Shoveling Gold Into An Abyss

Haven’t had a chance to post in a while with moving in and registering and starting for courses, so thought I’d post a short update just to let anyone who actually reads this know I’m not dead/in jail.

Not getting a chance to put in a ton of hands atm but that should change once I get internet access at the new house on Wednesday!

So far I’ve played about 3.5k hands this month, and I’m on an omaheater, running at like 10 ptbb/100 or something – still learning PLO at PLO50, &25 if I’m tired/hungover. Obviously this is a completely meaningless sample size at PLO but it’s nice to run pretty hot for a bit.

Also I found some tournament credits lying around on my boss media account so I used those on some HU SnGs and am +800 in those. So I’m comfortably over the 1k mark on the month, like ~1.3k so far which is nice.

I’m playing solely 6m uPLO apart from using those tourney credits, and running about 25/21 and playing pretty aggro, which seems to be working. I’m finding I’m not CC a ton atm, I think I’m just a bit less comfortable playing without the initiative and figuring out calling ranges and standard lines as the pre flop caller in PLO than at NL where I’m pretty comfortable. Also people suck at playing vs 3bets at PLO – at least at low stakes. So I’m 3b quite a lot, especially IP and not CC a ton.

I’ve been running equities a ton for PLO and sort of noting down the conclusions and trying to build my ABC lines, which has been interesting, and pretty eye opening, finding stuff like how non FD wraps change in value a bit when there’s an FD out, how often I can’t necessarily bet a lot of stuff when a draw hits etc. I’ve been doing this on propokertools site on the omaha simulator which has been really handy. I really recommend running equities for some different ranges, like maybe vs a tight range, a loose range etc for pots > 20 or 40bbs etc. The other exercise I found useful was to keep adjusting the ranges until a VB wasn’t profitable or a call wasn’t profitable, or a semibluff was/wasn’t etc and noting down where the ‘tipping point’ was. I think this is really good for figuring out what assumptions you need to be true for a certain line to be good. I think skier5 mentioned this in his NL well on 2p2 a while back, and it’s definitely a really good exercise. So I can definitely recommend doing this.

In terms of life stuff, the new house is finally about finished, like carpets down, living room is sorted etc. Once we have internet access things should be pretty sweet. I’m also learning to cook more things which is actually quite satisfying – TR on various dishes to follow I’m sure as I get more adventurous.

I haven’t started my academic work for this term yet but have been out for drinks A LOT with the people on my course and the other postgrads at my college, which has been cool, since everyone’s turned out to be surprisingly willing to go out and have drinks etc and be sociable. My academic work should start monday. I expect a pretty heavy load of work, but it’s on courses taught by the best people in the world for that subject for a couple of them so at least it will be interesting.

I was facing a dilemna in that I’d chosen 4 pretty work-heavy courses and was worried about being swamped but in the end on the advice of a few friends who had done the same master’s I decided to just pick 4 courses I liked, rather than like 2 or 3 and an easy one or two to lighten the load. The easy ones all sucked, and I think even with slightly less work spending a year doing a crap subject when I could do an awesome one would make me want to stab people’s eyes out with a needle.