Heisenberg

IF you can beat it. That seems to be a big 'if' from the data available. Unless the data in those charts is incomplete/inaccurate, or there are tons of crushers at 500z who have moved up beyond the 50-200 rake trap. Which seems unlikely.

Do we have anyone here who has crushed 100z or 200z for a big sample to refute the info on 2p2?

Yeah the comment about deep tables is probably a valid one. Would be nice if zoom was a deep ante format instead.

Given that so few people seem to beat zoom, why do so many regs still choose to play it?

Yeah I saw the 2z to 100z challenge, but the guy who did it is a crusher. For an average player learning to beat the games, it looks a hell of a lot tougher. The extra volume is surely better for the learning curve, but it could be tough to move up if your roll isn't increasing much due to rake.

Wrt moving up, how high are we talking? 200z still had some razor thin winrates, and I find it hard to believe that the drop in rake is enough to allow higher bb/100 in the 500z games given how tough they are. I agree that the best players won't stay at 50z or wtv for long so the highest volume players aren't going to be the best players, but you'd expect to see winrates climb at the levels above as better players move up and escape the rake trap. Which doesn't seem to be the case at 100z/200z at least.

Do you have any reads?

AKQJ performs pretty poorly against very tight ranges, so as nitty is it seems this might be a fold 100bb deep. Readless you aren't giving too much up by folidng this hand, but if you have any indication that villain 4bets wider than mainly AA then obv this hand gains a lot of value.

Ditto. Anyone?

Skype name: elcuhpacabra117

I play a mixture of games including MTT, PLO and live NLH but am now adding in some zoom at 25NL or 50NL as the rake at micro PLO is awful (there are actually better winrates in NL zoom than PLO zoom $1/$2 and below).

Add me on Skype if this discussion group is still going ahead.

I might be interested in this yeah. Could you let me know more details about it?

Bump - did anybody ever set up a group?

I play 50PLO zoom on stars - interested in joining or starting a small stakes group.

Skype: elchupacabra117

Feel free to add me/talk about hands or wtv. I'm online a lot in the day/evening.

I don't mind the check down tbh. I'm far from a PLO expert though and this flop spot isn't reallying clear to me either. C/c flop planning to c/f most turns seems ok altho does face up our hand somewhat. River is an easy bet fold for me as played, b/f is an important tool vs loose passive players as their frequency of bluff raising the river is so low.

Don't think it's a nit fold. Seems pretty standard to me. You're playing for set value only with no other connectedness. A hand like 7766ds plays much better as an aipf but even then I'm not sure if its actually +ev unless we know they both have AA which is far from certain here.

As long as you keep the raise sizing the same every time, you can raise bigger in EP and smaller in LP while still being unexploitable. E.g. pot utg, 3x in mp and co, and 2.5x btn. I wouldn't flex bet sizing based on hand strength however. Keep raise sizing uniform in each position and adjust your ranges instead, according to how people are playing vs your opens.

I like the line. +1 to ohgodwhy on bet sizing, a little bigger removes some of the doubt but other than that I probably play it exactly the same.

Problem with a bet is that you're putting in money bad vs his flop calling range, but the advantage of taking it down cheaply oop is pretty significant imo. Checking allows some of the decent equity hands we beat (mediocre flush draws) to push us off our hand when they would otherwise have folded to a bet, and villain still gets to go for value with his trips+.

midori - comment regarding this being a theory check is probably true, but I like to contrast this spot to holdem where I'm sure this is definitely a check in theory. KK on Axx flop is a much weaker hand in PLO than it is in holdem for example, where sb v btn we still have a pretty legit hand and checking becomes more attractive. So I'm fine 'bluffing' to just take it down in this spot, after all we're not very high up in our range and don't give much up equity wise in the event of getting raised.

@pav - ds KKxx is a good hand to add in when expanding your 3b range beyond just aces. Most opponents will 4b AA pre so we push decent equity pre vs the range that calls, and the suits/connectedness means we have playability on enough flops too.

I think at low stakes we can get away with being imbalanced in these spots because A. A lot of players aren't good enough to pick up on it and B. Those who are good enough probably focus on volume too much to realise what you're doing. So I would just bet the amount that you think gets the job done on a hand-by-hand basis, whether that 'job' is bluffing or valuebetting. Obv the exception is when there is a villain you have a history with.

To flip it around, if you got to the river here with a hand you wanted to turn into a bluff, I don't think many would advocate bluffing specifically because you rep AA so for that reason I think we can go for broke for value when we do have it.

I also think you can go bigger on the turn, the board texture doesn't change from flop to turn, his entire range is made hands and the 4 is better for his range than it is for yours.

I assume his calling range is pretty inelastic here but I could be wrong. There are no draws and the board doesn't change really, i think If you bomb river a lot of players won't get away from 99 or A4/94.

Betting smaller ensures a call but I think the range of hands that calls turn is pretty strong anyway so I'd be looking to bet pretty big. Although you rep AA very well I think opponents often talk themselves into a call when in their eyes AA is the only hand they lose to (A9 might even make a hero call down here for example because he blocks AA and 99). I don't play these stakes so perhaps regs there play much more straight up than at 25PLO or 50PLO, but I see solid looking players show up with some really weird stuff at times and I don't think we can narrow him to boats+ on the turn. But if that is actually his range then potting the river becomes even better as people just have a hard time laying down boats from what I've seen.

RIO videos are generally excellent, however as a COMPLETE beginner they might skip over some of the very basic stuff which you need when starting out. Donkr has an excellent article series called PLO from scratch, I would make reading this your first port of call and then move on to watching videos. It goes into starting hand selection, common situations etc and uses maths to back up its points (the article is a good introduction to the concept of flop equity distributions and how they affect pre flop decisions).

http://en.donkr.com/Articles/Category/PLO-from-scratch!-14

It's probably a good idea to start with the concept videos first, Tom Coldwell has done several. Then move on to live play videos. There is no "magic bullet" video so to speak that will make everything click for you, but the cumulative effect of watching many videos and seeing spots explained over and over will make things a lot clearer to you in a short space of time.

Oh, and play a lot! You'll find yourself in lots of tough spots to begin with and probably lose money for a while, but as a beginner that is ok. I think it was Phil that put this down to 'paying your tuition' when learning a new game. Videos and articles are good but in the end nothing beats experience. :)

I like the flop raise as I expect to be ahead of the donk bettors range even when called due to his sizing. Flatting such a small lead turns our hand a bit face up imo, if the other guy calls behind then I'm going to give it reasonable credit and won't be putting much money in unimproved. On river I guess we would need to do some
calculations on required calling ranges. I get the feeling that the decision is actually very close and is something we can't be very accurate with as it's impossible to know what range a random fish gets to the river with (does he smooth call bottom set on the flop or go with it for example?). We also don't know if he checks the river nuts, or if he will call with 2 pair. I suspect that even if we are good here most of the time, there just aren't enough combos of worse that call and checking back is the better option.

Yeah tbh having seen you write it down and gone back over the hand after the fact, flatting seems the totally standard/obvious line here. Even if he goes into c/c mode on a flush turn I don't think this player type can let his sets go after potting them on flop, and we can def get 2 big streets from him IP. I guess in the heat of the moment I gave him too much credit for being able to get away on scarecards when in reality that probably isn't the case. Thanks for the input. He had JJ fwiw and I felt pretty dumb when I rammed and he flipped em up after telling myself beforehand that it was probably top set! Live and learn eh.

53 seemed unlikely to me when he called for a second time but I think this was a flaw in my thinking (I was focused on what backdoors/2pairs the turn brought in that could enable him to call twice, sort of dismissing 53 as "he wouldn't call twice with just that there")

If he has T2xx, A4xx and A2xx hands for us to valuebet against on the river then it's reasonable to assume he also has T53x, A53x, 532x, 543x also as well as the KTxx, ATxx, QJTx combos. The more I think about it the more it feels like a c/back, even if we are good here most of the time he still has to be calling off with 2pair etc for a shove to be good. If he gets away from these sometimes then the value gained by jamming goes way down. I suppose as a fairly close spot, you can't really go too wrong either way with it.

Nice video, it's good to see content on the lower stake games - as you pointed out at the end there are important differences in the strategy required to beat them compared to the 200PLO level and above. Of course the leap between .5/1 and 1/2 isn't going to be massive, but videos made at 100PLO are definitely useful for people like myself starting out at the 25PLO/50PLO levels just below.

At what level would you say it becomes important to always be cognisant of balance, e.g. constructing a range for each play that you make, as opposed to simply playing hands in isolation in the way you think will maximise value? I am a relative PLO noob - I moved across from NL MTTs as my main game where at low stakes balance is practically a non-issue due to the size of the playerpool. As a consequence, most of my poker thought process centres around ranging my opponent and I find it difficult to think about my own hand in terms of a range, especially at the table in real time.

At 25PLO/50PLO there will of course be many regs and some of them will be very good players who think about the game, but with the size of the Zoom pool at these stakes will they really be paying attention to and exploiting my imbalances, or just focusing on volume and exploiting the player pool as a whole? I have definitely adopted the aforementioned tighter strategy until my postflop game becomes better, although at 17/12/5 I think I may still be a little too much of a nit! :)

http://i.imgur.com/zZi6n61.jpg

Having looked at this table, it doesn't actually seem like Zoom players will be affected below 25/50, being that zoom tables are always 6 handed. Regular tables should be fine too as long as they remain 3+ handed. What it might do is hurt the number of regular games running at SS/MS, as there is now no incentive to start tables off with the new double rake HU cap. I would also assume this spells the end for HU cash games at .5/$1 and lower, and stakes above that will possibly take a big hit too.

What I take from this, is that Stars may be attempting to end what it views as the most predatory forms of poker by killing off low stake HU (excluding reg-on-reg matches, HU is as predatory as it gets) and encouraging people away from regular tables into the zoom pool where they can't be bumhunted as effectively (less tables started=less available seats at regular tables=fish load up zoom instead). This is just a theory as to why they chose these specific places to increase cash game rake (ignoring the obvious overall reason of more profit). Although the bumhunting situation in HU poker needs to be addressed I don't agree that raking the games out of existence is the best way of going about it, and feel pretty bad for the SS/MS HU regs who are getting hung out to dry by this.

2+2 thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/pokerstars-increasing-rake-ending-bop-promo-who-will-become-new-1-site-1485517/

(rake increases announced a couple of days after he said it)

He can see the future.

Your point about higher rake potentially evening out the winrate discrepancies between PLO and NLH is an interesting one and I'd be curious to see if anyone has the numbers to back up/disprove it.

As somebody who has just decided to move from MTT as my main game to PLO (starting at 25PLO zoom) my gut reaction is that this is pretty bad news for me personally, and might mean I have to reconsider my choice of format (or indeed whether to play online at all - I play live NL locally and might make this my regular game if the increases prove to be as bad as people suggest). As a relative PLO noob I have a big challenge just learning to beat the game under present conditions - additional rake at the stakes above could make moving up and sticking there impossible for newer/weaker players like myself. I'll reserve judgement however as there will no doubt be people on here with far better analytical skills and databases who can offer a more solid opinion than mine.

Thanks for the replies all.

The variance calculator above was very useful and sort of confirmed my suspicion that over the medium term, variance in smaller fields with bigger buyins is actually less than if you were playing stuff like the daily bigs etc with fields in the low-to-mid-thousands. This was factoring in a significantly lower ROI in the midstakes tourneys too due to the overall tougher fields. 

@thephyzician - the point about fields is a valid one, although when I've played these games myself, or railed friends in them, there are still some pretty bad players in them. Luck of the seat draw I guess. The last 109 freezeout I played, all 8 opponents were big winning regs on my first table, but as people got knocked out or moved around there were still some 40% vpip passive fish. I think typically below the $109 level you'll have at least 1-2 fish on a 9-handed table, plus some regs are bad/spewy and others prone to tilt. So I think with a small field, the edge is there for sure - it's just so, so much easier to reach a FT when you have only 100-something players to get through not 1k+.