PLO Style

Okay, so I’ve been putting in fewer hands by playing fewer tables capping at 8 and then quickly weeding down to the best ones with the best seats and trying to only play 4 at a time. This seems to work better on a lot of levels for me, first and foremost being I run better.

Okay, obviously that’s not really true, even if it seems that way sometimes. I think cutting down on my tables cuts down on variance and how badly I can play and increases the other factors that lead to winning poker. I can pay more attention to the action I’m not involved in, I can hand read exponentially better, I can just do more and make better decisions when my attention isn’t spread out over 8-12 tables that are constantly changing and new tables are always popping up that I have to resize and then reevaluate players and position and stats. Ugh, it’s a mess for me and definitely hurts my play.

One thing specifically that’s been different and better is my non-showdown winnings. I know, eff the red line, but it’s been a leak for me and over the past 1200 hands I’m actually up like 3.5 BI’s in non-showdown pots. This is partly from running good and being able to value bet the river, just not getting called which could be another leak, but also I think it’s from being able to have a plan and follow through with it, as well as being able to hand read better when playing fewer tables and being able to make better decisions as a result.

I did play some short sessions and book a few wins to boost my confidence and keep me happy for a little while. I split about 1k hands over 6 short sessions and I’m up about 8BI’s. Running good, for sure, but playing decent as well and focusing a lot more than I was before.

I realized that I can’t think about where my roll was 2 months ago. I can’t chase the losses especially not 30BI’s worth. It is where it is and focusing and trying to get back to where I was is the wrong way to think about it. Take it hand by hand, session by session, and grind it back up the way I did before.