Slinger's Poker Blog: Cap PLO

I've broken my promise to post interesting PLO hands because, well, I've taken to playing Cap PLO lately. If you're not familiar with this, it's just PLO with 40BB effective stacks. This does not allow for a lot of interesting spots. However, I've taken to it quite nicely:

These games are just so so so soft. Normal PLO games are soft, but at least you'll run into some good players. There are just no regs at these games (until now). I run like 21/15 at normal PLO, but I'm running 30/24 - about 45% VPIP on the button - at these games. They're infinitely loose/passive and put up absolutely no fight post-flop - as you can see, I'm crushing at non-showdown.

Winning at Cap PLO requires relentless aggression and a very good knowledge of equity. Players don't know either. I really don't blame them for not understanding equities... I didn't either until I did a lot of work on it lately. I think the lack of PLO on TV is 100% to blame for this. I don't know about you, but I watch a ton of poker on TV, and it's because of that, and not Pokerstove and such that I have such a good knowledge of NL equity. Without doing the research, you're just going to be forced into a guessing game.

I'm about 1500-2000 hands away from clearing my last FTP bonus, which should be done on Monday. When that happens, I'll leave $500-$600 in my account for other commitments, get a 6-month CR membership from the store, and I'm going to start on the rest of my bonus-whoring adventure. I'll start off with Cake and Pokerheaven's $500 deposit bonus simultaneously. I don't think either site has enough PLO games running for me, so I'll need two sites, and either way that should save me time with bank transfers and such. Making $1k off of bonus and likely another $500 or so off of rakeback is going to be sweet next month.

I've started off the year so hot I should probably re-evaluate all my goals. I was very pessimistic with my $1k goal for January - combing poker, rakeback and bonuses, I've made about $3k so far. That will increase my year's earning exponentially and I assume I can shatter the $15k goal I suggested. I hoped to finish the year at 2/4, but I don't think it's unreasonable to think that I could be playing 5/10 by the end of the year.

Oh, here's one hand I find interesting. This was the first time villain had raised in ~80 hands or so, so I decided he almost certainly had AA** or KK**. His bet on the flop seems to say the same thing, thinking along the lines of "I have a set but don't want to c/c a big bet so here's my price". I could have raised here, but that's a little marginal. His turn bet was also kinda weakish, so I decided to call and re-evaluate in position.

On the river, I have a bluffcatcher against a very tight opponent, which doesn't seem like a great situation. However, given my read that he has AA** or KK**, with the Ad and Kd on the board, his other two cards have to be exactly Qxdd or Jxdd for him to be potting for value, and I have three of the remaining 10 diamonds myself, so I snap him off.

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 $40 Cap Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 3 players - View hand 17824

The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $106.75

Hero (BB): $207.00

BTN: $1553.80

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with 7 7 of diamonds