So I was watching the interviews on cardplayer.com the other day and I got an idea. As you may or may not know, Phil Ivey won a PLO bracelet this year, as well as a few years back. He was the chip leader at this final table and was playing virtually every hand and the interviewer said something about it and how he was "in control" of the table. Phil went on to say however, that it had little to do with him being the big stack, and thats just how he plays omaha he likes to "play a lot of pots". I was also watching the live updates on the website and it wasnt like he was playing 40% of hands type of loose he was seeing like 80% of flops. I've also always played a few notches looser than Monk, although I can't really imagine him playing looser seeing as how he is playing up to 8 tables some times, the max I ever play is 4 (for the beginning of the experiment I will only be playing 1 table however). It's hard to argue with Phil Ivey, who most respected pros will tell you is the best of the best. Enough babbling though, here is what I'm doing.

Limp with any 4 cards EXCEPT
3 of a kind
Low pairs with little help

Thats it! Everything else is worth at least a limp. I'm doing this at $100 PLO on Party, by the way. I'll also VERY liberally call single raises, but a raise and a re-raise I'll use much more standard values. Session #1 was 112 hands with me seeing 87% of flops. The Monkman himself was at the table very briefly, likely disgusted with my poor play
The table got down to 4 handed for quite a while. I won 32% of the time I saw the flop and 76% of showdowns. I won $274 during the session, although I won what was basically a $300 coinflip:

I have KJ68 with the KJ of diamonds on the button

Flop was QdTd8c

Some guy with J9 and a small flush draw and I got in a little pissing contest and I came out on top when the turn was a diamond.

Thoughts?

Lots of people win big money playing a fast and loose style in PLO; I've just got PTO up and a lot of players in my database (mostly losers, but some winners) have vpip 60%, 80% and up. I know one winning player who raises EVERY unraised pot preflop.

One of the best winning styles I've seen really good players adopt is a hyper-aggressive strategy in the later seats, betting and raising very liberally in MP and LP, and being able to cool off or get away when someone else has a hand and plays back; seems you can win a lot of pots unchallenged using that strategy and run all over relatively regular-aggression tables. It's not my style, though, as you probably know

My thinking is that you won't lose any great deal of value by folding very mediocre hands, but then again you won't lose much in plo by having a very high vpip on PASSIVE tables, as more or less every semi-decent hand is worth $1 preflop. I'm just not so keen on limping a poor hand then feeling I have to drop it when someone raises to 6 or 7 bbs. With deeper money I think the strategy is better, but I don't think it's necessarily bad online. Having not played that way myself (my VPIP is in the mid 20%s), I guess I couldn't tell you for sure.

Perhaps you could try being a semi-LAG in LP and raising first in EVERY time you enter a pot in the last 3 or 4 seats. I think that strategy is really sensible, and something I need to start doing more often myself. Against semi-clued-up players, position is a massive advantage in a short handed pot, and you can overcome apparently large gaps in the quality of your hands simply by being last to act. So I'd strongly suggest you try that, if you're going for a more open, loose style.

Other than that, let us know how you get on!

Monk
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