October

So I did a little disappearing act this month, at least blog-wise. And yeah, I guess the sentiment does also apply a little to poker. Specifically, I have disappeared from the live poker games here around Austin, TX. Just haven't been able to clear the nights to play.

As for my online play, I'm still going at it, but I spent almost the entirety of October playing 6-max PLO on Full Tilt. After the run I had at the end of September, I really wanted to keep riding the PLO wave. Unfortunately, the wave crashed down on me in a nasty way. Here were the month's results.

PLO variance put me to the test here, as I ran a full $200 behind EV over the 4.5K hands that I played. The good news is that I'm still playing a winning game, since my EV was above water.

I still have some major leaks. I call way too many big river bets with non-nut flushes and not holding boats on paired boards. On the upside, I'm getting better at picking my value betting spots, and actually sticking to a bet-fold strategy in thin spots.

The really good news is that the 25PLO games are still swarming with awful players. You just have to be ready to withstand some lumps before they hand it all over to you.

NLHE Online: +$123.97 (just 800 hands)
NLHE Live: N/A
PLO Online: -$189.20
Rakeback: +$83.31

In terms of posting, I guess I have been feeling like the PLO hands I've been playing have been pretty ABC and haven't contained much worth discussing on the strategy side. At low levels where the fundamental play is bad, you really just need to play solid ABC PLO and not get too tricky. But I'm sure there are enough interesting spots that I can start diving into with some more depth. It always seems to help my game when I do so, and maybe that will be part of the trick to getting my profit curve point upwards again. Then again, this is PLO, and the variance is wild and cruel, so maybe I should just keep focused on that EV number, and let the profits come around when the PLO Gods are damn well ready to let it happen.

Oh yeah, I'm headed back to the local live felts this weekend, as the wife and daughter are out of town. So I'll keep a close tab on the action this Friday and Saturday and report anything interesting or noteworthy towards the end of the weekend.