The right way to study PLO

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The right way to study PLO

I played around 200k hands of PLO now and I think I improved my game a lot. I still struggle to find the right approach to studying. If I review my hands it feels like I am not really learning much as I lack an objective perspective on the hand.

What to you guys suggest is the best way to study PLO?

15 Comments

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MajinVeta 8 years, 9 months ago

Use a program like odds oracle. Even though you've played a lot of hands, I'd try keeping your questions simple. The more complex your hand analysis, the more assumptions you'll have to make and the less applicable to real poker your results will be. Just do a ton of comparing equities and go through your data base to see where you're winning and losing money. Getting the combinatorics down and looking at preflop equities is very huge, imo. I'm not the greatest at studying and I'm not super great at math, though. So take all the above with a grain of salt.

Here's your first question: which plo hand has the highest equity vs a random hand?

Disharmonist 8 years, 9 months ago

AAKQds. Problem is that your EQ preflop varies alot from the kind of blocker/ dominating flushdraws villain has. Example. You 3bet JT89ss against co range from BTN, which you all will agree is probably a good play. Now you get forget against someone who 4bets any AAxx which is reasonable. Now A654ss without your suit doesnt peform that well. Your hand has something from 40-45% EQ. While AAQT wih your suit dominated drops your preflop EQ massivly. Also postflop.: Flopping pair + fd in a 1SPR pot forces you to stack off. YOur EQ can be anywhere from 20%- 60% or even a wider range.

My point is, there is so much you cannot know by any means, even tough you narrowed villains range decently. Estimating average EQ is pretty tough to do on the fly while in a hand. Especially when you need as little as 33% EQ to break even.

DirtyD 8 years, 9 months ago

I'm not going to recommend a specific approach, I just want to point out that studying poker is as complex as playing poker. You're not going to find the right way to study and leave it at that, any more than you're going to find the right way to play and be done. So my advice is to make sure you're always genuinely striving to improve and be as creative as you can with how you go about it.

Ephedrine10 8 years, 9 months ago

here is how i do it:
I have specific marks in my HM2: For review-for hands that need to be posted or discussed, or I was unsure, Mistake-where i obv made one, and it was clear right after my bad call for ex, Good line- where i liked very much what i did.
While playing have a piece of paper in front of me , where u write: KQT8ss RD on riv : means u wanna know his range distribution on the river, for some reason, like bluffcatching or not. Then grab Pokerjuice, put in ranges, check the resutls-have your conclusion.
Furthermore:
I have an exercise book, where i put in my notes, while watching a video or from my "good lines", or when im reading articles. Here is an example I made yesterday: I open UTG 789Tss flop AK3ss (no fd) BTN called pre. plan is delayed cbet coz if he calls (with any FD, A+, wrap) u dont continue, and u have close to zero % EQ against his calling range, and the hands u are making fold, will often check behind allowing u to push them into the muck on the turn.... (This was taken prom Phil's Exploitative play on 0,5$/1$ zoom 2 tables video.
This is useful coz I kida autocbetted this in the past. Imagine 50+ notes like this... Before session I grab my notes , read them through all (it takes less than 10 min) then I start opening tables n play.

Regards
Eph

menofold 6 years, 3 months ago

What do you do with the hands in HM2 like "bad play" or "good lines"?
The "good lines" probably comes in to your note book which you reread every day and the "bad lines" you will just review once in a while, like every week once so they want repeat over and over again, or comparing all the "bad lines" with each other if there are similarities, like calling to much cbets in 3bet pots.
would you xplain it more in detail? Have you any updates according improvements of your game?

Th7TrueHeartLiesInOldNature 8 years, 9 months ago

here is my story from which u can take anything you want : i was superheavy for math and was doing all kind of very analytic work, for hours, varying from simple calculations, to EV calculations , PokerJuice work , Odds Oracle. The results in my play were such that i was losing at hypergalactic speed. I was misplaying many many hands. That left me very marked with a ton of scars , in numbers -5bb/100 at PLO50zoom over 200K hands. very ugly.

In my deepest despair , very close to the bottom, i decided to change my approach to poker both away from tables and in play, i found a 3 step guide how to win at microstakes. that was 20. april this year. since then i never touched any calculation, i spent like 30 minutes in total on PokerJuice , the only "study" i did was just pure thinking about the hands. I grabbed a 100K sample showing me 11.4bb/100 winrate at PLO25z.

So in my case, i perceive there is a limit to what i personally can digest from what am i studying. At first i was overwhelming myself with a ton of knowledge what led to even more -EV spots, then i took it very very lightly and suddenly i jumped at EV in a remarkable fashion

Disharmonist 8 years, 9 months ago

I can relate that it can be easy to overthink the game and find reasons for certain plays because of pseudo GTO reasons, balancing etc. and you might start thinking that the plain solution or best play in a certain spot must be far more complicated than what you initially think.

However, your comment sounds a bit like a teaser to an external ad, to be honest :)

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