(Im)Perfect Omaha - Day 27

It's been a while since I reported on the (Im)Perfect Omaha experiment. I've been playing almost every day, and getting in at least 100 hands per session. The good news is that I've been learning a lot about micro-stakes Omaha, what works, what doesn't, what to watch out for, the types of hands to play, etcetera. The bad news is, well, shown here:
Early in the experiment, I was making money. Then, clearly, I ran into some kind of a brick wall about mid-way through. For the past 2700 hands I've essentially added zero money to the bankroll. Lots of swings up and down during this period, with basically nothing to show for my grinding. During this long dry stretch I frequently ran $20 or more up, only to lose that same amount the next time I sat down. In my defense, during this long dry stretch I ran into some big coolers, including three times when I held top boat only to find out I was up against quads. On the other hand, quite a few times I had straights and flushes when the board paired. I'm also pretty sure I had more than one case of Success Syndrome at work on my psyche. Enough said.

Anyway, some lessons learned thus far:

No Fold'em Omaha. You simply can't get the majority of players to fold preflop in the microstakes games. The two main reasons in poker that we bet/raise are to (a) get better hands to fold; and (b) get worse hands to call. The former is essentially impossible at the $10NL games preflop. The latter certainly has merit, but because it is so easy to have the nut hand on one street become the non-nut hand on a later street, I'm not sure that value betting PF is really worth it in most instances. Sure, if you have AAKKds or AAJT you need to ram and jam, but for the vast majority of speculative hands (which, in PLO, are essentially 90% of your hands), keeping the PF pot size small preflop OK.

Pot Control. Again, in all forms of poker, the idea of betting when you think you're ahead is key... but you also need to assess how vulnerable your hand is and factor that into the equation. Sometimes it makes sense to bet to protect, but other times it makes sense to check/call to keep the pot manageable with your non-nut made and drawing hands.

Swings. As stated above, the variance is big in this game... at least the way I'm playing it. You better have a strong stomach if you think you're going to play PLO for profit.

Big Hands. One of the hardest things for this hold'em bug to get used to is accepting just how weak top two pair and non-nut straights are. Dozens of times I was (re)taught the lesson that PLO is a game of the nuts/drawing-to-the-nuts. A set of aces multi-way on a A-J-T board is almost certainly going to lose unless you can get the board to pair.

Position. This is probably the biggest lesson I've learned thus far. If your PF hand isn't super strong, you should just fold it from the blinds and/or UTG, and move on. Having a 2-pair-type hand on a flop OOP in PLO just plain sucks.

All-in for now...
-Bug