Forever a Fish

Hey guys,
Been studying PLO a fair amount in the past few months. Was wondering what is standard PF these days headsup. Is it standard to get in a 100 bb stack heads up with:


Good kings
Bad Kings
Good Queens
High-4card run downs: 2-suited, 1-suited, 0-suited
Good double Paired hands: JJ99 double suited say

What about 50 bbs or 200 bbs?

In my games mostly at 100bbs I've been stacking off with good kigs, or double-suited 4-card rundowns 8 or higher (and aces obviously), but wondered whether that was abnormal.

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I did not follow the PLO scene (still don't know much about it really), so I am hoping you LP PLO players can help me figure out a mystery. Who were considered the best online headsup PLO players in the world a few years ago? like say 2009-2013.

Although I'd still be curious about the full list, the person I'm looking for isn't famous outside of online play (so nobody like Ivey, Antonius, etc.)

Thanks for your assistance

~N


*EDIT

Current best guess: Xblink (but there are some things that don't add up). Have any of you guys met him in person or played against him?

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Hey LP,

Haven't really talked about my life before as I've never seen a purpose to doing so, but I guess that's changing a bit. Over the past 2 years I've obtained a masters degree, and am about to start working on a Ph.D in finance. I've always had been fascinated (and sometimes obsessed) with games of every type, and poker's mathematical side was an additional draw. There are a few casinos nearby where I live so I've been playing live to pay for MBA program tuition, and also for making myself get out of the house and be more social. The closest friends I have since moving to this city are the other poker pros who frequent the casinos that I've battled with time and time again. It was clear that I could make a living (albeit not a glamorous one) playing, and the game had not yet reached the point of being tiresome to me. I still love studying toy games and breaking down abstract concepts to apply to real situations, although none of that is necessary in live games.

I am 100% certain in saying that success at the live $1/2 through $5/10 games I've played depends much more on discipline than skill at the game. Most of the time you would still be by far the best player at a table even if you were significantly worse, but folding for 3 hours at a time while you are forced to sit in a seat waiting for playable hands can be trying to one's patience. The real fun of games comes from learning and improving anyway, so mindless noob-bashing doesn't seem very gratifying for someone who actually likes games and poker.

A couple professors in my masters program were pushing me to apply to Ph.D programs, but it also sounded like a good point in my life to take off 1 year and travel around playing live poker. The flexibility poker can provide is fantastic, and though I don't particularly enjoy traveling, travel is certainly something that would help me grow as a person. I've never been one to readily go outside of my comfort zone. I had tentatively planned on doing poker for a year, so had gotten permission to delay my application for a few weeks to decide if I wanted to take time off to play poker before seriously applying to Ph.D programs. I decided to apply anyway, and against the odds (60 applicants, 1 acceptance; speaking of running good) I was accepted into the program. Since I essentially gave my word my application was serious, I felt obligated to follow through and accept.


I love poker, but after running what is probably 3 standard deviations above EV the last two weeks, I observed something else that is difficult about the game to me: the taking of other peoples money. I don't think it is wrong to do so per se; after all, it is a consensual relationship, and I do not take pains to hide the fact that I am there to make money from it. But if I were to play poker for a living for a longer period of time, I think it would eat into my happiness. Good poker players are usually intelligent and quantitatively gifted people, people that could really be adding a lot of value to society. Instead they end up just redistributing wealth (and occasionally from people who can't afford it) to themselves.

My program starts in about 10 days, so my study of poker will have to come to a pause for the moment. I'll still be at the casino a lot; that's where I do much of my reading/studying anyways (gotta have something to pass the time just folding for hours, right?). Poker has certainly treated me nicely the last couple of years; if I had run a bit worse maybe I wouldn't mind cutting it out of my life quite so much. As usual, I am very grateful to this community and the insightful (though sometimes vituperative) comments about concepts and hands. I think most people here are pretty smart, so on an individual level, whether you are continuing in poker or branching out into different things, I feel confident in your success and would encourage you to step into other activities if you feel poker is not the most soul-nourishing way to spend your life long-term.

In the meantime, I'll try to keep a bit of time carved out for anyone that wants to do practice heads-up matches. ^^

GL everyone

~Nathan

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Hey guys,

I have gotten to play heads-up against a couple somewhat strong players recently, so I want to purchase a program to help get stats and analyze hands. I used an old version poker tracker a while back, and thought it was fairly good. Is there something better that you guys would suggest? I will probably move to studying PLO in a few months, so perhaps something that is helpful PLO would be desirable as well. What program would you suggest picking up now?

As always, thanks for the advice

~N

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Started playing a bit online again so I could continue improving. Running pretty well, I'm pretty much playing like a god. Maybe with some hard work I could get my BB/100 up just a little higher, but my play is pretty much GTO so it can't improve too much. Here's some stats/graphs.




BB/100
-568.82



Here is one of the stronger hands I played. It might not look well played, but try not to be results oriented. You can be sure that it was pretty much perfect.
Note flop raise size; not a ton of money left to go in on the turn, but villain doesn't have to fold that often for the turn barrel to be profitable.



Seat 1: j_rogan_ex ($55.83)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD ($9.90)
HungarianGOD posts the small blind of $0.05
j_rogan_ex posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HungarianGOD
HungarianGOD raises to $0.30
j_rogan_ex raises to $1.20
HungarianGOD calls $0.90

*** FLOP ***
j_rogan_ex bets $1.90
HungarianGOD raises to $8.69
j_rogan_ex calls $6.79

*** TURN ***
j_rogan_ex bets $0.10
HungarianGOD calls $0.01, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $0.09 returned to j_rogan_ex

*** RIVER ***

*** SHOW DOWN ***
j_rogan_ex shows (a Pair of Aces +QJ7)
HungarianGOD shows (High Card Ace +QJT7)
j_rogan_ex wins the pot ($19.31)
HungarianGOD adds 10 chips

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $19.8 | Rake $0.49
Board: [4c Qs Ad 6c 7d]
Seat 1: j_rogan_ex showed [Jh Ah] and won ($19.31)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD showed [Tc Js] and lost

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Started playing a bit online again so I could continue improving. Running pretty well, I'm pretty much playing like a god. Maybe with some hard work I could get my BB/100 up just a little higher, but my play is pretty much GTO so it can't improve too much. Here's some stats/graphs.




Stake Game Hands Hands Won Won My C Won My C All-In Adj BB/100
$0.10NL Holdem 119 54 (45.38%) ($67.69)($67.69) ($47.52) -568.82



Here is one of the stronger hands I played. It might not look well played, but try not to be results oriented. You can be sure that it was pretty much perfect.
Note flop raise size; not a ton of money left to go in on the turn, but villain doesn't have to fold that often for the turn barrel to be profitable.



Seat 1: j_rogan_ex ($55.83)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD ($9.90)
HungarianGOD posts the small blind of $0.05
j_rogan_ex posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HungarianGOD
HungarianGOD raises to $0.30
j_rogan_ex raises to $1.20
HungarianGOD calls $0.90

*** FLOP ***
j_rogan_ex bets $1.90
HungarianGOD raises to $8.69
j_rogan_ex calls $6.79

*** TURN ***
j_rogan_ex bets $0.10
HungarianGOD calls $0.01, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $0.09 returned to j_rogan_ex

*** RIVER ***

*** SHOW DOWN ***
j_rogan_ex shows (a Pair of Aces +QJ7)
HungarianGOD shows (High Card Ace +QJT7)
j_rogan_ex wins the pot ($19.31)
HungarianGOD adds 10 chips

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $19.8 | Rake $0.49
Board: [4c Qs Ad 6c 7d]
Seat 1: j_rogan_ex showed [Jh Ah] and won ($19.31)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD showed [Tc Js] and lost

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Comments (0)

Started playing a bit online again so I could continue improving. Running pretty well, I'm pretty much playing like a god. Maybe with some hard work I could get my BB/100 up just a little higher, but my play is pretty much GTO so it can't improve too much. Here's some stats/graphs.




Stake Game Hands Hands Won Won My C Won My C All-In Adj BB/100
$0.10NL Holdem 119 54 (45.38%) ($67.69)($67.69) ($47.52) -568.82



Here is one of the stronger hands I played. It might not look well played, but try not to be results oriented. You can be sure that it was pretty much perfect.
Note flop raise size; not a ton of money left to go in on the turn, but villain doesn't have to fold that often for the turn barrel to be profitable.



Seat 1: j_rogan_ex ($55.83)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD ($9.90)
HungarianGOD posts the small blind of $0.05
j_rogan_ex posts the big blind of $0.10
The button is in seat #2

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HungarianGOD
HungarianGOD raises to $0.30
j_rogan_ex raises to $1.20
HungarianGOD calls $0.90

*** FLOP ***
j_rogan_ex bets $1.90
HungarianGOD raises to $8.69
j_rogan_ex calls $6.79

*** TURN ***
j_rogan_ex bets $0.10
HungarianGOD calls $0.01, and is all in
Uncalled bet of $0.09 returned to j_rogan_ex

*** RIVER ***

*** SHOW DOWN ***
j_rogan_ex shows (a Pair of Aces +QJ7)
HungarianGOD shows (High Card Ace +QJT7)
j_rogan_ex wins the pot ($19.31)
HungarianGOD adds 10 chips

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $19.8 | Rake $0.49
Board: [4c Qs Ad 6c 7d]
Seat 1: j_rogan_ex showed [Jh Ah] and won ($19.31)
Seat 2: HungarianGOD showed [Tc Js] and lost

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Comments (0)

There was a site I wanted to try out that just used bitcoins (The state I'm in doesn't allow brovada -_-) and I was wondering if somebody was willing to sell me a small amount of bitcoin for paypal transfer, just enough to mess around on the site to see how I like it. The smallest amount I'd want to buy is 1/50th of one. If you are someone who posts a reasonable amount I'd be happy to transfer you the paypal money first.

If anybody wants to, just let me know. I don't know much about how bitcoin works, I am just tired of not being able to play online to improve at all.

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Comments (3)

Greetings all,

I finally hit the 10k profits mark a couple of days ago in live play, so thought it was time to make a blog just saying 'thanks'.

I finished clearing a backing agreement (a friend was backing me 1/3) to play $2/5, and had won about 2k the month before this graph, so there's the 10K. This includes $20/session for transportation costs, so if that's added back I'm actually up an additional 1200 or so.


(Blue Line is session result, Orange is Cumulative Result, the dotted lines are trend lines)

Every data entry is a session, ranging from 4 to 12 hours (7 is probably my average)

I won't get too much into my background atm, as I doubt people really have an interest in that anyway. I've done a ton of study/work compared to how much I've played in the last 2 years, lots of theoretical stuff; as such my learning of the game has been quite irregular. There are many advanced concepts I'm comfortable with, but lots of holes in my knowledge and experience throughout. I've actually studied it harder after black-friday than before, and as such most of my studies have been tied to a GTO approach than an exploitative approach (because there was nobody for me to practice against to try to exploit).

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for all the help LP! There have been a lot of insightful posts and comments here from so many of you, it has helped my thinking and approach to learning the game immensely. I know some of my posts and questions are pretty noobish, so I appreciate you guys putting up with them. I would like to think I could add some interesting or insightful comments of my own every once in a while, though I feel that most of the active posters are better than me at 90% of the aspects of the game. Perhaps I can take a crack at giving help, and then when I say something retarded one of you guys who can actually play the game can come in and put me in my place.
Thanks again, and Cheers.
~Nathan

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