PLO Pimpin'

What's up guys? 

As always, here's a song I think you should check out! Puts me in the mood to do some live grinding haha. 

I've been spending a lot of time lately reading blogs from players about their thoughts post Black-Friday, so I figured now was the perfect time to play catch up on some posting. I think the part about BF that annoys me the most is the poor timing it had on the release of my new coaching program PLO QuickPro. I essentially gave up grinding for more than eight months so I could devote my time and energy to creating the product, and then 48 hours following the release, I was smacked upside the head with the bad news. As a nice added bonus, the same day we went live, my laptop got destroyed because I spilled a cup of coffee on the keyboard. 

Perfect timing! It's all good though. I was planning on getting another one soon, but transferring my files onto the new machine has been kind of a pain in the ass. If anyone out there can recommend a site that's good for backing up files (I currently use Mozy but have found their file recovery process to be pretty inefficient), then let me know! 

Even though the airwaves have been dominated by the bad news of Black Friday, the students who have decided to enroll in PLO QuickPro have already improved dramatically, which I'm super stoked to hear. 

PLO QuickPro is the only multi-media training product of its kind. I personally walk you through my complete curriculum of premium theory. You also get to take advantage of the aha moments of my more than 90 students with hand history reviews. To make sure you get results, I give you personal attention throughout and answer all of your questions. Anyways, you can get all the details at www.ploquickpro.com, but quite simply, this program is everything you need to take your game to the next level, so check it out! 

My gut tells me that I won't be forgetting about what happened during the last month any time soon. Black Friday has had a significant impact on me and many of my close friends. One of my biggest concerns is how it'll impact the WSOP this year, and perhaps even next year if everything isn't sorted out yet. I'm not sure on the percentage of the ME field that comes from online qualifiers, but I'm assuming it's significant. Not only will the tournament fields be smaller, but it will also lessen the amount that players are willing to put up for cash games. 

I think I can provide an interesting perspective on everything that's happened because I live in Las Vegas. At first, you'd think that I'd be somewhat insulated from what's going on with poker because I have the ability to play live at the casinos whenever I want. But truthfully, I think it's made me notice just how much I've taken online poker for granted in the past, and how much I miss degenning on my computer whenever I want. Here's a few observations I've made since Black Friday:

• Grinding live poker SUCKS. Before I began playing online, there's nothing in the world I wanted more than to spend a few hours at a B+M game facing off against real live people sitting in front of me. Putting in a considerable amount of volume online has definitely changed my perspective about the prospect of grinding out a living playing live poker. Frankly, if I had no other choice than to grind live poker, I would find another profession. There's no question that the players in a casino are significantly weaker than online, but in my opinion, that doesn't make up for the fact that you have to spend so many hours in a dirty casino. The action is excruciatingly slow, the environment is unquestionably unhealthy in a number of ways (food, people in casinos, germs etc.), which all combine to make me feel extremely "degenny" the more time I spend there. 
• I wasn't too upset about being forced to put in more volume at the casinos because that's what I was planning on doing to prepare for the WSOP anyway. The combination of BF and the upcoming WSOP has made the poker rooms fairly packed, and I'm starting to really get a feel for playing FRPLO. In the past, I think I focused too much on playing tighter than I need to. I figured that playing tighter was the way to go, because since everyone plays so loose and stacks off with terrible hands, why not just nut peddle and get paid on my big hands? I think this strategy will be profitable in the long run, but I don't think it's optimal. Because they're weaker players, they have a lot of leaks not just preflop.. Which means that playing more hands and messing around with them postflop can yield not only more profit, but also be good for your image so that you can win more money when you finally have a hand. Besides, since you only see like 15 hands an hour in live PLO, playing excessively tight is really boring. 

Although Black Friday has had negative effects on basically everyone, I think it's equally important to think about the positives. Unfortunately I haven't played a single hand of online in the past month, but I know a few people that have deposited money on Lock, and apparently the games are insanely juicy.. Which means that instead of pouting around and feeling sorry for yourself for not being able to play online, the better approach is to use the extra time to focus on improving and keeping your skills sharp. I know from personal experience that it's easy to lose motivation to do things like watch videos, post on forums, and work on your theory away from the table, but I think that given how soft the games will continue to be until the online environment gains some stability, the guys that are really going to kill it during this time are the players who somehow turn this negative experience into a positive one. In fact, yesterday I was chatting with a guy at the Venetian who's good friends with a very well known midstakes reg that I've played against a bunch, and he said that since his friend lives in South America, he's been able to continue to grind on FTP despite everything that's happened.. And apparently he's destroying the games more than he ever has before! 

I've been glancing at the Lock lobby over the last few days, and it looks like there's plenty of midstakes action, but almost no action above 10/20 6max. Put more simply, the good news is that if you're willing to load some dough onto a smaller site, you'll be able to take advantage of the softer player pool until the other players have time to set their feet again. I'll probably end up loading a roll on there in the near future, but I want to wait until I either get my FTP money returned, or until after the series is over and I don't need readily available cash. During the series, it's important to have access to as much cash as possible; not only for the tourney buy ins, but also for bigger cash games, and for buying other players action. 

Anyhow, I wanted to include a bunch of live hands I've played lately, but this one has already ran on longer than I expected! The next one I do will definitely review some live hands. Hopefully everyone is doing well! Hit me up if you're coming out to the WSOP this summer so we can meet up!

GL,

John