how good is you omaha?

[jomatty]

i have been playing a lot of PLO lately so i thought id refresh my game a little by reading a little more on the subject.

after rereading the stewart reuban book, and then getting crushed after incorperating some of his ideas, i remembered something. this is exactly what happened last time i read this book.

Now before everyone saysthat i cant blame my results on mr reuban let me point out that i know this and am just using these results over a very small sample to make a point/ask a question about his book.

he seems insanely loose from almost all positions. i have no doubt that he is a great player and that he is playing very deep money but it still is much looser than my regular game in regards to 2 and 3 gappers that are very small in early position and a lot of other situations.

while he claims that his book is very good for learning online PLO i think it is not very well suited to a short stacked game like any big bet online game (assuming a 100bb buyin)

just curious about what others think of his starting hand selections and the hands he call raises with. other impressions of the book are also welcome. the most glaring problems with it to me are his rarely metioning stack size and an incomplete explanation of the position of the players involved in the hands. without this info i often found myself with no idea how to answer questions. his anyalsis does seem very good other than this though.'

anyways, i dont have the experience with PLO i have in other games (although i enjoy it quite a bit) so its difficult for me to know for sure if my impressions of the book are correct (outside of the stack size and position comments which i am almost certain is neccessary info, at least how i play the game). is he too loose, or am i too tight, or is the answer just that you can play this loose, esp up front, when your money is very very deep. it seems like you would get into a lot of tough situations with 2476 and the like up front with deep money.

sorry such a rambling long post,
matty

[BluffTHIS!]

He routinely plays in a game with very very deep stacks and with players he is very familiar with. You will go bust online playing that way without exceptional postflop skill.

[jomatty]

i realize how deep stacked he plays and that he plays with players he is very familiar with. he also seems to suggest that these sorts of play are generally correct. he suggests that it is a good book to learn online PLO and i think that is dangerous advice. i was curious if people agree and it sounds like you do. i generally play the 400 and 600 buy in games and have had good success with a much tighter strategy. i sometimes will play nl he fairly lag but it seems a difficult approach for online PLO. any lags want to give another opinion on things like small 2 gappers utg, which he seems to have little problem with? any other opinions on the book in general?
matty

[LA_Price]

Yes the game he plays in plays very deep. He had about 7000 in front of him in a 10-10 blind game when i played with him and he wasn't even the largest stack. His strategy thrives on outplaying his opponents after the flop.

[Big Dave D]

A lot of the *concepts* he talks about are applicable. It's just that his hand selection sucks so much. It's not helped by the fact thet he almost never passes a hand for a raise once he has called with it, which in most games is madness.

This is compounded by the ludicrous point system, where often two very reasonable choices have very wide differences in scoring.

But PLO is not a cookie cutter game like limit holdem. And if you accept that, well then it can be a very useful aid and is probably the best book available.

gl

dd

[ QUOTE ]
he seems insanely loose from almost all positions. i have no doubt that he is a great player and that he is playing very deep money but it still is much looser than my regular game in regards to 2 and 3 gappers that are very small in early position and a lot of other situations.

[/ QUOTE ]

He says at a couple different points in the book that he plays rather loosely, mostly out of boredom, because he sees so few hands per session in comparison to online play.

[ QUOTE ]
while he claims that his book is very good for learning online PLO i think it is not very well suited to a short stacked game like any big bet online game (assuming a 100bb buyin)

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of the concepts are general and will work in a lot of games, but otherwise I agree with you. The very, very, very deep stacked, aggressive game he describes is tough to emulate.

[ QUOTE ]
anyways, i dont have the experience with PLO i have in other games (although i enjoy it quite a bit) so its difficult for me to know for sure if my impressions of the book are correct (outside of the stack size and position comments which i am almost certain is neccessary info, at least how i play the game). is he too loose, or am i too tight, or is the answer just that you can play this loose, esp up front, when your money is very very deep. it seems like you would get into a lot of tough situations with 2476 and the like up front with deep money.

[/ QUOTE ]

He is loose, but more importantly, he knows his opponents very, very well. He has been playing with the same people for years and years. If he played simple ABC poker, he likely would have gone bankrupt a long time ago.

In a couple of the hands, the plays he makes are just plain bad against an unknown opponent. Mr. Reuben makes it sound as if his chosen tact was obvious though and goes on to explain how he knew this particular foe was capable of laying down his hand. He then gives poor marks to the "proper" play.

All in all, IMO the book has some interesting concepts, but trying to emulate his play in short money small-mid limit online games is probably asking for trouble.