Why is my hourly rate in the positive three digit range?

For a guy that plays low stakes, I’ve been running a little hot.  Last night I hit an online $1/$2 Omaha/8 No LIMIT game and relieved folks of over $200 in a little over an hour.  I am a decent Omaha/8 player, but I’m not that good.  Omaha’s a pretty complex game, with enough potential draws that even experienced players probably don’t always sit and try and count all the outs of their opponents when considering an action.  I know I can’t in the time I’m allotted; I just try and play my cards well and hope I’m playing worse players.

There’s a lot of bad Omaha/8 players out there, and apparently, adding in the factor of a No Limit dimension brings out the worst in them.  Suddenly they’re shoving in their entire stack just to try and buy a pot, and everyone knows you don’t play an Omaha hand without the cards to back it up.  If you do, it’s like ‘truthiness in poker’, and you’re gonna get cracked.

I do feel like I’m starting to find ‘my game’.  Professional poker players talk about playing ‘their game’.  For some it’s a reckless maniac game, raising with nothing.  For others it’s a tight, tight game.  Whatever it is to you, it’s your comfort zone and you’re familiar with the decision patterns enough that you can start to trust one half of your brain to make those calculations while you let the other half of your brain do the really subtle stuff.  Like identifying the betting pattern of the guy next to you who seems to always light a cigarette when he’s waiting for someone to call his big bet with the nuts.  Or noticing the pulsing vein on the bluffer’s neck next to you.

Although I doubt I’ll say it when I have my statistically likely slide after this hot streak ends, I do love this game.  It’s like mortal combat without actual weapons.