One thing you can do to work on your game is save the hand histories of the more critical hands played during a session and review them the next day. This not only let’s you get an observer’s view of your own play, but after a while it gives you a better perspective of how general opponents are playing in your selected game and limit. There is one caveat to this exercise, however, and it is this: You won’t remember some of the decisions that were based on how your opponent seemed to be playing.

Here is an example from a Pot Limit Omaha cash game on Poker Stars that I saved from Friday to post today. After Superbowl weekend I now have no idea what I was thinking.

My hand:

According the hand history log I had $199 (in this $100 max buy-in game) and called the $1 blind in early position with this extremely marginal hand. There were two other callers, plus the big blind got a free flop.

The flop:

I bet the pot, $4.30, and got one caller to my immediate left.

The turn:

Again I bet the pot, $12.50, and again my opponent - the only other large stack at the table who started with $180 - calls.

The river:

I check and my opponent now bets the pot, $36.25. Well the log shows that I called and won the pot. Why I decided to save this hand I have no idea, and I have no idea what I was doing calling that river bet with the straight and spades out there. I can only hope that I had a good reason for attempting to pick off a bluff, like noticing this guy speeding around or something.

Now in my defense, the straight was a gutshot and the flush was back-doored, making them both less likely holdings for calling pot size bets on the flop and turn. And since the pot was laying me 2-1 I only have to catch a bluff on the river more than 1/3 of the time for it to be profitable, and in these 6-max games there seems to be a lot of bluffing.

Here is what my opponent had:

Don’t ask me what he was doing playing that in early position, or what in the world he was doing calling the flop bet, or why he didn’t just check down a possible winner on the river. If he thought two pair was beat why did he call the turn, and if he didn’t, he didn’t think he was value betting the river with a pot size bet into a flush board did he?

Well?

The only thing I can figure is that my opponent was another one of those NL Holdem players taking a shot at a PLO game while having no idea how to play. That’s what makes these games so profitable, and it’s why I play them.

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This entry was posted on Monday, February 4th, 2008 at 9:59 pm and is filed under cash game results. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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