I’m looking to have non stress play where I make a average income with plo. What books or articles/vids are suggested for plo patience starting hands etc? When to call bets with what hands

Welcome to 2+2 and the SSPLO forum. There are a number of resources available to start learning how to play pot limit omaha. You've already found this forum, so you can start by reading some of the threads here.

You can also find some interesting videos on youtube.

PLO is not the game for you then

I don't think PLO is stressful if you have reasonable expectations. Reasonable expectations means losing 10 buyins within an hour sometimes.

There are no quick routes to getting better mental game. You just have to stop making excuses for yourself and allowing you bits of tilt.

I would recommend the mastermind for coaching content. There is other good content out there but it's a bit more hit or miss.

Most people new to PLO don't have reasonable expectations lol.

Being able to roll with the variance is what makes the game great. The fact that you can make every right decision and just get absolutely crushed and then a day later make the same good decisions and kill a session make it so much fun.

I don't think most people, new or otherwise, have reasonable expectations about poker, or, not to sound too faux-deep, about life.

I don't think finding variance fun is a great way to longevity in the poker world. The more emotional you are about positive variance, the more likely you are to suffer when you run bad. Of course, everyone is different. I would say in general, poker players would be better off if they disassociated more emotionally from results.

That is of course, counter to why most people play poker in the first place. A matter of your goals, I suppose. Seeing as OP said "making income" I assume the goal is to make money, not have fun.

I'm not saying variance is fun, I'm saying the ups and downs of omaha are part of what makes it a great game. Learning to master / tame emotion so that you can ride the ups and downs is a skill that many never figure out.

If OPs goal is to make money, then the aspect of "stress free" poker is going to be unavoidable. Unless he / she has the ability to disassociate from results based thinking there will no doubt be stress.

I feel that OP is set up for failure if the goal is to make income, at least as an initial goal with what appears to be little to no experience in the game.

I am too at the beginning of my plo journey and as Inky said I am realizing a lot of expectations about the game are wrong and need to change drastically.

I expect to receive a certain number of good hands in a reasonable time and to have good success with them. But in reality there is a lot of folding that has to happen preflop and hitting the flop hard is rare. In this sense I expect the game to be "fun" in a way that is not realistic.

I am also not humble, and when I run good I immediatly think I have become good enough and now I am owed to win and keep winning.

There is also a lot of situations where you play well and still lose. And nowhere it is written that it can't happen again if it happened last session. And there comes tilt.

I found that what help me is studying. Studying humbles me in realizing how little I know, how many spot I'm just guessing rather than having a plan/global strategy. It also help me detach a lot: it is not about any specific hand, is about spots that repeat over time and opponent ranges. So next time I pot twice with top set and the guy lucks out a gutshot on the river I know I have just made money despite losing that one hand.

Studying also pours a bucket of water on tilt and quenches the compulsive/gamboling desire to play and recover.

There's an article about poker psychology in the psychology section by Matusow which also holds an important lesson: we often react to events at the table by trying to adjust our play, but playing poker is complicated and we can't really adjust our frequencies on the spot in an optimal way. We need to sit at the table with a strategy in mind and play it fully and evaluate it after and then make the adjustments.

By the way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isoFDpstg1k
amazing video from J. Nandez on PLO variance :O!

If you're playing at a stake where the swings are going to significantly cause you stress, then clearly you're playing too high, have too small of a bankroll, and/or you have some serious work to do on your mental game.

Just because it's common for live pros to absolutely suck at strategy, bankroll management, life management, and emotional control, doesn't mean it's not wrong.

People love to use the fact that everyone sucks at these things to justify them also sucking at these things. Plenty of people out there just taking it quietly, and you don't hear them complaining the same way. I know there are some good players who are exceptions to this, but "pros" who still break mice or go on tantrums and rage tilt due to downswings after years in year out of grinding are just bad pros, that's all there is to it.

Speaking as a pro of 12 years with 2 losing years in a row one time with significant volume both live and online.

If you are a good player and manage it properly, poker is way less stressful than most jobs. Certainly any retail or food service job is way more stressful.

Inky, I think quite a few pros that rage after bad beat actually have it as coping strategy, basically they vent it out so they can get over it. I remember Hellmuth playing once and obviously raging and then kind of explain to himself that the bad move from his opponent was making him money.

I also remember one of the first few of your stream and I remember you getting stung by some weird unexpected hand from your opponent and venting a little bit (in a joking way). And I remember learning from it that it is important to acknowledge what happens, express it and move on (whereas I tend to do the opposite and bottle stuff up and tilt later).

Also, regarding stakes, I get mad when I lose 10 dollars which are an absolutely inconsequential amount in my life. It's the ego and the wrongful expectations that hurt some times.

To be completely honest here, I try practice what I preach, but that doesn't mean I don't have leaks too, and there are a few times where I do notice whilst streaming I am affected by what's going on. That said, me jokingly yelling NOOOOO on stream for fun with the mutual understanding that it's not a big deal is not the same thing. When I tilt, it's always quiet boiling over steam, and yes, I agree, it's better to be honest than to bottle it up.

In any case, that's not my real point anyway. I'm not saying you shouldn't have any emotions, but I would say that if you're having emotional response that significantly affects a) your play b) your emotional state outside of that moment, then you're leaking significantly. That, isn't normal. Not being able to tell when you're tilted, and not being able to control it, that's not acceptable for a good long time pro.

And that's one of those leaks.

If hellmuth's tilt doesn't affect his play and dissipates as soon as he likes (ie. it is just a show) then, yeah, it's fine. But in that case, it's not actually stressful, it's just messing around, or an act, and would be different.

All the good regs I know, we vent to each other, and yes we "tilt", and occasionally our play during this time is bad, but for the most part our B and C game are not going to be as significantly worse than our A game. Because they're very strong players, even that small difference is noticeable to them, but it's nowhere like the tilt most people see. They're never ever going to make basic mistakes like 3betting KKT3ss otb or whatever just because they are tilted.

Sorry, I did not mean at all to single you out and I get your point, just wanted to add some extra considerations!

Oddly enough, this is actually encouraging to me.

I always thought this was standard. Omg!