In my last blog I wrote about my auto-play problem. Since then I've been setting goals every time I play, i.e. to play two tables for 2 hours without exposing myself to any distractions, and slowly training myself in having more discipline. This seems to work, because I'm owning my stakes lately.

Last Saturday I got a phone call of a mate of mine that in a pool hall in Maastricht there was a pretty good HA (NLH/PLO mix game) running. After I promised my GF she could buy herself some new shades if I had a winning session, I drove off to Maastricht. It's about a 15 minute drive for me. When I arrived I introduced myself at the guys at the table. The oldest was about 45 years old, and the youngest in his early 20's. The game was HA 1/2, and I bought in for 400 euros. People looked at me funny because the rest all bought in for 100 euros, and they didn't seem to mind to play 50BB deep. Every orbit we switched games. The thing that grabbed my attention was that their PLO game (my specialty) was their weakness and NLH was their strong game. In the NLH game I played pretty TAG for a live game. And balanced my tightness by exploiting their lack of knowledge in PLO and playing LAG in that. The mistake I noticed the standard micro stakes PLO leaks; 3  betting all AAxx hands and playing passive on every board, putting it in with weak flush draws and playing bottom rundowns. The hand selection of the people playing PLO were as bad as playing 2 danglers and 3-betting 1 dangler. After about 9 hours playing I left with a profit of 1200 euros. I could won more, but in nlh I missed a big pot with a str/flsh draw and my kings got cracked once.

When I came home, the resemblance with the micro/low stakes plo games got me thinking how I could explain how to beat the micro PLO tables to a NLH player. Instead of dictating how you should play I'd rather give you a list of the biggest leaks in micro PLO.

playing OOP (biggest leak)

Only 3-betting AAxy and AAxx

Drawing to the non-nuts

Putting your money in with a hand without redraws

Playing hit/miss post flop

Folding too much when the board pairs on the turn or river

Not showing aggression in late position

And maybe the second biggest leak of all, bet sizing!

Bet Sizing is a common mistake. A lot of people don't get nearly enough value from their hands and bluffs. Your strategy should be something like this: On dry boards you want to give a discount to make people put money in the pot (elastic purchase), and at wet boards you should make them pay to see the next card (inelastic purchase). This doesn't mean you need to check your draws and bet your made hands on wet boards, you need to balance your bluffs/draws and real hands, c-bets and value bets into playing them according to the board, not according to hand strength.

Super dry board: 5d5sTh       1/3 pot.

Dry boards: 2s6dQh              1/2 pot.

Dryish boards 2h3s9h            2/3 pot.

Wet boards: 4h5s7d              4/5 pot.

Super wet boards: 7h8hTs      full pot.

I'm sure when you're playing the small plo games you'll see lots of these leaks, maybe even in your own game. And leaks are to be exploited.

 Next time I'll write a lil something about Turn syndrome