Studying

September 5, 2009 by Brian Townsend

Kara left Santa Barbara and is back in England for some work things so I am on my own for the next month or two. I have been taking full advantage and putting in the hours. In the first four days of the month I have played 7k hands. If I were to get 60k hands in this month I would be very happy, but that’s probably going to be tough. I have been studying every night going over my hands.

When I started focusing on the mix games on August 11th I thought this would be my best to worst list of games.

1) PLO

2) NLH

3) LHE

4) O8

5) Razz

6) Stud

7) 2-7 TD

Stud 8

I have been focusing on Razz and I feel like I am starting to make to good strides. Razz isn’t nearly as complicated as the other stud games, O8 or 2-7 triple draw. I have also been doing alot of study in Stud 8 as I thought that would be the toughest game for me. I have done really well in it and I have to give alot of thanks to Eric Rodawig’s videos as they have been excellent for a starting stud 8 player like myself. There isn’t much information in videos or books about the HORSE games and his videos are 10x better than any other on the Internet. So now after this study and seeing some results here is the order of skill in games now.

1) PLO: Mix game players are terrible at PLO, they really don’t get hand strength. I can’t be to critical of them as I am sure they think the same about me in other games I am weak in.

2+3) LHE/NLH: This may be more a result of the competition than my personal skill. I feel as though my limit holdem game has come a long way though and people don’t play it nearly as well as NLH. I feel most people are decent at NLH and some are atrocious at LHE. I have TheBryce to thank for part of my success in LHE. If you have never seen a Bryce video they are far and away the best on the Internet. I watch many videos on every major training site and the Bryces videos are a step above everyone else’s.

4) Razz: I have a razz simulator being built for me which will help with calculations. I ran through alot in the past week by hand and I feel pretty confident in my razz game.

5) Stud 8:My improvement is all thanks to Eric Rodawig.

6) Stud: I am up small and feel like I have a good concept of hand values. I need to spend some time crunching numbers but I think I will get there with some time spent.

7) 2-7 TD: This could very well be my worst game as I am only playing it when I play on stars and I have no way to track my results.

O8: As was evident in my previous list by placing O8 4th I thought I would be crushing this game but I have been getting murdered.

I am going to shift my focus from razz to O8 the game I am weakest in. I think my basic razz strategy will be enough until some of the very tough games where I will have to reanalyze my play and realize that my edge will probably always be very small in a game like razz.

My plan for learning O8 is to focus initially on starting hands and coming up with a good opening, three betting and blind defense strategy. I think I have mostly formulated it except for which hands are in what % grouping of hands. I will have to spend some time reviewing sessions and using http://www.propokertools.com/simulator/handPercent…

I also think part of my problem with O8 is that I am not starting with a blank slate. I have so much PLO background that it sways my mental calculations on hand strengths. I overvalue mediocre high hands. This is why using the propokertools simulator will help me realize which hands are in what %. I also think I need to really focus while playing. When the Stud games are on I really turn on my focus while during the Omaha and Holdem I go into auto pilot. Its fine for me to autopilot through NLH, PLO, and LHE but I need to focus on O8.

Check Out Brian’s Online Training Site – CardRunners

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