@Anthony Martino I casually follow your thread, and I always refer to you as "Anthony Martini PLO Superhero" lol. I'm only asking because I haven't seen the question asked recently, but I think that you recently upped the stakes in which you play. Typically, moving up in stakes would mean the quality of the competition would be increased. Do you think that it has anything to do with your play? Typically, as poker players, we can always remember the bad beats street by street, but perhaps analyzing your critical spots in general may be a better practice. I'm sure someone has already recommended this, but if they did not, I am.
My biggest losing month was in September, but about half of my losses for the entire month are from one session and three hands:
The first hand I'm in for a 4k buyin with an aggressive player on my immediate left who has done flips for 25K before. He's raised the pot preflop, but on a board of something like
we are 4-handed with 1K in the pot and it's checked through (this guy is on the button)
On the
turn we again check to him (I've now made a set of Queens) and he fires the full pot of 1K. I just don't buy that he has the nuts here and I opt to checkraise all-in for around $3,725. He goes deep into the tank and eventually calls. He had flopped two pair (Aces and 6's) and turned the nfd for hearts, so at this juncture I have 78% equity and he has 22%. Unfortunately he only runs once, binks the heart on the turn and I lose the biggest pot of my life thus far.
It was uncharacteristic for me to make that play because generally I avoid spots where I'm sticking my stack in when I don't have the nuts, but given the way the hand played out I believed I was ahead and decided if I was going to play in the more aggressive higher stakes games I was going to have to be willing to be uncomfortable and trust my reads and get it in even without the stone cold nutter butters.
I buyin for 1K and immediately pickup AAT9 with a single suit the very next hand, I limp repot his raise, he repots to isolate with a junky J785 I believe and the flop was something like K64 and he binks the straight on the turn to bust me again.
Then later after he's gone a nit moves to his seat, I limp repot the nit with AAJ5 suited in nut diamonds, get two callers. Flop is 986 with two of my suit, get it in three ways and agree to run it twice. The nit has KQ of my suit and T9 of another suit. First board I river the nut flush, but it comes K9 boating him. Second board it goes KK boating him again lol.
I'm still playing the 2/2/5 and the 5/5/10 as well (although I was able to increase my buyin in the 5/5/10 as previously I was limiting myself to 3K daily loss limit per day with just my roll, so buying in for 2-2.5K was tough to justify as I only had one bullet for that stake)
The same players that play 2/2/5 also play the 5/5/10 and the 10/10/25 although some of them will tighten things up at the higher stakes, and some of the players are loose regardless.
