PLO Cash - Time to get serious

So I lose the most from the big blind, 120 bb / 100.  I guess that is to be expected given its weakposition and the number of times I probably fold preflop, but I have to start looking somewhere and this will do.

I think I need to concentrate on the biggest leaks and therefore the biggest bb/100 losses and will use HM to dice the statistics in a
few ways.

What type of hands do I lose the most with?

I’m beginning to realise that with only 2.7K hands at PLO cash it might be hard to find definitive patterns.  However I need to start somewhere so I will concentrate on the hand groupings where there are at least 5 hands with the knowledge that statistically this might not be significant.

The biggest three losing groups are:

• Pocket Aces (8 hands -1681 bb/100);
  
• Pocket Queens (14 hands -533 bb/100);
• Pocket Kings (12 hands -418 bb/100).

In total these hands have lost me $64 or 762 bb/100.

Three hands account for almost all this loss, or in other words if I had not lost any of them I would be breaking even.  In contrast there is only 1 big winning hand, for $14 or 54 bb/100.

Looking at the three biggest losing hands in detail I got the money in good.  In the worst loss I was
a clear favourite until a nasty turn, and even then I had the pot odds to make a crying call, losing to a made straight with an AA and a draw to the nut flush and two nut straights.

Party Poker $25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players - View hand 1289219
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

BTN: $16.39
SB: $24.96
Hero (BB): $41.76
UTG: $28.72
MP: $13.31
CO: $7.35

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with A 8 A 9
UTG calls $0.25, 3 folds, SB calls $0.15, Hero raises to $1, UTG calls $0.75, SB calls $0.75

Flop: ($3.00) 3 7 J(3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2, UTG calls $2, SB calls $2

Turn: ($9.00) 5(3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $8.55, UTG raises to $25.72 all in, SB folds, Hero calls $17.17

River: ($60.44) Q(2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $60.44
Hero shows A 8 A 9 (a pair of Aces)
UTG shows 6 A 4 T (a straight, Three to Seven)
UTG wins $57.44
(Rake: $3.00)

In the second I get the money in as an 80/20 favourite with
top set, and then lose to a straight on the turn.

The third is a lot more interesting so I’ll post this on the
forum.

Overall though I think I have just been unlucky with these
set of big hands, and if I understand the EV $ Diff figure in HM (my expected
value for hands that were all in before the river) then I should have been up
$18.

Do I lose a lot calling a raise, then check folding?

I lost 29 bb/100, or $7.20 over 11 hands calling a preflop raise then check folding.

Over 5 hands I lost another $7, or 28 bb / 100 check calling.

There were no hands where I check raised.

There were 3 hands where I donk-bet, and these were all hands where I won.  However these were all with
top set or a good wrap draw on the flop.

Does it matter how many limpers there are?

Against a single limper I won $12.80 over 61 hands, or 84 bb / 100.

Against 2 or more limpers I lost $69 over 139 hands, or -198 bb / 100.

The third biggest losing hand is interesting.  I think it shows a common theme in my play where I play passively with the thought that I don’t want worse hands to fold.  Inevitably it seems that I get out drawn on the river.  I think here I have to believe their river shove and believe I have the worst hand:

Party Poker $25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 5 players - View hand 1289301
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG: $23.34
CO: $15.00
BTN: $4.64
SB: $26.73
Hero (BB): $23.08

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with 8 T 8 4
UTG calls $0.25, CO calls $0.25, 2 folds, Hero checks

Flop: ($0.85) K 8 5(3 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks, CO bets $0.60, Hero calls $0.60, UTG calls $0.60

Turn: ($2.65) K(3 players)
Hero checks, UTG checks, CO bets $1.26, Hero calls $1.26, UTG folds

River: ($5.17) 9(2 players)
Hero bets $4.92, CO raises to $12.89 all in, Hero calls $7.97

Final Pot: $30.95
CO shows K 9 J A (a full house, Kings full of Nines)
Hero shows 8 T 8 4 (a full house, Eights full of Kings)
CO wins $29.41
(Rake: $1.54)

Conclusion

Actually overall I don’t think my big blind play is too bad over this sample size.  If I take EV $ Diff into account I should be down $85 which perhaps isn’t too bad given that almost half of this is when I folded pre-flop and only lost the bb.

I definitely need to respect river re-raises more though and I think I do do this more now.

Next I think I’ll look at where I should be winning more money: either the cut-off or button.

You know when you come across something for the very first time and you think "that's really interesting, I can't believe it is common knowledge"?  And then subsequently you read or hear it all over the place.  Well one of my favourite reads over the last few years is "This is your brain on music" by Daniel J. Levitin.   Almost inconsequential to the general tenet of the book was a section on genius that talked about the number of hours the Beatles spent playing live in Hamburg, and the number of hours Mozart would have studied and played music before he truly became a genius:

...ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert -- in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is the equivalent to roughly three hours per day, or twenty hours per week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn't address why some people don't seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

So I can't wait 10,000 hours to stop losing money.  But I do probably have twenty hours a week to play and study.  At the moment 90% of that time is spent playing.  And the 10% I study is fairly passive, reading forums or articles and thinking "that makes sense" without really thinking about it.  I intend to change that and aim to spend at least 10 hours a week properly studying.  

To help with this initially I've come up with a structure to follow.

For each position in the 6m games I play I will take a range of hands and post them on the PLO forum for help and advice.  I'm looking to explore where I lose the most, but also where I miss value.

As I can't expect to just take advice from other people I am going to balance my posts equally with commenting on other people's posts. 

In addition i'm going to practice note taking.  This is an area I really struggle with, both spotting the pertinent pieces of information and, even when I do, writing them in a concise and digestible format is a struggle.

The first step though is to record my current statistcs for posterity: