Four cards and a grindette - kiss my Ace: Tennis, Omaha & HOT stuff (Chilis)

Do it yourself!

Not much poker going on here, even though I´m still on vacation! The reason is that Homer and I are pretty busy with things we finally have time to do, not only the cleaning, but there´s also gardening to do in winter, tons of reparations and renovations (Homer is a big fan of Do it Yourself). So, we got a lot of Do it Yourself and stuff to give away, to finally tidy up. There was a pretty big mess in the attic! And I have a bunch of clothes to repair (sewing).

Not only the apartment itself but also the attic has to be brought in order! We have tons of blankets and our off season clothes have to be stored somewhere - which should be not the attic anymore but new cupboards which we bought at IKEA (Homer is building them). We did not even throw or give away much stuff, rather we build some more nice space to store them.

Homer is very keen on cleaning and tidying up the attic. There´s a lot of work to do

Hi Prim

I hope you are well. We were on Kyyberi's PLO course together a while back, although it's taken me a while since then to actually find an opportunity to put any of it into practice.

Just catching up on your blog since you re-started the bankroll challenge. I was already beginning to wonder whether you'd find enough traffic on Party to maintain the cash games, but then you answered that for me with your switch over to Stars.

As I'm discovering from my own low-stakes challenge, there's plenty of opportunity to take advantage of the bonus monies that Stars offer at the moment, particularly the PLO daily leaderboards, if you can play 300 hands in a day (which isn't too difficult playing Zoom). Historically Stars was always pretty terrible for this, unless you could generate enormous volume, but it's currently a decent environment for micro-stakes play.

Great to see that you and ghaleon are both still active on here since we finished the course, as it's been interesting to see how your individual situations have progressed from there.

Best wishes in your challenge.

Hey Riffman,
thanks a lot! I was a bit "lazy" too, that´s why I re-started the BR-challenge, this time with PLO and PLO8. Especially during summer I use to spend more time away from the tables. Fall/winter is always a good time to put our knowledge into practice. ♠_thumbsup:

Stars is the ONLY option for Germans to get a decent traffic on PLO cash. The traffic in PLO CG on Party is unfortunately very bad but I still play tournaments there.

Not much action ...

...but at least a couple of nice hands and good flops. PLO can be terrible, especially when you have long streaks of just hitting nothing and there are plenty of calling stations at your table. But this time I got some really nice hands (full houses) which survived the river.

But there were also longer streaks of being card-dead or completely missing the flops, there were C-bets I shouldn´t have made and two bad calls.

I should remember that on Stars you can get the hand histories, so I can show some hands in the future. ♠_thumbsup:

Today, I made a small profit, not impressive, but a little winning.

Patience, patience

Well, what´s happening on the PLO roller coaster this week? Played yesterday a session PLO2, because there was no traffic on PLO5. Today, gladly, I could find enough traffic on PLO5 and played a session of about 1,5 hours on Party and Stars. Could find 2 PLO5 tables on Party and there were several on Stars.

Did not play well today and yesterday I noticed some stupid mistakes as well. I really have to go through the c-bets, when to c-bet and when not to. Noticed that I make a couple of bad c-bets and today, there were three bad calls.

Nevertheless, there´s a little profit this week, even though today I had a little loss of -1,30 €

Noticed also how IMPORTANT patience is!! No matter if you miss 999 flops, you have to stay patient and I´m getting into it mentally.

Have you considered playing the Zoom tables on Stars rather than the normal ring games? Traffic is pretty consistent there and you're guaranteed 6 players to a hand, plus the advantages of getting more volume in the equivalent amount of time (both for earning bonuses and accumulating experience in the available time.

The Party equivalents were very hit and miss in terms of traffic, but the Stars ones are great.

Zoom tables are probably somewhat nittier than the regular ones, but I've got used to them now and enjoy dealing with the variety of opponents in any particular session.

Originally posted by Riffman117
Have you considered playing the Zoom tables on Stars rather than the normal ring games? Traffic is pretty consistent there and you're guaranteed 6 players to a hand, plus the advantages of getting more volume in the equivalent amount of time (both for earning bonuses and accumulating experience in the available time.

The Party equivalents were very hit and miss in terms of traffic, but the Stars ones are great.

Zoom tables are probably somewhat nittier than the regular ones, but I've got used to them now and enjoy dealing with the variety of opponents in any particular session.

Don´t really like Zoom, hurts my eyes. I may try it some time but I´m happy with the regular ring games.

Let´s see. Maybe I´ll give it a shot.

Fair enough, I know what you mean. It does take a bit of adjusting to get used to it.

Having historically been used to playing 4 tables of non-Zoom poker without too much difficulty, I find that 2 is optimal playing Zoom, but even moving from 1 to 2 took a while to get used to.

Originally posted by Riffman117
Fair enough, I know what you mean. It does take a bit of adjusting to get used to it.

Having historically been used to playing 4 tables of non-Zoom poker without too much difficulty, I find that 2 is optimal playing Zoom, but even moving from 1 to 2 took a while to get used to.

I usually play 4 regular tables PLO5 or PLO2 (depends on traffic).

The common wisdom back in the day was that one Zoom table is just about comparable to four regular tables.

Reg tables offer some advantages, like being able to play in a more opponent-specific way (only partially possible at Zoom, and you would ideally need a HUD for it), but maybe Zoom could be worth checking out when you're getting bored with those card dead stretches again.

Originally posted by Harrier88
The common wisdom back in the day was that one Zoom table is just about comparable to four regular tables.

Reg tables offer some advantages, like being able to play in a more opponent-specific way (only partially possible at Zoom, and you would ideally need a HUD for it), but maybe Zoom could be worth checking out when you're getting bored with those card dead stretches again.

Zoom on Stars is HUD friendly, thankfully, so all the relevant stats are available. Makes a big difference. Having ground out some decent volume in recent weeks there are many familiar names popping up, not all of them good players, including some of the regs.

There's a definite trade-off between difficulty level and the ability to churn out hands more rapidly. Its worthwhile for some, not for others. The primary reason for the suggestion to Prim was the intermittent traffic levels, but it sounds as if it's not too problematic for her, based on her reply.

Three players and one straight....

...this is what I saw the first time in CG! Played a little mini-session (1 hour) PLO5 on Party and one of the funniest hands I ever saw was this str8 A to 5. This was the nutstr8 and Villains were raising and re-raising and going all-in and I checked 4times if I really have a str8 and if I really have the nutstr8 and after I saw that I had the nuts on the river, I jammed my stack all in. The showdown was crazy: ALL THREE players (including myself) had the same str8 A to 5!!! And of course we all had to pay the rake :facepalm::rage: Was funny anyway. :f_ugly::f_ugly:

It´s Saturday and like (almost) every weekend, I play MTTs. ♠_biggrin: Played the 0,55 $ PLO Deepstack, the 2.20 $ PLO Bounty Hunter, the 2.20 $ PLO8 Deepstack and the 1.10 $ PLO8 Deepstack on Party Poker.

0,55 $ PLO Deepstack: Final table, 3rd place
2.20 $ PLO Bounty Hunter: ITM, 9th place
2.20 $ PLO8 Deepstack: busto
1.10 $ PLO8 Deepstack: ITM, 13th place

Again, a nice profitable Saturday. Wanted to play more MTTs but what did I say? Quality before quantitiy! ♠_smile:

Cash Game: 1 stack up.

Really nice results! ♠_thumbsup:

Originally posted by Harrier88
Really nice results! ♠_thumbsup:

Yeah, FINALLY ....! After a long long card-dead streak in CG.

Week 8 recap

What did I learn this week?
Especially patience! On my current limits I noticed that I should c-bet a bit less and instead (especially on PartyPoker), just wait patiently for a solid hand and value bet. Interestingly, on Stars I can use a bit more bluffs and collect more small pots, while on Party I only have to wait patiently for a decent hand or make a couple of thin value bets. There are WAY more loose-passive calling stations on Party than on Stars.

I also adjusted my starting hand ranges (tighter!).

MTTs show very promising result! Thinking about playing more MTTs, but that´s a question of time.

Week 8

BR last week: 412, 35 €
CG hands: 450 (rough estimate)
MTTs: 4
BR now: 424,65 €
Result: +12,30 €

MTT graph

I have quite promising results in MTTs so far. It is really worth thinking about playing more MTTs on PartyPoker, isn´t it?

The Troll Challenges continue in 2022!

Harrier and I agreed on the Troll Challenges this year and I decided, as otherwise it´s getting way too complicated and (little spoiler): there is PLO8 involved, I will make them count also for the BR challenge.

Last year we started with our fun Troll Challenges and this will also continue this year. As I have transferred half of my BR to Pokerstars (due to bad traffic on Party in CG), where the Troll Challenges take place, I decided to combine both challenges. So, the Troll Challenges do count for BR in 2022!

3-Way Nut chop Way to go!
Who cares about the win/loss — wild and crazy hands are the reason to play poker...

Boring instead of wild and crazy

This is absolutely right, Vorpal! Played also a little session yesterday: a mini-CG-session and some MTTs! My yesterdays session was boring. Very boring! Played 1 hour PLO2 and PLO5 on Party and 4 MTTs: 0,55 $ PLO8 Bounty Hunter, 2,20 $ PLO8 deepstack, 1,10 $ PLO8 deepstack and the 1,10 $ HORSE on Stars (as Troll Challenge AND part of the BR-challenge). None of the tournaments went well. I was totally card-dead, with two unlucky busts in PLO8.

AAQ5ss didn´t make it vs. A6xx (pre flop all in), who made the flush
In the 1.10 $ PLO8 deepstack, I lost with middle set versus top set, against which I held a blocker (otherwise wouldn´t have jammed it in on flop). Held 6639 on a 9-6-3-flop, figured that as I hold a blocker for 99xx, it will be unlikely to look into top set. But unlikely is not 0! Jammed flop and looked straight in to 99xx top set.

CG went pretty card-dead as well and I left the tables with -70 cent.

Well, not every session can go well. Let´s see what this week of the BR challenge will bring ... ♠_smile: