So I changed games again. Last time I mentioned that PLO was a temporary solution while I tried to figure out my next move. I never really expected to play it long term (although a girl can dream).

You might have already guessed that the main problem with PLO cash games as a long term solution is the variance involved. While I didn’t research the variance possibilities myself, my friend did a bit of scouting. We estimated that with my volume, I could easily run bad for an entire year. Losing money for a year? I’m gonna go ahead and say no thank you.

I seem to talk about my multitabling woes and inability to amass volume ALL the time, but can you blame me? It really does cause tons of problems. If I could multitable properly, PLO cash games might be a viable option. Instead, there is pretty much no way to consider it unless I want variance to run my life.

I think PLO is a super fun game, though. I really enjoyed the hours I spent learning it, and I definitely improved a lot in a short period of time. Once I become competent at heads-up hyper turbo SnGs, I intend on playing PLO around once per week so that I can slowly improve at it.

Oh yes, heads-up hyper turbos. That’s the game I switched to. Who knows how long I will play it, although I’m hoping it’s for a while.

Heads-Up: A New Challenge

I’ve always kind of avoided playing heads-up in the past. I think the main reason is that I tend to tilt pretty easily, and heads-up is easily one of the most tilting forms of poker. I just assumed that there was no way I could ever handle the tilt that came from playing it.

Unfortunately for me, though, the time to test this theory has come. At this point, I’m running out of options. I don’t want to play MTTs, I can’t play enough volume to make regular or turbo SnGs profitable, and I don’t want to play hyper 6-max. Where NLHE is concerned, this means that I have to play cash games or heads-up SnGs. Given my background, I figured I should probably try heads-up first. I am also lucky enough to have a good friend that does very well at them, so it seems like a wise choice.

I started at $30s and $60s so that I could learn the game without losing too much money. After some review I felt comfortable that I kind of knew what I was doing, so I moved to $100s. I have played 20-25 hours of heads-up over the past week, with plenty of review in between.

So far I find the games pretty enjoyable, although maybe I just like running hot because I am definitely doing that. It’s nice of the poker gods to give me some run good while switching to a new game, though – it always makes the transition easier.

Since I have been running hot, I haven’t had the chance to see if the games tilt me as much as I thought they might. I am definitely going to run bad sometime, though, and I hope I’ll come back to report that hey, I didn’t get tilted at all! Am I being totally unrealistic? Yup. This might be a good time to find my copy of The Mental Game of Poker…

Speaking of The Mental Game of Poker, I need to get back on track with my “mental game blog”. I’m supposed to be updating my other blog after every session to keep track of my mental game progress, but instead I have usually been updating before each session (which is much less useful). I’m gonna really make an effort to do it properly this coming month because I think it’s very important.

This is getting kind of long, so I’m gonna stop here. Hopefully I am still playing hyper heads-up next time I write ;) Good luck at the tables!