I’ve Got Friends in PLO Places

Posted by icemonkey9 on Jun 18, 2009 in omaha | 4 comments

I'm facing a weird dilemma with this post. For the most part I've wanted to keep my jump into Pot Limit Omaha pretty much a secret. For one thing, as someone who has been known to tilt once or twice in his life (lol) Omaha is a tilting-variance game so it doesn't seem like a good fit. Second, I've put a lot of time, effort and coaching into my NLHE game and to not use it seems like a waste. Third, when you tell people you play Omaha game they either call you a gambler or just look at you like you have the bubonic plague.

I made some good cases for Omaha in a couple of articles I wrote for pokernewsdaily.com which you can read here:

- Omaha Manager Released
- Falling in Love with Pot Limit Omaha

There's a lot of people that think that PLO is the future of internet poker with Hold'em games getting dry due to the dwindling number of fish and increase in information on how to get better (quick) at poker. It's like Sammy Farha said, if Hold'em is the Cadillac of Poker, then Omaha is the Corvette. If you know me, you know I've always driven a sports car, and I've always wanted a 'Vette!  

So to move the story along, I've been playing PLO25 during this "NLHE Break" I've been on for a week or so. I've learned some interesting things about the game, including:

• This game definitely isn't for everyone. Wild swings, big variance and more difficult "drawing" strategy is at the core to the game.
• PLO25 is a great place to start in terms of super micro stakes to just learn the fundamentals and nuances of the game.  However, you can still learn "on the job" at PLO50 since the players are so bad.
• You really do need at least 50 buy-ins per level to take a shot, and probably 60 is ideal.
• Most people at the PLO25 and PLO50 tables are downright terrible at poker.  This means that I've found that the opportunity for a huge winrate greatly outweighs the pitfalls of making mistakes yourself and negative results as resulted by variance (aka losing 60-40s or 75-25s).
• The videos at Stox Poker for PLO are woefully thin on content.  I've been a big champion for Stox in the past, but when it comes to PLO I have not been impressed.
• It's hard to find an online community that talks about Omaha.  There's a couple of decent online training sites and a couple of worthwhile books, but that's about it.

Unfortunately at my favorite online poker community, CardsChat, there is basically zero there in terms of Omaha discussion and theory.  I tried starting a thread which had some interesting life behind it at first before dying in about a month's time.  I don't normally speak highly of the 2p2 forums but in this case, the Omaha guys seem a cut above the rest of the site.  I put out a somewhat cheeky post titled "Will You Be My Omaha Friend" where I explain that out of all the poker friends I have online, only one plays Omaha and that's just not enough to stay sane.  Fortunately, I got about 7 great responses from people that were similar to me, playing PLO25 or so, trying to get the hang of it and build a big bankroll (you need 60 to 70 buyins per level at PLO) and move on in stakes.  So, I've made a bunch of new friends specific to PLO which is great news.

Again, I am not totally sure how long this adventure with PLO will last.  I imagine if the US Government finally legalized online poker the fish would come rushing back mainly to NLHE and I'd immediately go to where the fishy action could be found.  For now though I'm enjoying poker and making money, which means my poker expectations (despite the game) are being met.

Playing Omaha + Writing for PokerSoftware.com

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 17, 2009 in omaha, pot limit | 0 comments

A good friend online, Bob_Tiger is a real solid Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo player and has been trying to get me to play the game for months. On top of that a neighbor of mine has recommended the game as well as Razz. So, I caved in because I was sick of NLHE and watched a few videos from DeucesCracked (site review coming) from Vanessa in help learn. Vanessa is a WSOP champ in Omaha and one hell of an instructor. Watching the first two videos basically gave me more insight into the game than anyone I have played against at the ultra-micro stakes tables. That's not a huge brag but I feel good about it.

After Bob_Tiger did a teamviewer group sweat of him playing a turbo SNG of PLO H/L three of us bought into a SNG and sure enough two students finished HU - me and The Shrog. Guess who won?

Yay for me! A first place win in a SNG is something huge for me because I generally either SUCK or BLOW at them. Either way the result isn't comfortable. So this made me curious about PokerTracker Omaha edition, so I downloaded it, and apparently my key for Pokertracker 3 made it work because I didn't have to register it. Bug in the program? Who cares.

So in order to get Pokertracker Omaha to work I had to:

• Download and install the program. Clunky and outdated to say the least.
• Configure the program. Took about 5 minutes total, not bad.
• Download and install a program called "Poker EV" so that I could generate graphs and use a much better replayer. That took about 5 minutes.

So the process wasn't painful. I am going to play 90% of my hands at NLHE still but will reserve 10% for Omaha, whether it be PLO or PLO H/L remains to be seen.

In other poker news ....

I'm a news story! Woo! PokerSoftware.com has brought me on as a writer and put up an expose on me on the front page of their site. You can read the full story by clicking here.