gearing up for event #6: limit omaha8/better

Life is good.
The first event on the schedule starts in 2 hours, limit omaha 8/better hi-lo split. It's event #6 on the calendar, $1500 buy-in.
I'm staying at the gold coast (right across the street from the Rio, where the events are played) until tomorrow. Andrew, Derek, Wes and Christina get here tomorrow and we'll move into the house then. I've spent a bunch of time with my friends Caroline and Hector who live here... they've been great.
So, played a bunch of cash games so far... here's the quick run down.
1. Sunday night, $4-8 limit mixed game at the Wynn (2-7 triple draw, badugi, stud8/better, A-5 triple draw and Crazy Pineapple). Without trying to explain this mix as it's kind of obscure, it was a game that Caroline tried to organize for me but that's the highest we could fill a table. I ended up +$37 or something.
2. Monday, $2-5PLO at the Rio. +$100
$20-40 mixed game at the Rio (stud8,Omaha8,2-7 Triple Draw, Badugi) +$200
$20-40 Omaha 8/better with a Half Kill (30-60) +$200 (wynn)
$10-20 Omaha 8/better with a Half Kill (15-30) +$150 (wynn)
$5-5 PLO +$200 (wynn)
$2-5 NLHE -$800 (wynn)
So I played a ton of hours yesterday and tried to keep moving to good games but to be honest, except for a few marks in the PLO games, all the games were tough and I'm not sure there was much value to playing in them despite the wins. The NLHE session was full of marks but I got barbecued. As I've mentioned to everyone who's asked how this trip will go, I've got to make sure I adjust my hand ranges to live play. Online is way different than these live NLHE games. The hand that stacked me for $500 was silly and it'll sound silly when i re-tell it but I'm not entirely sure I hate my play (obviously I hated the outcome).
1. $2-5 NLHE at the wynn. (I have $500). Everyone folds to the mid-late table, one guy limps, this college kid with the earphones and card protector limps, I have 55 on the button. I make it $20 to go, (take control of the hand, build a pot and disguise my holdings... pretty standard). The blinds fold and the first limper calls, the kid now makes it $95 to go.
Now I have a couple of things I'm thinking about.
1. He CAN'T have a big hand here. He was fine limping in 2nd in late position with AA or KK or QQ? Very doubtful for a NLHE player but even more so from a young player.... We tend to be more aggressive, understanding ranges and knowing that playing a hand this way IMO is -EV. So i put him somewhere in the AQ, 99-JJ range even this is probably a tight estimate.
2. He knows that my range is huge here.... not a defining raise and I'm on the puck... it could be 34s here... looked like more of a pot sweetener than anything.
3. He's out of position and making it 4+x my raise, he's looking to end things now.
4. I have no information on him so he might be able to get away with this unorthodox/fishy line.

So, i think about this for 30 seconds and decide that i can pick up the pot here, so I shove in $500 to win $140, he snap calls with KK and he wins the hand. Now he's a massive favorite in this spot and on the surface my play looks terrible, I'm not sure it's not either, lol. BUT. I would say my play forces a ton of better hands to fold than 55 and he probably shows up with a hand that can call there (AKs, AA, KK, QQ) maybe 5% of the time. So I'm eager to here from NLHE players how atrocious my play there way or how unlucky it was for him to play his hand that ass backwards vs. someone who'll take rags and jam with them. Who knows, educational hand though. Live players do play funny I'll tell you that.

Second hand for a $300 loss or so was my top two vs. and overpair got counterfeited on the river and he made a better two-pair. Unlucky river, good spot/bad outcome. No problems here. Probably shouldn't have been in the hand OOP vs. an overpair anyways. He did spew a lot of chips when we got the money in though.

So that was that, played fine all day, beat every game but the last (unfortunately) and I think I wound up somewhere in the -$200 range for the day.

Looking back, here are a few observations. PLO is going to be hit or miss for me live. The games are either really good or they're populated by good players. Either way, the 2-5$ and 5-5$ games have no cap on the buy ins so they play HUGE. I don't have enough money here to sit down deep (with having to worry about tournament buy-ins) with these guys so I'll be buying in for 100x BB mostly. Unfortunately I'll have to grind up before I can really tangle with the big stacks. So far out of the say 25 players I've played PLO against, there has only been 5 or so that are real live ones. I will say that everyone overestimates the value of their made hands vs. draws and people will fold in +ev spots too easily. I made a kamikaze play yesterday with two pair vs. two players because I was short stacked and there was enough in there already. Original bettor folds and the last to act shows me 9JKA on a QT43 board and mucks it to my all in bet. He was getting like 2.7-1 to make the call and with 16 outs with one card to come.. he's taking slightly the worst of it folding.

Live players are so much more worried about the outcome of a pot then they are about the expected value their plays have. It's a strange thing but I guess when you play maybe 20 hands an hour (in PLO) it will lead to demonized beliefs. Anyways... enough bellyaching. Life is good. Saw my favorite pro Berry Johnson yesterday... 80 years young, came right up, remembered my name, shook my hand (we played a few events together last year) and wished me well. He's pretty unknown but a really top notch player in all the games. Oh and Justin, saw Amnon yesterday, they're running 3x a week so get down here, we need to make some basketball prop bets.

On a really different note. Buffet's are bad for society, Micheal Johnson giving those medals back is crazy-respectable but if you've seen him in his prime you've got to scratch your head at what he needed to look like that. Guiney, what the *&^* happened to your wings last night and Lakers in 6.