Nice report, I enjoyed that.

I was going to ask if the players at the table started respecting your raises/re-raises after you won 2 large pots. But you mentioned you got up after the 2nd big win.

Cool! Glad you made it through it.

One thing with the casino game is that effects are fairly long-term, since I've played with these guys before and will play with them again, and the circle of PLO players is fairly small as well (smaller than the group that plays NLHE at 2/5 or 5/10). So, whatever happens doesn't just set things up for the current session but also for future ones.

And, yes, I do think they have a lot of respect for my raises and re-raises. The super-gambly ones won't be afraid to draw a little too thin, but most of the sane ones will lay down in case of doubt--obviously unless they have a "must-play" draw.

The place where I'd like to get them is that they almost automatically lay down middle set to my raises unless they have quite a good redraw to go with it.

I also don't think they're aware that I'm very capable of raising and betting strong draws. I've just shown sets or other made hands almost always in big pots in those situations.

Interesting post indeed. This sounds like a very good game - by the sounds of things your play was pretty good too, I like your play in all the hands you mentioned and I'm happy with the raises you made on sets. Sometimes calling top set against better players and/or players you play often is an excellent play, especially when the stacks are deep in relation to the pot (more chance of a CR on turn to get much more of your stack in, good disguise of your hand if the board pairs and oppo makes a lower boat/trips, and some leeway for implied odds if a draw hits and there's some action), indeed I do this even against weaker players quite often when the stacks are deeper, especially if they're of the loose/semi-aggressive predictable type. However, in the hands you mentioned, I feel the stacks were just about deep enough to give you problems on the turn if a draw hit (if you hadn't bet/raised flop), and equally were shallow enough that you could commit yourself and (probably) bring along possible two-pair/lower set-type hands in this game. I think you'd be kicking yourself if you played passively and ended up facing down a big scarecard on the turn when (by the sounds of it) tricky play wasn't really required against these oppos to get paid off and (in both cases) a significant pot was already sat on the felt.

I think in this game I'd like to buy in for maybe 400-odd (perhaps 500 if rebuys aren't so easy to make) and play a little more loosely preflop (though I agree that off a shorter stack, the game may well reward tighter PF play). It seems that flops could have a fairly high volume of players, with some short stacks in there and a few more passive players than your typical live donkfest, so perhaps there's good value there to play slightly less-than-premium hands orientated towards nutty draws (such as the AQJxss you mentioned, which would seem like an awful fold in BB for $3 to me) as well as the usual high quality starters and some set-mining, top-heavy type hands in LP. I like your typical raise to $20 in LP with strong hands too, gives you enough poker to play post-flop I think, whilst perhaps giving a LITTLE more action to offset your pretty tight image (if indeed you think that's valuable in this game).

I would be interested to hear how you'd be handling strong draw-type hands on the flop in this game in various scenarios. Perhaps if you go back we'll hear some of these situations in a future installment!

btw I edited "scarecard on the flop" to "turn" in previous post; that's what I meant, but the initial typo meant that it made no sense.

I still think putting in $15 isn't much when you have 500 behind - indeed the hand should play out in a similar way (stack-depth-wise) to a typical online hand, so it'd still leave you room to make decisions. But I appreciate if you're not well-rolled, you don't want to be putting yourself in a spot where one big loss will make you quit what is presumably a pretty good game.

You still playing much online? It's getting harder for americans now isn't it, is there anywhere decent to play for you guys anymore? To be honest, even for us Euros Party looks like about the only really good site (well, betfair has some great games but the software is so horrible and crashes my PC sometimes so it's not somewhere I relish).

On the raising vs. calling top set with position (that's the most interesting question for me, since you give up some positional advantage with a strong hand here):

Let's take my QQ with Q-high flush draw hand, posted above. Board is something like QTd6d (can't remember Q suit), and I have QQJ7 with two diamonds, so I also have some straight blockers here.

Ok, the one guy is already all-in, but the question is how the initial bettor was going to proceed. He in fact had something like KT63 with K-high flush draw.

If I flat call, the turn pot is $300, and I think EP is PROBABLY going to check it to me or bet weakly unless he hits either the flush or the boat. I'm going to have trouble laying down the flush, which may be good against him and with boat redraw if it isn't (which it isn't in point of fact). He may get double me up if he fills up, particularly since I looked like a draw on the flop with the flat call.

He's also going to be more inclined to call on a blank turn if he checks and I fire $300. I think he'll have to consider that one but may very well call. My play in that case will give some conflicting signals to him anyway.

However, also on this particular board, any non-pairing card bigger than 6 makes a straight of some kind--which I can also bet to a check and may get called. I think in that case he'd probably figure that his boat would be good plus his flush outs. And the players in this game are inclined to make those kinds of calls (I guess 11 presumed outs, although in fact he only has 5). I also think he'll bet if he makes a straight here, so I should be fairly safe in repping it to a check: While I won't have the straight, I should still be ahead.

I don't know what all this adds up to in terms of calling vs. raising, but I thought it was worth a mention anyway. If he does hit his good flush, his two pair also means that I have only 8 outs on the river rather than 10.

Then there's also the meta-game aspect (which is really my biggest argument for the raise at the moment) of trying to get as much fold equity as possible when I raise in pretty attractive pots. I think one also sees a little bit about the "pain threshold" on this hand: They're not terribly worried about $70, but they think twice when you fire several hundred at them. And, really, $140 ($70 bet into $70 pot) is already a pretty juicy 1/2 pot, even given the usual PF raising.

Anyhow, just more to think about, and I'm not really sure myself how the pros and cons here really work out.