Playing a little more NLHE. And enjoying it!

Forgive me readers who are die hard four-card fans and cringe at the thought of Hold'em but it's true, I am really enjoying playing a little bit of NLHE recently.

My evening MTT schedule is made up of pretty much every PLO and O8 tournament starting on PokerStars up to around 10pm, with the exceptions of the high stakes games and 3x-Turbos. However, I also add in the Big 5, 8, 22 and 11 as well as the Hot 11 and 16 because these tournaments are just insane value. Obviously the value is more long term than regular tournaments but the bink potential is too much to give up, and as you all know my biggest score comes in the Hot 11. Even though these crazy scores may only come once in a blue moon, there's still enough of a draw to pull you back in. I was lucky enough to win the Hot 11 once in the hundreds of times I've entered it and likewise in the Big 5, I've managed to make one final table, but those two scores were enough to completely reshape my year.

Recently I took the decision to add in two $2 rebuys to my early schedule. I played these tournaments regularly when I was solely grinding NLHE last year and they are packed with value, for reasons not too dissimilar to the $3 rebuy PLO that we grinders love so much. What's changed in my mindset though is that I'm starting to enjoy playing with deeper stacks. Almost all of my NLHE experience and knowledge comes from turbo tournaments and as such I've become used to, and adept at, wielder a short stack but I've been far too ineffective with anything bigger. That sounded a bit dirty....

I think it might have something to do with the fact that my average buy in has been higher recently and in the low to mid stakes tournaments you tend to get a bit more play when it gets to the final stages. In micro stakes MTTs, players are so tight around the bubble and in the money that stacks never consolidate and the average stack tends to remain around 10-20BBs. Because I've been playing deeper than normal recently, I've had to think more about my opening ranges, about value betting correctly and generally just about playing better poker. This has translated over to NLHE where thinking about ranges is slightly easier and value betting becomes a bit more of an art than simply "I have 2 pair or better, I must bet".

Don't fret though Omaha afficionados, I won't be hanging up my four card boots yet. I still feel much more comfortable playing PLO and O8 and, to be honest, I don't see that ever changing. Besides, that'd mean giving up my little niche of having a PLO8 Blog rather than just a general Poker Blog, and I gotta keep you guys happy! That's enough random musings for now, I better get back to work! So for now, good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!