Pokerstars WBCOOP Event #2, PLO....

Pokerstars ran Event #2 of the World Blogger Championship of Online Poker last night, a Pot Limit Omaha game. Since I do play a fair amount of Omaha and PLO rather than the O-8 rendition, I had my hopes set pretty high for this one.

I eased into the game by taking a pretty big gamble. After folding for the first dozen or so hands and observing the wild starting hand variety of a few of the players, I made a note or two on who were acting like the Hold'Em players and who it was, that seemed to be playing PLO. The player RuzGerman was definitely falling into the Hold'Em category of players. He had won and lost a few good pots, with nothing more than top pair. So after his pre-flop call and subsequent re-raise after this flop, I took a shot that the flush was not what he was after.


I don't particularly like that as a starting hand to be honest but given the play ahead of this hand, my gut said I was going to make out alright.

Thank goodness I did too! Just after that I get this :


CRAP!

Oh and then I see this one next!


For what seemed like an eternity, I couldn't get back into the game. Soooooooooooo frustrating. I see the Internet & DSL lights on the box flashing at me, taunting as a reminder that I should be playing Poker right now but can't. All I can do instead, is sit and wait.

As my connection issues finally resolve themselves and I get back in the game, I see my folded hole cards and the hand being played out as follows.


Although I would have preferred the hand double suited to be honest, that is one of my favorite starters in PLO. I think I could have increased my chip count on that one.

Playing four-handed later against the two players on my left that would start with just about any four cards, I drew another of my favorite starting hands and hit the nearly perfect flop.


After abuabu1 checked, I bet it out. His check-raise was met with a re-raise of my own and after a long pause to think about it, his fold slid me another healthy pot.

The player to my immediate left jcars, was constantly showing a penchant for betting out on flopped top pair. Holding the set, I built up the pot a bit post flop.


Improving to a boat on the river, wasn't going to slow me down any time soon. So I managed to get his entire stack into the middle and the rest as they say, is history.

Well into the event, the number of players sitting out made for a challenging table. Here we sit 3-handed with a monster stack to the left of me, for what seemed like forever!


It basically came down to who had the balls to make the run at the open blinds. A pretty tough way to play the game. So I picked my spots and quite honestly, a lot of them were where the two active players were actually in the blinds. I figured that anyone can chip away at an empty spot with chips in front of it. Why not show them that I'm not afraid of a spot with a live player at it? Solid play or not, I don't know. But for the most part, I held my own and managed to garner a few pots along the way.

At the $150/$300 level and a pot grown to over $2000 in chips, I found another favorite starter and decided to play pretty aggressive pre-flop. With the uber-aggressive nature of the two behind and to my left, I was actually quite surprised to see the pot pushed my way before a flop. Bonus!


Although two hands do not a player make I know, I'd seen poltsik on my right get it in twice in the last 8 or so hands, with Quad's in the hole. That to me is JUST the kind of player you want to have sitting there ahead of you.

Poltsik was also playing a lot of hands quite aggressively as well. So when I picked up a starter that I thought was pretty good against his pre-flop aggression, I played right back at him on this flop. I got all my stack in with the flopped set, only to watch his set of Kings in the hole improve to the flush.


I'm just not good enough I guess, to have seen that one coming.

So I'm busto!


Out in 206th. of the 1634 that entered.

GG me and GG poltsik, whoever you are.

I railed a couple of players through the rest of the event and would like to offer my congrats to both BadBlood for his 73rd. place finish and Lightning as well, for picking up a 3rd. place for his efforts. Great work both!

Event #3 goes tonight at 6:00pm ET and will return back to NLHE. I hope to see you all there for the fun!

My sincerest thanks for dropping by....