call, call, to me with $500 and AA73r. I pot. Call, call, shove $1300, fold... To me.

"I have aces so I guess I have to call!"

Then tank fold. Tank fold.

I win the hand. Both players who folded would have won.

So dirty!

Why so short?
Definitely terrible etiquette to disclose your hand.

lol how did that happen Skirmish? You angled them on purpose?

anyway, session update. I played 2 hours of NLHE and was up $265, 1 hour of Big O and was down $211. Haven't played NLHE in awhile, I must say there's no feeling in PLO quite like looking down and seeing pocket aces. At least not to me. Although I did lose to 84s all in on 864...

Played a hand where I cbet with 95s and got called, turn and river check through. I throw my hand face up and say "you win", board is J87QQ. Villain mucks face down. When dealer starts pushing me the pot, she says "wait he said I won". I'm not 100% sure what happened, I said if she can identify her cards I'd give her the pot, she didn't. Maybe she had like 65 or something? She didn't seem to be someone who would ever angleshoot but her reaction also didn't seem like she had a winning hand either. At any rate, she didn't seem to care.

Las Vegas total: +$30130, 73 hours.

Oh I almost forgot. I did a podcast with Bart Hanson, which you can listen to over at http://www.seatopenpoker.net/. It's not free though =P

Yeah I did it on purpose. I know it is dirty and out of my character but $&@! It!

Each additional caller take equality away from my hand. Both players wanted to call. My hand would be valueless 4 way. I had very bad aces. I have already lost 13 of these in a row. 13! So I did some dirty pool.

Now the 1300 shove should normally protect me. But you know this crowd. They wanted to call. Plus 1 of them only had 500 more and should have auto call. The pot was 1500.

So what I did was dirty but I am happy to do it that day. Karma might come back to me and bite me in the ass for it. But the one gambler who tanked for a minute and really wanted to call folded. And the short stack that should have auto called didn't. And I got to play with a nice edge with a huge overlay.

By saying I have aces I protected the 1300 range vs. them. Now they were playing their weaker hands for half the pot knowing I was a head of them and the 1300 most likely had their rundown hands dominated with a bigger rundown.

Yea I understand the equities of course.

I can understand why you would do that although I obviously can't condone it. Also you gotta be careful because I think floor can rule your hand dead if you announce what you have in multiway action.