Tuesday, September 23, 2008

PLO

At the start of September, I decided to fully commit to learning PLO. I am having fun playing poker. I personally feel that the edges in the current NL games are few and far between. While the occasional fish pops up here and there at the NL table, they seem to be instinctively flocking to today's PLO games. With all of the training sites available, everyone is good at NL. A few months back, Taylor Caby decided to grind out a bunch of hands at 5-10. He couldnt get over how tough the games were. Heres a guy who crushed the biggest games just a few years ago, and now hes having a rough time with 5-10. Granted, my perspective should be taken with a grain of salt. I cant remember the last time I played on a Friday or Saturday night - the most profitable times of the week. Although the variance is high at PLO, it is also high in NL. Anytime you're getting TT, AQ in preflop for 100bb, its a high variance game. Even the HU NL games are getting ridiculous these days. Game selection is key in HU. When there are 10-15 other HU regulars waiting for a game, its tough to game select. PLO is fun and also very interesting. There are so many unique situations. Not too many people know how to play this game optimally. As PLO has become more popular over the last year or so, it reminds me of former trend seen in the poker world. The poker boom. Everyone flocked to NLHE. This was a time period when Andrew Wiggins was beating up on the 10-20 games... enough said. Back to the point at hand, PLO is starting to boom - just like NLHE did several years back. No one knows how to play the game. Best of all, gamblers love it. Its safe to say that PLO yields significantly more action than NL. If you were a compulsive gambler (aka recreational gambler) putting money on an online poker site and you were a bad player, would you prefer more or less action? While NL may be the more popular game at the moment and said recreational gambler may feel more "comfortable" playing NL, he ultimately has no clue what hes doing. Whether he has no clue what hes doing at NL or PLO, I think hell have more fun at PLO. These are just my observations. History tends to repeat itself, and as PLO gains popularity, more fish will make the shift. Even if they dont make the shift, the games are quite profitable as it stands.