PLO Ends, For Now

If you want to be surprised by SpikeTV, read no further.

Otherwise…

I came in fifth. I won’t talk too much about the hands before the show airs, so that some of you have the chance to tell me, without any prior bias, how many ways I messed up. But overall, I’m pretty pleased with how I played. As of this writing, there’s only one thing I would’ve done differently (though that opinion may change as I gain more and more experience playing PLO). I think I’m a favorite to play a few of the PLO events in the 2010 World Series of Poker, and I think this USPC provided some solid experience for that venture.

Not sure yet what my next tournament will be. I’m considering the Harrah’s WSOP-Circuit event in which I cashed last year, but I’m not sure I can bring myself back to Atlantic City for a third time in a month.

PLO Time

Later this afternoon I’ll be playing the final table of the U.S. Poker Championship’s Pot-Limit Omaha event. I haven’t done a ton of preparation since we got to seven-handed on Tuesday, but I at least have the semblance of a plan. I’ll be posting updates to my twitter account as I get the chance. Here’s hoping I make a hand.

The PLO Continues

Well, I elbowed my way into the final seven of the USPC PLO tournament, which means you’ll all get to see me playing this crazy game on SpikeTV sometime in the near future.

I was up and down all day today. I lost 12k with 9876ss on the first hand I played to knock me down to 40k, but I worked that back up to 60k without showing down a hand (though I did have the nuts several times). I got chipped down a little, and then lost 28k to Michael Binger with AAT8s against his AAQ5ss. At my lowest I was down to about 17k. I finished at 41k, and again I don’t think I had to showdown a hand to climb back up. I only have 25 blinds, and I’m the second-shortest stack; but I haven’t once been all-in needing to win a showdown to survive, so maybe we can keep that streak going a little longer.

Joining me in the final seven are Binger, Matt Glantz, Amnon Filippi, Steve Zolotow, Allie Prescott, and a European player I don’t know (he’s on the short stack). It’s a fun group. All these guys are really accomplished players, and as we wound down towards the TV table today, all of us were talking hands, cracking jokes (some funnier than others), and we just generally had a really good rapport. I hope the event will make for entertaining TV for the many, many people who have no idea what Pot Limit Omaha is.

Time to start planning my 25 big blind strategy! I know what to do with that stack size in NLHE, having played a million NLHE tournaments. In PLO…I’m still trying to work it out. We play on Monday. Wish me luck.

Yo, It’s PLO

I’m down at the luxurious Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City (I meant that sarcastically, but they’ve actually made a lot of improvements since the last time I was here and it’s pretty nice) playing the U.S. Poker Championship’s $2500 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha tournament. The final table of seven players will be televised on SpikeTV.

We got a whopping 32 runners, and they’re paying five spots. This means that two people will reach a televised final table and lose money. Hah!

As some of you know, I’ve been working hard on my PLO game and I thought this USPC event would be a great spot to get some more experience, and of course possibly win some money and get some TV time. We started with 15,000 in chips. I ran that up rather smoothly to 55k (someone got 100 blinds in against me with naked A2 on a 345 flop; for you non-PLO players out there, that’s really really bad), but then lost a couple of tough pots to go back down to 26k. Luckily I got on the right side of set-over-set against Steve Zolotow, and I ended Day One with 52,400. Thirteen players are left and we’re playing down to seven tomorrow (Tuesday). Average stack is 36,923.

I’m off to sleep now, but you can follow live updates on my progress via my twitter account.