jayhead91

Yes my friend. I think it's still quite practical to learn as of now. If you aspire to nosebleeds and have huge dreams and willing to take the risk probably not the best option now as it used to be. Hold'em is pretty solid for that and will continue to be despite being the strongest game of poker players in general. If you are a big risk taker the 5 and 6 card PLO games might be attractive. I don't think that is for me though, to play the type of volume you need at high stakes will become problematic and it's a game where you would need big volume to combat variance. But 4-Card I think you could settle at a nice mid stake and do pretty well so I'm going to learn it. As far as learning games that are sure to still be relevant in many years I'd say you can only bank on variants of Hold'em. Tournament, Cash ring games and I think 3 person Spin's as well in an online setting. PLO I think is pretty safe but I can't guarantee that, there are now 3 PLO games competing with each other and Six Plus Hold'em has some players. All big gambling games more so than NLH so regular PLO isn't special any more for players who want to gamble and have fun and the tables are usually empty at the really large stakes on GG with all the action on 5 and 6 card PLO now. But I think the different versions of PLO might feed off each other. Cause someone playing 4 card might try 5 or 6 eventually and players playing with the additional cards might hop into 4 card games and I think nearly everyone playing 5 and 6 cards would have started off and have some experience playing 4 Card at least. Definitely stake dependent but I think there is a good chance that in general they might feed off each other rather than one variant cannibalizing the other. There might emerge a frontrunner though.

Stars is falling further and further behind. It's still got a good base but GG is taking more and more of the market on the international scene and it's languishing relatively speaking. Still the 2nd biggest site but becoming a distant second. That is why I asked for up to 200 Zoom because I think it will have few players on the Omaha 500 Zoom on stars not sure if they still have 500 PLO Zoom but I wouldn't be surprised if they drop it eventually or already have. Even NL 500 Zoom is on thin ice on stars with few players. GG though Rush and Cash basically their Zoom format is thriving but it only goes up to 200. Great reward system but their rake is a killer. It's really the only place to play fast fold on an international facing site. Don't have access to the American sites, I can play on ACR but I'm not really interested to on there and I think the Zoom would pale in comparison to GG. There is action at all fast fold stakes on GG, regular tables too but the most popular plo games varies by stake. 4-card usually has reasonable traffic, but 5 card can rival it depending and 6 card might be lower on popularity in the low to lowish mid stakes but be the most popular on some of the highest stakes with 4 card not having any players and 5 card having a few. But even on GG player pools at reasonable stakes 100, 200, 500 aren't that big on regular tables. You can find games but you would probably run out of tables if you wanted to play 4 tables any time of the day at lets say 500 not sure about 200. 200 probably sometimes running into an issue. There is no table selection though cause GG calls looking for bad players 'predatory' you are automatically placed at tables based on a few criteria you select, loose, fast, slow, deep stack but it doesn't matter what you input if the player pool is so low. Anyway action isn't bad up to low or lowish mid stakes 100, 200. Zoom no choice but up to 200 and I think the fact all the players drop plo 4 at the very highest stakes is telling. I think at that level most ppl willing to risk big money playing nosebleeds are studied at plo-4 so PLO-6 and to a lesser extend PLO-5 is the game of choice cause there is less material out there so they are all trying to outdo/one up each other. Regular PLO had that spot years ago with high stakes players, lots of gambling, big pots and lesser educated players but now what's the sense playing a game like this over Hold'em where the variance is so high if all the players are studied at high stakes and there is a more than reasonable amount of info on it. That is why I believe at least very high the advantage playing 4 card plo levels off and they gravitate to plo with more cards cause there is less info as I mentioned before so it's now replaced 4-card at that level. At least on GG don't know about other sites it depends on what games they offer, maybe rake structure influences what the high stakes players do as well. I mainly play on GG but I'll have to go back on Stars to check their Zoom and what the numbers are like. GG is pretty solid with the numbers but stars is better with rake and GG with the rewards. Hard to know which is better because GG is so secretive with it's rake system you just know you are paying much more rake and getting much more rewards. This system is extremely clever and propelled them to #1 cause it's like you just get all this 'free' money but ppl don't pay as much attention how much they pay in rake and it's a system no one can figure out. I can tell you the psychological effect is real. You will win money in GGCares&Cheers, standard rake back, I've won 2 Bad Beat Jackpots you will definitely have your share of luck on this site and whether you believe they are stiffing you with the rake and throwing you a bone they got most of the players. For the sake of poker and competition I hope stars can think of something and revive because if one company becomes too dominant they will end up doing what they want to customers/players.

Hi Emty, I'm new to PLO and my goal is to get to at least Zoom 200 on either PLO or Hold'em. Either way I choose I have decided to learn PLO currently but the only upside I see in choosing PLO over NLH is if the win rate would be higher, as I understand the swings in PLO can be tremendous. Would it make sense to try to take PLO to Zoom 200 over Hold'em? Is there a clear win rate edge in PLO to take advantage of at that level or would the variance be too great for not much uptick in profit. It's my impression that micro and low stakes players know a lot less about what they are doing in PLO compared to NLH at the same level so win rates can be high and it's worth playing for low stakes players but if at a high enough level the skill gets close to NLH at the same stake or at least closer or close enough I don't see it making sense to play a more high variance game for not much more reward except for fun purposes. Your thoughts please. Essentially what I'm asking is do the win rates level off with NLH at some stake? What stake would you estimate that to be on an international site like PS or GG? And maybe you would answer it with the previous question but to make clear does it level off by the 200 Zoom format on these sites if so is 100 the same? If let's say it is possible to make 10bb/100 as an expert PLO player on Zoom 100 that might not be too bad because it would equal what is good in NLH Zoom 200 if you get where I am coming from. I know hard and fast win rate expectations are not possible but I'd appreciate the general overview of difficulty level and possible upside or it's curtailment in comparison to NLH as a player rises. Cheers.

Hi, I know this post is about a year old but like the original poster I am also curious to what is achievable presently. These 1.2kk hands you have over what period was this achieved? I'd like to know because if it is going back 10 years then what was achievable when you played that portion of the hands from the data back then would be different now. Can you give a rough start date and how many of the hands you would have played in lets say the last 4 1/2 years?