My first PLO tournament

Today was the first qualifying tournament in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker series. It's the first time I've tried playing pot-limit Omaha. The results were less than spectacular.

It started nicely enough. Here's the first hand of the match:





Whee! I'm the table chip leader now!

Here comes my big boost in the leader board, a short time later:




Here's a minor hand. The opponent here was a frequent bluffer, and I was simply taking advantage of that, plus the reputation I had earned as actually having something when I bet, plus having position, plus holding the all-important deuce-four. (Notice I flopped a straight draw with it, and the 3 surely would have come on the river, had the hand played out.)



Here's my next jump up in chips. I really don't know what this guy was thinking. He appears just unable to fold aces.



I snapped this screen shot of the tournament lobby at this point, knowing from long, sad experience, that this was likely as good as it was going to get, so I wanted to preserve evidence that at one point I was doing OK:



Sure enough, the decline and fall began shortly thereafter. On this hand I flopped the nuts, but then.... well, take a look for yourself.



That was my first heartbreaker--a 71/29 favorite on the flop. I correctly guessed that he had made a straight when he raised on the turn. I wonder what would have happened if I had represented making a flush on the river with a big bet. River card pairing the board sure would have been nice.

Then another smallish loss. I didn't have much faith in my trip 6s, so didn't lose much:



The next heartbreaker will look like I lost my mind ("went crazy," as Phil Hellmuth would put it), but I really didn't. This particular opponent, as noted earlier, was not only a habitual bluffer, but had been short-stacked for a while and raising/shoving very light.



So my judgment of him was right, and I got my money in as a 53/46 favorite, according to the odds calculator at www.twodimes.net.

The fall from grace continued after I got moved to a new table:



My end then came in two swift, pathetic hands:





But on that last hand, at least I picked a decent spot, going in as a 53/47 favorite.

And thus ends the sad tale of our hero's first attempt at PLO. I hope you all kept your hankies handy.

Tomorrow's qualifier is no-limit hold'em. We'll see if I fare any better with that.