HU PLO, the Real (Wo)Mens Game

I haven’t been playing too much much for the last week or so, maybe like 1h to 3h per day. Some days even less than that. But when I have opened the tables, I have played my A-game except one day when I felt I was on my B-game. Nothing bad though.

The way I have run have been swingy. I have had lots of up sessions and little bit less down sessions. Still, i’m probably breaking even or little bit winning for last week, but I am happy. Most important for me is to feel good about decisions I make and not to spew (imo biggest problem I have had).

I think i’ll just paste some hands now. Nothing too special or exciting, but maybe someone can get some entertainment or even learn (LOL) from them.

I’m starting with hands I lost and gonna link them this time as I am gonna post so many:

1. Trips preflop Nothing too special I guess. I’m sometimes calling, but this villain had shown that he played fit&fold n 3bet pots (even with HIS initiative) so I opted to 3bet as we had one suit also! Flop is pretty nutty for us, but I wanted to maximize our value. My donk bet is mandatory when board is like that. It would probably look stronger if I didn’t have bet it.

When he comes over the top of me, his range is pretty much KKxx, AKxx or 33xx as there is now draws. Though his betsizing looks maybe little bit scared as it is A high flop after my 3bet and my range is gonna have AAxx in it. That’s pretty much why I did just call. I was gonna get it in on all turn cards so it didn’t really matter what the turn was. He could sometimes fold to flop 3bet but if I just call the flop he might think i have like QJTx and get it in all non-straightening cards. Seeing his hand, it might be better play just to 3bet the flop as FE is near to zero.

2. Aces again This hand also is somewhat simple and boring. Nothing special to even commentate. I made my c-bet on the flop small cos it’s A high again and I had 4bet. Also stack sizes were good for that. This wasn’t my 1st 4bets even. Villain had seen me going showdown in 4bet pot with something like KQT9 or like that so he might think I was weaker than I really was. But yeah, nice hand sir! :)

3. Misplayed little bit This is hand i’m not happy with. On the flop I have straight blockers + nfd and make normal c-bet. Villain check-raises me small. There is obvious straight on the board + board is drawwy so I don’t put him on straight here. My plan for the hand was raise his donk bet (or bet if he checked) on all turns except flush cards. On flush cards I would bet if he checked, but only call if he donks out. I think I should have raised the turn here.

The thing is, my hand is on the turn face up when flush hits and I call. Also, i’m not getting anymore value from without river pairing the board from any hands really. Villain is probably gonna fold big part of his range to my raise on the turn, but he is often check-folding them on the river anyway so I don’t get any more bets after just calling the turn and don’t risk giving him cheap cards as he has equity with a set here and straights are unlikely.

Then for the won hands:

1. Deep-stacked action This hand is nice, I like it though it’s easy to play. On the flop I have blocker for overset and middle set. Board is also rainbow. When villain check-raises me he has either wrap or 44xx. Other hands are too unlikely.

Because we are about 200bb deep I want to see turn card before shoving. I know which ones are good for me and which not. Also, i’m not that much ahead of a wrap draw on flop anyway so I want to lower my variance little bit when it’s possible. There is also point made that I doubt villains at these level are good enough to turn their sets into bluffs when straight card hits AND I am representing wrap/draw based on my flop action. This eliminates change being outplayed almost fully. On the turn I just get it in and he had what I expected him to have. I am also pretty skilled in holding my made hands against wraps to it was handy to have that skill also.

2. Example of mixing it up On this hand I wanted to show how to get max value from worse. :)

Nothing special on flop. I made my turn bet little bit smaller than usual to mix it up sometimes. Usually i’m betting like $5.5 here which might be better his actual hand, but I thought there would be some draws in his range and I wanted to look as weak as possible. When river fills the flush I want to look that I had like AhKxx or something like that. That’s why I make ridiculously small bet really. It is basically hoping to get value from flush, induce bluff raises and induce raises from worse boats. I have been betting before this big on the river for value so I hoped him to think i’m weaker here.

This time it went pretty well as villain happened to hit his boat on the river and he even called my 3bet. I hate his play so much, but I can’t complain.

Hola!

Thanks for all (two) comments! I really appreciate that someone might be interested in my blog. :)

Todays theme for me was reading an old blog of sick Finnish HUPLO player and try to get some good tips or thoughts from there. I think I got something, tried out with calling those hands I have only pair on the river on good spots and it seemed to turn up pretty well against the right villains. I’ll paste some hand histories and it’s okay if you want to comment on them but i’m not really huge fan of HH discussions without specific knowledge about opponent, game flow and other dynamics. This is true espescially in HUPLO where pretty much every decision is so dependant on other info you have and there aren’t really any std lines.

It seems that Hand Converter in this posting form doesn’t support Ongames hand histories so I have to paste them through Weaktight.

1. This one isn’t actually that cool or anything like that. I’m not usually 3betting hands like this but he wasn’t so good so I gave it a chance. Flop is easy bet-fold. I don’t like c-c here or c-r so betting out were the best option. I was gonna fire any turn that doesn’t complete straight. Yes, I have blockers if turn would have came like 8, but I doubt he’s folding any straight there so I would just give up then.

Turn is blank and probably 2nd best card in the deck so I decide to fire again for FE and based on his action we usually have the best hand here. On the river I check. There is no point firing anymore at this point. I was gonna make my decision if I call after I see how fast he did bet (or check it back). But yeah, I opted to call cos he bet like instant, his line didn’t rep T and all draws missed. Also, if he happens to have better hand, it’s good for my image. And we get so good odds for our call that we doesn’t have to be right very often for it to be +EV.

You can see at this hand the power of donk betting. On the flop he made plain float, but what if we have had checked it? We can’t really call because we wouldn’t know what to do on the turn. C-r is too spewwy. So we pretty much have to bet out or c-f, depending our villain.

Again on the turn, what if we check? Even if it’s blank as it is, I don’t like c-c. C-r MIGHT be okay if we know villain is floaty, but even then his floats have good equity against us almost always. When we donk, we force him to make the decision. It also looks like that we aren’t folding anything. We also take away his chance to take away the initiative from us when we donk like that. Donking keeps our range also wide for the villain and makes it harder for him to realize his equity.

$0.50/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Hi
2 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by http://weaktight.com/

Stacks:
SB $51.35
Hero $48.50

Pre-Flop: ($1, 2 players) Hero is BB Jc Ad 5d Jh
SB raises to $1.50, Hero raises to $4.50, SB calls $3

Flop: 7h 5c Td ($10, 2 players)
Hero bets $7, SB calls $7

Turn: 2h ($24, 2 players)
Hero bets $15, SB calls $15

River: Ts ($54, 2 players)
Hero checks, SB goes all-in $24.85, Hero goes all-in $22

Final Pot: $97
Hero shows TWO_PAIR JACK TEN
Jc Ad 5d Jh
SB shows PAIR TEN
Kh Js 8h 4c

Hero wins $96 (net +$47)

SB collects $2.85 (net -$49)

2. Villain was unknown, like 5th hand against him. Haven’t done anything rly. Sometimes I find myself giving too much credit for new guys and not thinking through about what they could have etc. This again is good example of how you should try to think his probable hands he would do this and that, and how they match for his line.

Actually, I think that this hand is little bit more closer fold on the river than the 1st one. Nothing very interesting on the pf, flop or turn. I like to create barrely image at the beginning of the match so I can after that start to check back some of my range, induce bets and raise them on the turn. Also, if they start to c-r you a lot it’s probably good thing if they are bad and you adjust for it properly.

On the river his line is either nuts or missed draw. We block KKxx, his line isn’t a set and TTxx is way too unlikely so I put him on a missed draw. Only thing I worried about is draw with Kxxx because every one of them beats our hand. But I think he wouldn’t bet with Kxxx that much or that fast. He bet it instantly.

$0.50/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Hi
2 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by http://weaktight.com/

Stacks:
Hero $50.05
BB $49.10

Pre-Flop: ($1, 2 players) Hero is BTN 2s Ks 5d 3c
Hero raises to $1.50, BB calls $1

Flop: Kc Tc 7d ($3, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $2.50, BB calls $2.50

Turn: 5h ($8, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $6.50, BB calls $6.50

River: Ts ($21, 2 players)
BB bets $21, Hero calls $21

Final Pot: $63
BB shows
9s 6h Qc 7c
Hero shows
2s Ks 5d 3c

Hero wins $62 (net +$30.50)

BB lost $31.50

There were also some other interesting hand today, but I think that’s enough for this time. Hope you like it and understand points I tried to make and maybe get hang of my thought process during the hands. :)

Also, I would like to advertise vid I made little while ago: HUPLO Video

If you are interested, watch it and tell me what you liked or give me some feedback about anything I did. Thanks!

Okay, hello everybody!

After little thinking I decided to start my blog. I’m not sure what are my goals but maybe i’ll see them as this continues to grow.

This post is just gonna introduce myself, my poker “career” and some of my goals I have. In the life and in the poker.

I’m 18 year-old high school (kind of, though our school system differs little bit from one used in for example USA) student from Finland. Yes, it’s fkn cold out here atm. Today it was like -18 celcius when I woke up for school. But yeah, I have like little bit over a month school left anymore and then couple of exams. After that I should be ready for university. I booked already prepping course for law school which I have wanted to get into for last couple of years or something. It takes lots of work and reading but i’m ready for it! Though after reading the whole spring for the law schools exams, kind of life bad beat comes in: I have to in the army for at least 6 months. :( But it’s okay, cos most of men go there anyways.

As school is big part of my life, so is poker. I don’t have any job or like that and that’s the way i’d like to keep it in the future. Here comes the poker. One of the reasons that I even started to play, was that I could someday get good enough income from poker so I wouldn’t need to have job when i’m studying something. That way I could graduate faster and keep decent standards of living as a student.

I started really playing poker 9 months ago. I first started with something like 10 buyins for NL20 and played about month it. I was right away marginally winning player (might be luck or something as now I feel i’m superfish at 2card pokers). I started soon feeling pretty bored about the game. I don’t remember exactly and why, but I moved in to the wonderful world of the game where you geat dealt 4 cards and it’s lot more action packed than the boring 2 card game: PLO. As my roll wasn’t too big at this point, I went broke pretty soon. Won little bit → felt great → lost some pots → shots to PLO50 HU → broke.

At this point, I took little break. It wasn’t too much money but it just felt so bad losing all of it. There were also another deposit after this one what I lost. Then when I turned 18 in April (and I was legally allowed to play, before that I played with my mothers ( :D ) name on rndm eurosite) I made account to FTP, deposited about 40 bins to play at PLO10. Now I really tried to improve my game and move up in levels. I played and moved up to PLO25 at May or June. I wasn’t winning too much but enough for it to be profitable.

On my biggest downswing for this point, I decided to get coaching to get back my self-confidence. I took money away from my “life roll” because I really couldn’t take from my bankroll. I was little bit scared about this, but it turned up to be good thing. I don’t want to this sound like an ad but taking KasinoKrime as my 6max coach has been the best investment in my poker career. I would say that it was the whole turning point when I really started to know better what I am doing and why. Thanks for this! But yeah, after his great coaching I got up from the hole and grinded my way up to PLO50 where I am now.

When I went broke at the beginning of my career, it happened always at PLO50 HU where I took shots when getting sucked out or like that in lower 6max table. Even then I felt that it was the game I want to be playing later on when I have roll for it. So at August I had enough roll to give it a shot. It started pretty good, not too amazing results though but at least I made some profit.

Then I would say came the biggest thing happened yet. I had my biggest downswing ever. It was combination of bad luck, tilt and spewwy plays. It started in October with some pretty normal losses, but I continued to lose more and more until I was 38 buyins down. Then I had to ask myself that if I want to throw my couple of months work away and go broke? I didn’t. I started to work really hard on my game and I was able to come up from the hole and my month ended down only like 15 buyins which was so great result from being down so much.

When I survived that, I think there is nothing but hard work anymore for me to getting into bigger games and develop into a better player . Now when some time has passed from that swing, I have enough roll to take already PLO100 shots, but i’m gonna stick with PLO50 until next year. So, almost year passed and I have achieved bankroll for PLO100 HU games. I must say that i’m happy even though that I wasn’t the fastest one to get here.