Monday, March 29, 2010

Back on the High Stakes Grind

I haven't been playing a ton of poker lately, but when I have played it's mostly been high stakes PLO and some bigger mixed games. The big action has mostly been at 200/400 cap plo with the occasional deeper stacked game mixed in. I also have played some of the 7 and 8-game mixes when the lineup doesn't seem too bad for practice and because hopefully I might have a small edge. It's been a fairly strange run for me lately where I've been up and down a lot with the usual biggish swings but overall I've been doing well.

The strange part is according to the adjusted all-in EV column on Holdem Manager I've run between $200-300k above expectation in all-in pots over most of this run, and if I hadn't been I'd be losing a decent amount. This means that in pots in which I've been all-in, once my hand has been turned over and there's no more betting I've been a huge luckbox. This is just one way in which luck manifests itself in these games and I still feel like overall I've played pretty well. I've just been very unlucky in being on the wrong side of a lot of coolers (another kind of luck), but very lucky in drawing out of them. That's what it seems like to me anyways so I still feel good about my chances in these games in the long run, but it's something I'll have to keep an eye on.

The other day I was playing a big session and decided to take a chance and play some deeper stacks I had run up. I ended up playing what I believe are the two biggest cash pots of my life against cts:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5314245 - I think it goes without saying this is a dream hand.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5314252 - This one took a pretty serious chunk out of how much I was running above expectation in all-in pots.

I'm still not planning to play many tournaments before WPT Championship, a few FTOPS events, and SCOOP. Probably this Easter Sunday I'll play a proper tourney grind session, but otherwise most of my play will likely be biggish cash.

Mike