[januarymute]

Phil, I think this will be a valuable exercise to you, because forcing yourself to put thoughts about your approach to the game into words will cause you to inspect all the areas of your style closely. But I think it may lead to a lot of frustration for others...

I say this because it seems to be a common mentality at 2+2, and this forum in general, to come up with a plug-in, formulaic approach for how to beat a game. For example, these starting hand threads where people come up with exhaustive lists of what hands to play in position X, when to raise, etc.

For rigid-structure games like limit O8, that kind of mind-set or approach or whatever you want to call it might be successful. But for big-bet games like PLO8 and NLHE, where there are many winning styles to choose from/incorporate, this sort of plug-in learning is flawed in that it may discourage a player from the experimentation it takes to develop an approach that not only works but is also comfortable. Worse yet, if a reader attempts to patch together various pieces of your guide to PLO8, the result could easily be a -EV style. For example, suppose the reader is naturally comfortable playing a 20/5 game, playing virtually nothing besides A2's and 3-wheel-card hands. Then they read your guide and notice that KKxx hands are winning at a decent clip for you, so they try to add them to their game. But perhaps KKxx won't win for them, because they aren't playing enough hands to get their opponents to discount the chances that they have top set when the K flops. It turns out that KKxx only gets a significant win % because your numbers are more like 45/15, we'll say, giving you a greater likelihood of getting action with nice-fitting flops. That is a pretty bad example, but I'm sure you see what I'm getting at.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd put these thoughts forward as a caution that Phil's advice is based on his particular approach to the game, and should be taken with a grain of salt when one considers how/if to incorporate whatever PLO8 theories come out of this. Still, I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say, if nothing else it should spark some good discussions.