Over the next few weeks I will begin a journey to build a rudimentary understanding of the great game of Pot Limit Omaha. I have very little experience with micro stakes NLHE, but I’ve fallen in love with poker and would like for it to become a profitable hobby – I’ve heard PLO is the softest. I will spend most of my free time playing and studying – is there an ideal ratio (play to study) for absolute beginners? I will begin tomorrow and will do my best to dedicate at least 1-2 hours to my improvement every day, more on weekends. Like I said, I have no experience with PLO, so I plan on beginning by reviewing the PLO From Scratch Series on Donkr (http://en.donkr.com/Articles/Categor...om-scratch!-14), unless someone has a better resource they’d recommend. I’ve heard great things about 2 + 2, so I will post updates on here whenever I can so that more experienced players, who are willing to share their time/knowledge, *fingers crossed* can comment/give feedback on noteworthy hands and so that this thread may serve as a reference for players who are looking to embark on similar journeys in the future!

Good luck. Your first order of business is to draw up a poker business plan. For example, it could be something like :

My bankroll is $100.

I will play PLO $5.

If I drop down to $50 I will move down to PLO $2.

If I win up to $250 I will move up to PLO $10.

I think that donkr series is great. Good luck with it all

Something I can highly hiiiighly recommend to start understanding PLO as you play it is to keep clicking up hands from your HUD after they play out, and observing the equities between streets. You know, that "Hand xx$$" thing that pops up at the top of the table when you run a HUD and you can click it and it shows how the hand played out and the involved hands's street by street equity. I've played one or two (who knows lol) million of PLO hands and the equities still ****ing surprise me and are sometimes not intuitive at all

Hey good luck numbersloth.

As far as the ratio of study to play, my recommendation (which probably isnt worth much) would be to to really focus on getting in as much high quality study time as you can. Time where you are excited to learn, and actually retaining what you are studying. Even if this is only a half hour a day.

You said in the post that you would do 1-2 hours a day and I think thats excellent. Even one hour a day of TRUE studying where you are engaged and really thinking is better than 5 hours of 'passive' studying where you are going through the motions. Quality over quantity.

There are some counterintuitive things about PLO that a lot of people including myself got wrong in the beggining. For example you need to be fairly tight when assessing hand values pre flop, not overvaluing double suited 1 pair hands/rundowns, understanding what draws justify continuing, avoiding multiway pots etc.

If you are just beginning PLO there is definitely enough free content on youtube and 2+2 llike Jnandez videos, and old phil galfond videos.

If you exhaust the free content, Run it once has the best PLO training content on the net, and their essential membership is 24$ a month which is more than worth the money. Upswing also has some content but I dont know much about them. I can say with certainty that Run it once is the best training site on the web.

Another great study tool that I never hear people talk about is play money: on pokerstars there is a thriving play money scene where you can play PLO for free and learn the dynamics of the game without losing money in the process.

I believe that studying is really important when it comes to PLO. The game is so rich and complex, off the table work is critical to becoming better.

I have decided to post an update after each of the PLO from Scratch Series articles (13) – this is the first. I will be taking a slightly more aggressive approach to bankroll management than the one proposed on Donkr. Instead of using the “50+10” scheme, I will use a “40+10” scheme - 40BI minimum bankroll and will begin taking shots at the next limit when I have 40BI for the current limit and 10BI for the next limit. If I miss the shot with the “+10” capital, I will move back down to the lower stakes. My initial investment will be of $80, since I will be playing 2PLO 6-Max on ACR. I am still wondering whether I should invest the $60 for Omaha Manager 2. Bugs suggests a few books, but I find that I learn better from videos, so I will begin by watching the recommended series on deucescracked, unless someone has a better suggestion for an absolute beginner. I really appreciate the feedback thus far, and I will post another short update before heading to bed today. I will definitely be running equity simulations using ProPokerTools, and will eventually watch Donkr's recommended PLO series by Phil Galfond and Whitelime (after 2X6 by Vanessa Selbst). But... anyone advocate for a video series to begin understanding starting hand strength? – an alternative to Hwang’s book. For the first few days I will only be studying, and I will gradually begin to mix in game play as I get more comfortable.

I think there is a lot of value in the Donkr series.

I noticed that you are thinking about playing on ACR and hesitate to even get into this but I feel like I need to warn you that there is a lot of multiaccounting/botting in the micro stakes PLO 6MX-9MX of this site.

Besides the allegations posed by Joe ingram (which were confirmed), I have contacted many ACR PLO regs to ask them about this and they aall agree that this is a major problem. As well as a lot of personal experience on the site.

I am reluctant to ever make accusations towards sites/players. ACR is definitely a great site and do not think many of the accusations leveled at them are deserved. However the PLO community is small, and I feel compelled to tell you about this. The micro stakes ecosystem on the site as become very treacherous.

If you do play ACR I recommend game selecting as carefully as possible, and setting up your HUD/database so you can monitor similarities between accounts. MAybe Ignition is a better option but I dont have enough experience on the site to say.

Short Update: Unfortunately, for some reason, I’m having trouble registering for deucescracked. I’m getting an SSL error every time I try to subscribe to their service. I’ll be trying again later, as for now, I’ve been researching starting hand strength and I found a useful tool that I’ve been using to get a better idea of what hands to play (https://plo-trainer.com/#).

Hopefully, once I get access to deucescracked, I'll have a better understanding of opening ranges from each position. I'd prefer using Ignition/Bovada because of the softer field, my only concern is that I would not be able to use a HUD - I feel like that’s important to getting the hang of the game, especially when starting out.

The Chico network also has soft fields (softer than Ignition imo) and is American friendly, but they do require a specialized HUD such as Omaha Indicator or Bet Online Card Catcher + HM2. On the plus side the games are dataminable.

Quick update: I have decided to make a subreddit for a compact, convenient method of storing my notes (https://www.reddit.com/r/NumberSlothPLO/). Due to my inability to subscribe to deucescracked, I have decided to read Pot Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy, by Jeff Hwang, as recommended by the Donkr series.

I have added my notes on Chapter 1 to this subreddit- for if anyone wants to follow along or has any comments (https://www.reddit.com/r/NumberSloth...ay_objectives/). As for the formatting, I bold his critical concepts and add a few remarks that I perceived as important.

Hello,

most sources recommend a 50/50 split between playing and studying, especially in the beginning.

I think, JNandez has some great information for beginners between all his advanced stuff, for example this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9OD...iPaTYglJmM_K3z

There is tons of things to say, I restrict myself to this one:
1 major mistake I see almost every microstakes player do, regardless if they are winning regulars or funplayers is:
Playing the same amount of hands from every position.

I did a month long subscription to JNandez Poker and it plugged some significant leaks that I think are pretty common for a player who is new to PLO. It was well worth the $100.

Someone else made the suggestion to check hands for equity per street which is an excellent suggestion. This is something I do every session. I like to mark hands and check equity during hand review, sometimes right away while I'm folding other hands. Usually equity is a lot closer than you'd suspect and other times it's much larger than you thought.