Saw you were coming to The Lodge and just came across this thread. Wife is working on dinner but I'll get caught up on this thread, just wanted to make sure I subbed

Since deciding to solely focus on PLO at the end of July and logging our PLO results, I have played 53 sessions over the course of 329 hours. The 53rd session went well tonight, finishing $2650 in the green, and pushing us past the $20,000 profit mark once again over the course of this nearly five month period. Had the floor called on me with $2100 in the middle tonight :-O







A concept that I am taking away from this specific session is that $1/$3 PLO players are cbetting WAY. TOO. OFTEN. Especially with strong hands like AAxx. They're cbetting into 1-4 people on flops like 769 with AAxx. I think to exploit this, when we find ourselves with solid equity on the flop HU or three ways, and the player who 3! preflop cbets on a flop that is horrible for their range, we can look to 3! way more frequenty against this sort of cbet.

Regarding the hand the floor was called on me - we see a flop in a single-raised pot which was 2104r, and I had K10106 suited to the K. I get about $1000 in on the flop against 2357 and hold. I turn over the two tens, and mistakenly muck the other two cards when villain says we're good. He immediately calls the floor and says it's bullshit and my hand should be dead. Floor says because my hand is retrievable (entirely separated from the rest of the cards), and in the interest of fair play (ie. I clearly wasn't folding with all the money in the middle and middle set exposed), my hand is still live, and I can turn over the other two cards.

Of course the other guy - a loose reg that I was friendly with - is livid. **** me, man; I had such a great rapport with this guy who was great for the game (and friendly and funny, too) and now he will forever associate me with this dumb freaking hand. Completely my fault. Can't believe I would allow myself to do some dumb crap like that. Hopefully, he is more frustrated with the ruling and not with me, although I'm pretty confident that's the right ruling (trying not to be results-oriented here!). I asked the floor manager to meet me at the front of the room as I was cashing out and said thanks for doing his job. He was grateful.

Weekend trip with my girlfriend this weekend to celebrate our anniversary. Looking forward to relaxing with her and getting quality time in.

**** that guy. If he saw your 2 Ts and said you're good, I don't understand what his complaint is. I mean, yeah, maybe he can bitch a little about not showing all 4, but seems pretty ridiculous for him to think he deserved the pot.

Sub'd. Enjoyed reading up to this point as I'm currently grinding PLO micros.

Also, whoever the guys were getting mad over that hand are simply mad because they're losing.
Since they can't outplay you, they'll be petty & see if they can con their way into getting their money back.
Typical degen scumbag behavior for a poker room. Glad the floor did the right thing.
Agreed with Mark, F those guys.

Has your experience overall at the Texas rooms been good?
If I can ever grind up a roll, that's one of the places I'm wanting to visit to play.

Agreed, dude was just trying to angle to get your hand declared dead so he could scoop instead of you. Scumbags gonna scumbag.

Thanks, you guys. I'm hard on myself when things like this happen. I don't feel bad for him or anything like that since the ruling was correct, but I could have just turned over all four. Won't make that mistake again.

Elaborating on the concept I talked about regarding exploitatively raising on flops against bad cbets from strong ranges...

In the $1/$3 PLO player pool, there are two major groups and identifying which group a villian is in determines our overall flop strategy if we are able to get to HU or 3 way on the flop. Group 1 are PLO players who undervalue AAxx “because AA never holds up in PLO”. On bad boards for AAxx when they RFI, leads are stronger than C/R or raising because we have good fold equity, especially if there are a lot of turns we can barrel with our blockers/hand. Group 2 are your always c-betters. We are over raising and check raising all day. They are exploiting the under check raising of the player pool. We re-exploit by over C/Ring. Really important though: there is a subset of group 2 that will 3b or ship after cbetting because they feel committed and always feel like they have equity with an overpair. We exploit by avoiding entering pots with them OOP unless we have hands that flop smooth and will get it in often when c/ring.

Let me know if you all have any thoughts on this.

Thanks for the sub. My experience in Texas rooms has been overall positive. Even if I were a rec, these places are clean, offer mostly friendly games, and any issues I can think of off the top of my head would be with some of the regular players, and not with the rooms. Note that there are rooms I avoid based on prior criminal activity, like Legends where there has been multiple shootings in the parking lot.

Heading to Austin tonight. I work remotely, but a dozen employees or so at the company are based in Austin, so they're having a Christmas party as well as a couple of in-office days. My original plan was to play at The Lodge, but it's pretty far away from my hotel in South Austin. My friend who lives and plays in Austin recommended that I give Bullets Card Club a try. They have a Monday PLO game that runs that is allegedly quite solid. Seems like the thing to do rather than make the 40 minute trek to The Lodge. I'll be playing in the YouTuber meet-up game as well tonight on my phone.

Some friends who I used to play in a home game with 5-6 years ago are back in town this week. When I get back from Austin, there'll be a home game on Friday, and I'm hoping to incorporate some pot-limit omaha into the game. We'll see.

Good Luck! I always try to get my friends into PLO, but I think it can be intimidating to new players.

Ah, that must be DonkFish and PLO Professors game?

Yes sir! Started watching you three around the same time. We play on PPPoker.

Just played this hand and got 700 big blinds in on the turn with 77% equity. It did not turn out well for us.

ooch, you attending the Georgetown TX meetup in February they're hosting?

For sure, I see so many people who just know hold em sit down and get absolutely wrecked when they overvalue top and bottom pair, idiot ends of the straight, 8-high flushes, underfulls, etc.

At The Lodge in Austin the 1/2/5 can play INSANELY much higher than the advertised stakes depending on the lineup. I've seen people in that game sitting on over 30K and also restraddles to $320 preflop

There was a 1/1 game but the buyins were only up to $300 and it didn't have much success so someone started a 2/2 game with buyins of 200-700 with no match the stack option which makes it a little less intimidating for newcomers to PLO to try it out.

Probably the worst thing that can happen to a newcomer in PLO is to run like god their first few sessions because they'll quickly be broke thinking they're god-tier at the game when variance finally swings back around

wow OP you're killing it! what kind of studying do you do？

So does the 2/2 capped game run as often as the 1/2/5? Have you noticed it saturated the 1/2/5 at all? Just curious.

And yes. I always hope that this isn't happening to me.

I'm a hard 'maybe' for the Georgetown meetup and the Dallas meetup... hope they make a Houston date in between!

Thanks for reading!

Early on, I bought PLO Launchpad and PLO Mastery from Upswing. Dylan Weisman's lessons and explanations, for me, are the most paletable out there. I also got coaching from a live PLO player within my first few dozen hours. I started using PLO Matrix (also upswing) to further my understanding of what is optimal preflop. I am currently starting to look into PLO Mastermind after getting it on sale recently. Not sure what it is, but JNandez' lessons are harder to pay attention to for me.

Right now I'm spending a lot of time trying to think about exploitative plays we can make to gain ev. Now that I have basic understanding of what is optimal, I want to consider how we can deviate from that to crush our opponents. I am working with solid PLO players and sending them hands in order to further extrapolate on these concepts. I tried to post here in my thread and in Omaha, but I only got one response.

tl;dr lately PLO Mastery, PLO Matrix, and talking about hands with winning regs mainly to gain more insight on thoughts I have regarding exploitative plays.

The 2/2 game essentially replaced the 1/2 game with a $300 max buyin. It doesn't run as often as the 1/2/5 which goes everyday. I have noticed sometimes people will start the 2/2 and then immediately leave as they're called for hold em games or the 1/2/5 so it doesn't have the staying power of the 1/2/5 game and can be less dependable.

I haven't noticed that it's negatively impacted the 1/2/5 since the degenerate gamblers want the straddles and match the stack features that the bigger game offers.

Enjoying the thread:

1. Always show all 4 cards. The guy was angling but was technically correct. A lot of floors would have ruled your hand dead. Sounds like lesson learned that luckily didnÂ’t cost you anything.

2. Any reason you don’t play at Legends? By far the best place in Houston for PLO. I play there regularly and can assure you games are much better than at TCH.

3. In LA next time check out Commerce. I haven’t played there post Covid but pre Covid they had multiple PLO tables every day and Limon(well known LA reg) hosted those games and was good at getting multiple games going.

1. I wholeheartedly agree that I got lucky there for multiple reasons and will show all every single time without hesitation moving forward.

2. In my opinion, Legends is located in an area where you don't want to form a habitual schedule coming and going. I firmly believe winners there are being marked and targeted. I haven't really considered going since the shootings outside of there occurred. That said... you couldn't be more accurate about the action. I may have to loosen my standards or at least work it into my schedule in the future. 3-4 PLO tables by noon on a weekday - insane!

3. Sounds good! I think LA may have been a one-time deal and a stop I'll skip in the future; not my kind of town. In any case, good info!

Thanks for reading. I'm highly grateful!

More HH’s imo… a lot more. I’ll be following, doing similar in fla.

Hell yeah man. Definitely what my thread is lacking. I'm going back to TCH Spring tonight for the first time since getting back from LA/Austin. I'll be sure to grab at least two hands and make it a habit for the future. GL out in Florida. I hear there's great action there. A PLO reg I know puts Best Bet Jacksonville in his top 5 places to play PLO.

We're two sessions further into our PLO grinding journey since my last post. I'll be capping off the year with another session this evening.

My session two nights ago was a memorable one. I went from sitting at the toughest table I'd ever seen at TCH Spring to being at the best table by far. When I arrived, there were two tables running, each filled with regulars in the $5/$10/$25 game that runs who are all relatively solid in comparison to the rest of the pool. At my table, to my left was Kris, a local MTT pro, and another guy I recognized from the WSOP Oklahoma stops. I was praying that this was an anomaly and the games hadn't suddenly gone bad. Fortunately, about 40 minutes into playing, most of the tougher regs leave for the $5/$10/$25 game, and suddenly, the game is as good as usual. A couple of interesting hands occurred before then:

I have QQ79hhdd in the LJ. folds to me and I make it 15. CO calls, BU calls, and BB calls.

Flop is Q93ss. BB checks, I bet $60. CO folds, BU folds, and BB, who we've tagged as a solid regular for these games, calls. Note that he is potentially getting out of line out of position, but this shouldn't take away from the fact that he is typically making solid decisions postflop. Turn is 6s. He now leads for $125. We call. River is Ad. He checks. Is this a slam dunk checkback here, and I'm overthinking this, or can we ever get value here with a set of queens on a flushed board with an ace? I am thinking that perhaps against weaker opponents, we can think about getting value with our set, but we should be checking back against a stronger player.

This one was against a very passive nit where I turn my set of aces into a bluff.

Hero SB AhAd8d8c. I am the effective stack with $1225.

$6 straddle on the button. I make it $25. BB calls. UTG+1 calls. CO calls. BU calls.

flop is AJ10 rainbow with the 10h. I check. BB checks. UTG+1, very very passive guy, leads for $80. Folds to us, we call, and BB calls. Turn brings 6h

AJ10h6h. I check, BB checks, and UTG+1 bets $175. I call, and the BB folds. River brings in the backdoor flush with the 3h. I check. He looks disgusted and groans, and then bets $200. In general against tighter, weaker players, are you ever turning top set into a bluff here with your nut blocker and potting? That's what we do, and he bitches for awhile, and then mucks.

We play for an hour or so at the must-move table until we are called to the main table. a couple of hours pass, and then the table goes from good to amazing. The must-move game and the main game collapse into one, at which point two amazing characters join us. One is a guy no one had ever seen before, but he had an 8x11 manilla envelope with him that was full. of. cash. $100s and $20s as far as I could tell. I got such a good look as he had to pull it out several times; his preflop VPIP was 100% without exaggeration, and his flop VPIP wasn't far behind. He was in seat 2, and I sat across from him in the 7 (we're 8-handed). In seat 8 to me left was an older guy with $5K in front of him. My buddy from the must-move game told me he was just calling with everything and getting there. He was on his 5th or 6th Dos Equis and kept announcing to the table "These chips are all for sale!"

My girlfriend arrives at the cardroom and we eat dinner in her car. She was in the area shopping. I mention that there is a free snack bar with Oreos, and she questions why I haven't been bringing any home for her. Eventually we created a character that's yelling in the poker room "I PAY FOR MY TIME LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!!! NOW BRING ME MY OREOS!!" and he's only there to fold, pay his blinds, and eat free Oreos.

One of the very first hands upon my return to the best table ever, the most interesting man in the world in seat 8 with his Dos Equis sees a 3bet pot preflop 4 ways. Flop comes KQ5. 3bettor pre pots it. Seat 8 calls, and the rest fold. Turn is a 3. Agressor pots it again to put himself all in, and seat 8 calls. River is a 2. Seat 8 turns over 9644, and the other gentlemen turns over his kings, masking his rage. I scoop a couple of huge pots against these guys with made hands like top set and a turned flush, and we leave shortly after.

Of course, I could ruin this all tonight at my final session of the year, but I never imagined that I'd make $20,000 in my first four months of grinding PLO. I attribute it mostly still to the game that I'm playing in rather than me studying and improving. I'm trying to focus less and less on the dollar amount and more ensuring that I am playing well, and that I'm truly a winner in these games.

gg

Great post, very entertaining and glad to see you killing it! I was just on my first livestream this past week, well, it was filmed but they aren't streaming for the holiday week so it'll air January 5th. Had a very tough spot near the end of the stream that's going to be make for a great watch, might be the hand of the night.