Shoveling Gold Into An Abyss

Haven’t written in a while due to moving so figured I should. My internet access situation atm is a bit sketchy since my new house is waiting on a landline to be installed before we can get internet access since the landlord doesn’t want us to get cable and the associated drilling. So I’m sat playing in a bar near me that offers free wi-fi. So until I get proper net access my posts may be slightly infrequent, but I shall try to keep writing!

The PLO experiment has begun, so far I’m 2.2k in and up a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE $15. At first I dug myself into a big hole making mistakes that looking back were frankly hilariously bad, but the last couple of days I’ve stopped doing quite so much retarded stuff, and realised how ridiculously easy hand reading in the low stakes games is, and I think I’ve played decently. Today was a little more swongy but I put that down to some poor planning on early streets that led to me crying calling on later streets where vs the sort of scared, passive retard villains I’ve run into I just don’t want to be calling with <nuts when they want to play a big pot.

So far I’m fairly happy with the shape of my game, I’m at 26/21/3.7 and 3b 9% (which is at like a low % in the blinds and a silly high % in CO/BTN). It feels like these stats are close to correct, like maybe I could knock it back to about 20/25.

Things I think I’ve noticed so far about micro PLO games but am probably wrong about:
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1) People really are terrified of the nuts in these games, even moreso than in like micro NLHE and just don’t VB non-nut hands basically, which makes playing vs them really easy.
2) Checks on the flop seem to be much more honest than in NLHE – I guess when people have a hand in PLO villain’s range almost always has like 30% so protecting your hand becomes more important, so people tend to bet more and check deceptively less because they really don’t want people to get free cards when they have a made hand. I suppose it’s analogous to when someone who cbets a ton in NL checks a really wet board as the pfr, and you just know they’ll c/f a ton or c/c and not be able to call multiple streets.
3) Turn/River checks seem to be 99% honest. This makes VB’ing the turn/river, or taking free cards really easy. It seems easy to play well postflop and no-one’s going to be too tricky and make life too tough. It also seems to make it easy to spot when someone doesn’t have the nuts and you can bluff them with like a blocker to the nuts if they’re not retarded and going to call with crap.
4) I don’t think I can VB as thin as in NLHE – because people seem terrified of the nuts in general they check like stronger hands planning to c/c so their c ranges seem much stronger in some spots. I don’t know about this yet but it seems like there are less opportunities to find spots to VB thin. Also it feels like I can’t like b/f marginal stuff when draws hit as much as at NL because villains hit in so many more ways and won’t call so thin?
5) It’s easier to table select because there are fish everywhere

So it seems like I should be basically playing good hands, just not paying off vs these fools ever, try to not to value town myself, and trying to pick up some pots where they telegraph they can’t have the nuts and can’t call a big bet. This is the strategy I’ve been trying the last 2 days when I started climbing out of the hole I’d dug at the start of trying PLO, and it seems to be working so I’ll stick to it.

I’ve been trying to post on some threads in Kasino’s group and that feels like that’s helping a lot so I’ll try and keep that up.
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In terms of non-poker stuff, the new house is nice apart from lack of internet. It’s just been renovated so everything is shiny and new. I’m also learning to cook more stuff – I did a couple of variations on chow mein recently that worked out well. If anyone can recommend any recipes I can do for a) minimal cost, b) minimal time and c) that don’t suck that would be appreciated. I’ve also met some of the people on my course for this year and they seem really nice, and so far 3/3 nights we’ve been out for drinks so more sociable than I thought for a bunch of postgrad lawyers! I also got a Blackberry Curve as my new phone upgrade since my contract with Orange is too ghetto to get the Bold on. On the plus side it’s a pretty sweet phone anyway, and there’s a NL game on there! AND IT’S CASH! It’s still pretty silly but good fun to play in a spare moment.

Anyways hopefully can post more once I have non-ghetto internet access!