I'm not even supposed to be here!

Event #2 , in which I decide to stick around and eat honey.

He remains formless. Not like the river flowing down a hill, nor like the unmuddied waters of of the still lake, but rather as a drop of dew condensed in a child’s pocket maze game. Tilting and moving of the environment takes us closer and closer to our goal.

Blah, blah blah. I finished 3rd last night in the WPBT #2 event (PLO). I’d like to pontificate how brilliant my play was. How I bested the best PLO players. But both would be a load of bull. Play at our starting table was so plebian that it prompted Snalitrax to heckle us from the rail. “This is some of the worse poker I have ever seen.” He may have been right. By the time we made it to level 3, I was a firm 26th out of 29 left.

But when you are the short stack in PLO & the field is playing tentative, you can quickly catch back up by steal blinds with pot size re-raises pre-flop and scaring the already tentative field. I crawled back out of the basement twice and with 20 left, thought I might squeak into the points at 15. (I finished just in the points in event #1, NLHE).

So, with this in mind, I played my basic PLO strategy.
1. Stay away from garbage hands.
2. Stay away from raised pots pre-flop without premium cards.
3. Decide on the flop the value of going to the river vs. folding. (See Freddy Deeb)
4. And, of course, get your money in ahead.

#4 seems so obvious , and if you are playing hold’em it is. But in PLO, which is a drawing game, you often get your money in on the come. Instead, I was trying to use ½ pot bets on the come to dissuade garbage from chasing while still building a pot. If I hit a hand, I made these same bets so that I would not be too readable. I sacrificed a few big pots with the nuts by only building ½ pot, but I think it had a bigger EV on the long road to the final table.

Even at the final table, I think I was 8 of 9. But players were making some miscalculated moves and I was lying in wait with my premium holdings. Fast forward to 4 left and I am suddenly the chip leader. With 3 left, I build my lead to having half the chips at the table. But as the song says,” somewhere in a lonely hotel room is a man starting to realize that fate has turned its back on him.”

In the course of three hands, the short stack, whom I had targeted for elimination on this hand, got his money in behind on nothing better than an open ended straight draw (not even a wrap), which he hit. The very next hand, I run my flopped nut flush into a turned boat. Then, as the short stack, run my KK into a random set of 4 cards which send me home.

Still, if I am going to go out, that seems the way to do it. In a blaze of fate. I could curse fate, but instead I will thank it, as I should have been on a plane to California and unable to play at all. But fate grounded the plane with “maintenance problems” and instead of working, I cash in event #2.

I will get to work on setting up event #3 when I return. And thanks to Biggestron (plays poker), for the thankless job of scorekeeping.