The Beautiful Game

Heh, back already for the second post in one day. I haven't the time or (nor?) inclination to write up some of the cool stuff I trailed at the end of the last post. Instead I just want to quickly talk about a hand from last night, which sums up the beautiful situations you can get into in Pot Limit Omaha.

In short, I had 2c 2h 3c 5d in an unraised pot in late position. The flop came 2d 4h 6c. Kaching! A set, if a barrel-scraping one, to go along with a flopped nut straight. A bet and multiple calls on the flop. The turn came Kc, giving me a tiny flush draw also. I raised one opponent all-in making a pot of over 90 dollars.

I am loving this situation, and it shows the wonderful multi-way hand situations that arise in PLO. I have the nut straight, a set, and a small flush draw. It is possible that my set would be no good if the board paired, or that my flush draw would be beaten if it hit, OR that the river could make a higher straight for somebody. But the chances of a solitary opponent covering ALL those eventualities is more remote than Pluto. (Note to self: find out which planet is actually farthest away). Really, whatever four cards you put in his hand, I have to be a favourite here, the only question is how big a one.

Well, the result was that he had the same straight, no clubs but had turned two pair so some of my full house outs were contaminated. The river bricked and we split the pot, but I was in a close-to-freerolling situation. It was 60% to split, 30% for me to scoop, 10% for him to scoop.

These are the situations that make us Omaha players wonder why we ever played Hold 'Em. How frequently would you get a GOOD opponent to go all-in with you at Hold 'Em when you were in such a positive expectation situation?

Anyway, I know hand stories can be boring, I just wanted to give some idea of what I like about Omaha. Also, it occurred to me today as I replayed the hand in my mind (specifically, thinking that if I had raised preflop as I considered, my opponent would have folded) that this was a good example of poker camaraderie.

By which I mean, that my opponent in this instance was not only a decent player, but a guy whom I like and respect - at least in as far as I know him through the medium of a poker chatbox - and here we were throwing chips in, both hoping to take a whole buy-in off one another with a deceptive hand if we possibly could. And if one or other of us had scooped it, we would still have continued to chat amiably about football.

Note: I assume most pokerblog reader are American (since most pokerblog writers are, and its a frickin' big country) but I will not be calling football 'soccer' for your benefit! Unless I am horribly mistaken, Association Football predates the gridiron game and therefore has first dibs on the name. So American Football is American Football. And by the way I love that too, and not just because my favoured Patriots have turned into a dynasty over the last couple of years!

Further note: I have spent much of today reading another excellent blog. Great stuff from HDouble.

Pokerblogs are ruining my life

Yes they are... I googled ‘poker diary’ a couple weeks ago and before I knew it, had been sucked into a vortex of blog-reading from which I have yet to escape. Which would be fine if I wasn’t reading them at work.

But thank you Iggy, Decker, Pokerbunny, MeanGene, Felicia et al for a ton of good reading, and for inspiring me to finally start a poker journal myself.

I have kept a ‘real-life’ diary online for a couple of years, but have resisted filling it up with too much poker content. This for the sake of my non-poker-playing (and mostly-imaginary) readers, and to avoid giving them or myself the impression that I am a poker-obsessed mono-maniac. Who uses too many hyphens.

So anyways, here I can indulge and chronicle my obsession to the full, although I am sure some of my other interests and views will rear their heads from time to time. I think this blog will be a mixture of confessional, archive, fantasy, business plan, catharsis, crowing, crying, and lying….

Mmm, I have so much I want to write about, since I have been planning this blog for over a week. But I think that first I will be mundane and predictable and give you the quick skinny on me and my poker:

I am British, English in fact. I have been playing online for money for, hell I am not sure, about three years? I’ve moved over time from micro-stakes limit Hold ‘Em to pot limit Hold ‘Em and now my definite game of choice, Pot Limit Omaha. I play $50 dollar maximum buy-in at the moment. Last summer I was playing $100 and $200 buy-in games, and had a short period attempting to play for a living, after being made redundant. After a good start it all went tits-up, as we Brits say, and currently I am back using poker as a means to supplement my income. Which is desperately needed, since I am drowning in a sea of foolishly-accrued debt.

I play cash-games almost exclusively, with the odd ‘sit and go’ of No Limit Hold ‘Em or Pot Limit Omaha for a bit of side action. I’ve not historically been into multi-table tournaments online, but have dabbled a little recently and will write about that soon.

I’m starting this blog at a fairly high point in my pokering. I am playing good and running good in Omaha, raising frequently, making good decisions, using position, blah blah blah, winning 400 bucks over my last 20-odd hours of play. Not too bad, in my opinion, for a game with 25c and 50c blinds.

Coming soon: Why I don’t keep records, Playing against a world champion, Why aren’t I playing at Party?, and much much more