Branching out…

June 7, 2009 by Brian Townsend

Last night things I thought things were really picking up when there was a great 500/500 PLO game at the Bellagio. Unfortunately it only lasted for a few hours, but I did end up winning 70k. I played a few pots but the biggest one I played was against two great online players. Every round most of the table was putting on a 1k strattle so the game was playing closer to 500/500/1k and many players were trying to get the game moved up to that. It never did make it to that size though.

As for the hand I opened from middle position to 2k with AA56 suited to the ace in hearts and an aggressive internet player to my left reraised me to about 6k. The small blind, who also primarily plays online overcalled and I reraised the pot to about 18k or so. I started the hand with ~100k and my two opponents had about the same, maybe a bit more.

The flop was T32 with clubs. I held the ace of clubs (no other clubs though) and with almost 60k in the middle and about 80k in my stack this was a great flop for me. I made a committing bet and the player behind me went all in. The player in the small blind folded and we decided to run it four times. I never care how many times people want to run it and have always let my opponent decide. My opponent turned over J987 with nine high clubs. Running the numbers I had 55% equity on the flop vs his hand. The first time through a club hit, but the boards bricked off the three other times and I won about 65k in that hand.

I won a few other pots and made one big fold that I don’t want to write about. Its a fold that even six months ago I would never had made, but now I think its a fairly standard. I think it really shows how my game has improved in the past year or so. I know I would have snap called in the past and I only had to think for 20 seconds before I knew I had an easy fold.

After those games broke I went back to my room and played some 50/100 with a 15 ante PLO. I ended up winning 10k in the short session before the games broke.

Here was the biggest pot I played. I don’t like my play at all…

http://weaktight.com/1180367

Luckily I won alot of smaller pots to overcome this ugly hand.

After spending some time here in Vegas at the live cash games I realize its time for me to branch out and learn some new poker games. I am going to be very serous about learning the games played in the eight game mix on stars.

I am also going to do things very differently than I have in the past. The simple fact is learning new games doesn’t come easy to me and requires alot of work. When I learned limit holdem I lost alot of money playing bigger than I should have. I wasn’t bad by any means but against the tough line ups in the 300/600 UB games and 150/300 pound crypto games I was a significant underdog. Looking back I had some big leaks such as not defending my blinds enough and having poor game selection. Now I have limit down well enough to most likely beat 50/100 and 100/200 games on stars (They may have got significantly harder in the past year since I last played) but it took me a long time and I am by no means a great limit holdem player, but I feel my game is sufficient enough for a mix game rotation.

A similar thing happened to me while learning PLO. Again I played way to high when I was learning. I use learning loosely here, because I knew how to play the game and was a pretty good player but I was playing against some of the greatest PLO players and I didn’t stand a chance. It took me dropping down to 25/50 and grinding for countless hours to hone my game to where it is now. Right now my PLO game is incredibly sharp and I think I am one of the top PLO players.

So I plan on learning from my mistakes and having a separate bank roll for learning the 8 game mix. I plan on grinding up from 2/4 limit stakes all the way up too the 400/800 limit, and hopefully I will be able to play some of the big mix games by next years WSOP. This is probably to ambitious of a goal and it will probably take me much longer to accomplish this, particularly because there aren’t alot of games to choose from to move up with.

I also plan on getting coaches for every game. This is something I have never done in the past and have always been self taught, but I realize now that’s stupid and a waste of time. Having a great player coach me will hopefully speed up the learning process. Right now I have a 2-7 triple draw coach and that’s the game I plan on focusing on most initially. If you are a skilled limit o8, stud, stud 8, or razz player and have any interest in doing some coaching shoot me a PM at twoplustwo to aba20 or send a PM here.

Check Out Brian’s Online Training Site – CardRunners