Dealing with PLO swings/tilt
When you sit down to play a session of PLO whether it is in the heads up cash games, shorthanded cash games, or fighting through tournament fields, you will have difficulty winning.
Unless you can maintain a steady level of consistency and mental stability.
PLO is a very mental game and coping with mental anguish is part of the game more than any other variation out there.
The natural swings of the game can cause you to lose a number of buy-ins in a row in a cash game or have your chips felted right away in tournaments.
Dealing with the swings
The key to dealing with the swings and avoid tilt is to have a significantly larger bankroll. If you have a bigger bankroll then everything will seem easier and you can quit when you are losing in games. What you don't want to do is sit in a session for too long a period of time and downswing really hard to where you lost 15-20 buy-ins when it wasn't necessary.
In a specialized game like PLO you will see tons of reckless abandonment and players who play every single hand dealt. It is a pure game of action and if you aren't careful the action can get the best of you.
How to deal with PLO swings and tilt sounds simple, but in reality it is very difficult.
You have to be able to quit losing sessions, when you are playing poorly, and minimize your losses. If you can do this and realize that you may be playing the game to loose or not using an optimal strategy, you will be in better shape in the long run. After all, poker is a lifelong game no matter what form of it you choose to play.
A good way to go about dealing with PLO swings is to maintain a steady diet, eating right, exercising and treating your body right. These things most poker players take for granted, but to be successful with PLO you have to be successful outside of the poker games as well. Tilting is very common in PLO simply because you can be a big favorite on a number of hands and the hands can go south in a hurry. When these hands go south you have to either look over hand histories to see if you are playing hands correctly or you have to fight through it.
You need to have a lot of endurance in PLO games and you have to also be able to deal with bad beats. The bad beats will happen very often, and also you will put beats on other players as well.
The moment when you feel exhausted is when you should quit whether you are up or down because at that time you will not play your best game. Ideally, you want to play your best game at all times, and this holds true more than ever now in PLO games.
Do not tilt
When you lose a big pot in a cash game playing PLO there are a couple of things to recognize whether it is about your table or about yourself. When looking at your table you have to know that you can win. If you don't think you are seated at a good table then you should quit the session right there because there is no reason to sit at a table with stronger players.
In the long term you want to prey on the fish and avoid the sharks. This will make you more money in the long run and you should always look for that. Also, when evaluating your own play, you should see how often you are getting money in with the best hand. If you are consistently getting your money in ahead then you should stay at a table even if you are losing.
The only reason to quit a good table is if you aren't playing well. If you aren't running well in the short run, you should expect this to happen from time to time because it will happen to all players no matter what.
Even the best players in the world like Sam Farha are prone to losing some days, but it is how you respond to losses and deal with them that will make you a better player. The more hands you play and the better you get at PLO the more long term money you make.
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