PLO Style

Took some time off, had to let some life stuff settle down and work itself out a bit, not that my life could ever be drama-free. Having your baby’s momma/ex-girlfriend as a roommate will never be ideal. However, it’s great for our daughter who gets two parents and we both get to have equal time with her.

So with that, going through a short sale of a house I own and trying to figure out where to move and send my daughter to school next year there is plenty on my plate. Oh and grad school. :/

Why then, you might ask, would I want to further complicate my life by adding poker to the mix? Good question. Really though poker has been the one constant through a lot of turmoil. As funny as that sounds with all the ups and downs and variance of poker the game is always there.

So I played very little poker last fall. September to November was probably only a few thousand hands. This was the end of my play on Poker Stars. I had been grinding PLO50 to mixed results the standard 35BI under EV 60,000 hand break even stretch, grinding vpps and bonuses. It seemed okay while I was doing it, learning and playing a lot, was Platinum Star and if I kept it up I could go for SN this year…then I hit a wall from trying to grind more and more tables and hands and still learn and play well that and life stuff made me take a break.

Through all this life and poker stuff I decided to be very specific when I played and only play when I felt my best. Only when I had time, I wasn’t tired, I felt good and positive and confident. Between working full time, a 4 year old daughter some semblance of a social life and babymamma drama all these factors together didn’t happen very often. But I stayed strong.

After not playing for over a month at one point I withdrew most of my roll from Stars leaving some for playing MTTs if I get the itch for that. Mid and small buy-in PLO MTTs are SO SOFT.

I dropped 1K on Full Tilt just to kind of donk around with. Kept to my rule of only playing when I felt my best. Played only 1 or 2 tables, 4 at the most.

Ran hot, played okay, built my roll. Trying to focus more on playing well, learning more, taking notes and being more aggressive. Had a few really bad sessions, one all-nighter and then one bad weekend where I dropped like 22BIs and then 10 more at 100NL Rush. Survived those 2 brutal weeks, though just barely and now I’ve been doing really well and I’m back grinding PLO100.

I hooked back up with my coach John, KasinoKrime (he has a really cool DC blog check it out). All-in-all things are really starting click. I’d say I’m playing the best poker of my life right now, fwiw, and running like the sun which doesn’t hurt.

Still playing mostly short sessions when I’m totally free and clear to really focus. Making good quits when I feel my focus slipping and tilt setting in. I’d like to find a way to put in more volume since I’m playing like max 500 hands a day, but until I can do that and consistently play my A game and not tilt when I get sucked out on I’ll keep doing what I’m doing.

I’ll post some hands and poker thoughts in the coming days and weeks.

Cheers.