Bankroll Management/Cash format

I told you to skip BRM section. ♦

In reality, there are three aspects to BRM. First you have to decide if your bankroll is static or dynamic. In static, you don't want to deposit more money if you suffer a downswing and in dynamic you are ready to deposit more. So in static you need to have bigger bankroll than in dynamic. Second is mathematical, and the idea is to have BRM that can stand the swings. This is affected by static/dynamic, your skill level and how keen are you to drop in stakes in downswing. And also how many lower stakes there are. And if you are a losing player, BRM just means how long it takes for you to go broke. The bigger your expected winrate is, the less chance there is to lose money.

Example: You have $100 and you play PLO5. That is 20bin, but if you drop to PLO2 when you are down to $60 you have 8bin for PLO5 and 30bin for PLO2. So you need to have downswing of over 38 buyins to go broke, even as your starting bankroll is 20 buyins for PLO5.

Third one is psychological apsect, and this is often forgotten. If your bankroll is $100 and you lose $50 in one session (10 buyins in one session is normal) how does that affect you mentally? It's easy to say "I am mental powerhouse, that doesn't affect me" but in reality especially beginning players are certainly affected if they lose a big portion of their bankroll.

My advice is to play normal 100bb games, as PLO over 200bb is a bit different game. Zoom is easy and that's why people love it. But in Zoom it's harder to make money, as the average VPIP of an opponent is lower than in normal tables. And at micros most of your profit comes from high VPIP players. But in Zoom you can play more hands and get more situations, so you have to decide if you want to aim for winnings or for becoming a better player. Also in Zoom you don't have to table select and worry about images and table dynamics, which can be hard for beginners.

SeacombeSwag, your post helped me in a way you may not think.

We can't look into your head and I'm sure either of your decision will be correct. Maybe this one of the few decisions in poker that should come from the heart rather than the brain.

Myself would make my decision between normal tables and zoom. And later if I don't have time for a long session but want to practice playing with a deep stack join these 250BB tables just one limit below mine. Nonetheless you will have big stacks at the normal tables and zoom. Afaik the 50+10 BRM was intended for 100BB so if you want to stick to it you have to decide between those two too.

An other consideration maybe how comitted you want to be to stars? If you are 'specialicist' in normal tables you can play on any platform with zoom it maybe very difficult even impossible.

The only thing I would disagree is your statement: 'is not sticking with the same ones putting myself at a relevant disadvantage?'. Because the PLO player pool isn't that huge - you are very quick very familiar with the faces at the tables. Even without a tracker.

Guyes dont play zoom. It is profitable on plo 200 and higher. Lower zoom stakes are unbeatable unless you are among the best of the best regs on limit. Rake kills games and it is proven that most regs have minus winrate post rb.

Actually it is proven that those who play the most hands are slight losers. Those are multitable grinders, which doesn't mean they are the best. I know a lot of players that make money in Zoom. It is harder to make money in Zoom, but they are really far from unbeatable.

In any poker environment you have to be better enough than the average opponent to make money. In PLO it is slightly more than in HE as the rake is more. If the rake is 10bb/100 after rakeback, it's not enough that you beat your opponents by 8bb/100. To get positive results in Zoom you have to be better player than what you need to be to get positive results in normal tables, that I agree on.

Are Zoom and normal 6-max tables the same in terms of rake taken?

Hi Kyyberi. For the sake of discussion i give a link to that topic on 2+2, so everybody make his own conlcusion.
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/153/high-stakes-pl-omaha/rake-analysis-between-plo-nlhe-incl-zoom-1461881/

Lets make few assumptions, if you have different opinion about it please share it :-P
1) on zoom tables WR is smaller than on regular tables,
2) because of smaller wr, variance is higher
3) because of higher variance you need bigger hands sample size to get a "real" wr.

You wrote "Actually it is proven that those who play the most hands are slight losers" and i totally agree with you about that statement. lets see at their hands sample size (its from whole year).
At plo zoom 25 its between 200k hands a year and 600 k hands a year. most players are between 200k-300k
300k a year is 25k hands a month. So top volume grinders on plo 25 zoom makes less than 25k monthly. This is really not so hard to do on zoom, i would say that most grinders on pokerstrategy forum who treats poker serious, would like to climb stakes, and play 20-25h a month, are in group of those who plays the most (so their are sligtly losers).

And going back to my 3 assumptions, if someone is a big winner at zoom (below 200), and is not in the group of top grinders, than he is doing very little hands, and his sample size is not reliable.

If someone plays 25K hands a month and makes profit, he is not playing PLO25 after couple of months. That's why there are those breakevenish regs who bang their head to the wall.

If you could take nicknames and forget stakes and then pick the biggest volume grinders from PLO5-PLO200, the results would be quite different.

I mean 25K a month with 2bb/100 winrate would change to PLO50 in half a year probably.

Smaller winrate doesn't actually increase variance (at least I think so), it just makes is more likely to lose money when downswing happens. With better winrate, it is less likely to lose money depsite having a bad run.

BRM ...imo is the most underrated significant skill a player can have. Time and time again, I see a micro stakes player lose a big hand and then his mind gets hi jacked and TILT takes over the drivers wheel. You must have stops in place less reload again and again.

GL at the tables !

I'd stay clear of the ante games. Deep ante isn't available anymore anyways but the ante games still run 100bb deep.
I personally prefer zoom. I play 3-max with a replayer or 2 most of the time. Hands/hr is still a lot and levels of concentration are often very high as your always in a hand. When 8/10 Tabling like I would need to match zoom tables I find the annoyance of table selection, seating/moving, tiling and looking at 2 screens is too frustrating.

Up to you, but I choose zoom.

If it was the US where there are anonymous tables i'd play reg just to get stats on villains.