CRUSHING THE MICROS: variance, volume, rake, tilt and how they connect
Posted by analihilator
Posted by
analihilator
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Low Stakes
CRUSHING THE MICROS: variance, volume, rake, tilt and how they connect
hey guys,
so this year i've been focusing on working my way up the PLO micros, playing 99% zoom. i have been grinding, watching videos, reading forums, following along in the RIO skype pokerjuice group and otherwise trying to develop my game. my starting point, of course, was Jonna's $100 micros experiment ... this confirmed to me that the micros are indeed beatable, in fact crushable; however one thing i always wondered was why when i saw jonna slumming at the micros, he only ever seemed to be one-tabling ..
so after crushing PLO10z in jan, in february i focused on a high-volume approach to zoom25, playing predominately 4 tables at a time and averaging 2500 hands a day. i enjoyed success in the first ~12k hands but immediately tanked, following a steady zigzag decline for a winrate of -4bb/100 over 52k. i lost $560, paid $1712 rake and ran ~1600bb under expectation.
i found myself getting tilted often, with my usual pattern being either:
a) start off winning, then experience 'winner's tilt' and get steamed when i dumped off 'my' profits to beats and coolers, which would worsen the decline as my play would suffer immediately if briefly,
or
b) start off losing, wind up down 4-10 buy ins, sigh and grind all day to get back to even or close-to.
interestingly, the first scenario always tilted me a lot more than the second. as a result, i developed pretty good tilt control; being able to laugh at myself was key, but i had to use that tilt control, every day, a lot.
so ok i had a bad month, i run under expectation, and i tilted off more than necessary as a result of getting steamed by the beats put on me by zoom25's numerous fish/whales. knowing i was in the red while paying ungodly amounts of rake every day also stuck in my craw.
so after talking with zenfish, alecks, midori & co (i think mostly they gave me this advice because they were sick of me whinging), i decided that while the micros are beatable, the rake environment and the particulars of how i was reacting to tilt indicate that a solid winrate is more easily attainable under a lower-volume regimen, and that, for me at that point at least, my 4table highvolume approach would make me a break-even player at best (and i wasnt even that; not even close).
so this month i have played 1-2tables for 95% of my sessions, focusing on getting every decision right, with a starting goal of maintaining 20bb/100 over 10k. i am having basically no tilt issues, and i am up 2600bb over 10.75k hands, +650 (470 rake), for a winrate of 24bb/100 (all-in adjusted to 20bb/100).
i don't know how all the crazy 4 table grinders at the micros deal with tilt; im sure they are all individuals who suffer from it and deal with it in their own ways.
BUT THE MORAL OF THIS STORY: in terms of establishing yourself as a solid winning player, i think it is very important to stick to 1-2 tables and establish that you can crush your given stake for a solid winrate before you start adding more tables. the variance is too crazy, the fish too clueless, and the rake too high. but if you just knuckle down on 1-2 and focus on getting every decision right, the micros are very easily crushable.
goal for the month: keep my all-in adj bb rate above 15. oh and i'd better book a bit more volume or i wont even crack goldstar, lol. sorry 'stars ! i'm sure THEY'D prefer i stick with the high volume approach !
good luck at the tables !
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BAD APPROACH:
variance
GOOD APPROACH:
variance
Yay, another member who has seen the light and joined the winner's circle. Well done! :-)
The thing is, information doesn't become knowledge or wisdom before experience is thrown into the mix. Some variation of your process is necessary for most of us. And in hindsight it all seems ridiculously simple. ;-)
Some people are cut out for multitabling and some are not. Find a style that fits you and stick with it. If i play 8+tables i find myself just autogrinding, not paying any attention to villains and just play my cards.
Thx JP,
It is nice to see it written out backed up by some graphs. My results were always worse when playing 4 zoom tables. For me a z-table is comparable to 3 regular tables. So adding one more z-table is a big deal in comparison to adding regular ones imho. I tricked myself into thinking that I could play tighter when playing more z-tables, but the overall time you have to make decisions stays the same since you always have 4 tables facing action. Playing tighter in zoom just means you play more hands per hour because you quick fold more often. For me one of the most tilting things was timing out preflop which happened at some frequency while 4 tabling.
Did your stats (VPIP/PFR/...) change when 4 tabling in comparison to 2 tabling?
let me check for the periods corresponding to my graphs:
52k losing: 26/16/5 cb 65/55 aggression 2.6/50
11k winning: 30/18.5/6 cb 70/53 aggression 2.6/50
I couldn't agree more. Really good post. I've been in exactly the same situation and I've been thinking what is wrong with my game lately and I got to same conclusion you posted about.
My biggest problem is that I always have to get that 3rd and/or 4th table to play zoom, to get in some higher volume for quicker supernova. My game hurts a lot more from that than I thought. I've paid over 6k in rake this year playing plo25z and 50z which is just ridiculous, while losing during these months. The end of the last year I started to redevelop my game and only played 2 zoom tables and had really nice results. Understanding this shouldn't have taken over 3 months... Im feeling pretty F stupid right now.
don't feel stupid. think in terms of our social monkey tendencies. 'hey that asshole is here every day grinding 4 tables for 8 hours playing hyper agro and he always has big stacks, therefore i should be able to do it' ... remember the upwards selective bias in poker, if someone is really crushing the shit out of the micros they should be moving up pretty quickly, if 6 months later they are still at the same microstake 4tabling the same style .... maybe they're all just doing it because everyone else is doing it ? pretty funny when you think about it. forget supernova.
Yeah i've realized that I shouldn't set getting supernova as a goal, but its just a bonus that comes with enough of playing. It's hard to get rid of old (bad) habbits of trying to rake as much as possible... those good old days of 50%+ rb and 20+ tables and easy games.
its a brave new world. lucky you've found the right community if you want to keep up with all the new tools that the fresh crops of geniuses are gonna be using !
Congrats on doing well and finding an approach that works for you.
Question - I enjoy plo and am not a great plo player in the slightest. What are the best options/resources for a beginner? I'm looking to play micros to improve my game.
pretty great resources to be found on this site, fella.
aside from that, bugs' 'plo from scratch' guide is required reading. google that shit
Thanks Jesse. Appreciate that information, hope everything is well.
Graph is from Zoom50 with an MTT Ratio of 3,5. I know that is no sample whatsoever, but I believe one can see the tendency. Once I get to 100K hands I might post a new graph.
What is important to achieve good results in micro/lowstakes Omaha in my personal opinion:
- as already mentioned by others, play as many tables as you're comfortable with. Just grinding down xx tables to get in sample or because you see other players doing it is not the right approach. For instance, I am very comfortable playing 3 tables of Zoom, but once I add 1 more table I see myself not attacking enough or simply missing our on spots. Of course that's something one should be working on, which is the reason I try to add the 4th table if I see that I am concentrated enough and feel like I can handle it.
- as a cashgame player (esp. if you play Zoom) you have the option to take a break any time you want, that is a privilege a tournament player doesn't have. Unfortunately I see many players not making use of that privilege and just grinding 3-4 hour sessions without breaks. Sure, if you feel that you are "in the zone" or you are able to play sessions this long, sure, go ahead.
- combating tilt. If you made a play or two and 2 seconds later you're not really happy with it, you might be tilting, no matter if it actually cost you money or you even made some money in that spot. Those wrong, or rather not best decisions we make sum up in the longrun and end up costing us a bunch of money and EV. Once again, you have the privilege of making breaks at any time, and once you realize that you are not playing your A-Game, sit out at the next BB, go for a short walk, make some notes from hands earlier in the session, or even watch an episode of your favourite show, as long is it doesn't last an hour. It helps you immensely to get your mind free from whatever was the reason you were not playing your A-Game. If this scenario continues over and over in the session, you might be better off quitting for today.
- note taking. Also something most players underestimate, especially at microstakes. However, against regulars you are playing on daily basis, taking notes on plays that are not standard, especially in bigger pots (raise in 3bet pots, leadshove range w/SPR2 etc) can improve your winrate very significantly, while it takes about 10 seconds to make the note. Also a reason for not playing to many tables is to be able to see those hands/spots where your opponents range might be off or note worthy.
- (esp. important for lower stakes PLO) not getting into multiway pots with low ss/ds garbage. Hands like 5543, 5432 8653 etc don't play out great if the pot goes multiway. Nonetheless, I see so many regulars overcalling with those hands, flopping bottom two and a gutter or the idiot wrap and chasing it, not realizing how much money they're actually investing over the hand, and how much it costs them in the longrun.
- attacking blinds/late position play. In my opinion the biggest leak of almost all micro and lowstakes players in PLO. You can go ahead, filter 5 regs of your choise and see how high their "Fold BB vs BU steal" is. From my experience those numbers start somewhere in the 60s (better defenders) and go up to 85-90 (no comment). Still, most players don't open any close to an appropriate amount on the button considering how much money they would be printing. Even after defending (especially if done wider) they will be folding a decent amount of flops, and not to forget, our 4 cards may hit something nice as well :) Just btw, my overall steal succuess rate (CO,BU and SB) amounts 35.4 , which is a pretty high number.
- attacking weaker regulars. Guys, use the spots that come at you. Most guys below PLO100 have significant leaks in their postflop game, whether it's over/undercbetting, barreling turns to frequent/infrequent, c/f a ridicolous amount after skipping cbet (numbers go usually from 75 to 95 at lower stakes), and I could go on for another half a page. Check out Phil's and Oddsen's videos, the two of them show so many great spots and opportunities for attacking boards of all kinds (not that the other coaches don't teach how to attack boards, but for me these two explain it the best). However, to recognize those you need what wll be my next, and so far last point on the list:
- a well-arranged HUD. Having the most important stats listed right away as well as having quickly available pop-ups for less important stats is very helpful and saves a lot of time. However, for most stats it requires a quite big samplesize, so for instance if someone is cbetting 40% on the flop over 15 samples, but is barreling 75% of turns it doesn't necessarily means that he is overcbetting on the turn, he could just have had stronger hands to be betting with since he is betting less frequently on flops and might also come to the turn with a stronger range, which happened to be able to barrel 3/4 of the turns so far.
There might be more relevant points for that list, but I believe that should do it for now. If something comes to mind mind that I think is important I will propably add it below.
Feel free to critique any of the points if you disagree with me, I just hope the points can make some players reconsider their approach to the game and improve it aside of the actual playing.
Cheers!
agree with all of the above, in fact its pretty much a checklist of the pieces i have put together in order to be a solid winning player @ z25.
HOW DO YOU GET THAT REDLINE???
Yeah, wondering the same thing???
Are you refering to me?
No, the other guy that posted the positive redline graph.
Questions:
Are you some medium stakes murderer?
Did you run hotter than expected?
Are your games full of regs?
Is it possible to achieve this line in games full of stations?
HU or 6MAX?
bb/100 over larger sample?
and last
Does this redline mean basically bluff and never get caught?
Oh and say you play a very loose style, is it still doable?
Fair enough :) I thought jesse also posted a graph with a redline, wasn't really looking at it too much.
OK, so:
Nope, I have never played PLO higher than PLO200 and my overall sample in PLO Cashgame is a 5digit number. I come over from Limit Hold'em where in the last few years I've been beating mid- and higher stakes game in a similar manner that this graph is showing (P.S.: I'm not TP). I even had applied at RunItOnce at some point, but unfortunately the interest in LHE hasn't been high enough that it was worth signing a pro. But a good friend of mine made it into the team, so it's at least something :)
I wouldn't say that, but I believe that over that small sample I wasn't running enough into top of their ranges, so say after c/r a 955 board my opponents didn't have it what I believe is a high enough frequency. But over this sample and given that I play 3-4 tables of Zoom and don't realize every time I get called and give up the turn because I'm also focused on different action and have given up on that spot in my mind.
Since this graph is from PLO50 Zoom you can't be serious with your question :)
Define "stations" in a PLO Ringgame. It's obvious that I'm playing exploititavely to achieve that redline and by that I'm also exploitable, so if the pool was aware of the frequencies (not that I think that they're way off, but they are likely to be higher than they should be in a "perfectly balanced" game).
Also like I said, it's 50PLO, and given how many recreational, not-foldy players are in the pool, I'd answer that question with a "yes".
Zoom 6max only, I've never been much of a HU player, although I prefer heads-up pots over multiway action.
The last time I was playing PLO before I played the hands caught in this graph I was occasionaly stacking off hands like KK97ss BUvsBB pre for 100bb and were going with every FD+gutter disregarding the action. I believe you might get a idea what that graph might look like :) (Well, it was not thaaat bad, I was losing like 3-4bb/100 or so, but I certainly wasn't a winningplayer back then).
But as I said, once I get to 50 and 100K hands each I might post the graph or just send it to you as a message.
In German there is the word "jein", which means "yes and no", but in a more funny way.
The red line sums up from my winnings from late position (stealing pre and cbetting vs defends), attacking a good bunch of postflop spots (headsup and esp. multiway) where people can just do nothing about it and my hand just matters in the way of blockers for their continuing range (e.g. leading 3way 3bet pots being in the sandwich). I basically always try to make my opponents life hard, sometimes even at the cost of a little bit of EV, and regret it afterwards because at PLO50 it's not too necessary to sacrifice EV since the pool is so large and people are mostly not realizing that they might get outplayed, because the pool doesn't play very sticky and people do usualy have it. Obviously, the higher I will move up in stakes the tougher it will be to keep the redline going this straight up because those factors mentioned just change a lot.
I wouldn't call a VPIP 32, 3bet 8 style very loose, I assume that many mid/high stakes guys play a much wilder style than that in much tougher games. I just try to be positionally aware and steal from LP as much as I think I can get away with, and by the way I see some people adjusting to that I think it's working out just fine. I believe once I will move up to 200PLO people will be able to adjust better and my VPIP will go down to about 28-30, which I think is a good number.
Cool, you're a bit of a prodigy then. That or what you learned from LHE and some RIO videos (I suspect?) really did wonders for you. From this graph though, It looks as if you're impervious to tilt.
Really loose that I was referring to = (40+)
I will see how the grind will go on and whether I can keep up the pace of the green and the red lines. 10K hands is basically nothing and it can change faster than I will even realize it.
Yeah, RunItOnce did their job well in putting out some serious content made by incredibly good coaches (a good player doesn't necessarily make a good coach), I was signed with a different account for an Elite membership for about a year but decided to open a new account for several reasons. At least it makes me post more on the forums :)
What I can tell is applying concepts taught by Phil, Ola and André in their High/Skystakes videos works out just fine at lowstakes if you can make certain adjustments in your opponents betting and continuing ranges. So I can only encourage everyone to sign for the Elite Pack and try the mass of information that those guys are throwing at you (in the good way).
becoming impervious to tilt is necessary but not sufficient to crush these games.
and i am signing up for elite now.
My jar of cookies is empty. :(
Not to be captain buzzkill, but on your "bad graph" you are also up about 11 BIs after 11k hands. Both sample sizes are very small. Be careful not to put too much into it. Trust me, I've done this lots and lots and lots and lots of times. Just try not to focus on results at all, just focus on every individual hand. If you make good decisions, the rest will follow.
That being said, it's much easier to make good decisions while positive, so crack on mate!
Hey, congrats Jesse!
I think you're probably attributing too much of your results to your decision making and not enough of them to variance. Tracking winrates in PLO requires a large sample size.
the tendency is to add more tables to get to the 'long run' sooner. every time i've done that, i/ve tanked.
winrate holding steady @ 20bb/100 over last ~16k now.
and variance affects my decision making a lot more when i zoom 3-4 tables than when i zoom 1-2. former case, i need to use active tilt control, regularly, every day. second case, i barely tilt at all, no matter how bad i run.
Maybe it's not the fact that more tables tilt you easier, maybe it's because the timeframe you have to make your decisions with 4 tables is too short at the moment, so you end up making less optimal decisions. This is the typical paradox of how much of your winrate is worth sacrificing for the added volume since you're unlikely to have both a high winrate and volume. Just because you CAN play 24 tables doesn't necessarily mean you should. :)
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