Discover the secrets of this new edition of PLO8Revealed. Take a look to the changes
What's new in the Expanded Edition?
How can I get a FREE preview of the book?
Just press here, fill the form and get a preview FOR FREE!
How can I get free PLO8 training videos?
I made a selection of videos for you! Just follow the link.
I’m working on a series of articles on PLO8. They are not coming out until probably January, but I’m planning the outlines right now. I’d like to get some suggestions for specific topics. If there is something that I didn’t cover in my book or hasn’t been covered in Cardrunners video that you would like to see, please let me know. Or if there is something I have already covered but you would like to see me expand on it that’s fine too. You can either leave a comment or send me an email at campfirewest@hotmail.com.
off
Its been a little while since I’ve made a post, so an update is overdue. Basically I’ve been busy with a variety of things and just haven’t had much time for blogging. Pokerwise I haven’t been doing too much. Playing a little on Carbon here and there, but no serious volume. I have been thinking about some more PLO8 articles, so expect to see some over the next few months. I did get Tommy Angelo’s new book on my Kindle. I’m not too far into it yet, but so far its been pretty good.
Between my corporate job, family, working out, golf, and a side business (not poker related) I’ve been working on getting started, and a little bit of options trading, I haven’t had a ton of free time. This season I’ve really re-devoted myself to golf. I’ve taken 3 lessons this summer, and my swing is getting a lot better. I have a 1 handicap, and really want to finally get it to scratch. The guy I’m taking lessons from is a total badass. He qualified for the US Open at Pebble last year and made the cut. He has the rare combo of being about to play and teach golf at a super high level. I signed up for a tournament that takes place in a few weeks. I used to play a ton of tournaments, and since kids I think I’ve only played one. Next year I want to play a bunch, so I thought it would be a good idea to get at least 1 in this year.
I’m not going to go into detail, but my job has been pretty awesome. After investing all of the time and money into the MBA its nice to see it paying off. There is also the possiblity I’ll get to travel to Hong Kong and Singapore in October. Look for some cool pictures if that happens.
That’s all I have time for right now. Look for me to get back to weekly updates and more poker content.
off
Had a bit of a bad run last week, and I’m not even talking about poker. First thing to hit was the AC compressor for my house dying. Then 3 days later my TV blew up. A brand new condenser unit was about $2600. Fortunately, big screen tv’s have come way down in price since the last time I bought one. I was able to get a 1080p 50″ plasma for $700, so that wasn’t too bad. Bad things always come in three’s, and I picked up a screw in a tire on the way back from the store with the TV. Not a huge amount of money, but pretty damn annoying.
off
This last week we saw the final Space Shuttle launch. Its kind of sad for me because I grew up on the Space Coast and watched many launches. It was what inspired me originally to study engineering. While doing my undergrad I was an intern at Lockheed and got to work on the shuttle. I was in the group that was responsible for loading the hypergolic propellants that power the OMS/RCS system, which is basically a system of thrusters that allow the shuttle to maneuver in space. My office was in an a converter railroad car next to pad 39A. I spent about half of my time there and the other half in the firing room. The highlight of the experience was getting to work the firing room for the launch of STS-83 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-83). Normally they wouldn’t let an intern do something like that, but for our system there isn’t actually much to do on launch day except for close a valve. We did our propellant loading about a week prior before launch, and if something is going to go wrong it likely will happen before launch. But I did get to close the valve and verify some pressures and temperatures over the radio. I taped the NASA channel of it and I have a cool video of myself behind the console on TV.
After I graduated I worked for Pratt & Whitney for a while doing Solid Rocket Booster refurbishment. It was really neat getting to see what the SRB’s look like before and after launch. As cool as all of the hardware was I decided what I really wanted to do was design engineering, and I moved on from the space center. As sad as it is to see the shuttle program end it was definitely time for it. The shuttles are about 30 years old now, and some of the parts actually were reused from the Apollo program of the 60′s. I still have a lot of friends who work on the program, hopefully they’ll all find new jobs and land on their feet.
off
I don’t claim to be the master of the World Series. I’ve only made it out there 2 years, and this year I’m not going to make it. Its not baller, but sometimes things like jobs and families get in the way……. Last year I made it out was able to play in the $1500 PLO8. I didn’t cash but I learned a lot. Here are some of my takeaways from that trip, in no particular order:
1) The structure is nice and slow so there is no need to rush- The structure is much slower than a typical online tournament. Also, since this is live poker and you’re playing fewer hands per hour, when you go through a stretch when you don’t pick up any hands it feels like forever. Don’t let that induce you to get impatient and fire your chips in a bad spot.
2) Most players are bad- In a way this is no different than an online tournament, but being live poker they will be even worse. Just watch out because the PLO8 specialists will be sprinkled in as well. You should be able to figure out who’s who after a couple of orbits.
3) If you recognize someone from TV, they might be really bad- PLO8 is a niche game that few people have taken the time to really learn, so there are going to be a lot of people who aren’t familiar with it. The WSOP event is nice because a lot of pros with big bankrolls will sign up for any event in an attempt to win a bracelet whether they know the game or not. Its funny to watch some people who may be world class hold’em players make some really weird plays.
4) Hang on to a rebuy chip or 2 at least for a little while- The rebuy chips are a cool feature of this event. Opinions vary on the proper strategy for using them. Whatever you decide to do, hang onto some of them for at least a couple of orbits so you can get some sort of read on the other players at the table. In the early goings you have no idea if a players getting all of their chips in is doing it because they don’t know the game and are way overvaluing their hand, or if they are an Omaha 8 nit-reg that only gets it in with the nuts. Usually its the former, but its nice to not have to put your tournament life at risk early to find out.
5) Staying at the Gold Coast is really cheap and convenient- Not the greatest hotel on the face of the earth, but its an easy walk to the Rio from there. There’s never much point in spending much money on a hotel room in Vegas you aren’t going to spend a lot of time in anyway.
My high school physics teacher had a sign above the blackboard that said, “above all else you must love the truth”. In any business its easy to fall into the trap of not being honest with yourself. Outside of poker, there are often other influences that you can’t control. I remember in my engineering career I worked on several programs where we were having serious problems. But the program manager not only wouldn’t assess the problems and get the team working to fix them, but he wouldn’t acknowledge that there were even problems at all. The obvious thing for an engineer to do in this situation is to bluntly point out in a meeting exactly what is going on, but that’s pretty bad politics. For those of you who have ever held a job you’ll know that this is a lot easier said than done. Concerns about your career path or even keeping your job can be a huge influence on how you approach the situation. It can be really difficult to fix problems when you are surrounded by people bent on ignoring reality.
The nice thing about poker is you don’t have any political considerations to worry about. You can actively study your game, find your faults, and fix them. No one is stopping you but yourself. And yet a lot of poker players can’t seem to do it. Like some of my program managers, they just hate to accept that there might be some things going on that aren’t good. God forbid they need to make adjustments in a game they already have figured and are +EV in. I can’t prove it, but I think this is especially true in the PLO8 player pool. There are a lot of players out there who have not adjusted their game in a long time, despite the fact that the game has continued to evolve. That can’t possibly be a good idea. So don’t fall victim to being influenced by your ego. Always be analyzing your play and looking for weaknesses and making adjustments. I guarantee there are some there, and when you address them you’ll be better off for it. Unlike the tons of unaware, degen, busto players who think variance is to blame for their problems.
Last year I started a project to make an equity calculator that was as easy to use as Pokerstove, but for PLO and PLO8. It was a pretty big project and going into it I was very unsure about how well the program would perform once it was completed. For that and a variety of other reasons I decided the best move was to make an equity calculator for Hold’em first. Then once that was working I could update it for Omaha. Well, I got the hold’em version to work, but after black Friday I don’t really see the point in continuing with any poker related software projects. Maybe at some point I’ll get back to the Omaha tool, but if that happens it won’t be until we see regulation in the US and some sort of stable poker market.
For now, check out Hold’em Range Tool. Like Pokerstove its totally free, but the nice thing is its web-based so you don’t have to download anything. It does a bunch of things that Pokerstove doesn’t. For example, you can specify an ‘air range’, which will add random cards to model a bluffing frequency. It also does weighted ranges in a way that is pretty easy.
I felt like there is a lot missing from the current crop of equity calculators. They tend to be either free and missing some key features, or they cost money and are really complicated to use. I think Holdem Range Tool fills in some of the gaps. Hopefully everyone enjoys it. Stay tuned for the Omaha Range Tool in a few years……
off
I finally got around to putting some money on Merge the other week, actually the day before the 2nd wave of domain seizures. Hopefully Merge doesn’t get shut down as well. But I only put on a small amount of money since the probability of something happening to them is so high. The thing that kind of sucks though is that even though I can again, on Merge its really only a recreational thing, I don’t think its possible to make real money. Part of the problem is liquidity in that not many games run. Certainly nothing like back on Stars and Tilt. The other problem is even if you could multi-table at decent stakes, it too risky to keep enough money on the site to do that. But I guess for now its better than nothing.
The cool thing is the games are pretty soft and I’ve been running well. Granted I have a pitifully small sample of hands so the results don’t mean that much. Prior to black Friday I had taken a few weeks off of playing while I was finishing up grad school, so it had actually been about 2 months or so since I played. After the break, and only playing 2 tables, it was amazing how sharp my focus was. My hand reading is so much better when I’m not playing 4 tables of Rush on autopilot. One of the other interesting things is I have hardly been getting check-raised at all. When I’m playing against new players I c-bet and barrel a ton and its really profitable. The problem is after a while they adjust and then its not quite as easy any more. We’ll see how long this keeps up. I haven’t checked out the PLO8 games yet, but I’m going to this week and I’ll report on it in a few days.
off
I’ve been doing a ton of reading on my Kindle lately. There are 3 basic types of books I read: books about business, books about war, and books about poker.
The other day I picked up Dr. Pauly’s Lost Vegas. Its been out for awhile and I had been meaning to read it since he first announced it was coming out a few years ago. He starts out talking about the 2005 WSOP when he was living at the “Redneck Riviera”. I have really fond memories of those days in poker. That’s before I realized how many players are just full on degenerates, and there would be lots of get togethers with my friends to play low limit home games. The thing I regret about that time is I hadn’t become very serious about the game yet, and I missed out on a lot of easy money from the Party Poker days. I remember when a friend I used to work with turned me on to Tao of Poker during the summer of 2005. I was fascinated with his stories of the WSOP, but mostly about meth heads and crack whores at the Redneck Riviera. The book goes back over all of that, but I don’t think it really added anything that was already in the blog.
After that it goes into coverage of the WPT events from 05-06 and then the 2006 WSOP. Again, mainly covering stuff I was already familiar with from reading his blog. What I was hoping for were a lot of interesting stories that never made it onto his blog. Maybe some tales of famous people going busto or engaging in wild debauchery. I understand with his position in the poker world he doesn’t want to piss people off. But in his blog over the years he’s alluded to stories like this that he couldn’t tell, and sort of hinted that some of them may come out eventually. I was really hoping to see that in the book.
However, according to my Kindle I’m only 49% of the way through it so far (that’s why this is only half a book review), so there is still a chance for some juicy stories in there. If there are I’ll follow up on this post.
off
This is a re-post from my old blog on Stoxpoker. I’m going to do some posts on things I learned during my MBA, and this was by far my favorite memory.
Last week part of my MBA class took a trip to Omaha to meet Warren Buffett. I was pretty lucky to get selected to go on the trip. Originally I wasn’t supposed to go, but made it when someone else dropped out. Buffett does a few of these events a year. In addition to my class from the University of Colorado; Harvard, USC, UCLA, Texas A&M, and a school from Brazil were also there. We flew in on Thursday and got checked into the hotel, then went out to a brew pub in the Market area. The stereotype of Brazilian women all being hot was confirmed.
On Friday morning we went to visit Furniture Mart, which is one of the Berkshire Hathaway companies in Omaha. Then we went to one of the Berkshire buildings to meet with Warren Buffett for a 2 hour question and answer. We went up to the top floor to the ‘Cloud Room’ to meet him.
http://img23.yfrog.com/i/sth73050.jpg/
On the way there the bus driver took us past his house. Its a relatively big house, but pretty normal. He bought it back in the 50′s. Amazing that its not even in a gated community.
http://img200.yfrog.com/i/sth73046.jpg/
The whole things was fascinating to say the least. Before taking questions he said that nothing was off the table, and encouraged people to take head shots at him. Of course no one did, but one idiot did tell him he thought he was a baller. Berkshire owns a stake in Coca Cola, and he talked a lot about how much he likes it and had free Cokes for everyone. He compared the stock market to a drunken neighbor that offers you different prices every day, and eventually will make you a silly offer. One of my favorite lines he had was, “if someone tries to offer you his billfold, you should take it…” I think a lot of poker players can relate to that. His other was “if its raining gold, go outside with a bucket and not a thimble.” He also talked about how the thing that convinced him to get a computer was when he found out you can play bridge over the internet. He said he plays about 12 hours a week, and would give up his jet before he gave up internet bridge. His main emphasis though was on how its more important to use the brainpower you have than to have a high IQ. He said if you have a 160 IQ you should sell 20-30 points, because you don’t need them. If you use what you have you’ll do fine.
Of course someone asked him about the financial crisis. He said although in general he wasn’t a huge fan of Bush,he felt that Bush and Paulson handled the crisis well, and did a good job of responding to it quickly. At one point during the peak of the crisis he said he called Hank Paulson about something, and Paulson told him he had been up all night puking because he was so nervous that the financial system was going to cave in. I assume to get to the top of Goldman Sachs you have to be pretty stone cold. So if he was throwing up over the crisis it must have been pretty bad.
Overall he had a pretty optimistic view of the future. He said in the next 100 years that 25 would be great, 15 would be bad, and 60 would be so so. Definitely not a doom and gloom guy, which is kind of rare for a 79 year old.
After that we all when to Piccolo Pete’s and he bought everyone lunch. Lunch was steak with ziti and fries, with a rootbeer float for desert. Kind of weird, but it was pretty good. Then he took time to take pictures with everyone.
Here’s me with part of my class, I’m on the front right:http://img62.yfrog.com/i/sth73059.jpg/
It was tough to get decent pictures with a mirror in the background and a disco ball overhead: http://img94.yfrog.com/i/sth73063.jpg/
He also did a lot of silly pictures, which was pretty cool:http://img684.yfrog.com/i/sth73064.jpg/
That night we went out and got dinner and then went to an Irish pub for drinks. It was super cold walking around Omaha, and it was supposed to get to -22F that night. Then we took a cab across the river to the Horseshoe in Council Bluffs for some late night poker: http://img706.yfrog.com/i/img00058201001090009.jpg/ I managed a small win playing 1-3 no limit, which was pretty good considering I was pretty tired and drunk, and I never play no limit anymore. You would think that you could find an Omaha game right next to Omaha, but apparently not.
off
Recent Comments