From the Desk of the Poker Philosopher

This was a great idea for a tournament format, with half the hands playing as O/8 and half as PLO8. Many people are going to be good at one game but not the other. Personally, I'm pretty strong in PLO8 but not so good at O/8. Naturally, plenty of people suck at both as well.

I got off to a nice start, playing well in PLO8 and running well at O/8. There was an awful player on my left who was giving me a lot of chips, but eventually he monkeyed his way into winning a huge pot:

Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Tournament
Blinds: t25/t50
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t6903
UTG+1: t2857
CO: t2540
Button: t3590
Hero: t12500
BB: t6035

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is SB with :ah :ks :6h :3h
4 folds, Hero raises to t150, BB calls t100 (pot was t200).

Flop: :2d :qh :7h (t300, 2 players)
Hero bets t250, BB raises to t1050, Hero raises to t3450, BB raises to t5850, Hero raises to t8250, BB calls all-in t35.
Uncalled bets: t2365 returned to Hero.

Turn: :tc (t12070, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: t12070)

River: :3d (t12070, 1 player + 1 all-in - Main pot: t12070)

Results:
Final pot: t12070


I flopped the nut flush draw and the nut low draw with counterfeit protection, and this guy got it all in with me for 120 BB's with the second nut low draw and an underpair to the board: Td As 4s 4c. The board bricks out, and I lose a pot that would have put me in top 1%.

I did get him back eventually though:

Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Tournament
Blinds: t40/t80
6 players
Converter

Stack sizes:
UTG: t7156
UTG+1: t2234
CO: t8584
Button: t8394
Hero: t5035
BB: t11526

Pre-flop: (6 players) Hero is SB with :6h :ah :3c :7c
3 folds, Button raises to t240, Hero calls t200 (pot was t360), BB calls t160 (pot was t560).

Flop: :js :3h :as (t720, 3 players)
Hero checks, BB bets t80, Button raises to t160, Hero raises to t1280, BB calls t1200 (pot was t2240), Button folds.

Turn: :4s (t3440, 2 players)
Hero bets t2515, BB calls t2515 (pot was t5955).

River: :qc (t8470, 2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks.

Results:
Final pot: t8470


I couldn't believe it when I scooped this pot. There was only about 1000 left in the effective stacks, but I was so sure I was smoked that I didn't even think I had good equity against his checking range. I was just hoping he would check it back and I could escape with half. Turns out he had 4d Qh 3d 5s, having called the turn with nothing but a bad low draw and two pair.

I lasted for about 6 hours, which only got me through 75% of the field or so, before getting pretty short and busting in some nondescript way.

Labels: 6-max, O8, PLO8, poker, Poker Stars, poker strategy, short-handed, tournament, WCOOP

Stumble It!

I wanted to make this post about how bad people are at Stud/8, because they are. Split pot games will rip clueless players to shreds. O/8 is a pretty easy game to get, so you don't see quite as many huge mistakes. Plus there are fewer betting streets and it's easier to make the nuts. But in Stud/8, people chase absurd lows and call down with any pair even when they are clearly crushed or getting freerolled.

But I also made a pretty big error in a Stud/8 game, so I guess I'll be talking about how I suck at Stud/8 (though this is really just a Stud high error). On the river, my opponent was showing 6655, and I had Aces up with both Aces and two high cards showing. My opponent bet, and I raised for value. Like I was saying, no matter how clear I make it that I have Aces up, people will call down with any two pair.

I forgot, however, to think about what my opponent would be value betting. Since his two pair was open, there was no way he could be betting on the strength of that alone. He had to have either a boat or a low, and in either case there was no value in a raise. Sure enough, he had 6's full.

Despite playing for four and a half hours, I only made it to the top 25% of the field. The hand that really hurt me came in LHE. A guy in MP raised, and I 3-bet with AKo. He called. The flop came Ad 5c 3c. He checked, I bet, he check-raised, and I called. the turn was an off-suit 8, he bet, and I raised. The river was a T, and he check-called with Ac Tc. Unlucky river for me, but there were quite a few of those that could have come.

Labels: 3-bet, FLHE, FTOPS, Full Tilt Poker, HORSE, O8, poker, poker strategy, session review, Stud, Stud/8, tournament

Stumble It!

Sweet run, bro, congratulations. Rouhani wins it, but Chambers down 140K for 2nd. Not too freaking shabby.

Labels: O8, poker, Stud/8, wsop

Stumble It!

Tom Chambers, 2+2's LearnedFromTV, has just made the final table of WSOP Event 10! It's a $2500 tournament that alternates between Omaha 8-or-better split and Stud 8-or-better split. Tom is a former math teacher and a mixed games expert (he's got a win in the Stars $200 Sunday HORSE under his belt), so it's no surprise that he kicks ass at these games. He's also a good friend of mine, so I'd be pulling for him regardless, but I'm especially excited because I have 10% of his action!

Here's the final table chip counts according to CardPlayer:

Farzad Rouhani - 513,000
Greg Pappas - 304,000
"Miami" John Cernuto - 285,000
Tom Chambers - 235,000
Michael "The Grinder" Mizrachi - 231,000
John Racener - 180,000
Daniel Mowczan - 122,000
Yueqi Zhu - 87,000

At 4 p.m., the eight of them will battle it out for the bracelet and $232,911 first prize. Stakes start at 10K/20K and the average stack is 195K, so Tom's 235K puts him in pretty good shape.

One time, dealer!

Labels: O8, poker, Stud/8, tournament, wsop

Stumble It!

On the night of the O/8 FTOPS, I decided to play some O/8 cash as well and came upon what seems to be a pretty common profitable spot in low limit O/8 ring games:

Poker Stars
Limit Omaha Ring game
Limit: $5/$10
9 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (9 players) Foucault is MP3 with :kc :2h :5s :ac
2 folds, MP1 calls, MP2 raises, Foucault calls, 4 folds, MP1 calls.

Flop: :5d :5h :4s (7.4SB, 3 players)
MP1 checks, MP2 bets, Foucault raises, MP1 calls, MP2 calls.

Turn: :2s (6.7BB, 3 players)
MP1 checks, MP2 bets, Foucault raises, MP1 calls, MP2 calls.

River: :7d (12.7BB, 3 players)
MP1 checks, MP2 checks, Foucault bets, MP1 raises, MP2 calls, Foucault 3-bets, MP1 caps, MP2 calls, Foucault calls.

Results:
Final pot: 24.7BB

For some reason the converter isn't showing my opponents' hands, but they both had A3xx for the nut low and a straight. It should have been obvious to both of them that this was the case and that they were going to get quartered with a third person jamming the pot and a pair on the board. Better players usually know not to cap the betting with just the nut low, since they will often end up sharing that half of the pot. Although in this case the nut low also made a straight, they still should have backed off given how easy it was to get quartered it anyone had a full house.

Labels: O8, poker, poker strategy, session review

Stumble It!

Ray Zee, the author of High-Low Split Poker for Advanced Players, posted a brief response to my review of his book on the Two Plus Two forums:

"tnx for the review.

i do believe all players would greatly benefit from the book. advanced or intermediate the most of course. but if you are a decent player of other games your skills can be transfered quickly enough to split.
so even a novice at the game can benefit from the book right away if he is experienced in poker.

a complete novice i think should get his feet wet with limit holem or seven stud first then expand his horizons.

no harm in reading any book once thru and getting a feel for it and then coming back when you can get the greatest use of it. if you havent at least skimmed thru it you wont know when you are reeady to digest its value."

I don't really disagree with this. Beginning players could surely find value in the book, and it couldn't hurt for them to know what's out there when they're ready for it. But I do think there are better resources for players new to split-pot games that cover important basics like O/8 starting hands in greater detail.

Labels: book review, O8, poker, Stud/8

Stumble It!

Ray Zee’s book is rightly called, “For Advanced Players.” Players new to Stud/8 or O/8 will need to find another resource, as Zee largely glosses over basic material in favor of advanced thinking and plays. Though occasionally scattershot and disorganized, his book contains a wealth of information for those who play in tough split-pot games.


Stud/8

Though it would be helpful if he came out and said this, Zee’s guiding principle in Stud/8 is that you need to know where you stand. Tough players are aggressive, and pots will often be capped on big bet streets. He advises to play hands that can give action like this and to get out of the way early if you won’t know what to do if your opponents start raising. Thus, rather than pushing small edges on early streets, “It is sometimes good not to play so fast so you can determine where the strength lies.”

In terms of showdown equity, Stud/8 hands often run close in value, particularly on early streets. Thus, how well a hand will play on future streets becomes the true test of its worth. Good players find their edge by recognizing the many conditions that affect whether and how a hand should be played. Will the pot be heads up or multiway? Which cards are live? Is there an opportunity to misrepresent your hand?

Much of Zee’s Stud/8 material is devoted to a street-by-street analysis of how to play. For third street, he offers a comprehensive analysis of the possible starting hands, when to play them, and how they ought to be played. This is one of the highlights of the book. Players make third street decisions on every hand they play, so it’s important to be airtight on the fundamentals, and this text can advance exactly that goal.

The discussions of future streets are good but much less thorough. They read more like a laundry list of possible plays than a full consideration of the situations in which a player may find himself. To be fair, this is not entirely Zee’s fault. Stud/8 is a complex game with a lot of variables, and it would be difficult to write a comprehensive guide to play on later streets. For advanced players who already know how to handle common situations, Zee’s thoughts on tricky spots and expert plays are a treasure trove.

Unsurprisingly, the text becomes even more disorganized in its second-half, where a hodge-podge of ideas is collected as “Miscellaneous Topics”. These include thoughts on slow-playing, bluffing, and random plays that didn’t fit elsewhere in the text. Again, it’s valuable information, but the presentation is a little lacking.

Zee’s sections on types of Stud/8 games (ie tight, loose, short-handed), psychology, and hand-reading fall short of the standard set by the earlier material. They are valuable enough, but rather generic (the Psychology and Hand-Reading sections of both the Stud/8 and O/8 manuals are literally identical, borrowed from Sklansky’s Theory of Poker, save for a few details). Much the same can be said for the Questions and Answers: I suppose there’s no harm in including them, but they introduce no new material and offer little advantage over re-reading the text.


O/8

Although the first section of the O/8 text is devoted to “Basic Play”, it is still not ideal for beginners. Zee does articulate the basic goal of O/8, particularly in weak low-limit games: “your primary edge comes from the fact that you won’t be drawing to less than the nuts.” Unlike the very helpful review of third-street hands in Stud/8, however, this section does not categorize the various types playable O/8 holdings or discuss when and how to play them. Instead, Zee presumes this knowledge on the part of the reader and dives straight into special cases of what not to play and which weak-looking hands could actually be played for a profit.

After this brief discussion of starting hands, the “Basic Play” section consists of a list of disjointed “Concepts” numbered and strung together. They are valuable tidbits, but the lack of any organizing structure prevents the reader from getting a holistic sense of the game and its flow.

Zee devotes the bulk of the O/8 manual to “Advanced Strategy” for higher-limit games. Here, just playing tight and drawing to the nuts will not suffice. Instead, “this is a game of trying to get in cheaply before the flop…. The big decision is to analyze the flop and understand how it relates to your hand and whether you should play on.”

Profitable players in these games make good decisions about how well flops connect with their holdings and how to play for maximum profit against opponent’s likely holdings. The key is “to have the nuts with draws to better hands.” In other words, in a game where most players are tight and only putting in money with the nut low, having counterfeit protection to the second nut low is essential. Outside shots to a gutshot straight or a backdoor flush also contribute important equity. Holding the nuts without any of these is rarely sufficient to withstand heavy action.

Of course, these ideal situations do not arise all that often. In the meantime, Zee explains how to steal pots, how to exercise restraint even with strong hands when there are a lot of draws out, and how to handle tough spots with marginal holdings.

Despite its catch-all name, the “Additional Advanced Concepts” section is actually organized more logically than most of the book. It consists primarily of advice on how to adapt your play to game conditions (i.e. tight, loose, or short-handed). As with the Stud/8 material, the Psychology, Hand Reading, and Questions & Answers sections are largely repetitive and generic.


Ray Zee’s High-Low Split Poker is not, nor does it purport to be, a comprehensive guide to playing Stud/8 and O/8. It reads more like an off-the-cuff brainstorming of all the little things that separate the players in these games from the merely good. But Zee is one such great player, and his musings, however disjointed, are worth many times their cover price.

Labels: book review, O8, poker, poker strategy, Stud/8

Stumble It!

Tuesday night's $200 O/8 event was the best I've done in this year's FTOPS, which just means I got to play for five hours and leave empty-handed. The play was atrocious, but it's tough to do much in O/8 if you aren't hitting flops. Once we got shallow, the willingness of awful players to take flops for two bets with awful hands made stealing impossible. The only thing to do was hunker down and wait for good cards. I managed to stay afloat with a 1/4 to 1/2 average stack, just blinding down down down and then doubling back up. I attempted one bluff that I thought was pretty sweet and really should have worked:

Full Tilt Poker
Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Limit: $60/$120
9 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (9 players) Foucault is SB with :ac :8d :3d :8h
3 folds, MP2 calls, 3 folds, Foucault calls, BB checks.

Flop: :2c :6c :jh (3SB, 3 players)
Foucault checks, BB bets, MP2 calls, Foucault calls.

Turn: :qs (3BB, 3 players)
Foucault checks, BB bets, MP2 calls, Foucault calls.

River: :qc (6BB, 3 players)
Foucault bets, BB calls, MP2 folds.

Results:
Final pot: 8BB
Foucault showed Ac 8d 3d 8h
Sometimes I lead out here with a pair and the nut low draw, but since I had the Ac, I decided I'd check-call the flop and then lead out at a low card or a club on the turn. That seemed like the best way to fold out some better high hands while keeping in worse lows.

Unfortunately, the club didn't come until the river. However, I still felt it was a good spot to lead out. It's possible the limper had a club draw, but he really shouldn't be chasing a non-nut flush draw, and I thought it much more likely he had A3 or some similar busted low. The BB most likely had two pair that got counterfeited on the river. Unless he flopped a set, he's not likely to have a boat, since the pair came running on the turn and river. It's rare to go for a pure bluff in O/8 (as opposed to a 'demi-bluff' designed to knock someone off of half the pot when you have the other half locked up), especially into two people, but I felt this was a good spot, and it only needs to work one time in six.

The fact that the BB snap-called me with the worst possible flush suggests, however, that it might not work even that often.

Labels: O8, poker, poker strategy, session review, tournament

Stumble It!

In his Closing Thoughts, Jeff Hwang comments on what motivated him to write Pot Limit Omaha Poker: The Big Play Strategy:

"...nowhere in poker literature was truly useful instructions on where to start. Everybody says the same thing: Play four cards that work together, A-A-J-T and A-A-K-K are the best hands, and four connecting cards are playable. But what else is playable and what am I trying to do when I see the flop?"

The resulting book is far from the definitive word on PLO strategy, but it is an excellent introduction to the game, which, as Hwang points out, was a market niche badly in need of filling.

The author proposes a simple but effective strategy geared towards the low-stakes, full-ring PLO games primarily found in brick and mortar casinos. Echoing the advice of other Omaha authors, Hwang argues that PLO is a game of straights. In other words, the winning hand at the river will often be a straight.

But PLO is also a flop game, even more so than Hold 'Em, and that is where most of the fireworks happen. Although big pots emerge most frequently when a monster draw runs into the flopped nuts, Hwang refutes the common misconception that PLO is primarily a game of luck and gigantic post-flop coin flips. Instead, he claims,

"there are a variety of common big-pot situations where not only does one player usually have the other one smashed, but in some cases will be on a total freeroll. Our goal is to be the one on the dominant end when the big pots get played: this involves first recognizing what those big-pot situations are, and then identifying the hands that have the potential to put us in the position to get the edge in those spots."

This is exactly what he goes on to do, beginning with a discussion of the most common profitable flop situations in which an Omaha player may find himself. Just as the Hold 'Em player is accustomed to winning big pots when he flops an overpair versus top pair top kicker or a set versus an overpair, the PLO player has his own set of dream flop scenarios, such as the Nut Straight Freeroll (nut straight with re-draws to a flush, full house, or higher straight versus the same straight without redraws) and the Dominating Draw (a 16-out draw to the nuts versus a lower draw to non-nut hands, or a pair and a wrap draw versus a bare wrap draw, for instance).

Having laid out these profitable situations on which one's sights should be set, Hwang next considers which starting hands are most likely to produce such situations: combinations containing suited Aces and four connecting cards (gaps at the bottom only, if at all), and pairs accompanied by either of these. Higher is better, in all cases. These hands form the core of Hwang's pre-flop strategy, which unfortunately cannot be laid out quite as clearly as can its hold 'em equivalents, given the much larger set of possible Omaha starting hands.

Hwang gives some consideration to how to play these hands pre-flop as well, such as whether to enter with a call or a raise, what can be played from which position, and what is still viable when the pot has already been raised. Frankly, this isn't the strongest part of the book, and the advice here sometimes feels haphazard and a little weak. Still, the reader does accumulate a feel for what works by studying Hwang's many examples, and this should be enough to get him started at the table, where he can work out his own answers to these questions.

Returning to the discussion of ideal flop situations, Big Play Strategy next discusses how much heat different kinds of hands can handle post-flop. Hwang devotes quite a lot of pages and examples to what is really a fairly simple strategy: only draw to the nuts, play big draws aggressively, don't slowplay, bluff when your opponents show weakness. It's not quite fair to call the many quizzes and example hands "filler", but I'd rather poker books stuck to content and left the study aids to high school textbooks. A lot of the material is repetitive or downright irrelevant.

Hwang's strategy is a good one, especially for relatively passive and straight-forward full ring live games. I don't imagine it would adapt well to the short-handed games that are more popular online or to games with tricker and more aggressive opponents. One weakness in particular that shows up in some of the sample hands is an eagerness to bet big and take down the pot in situations where a hand is likely to be way ahead or way behind of an opponent. Though Hwang's admonitions against slow-playing are generally well taken, it may not be best to bet pot again with AQQ8 on an AA6K board after getting called on the flop.

When I saw that Hwang included sections on O8 and PLO8, I was more than a little skeptical that he could cover three games adequately in one book. After seeing how little space he required to offer some excellent insights into PLO, though, and how much space he devoted to review, reiteration, and even the occasional bad beat story, I had renewed hope. As it turns out, he does an admirable job with both of the other games.

His approach is similar, identifying the most profitable post-flop situations and then working backwards to derive a pre-flop strategy. His recommendations concerning starting hands and how to play them is generally solid in both cases, though his bias for post-flop play occasionally leads him to disregard preflop edges. With A-A-3-x or A-A-4-x in O8, for instance, he advises a limp "in a 'zoo' game where everybody is going to call your raise." Even if it will be necessary to give up on many flops, it's hard to see a reason not to make a raise that will be called by so many hopeless hands that will both lose equity pre-flop and connect with fewer flops than this relative monster. Hwang also seems a bit too willing to give up on non-nut high hands for a fixed limit game where most opponents are playing primarily low cards.

Aside from these shortcomings, though, the O8 section is nearly as strong on post-flop play as on pre-flop strategy. It contains good advice on value betting, raising to clear the field and promote hands, semi-bluffing, and 'demi-bluffing' the river with the nuts in one direction in hopes of knocking an opponent off of half the pot.

Demi-bluffing plays an even larger role in the pot limit version of the game, where the bets are bigger and the bare nuts in one direction must sometimes be folded. In PLO8, high hands with any kind of low potential, like K-K-3-2, gain a lot of playability from the demi-bluff.

Hwang clearly highlights this and other differences between PLO8, O8 , and PLO. On the other, he makes good use of the similarities between the games to cover all three in a single book. Of course, none is covered in all its intricacies. But Pot Limit Omaha: The Big Play Strategy does a surprisingly good job of introducing all three of these games by orienting new players not just to the nuts and bolts but to the guiding objectives, the profitable situations towards that game's strategy is directed.

Perhaps more importantly, Hwang's fondness for Omaha shines through on every page, encouraging readers to recognize that it can be both fun and profitable. His book will certainly contribute to his dream of seeing "small stakes PLO games... become standard in card rooms across America."

Labels: book review, O8, PLO, PLO8, poker, poker strategy

Stumble It!

Unlike most of the other chapters that the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition dedicates to games other than No Limit Hold 'Em, Mike Matusow's "Omaha Eight or Better" really is dedicated to tournament strategy rather than to the fundamentals of the game. Unfortunately, I ultimately found his few insights into the game itself, particularly with regard to hand-reading, much more valuable than his tournament-specific considerations, to which he ascribes entirely too much importance.

Wisely forgoing any introduction to the rules of the game, Matusow dives right into O/8 tournament strategy, theorizing that there are really two distinct phases of tournament play: the early levels, where stacks are deep and you will play a lot of multi-way limped pots, and the later levels, where stacks are shallow and most pots are contested heads up. Though he doesn't say so, this distinction will be familiar to NLHE tournaments players, who are accustomed to focusing on implied odds early in a tournament and on immediate odds and showdown value during the later stages.

During the early stages, stacks are deep and there are likely to be many inexperienced O/8 players at the table. Consequently, play will be much too loose, making for good opportunities to win big pots.

Matusow correctly advises, "You can and should play a lot of marginal hands." What's a marginal hand? He permits you to play high-only hands as long as the pot is multi-way and you have or are drawing to the nut high hand. When in late position, you can open up even more. "Any suited ace with a low card." OK. "Any three low cards." Fine. "Anything double-suited." Huh?

If implied odds are the defining consideration for the early stages, why aren't reverse implied odds a concern? Matusow admits in the same paragraph that, "The goal is to see a flop for one bet and release the hand unless you catch the nuts or are drawing to them." That's not going to happen when you play hands like Ks 9s 6d 2d, but this tension is never addressed by the author.

Another fundamental implication of overly loose opponents is that you need to bet more hands for value, but Matusow actually suggests just the opposite: "Regardless of your position or your cards, you shouldn't be raising early in the tournament." It's true that in O8 you're often limping very strong hands because you want to invite in dominated hands and play multi-way pots with them. But with a strong multi-way hand and a few limpers in front of you, it's generally correct to raise for value.

Besides, Matusow's reasoning is just the opposite of this: no one is going to fold anyway and you might miss the flop. If you miss the flop, you can re-evaluate, but with deep stacks, this is no reason not to push an edge pre-flop. This is what I mean by taking tournament considerations too far: it's as though he doesn't even realize that there are reasons to raise besides increasing your chances of winning the pot. In actuality, I'm sure Matusow does realize this, and for all I know he's thought it through and still thinks his advice makes sense, but it's too obvious of an objection for him to leave unaddressed in the article.

The late-game strategy Matusow outlines is more useful. He advocates a tight aggressive game, backing off of marginal stuff like high-only hands and coming in for a raise or reraise pretty much whenever you enter the pot. This is very consistent with Sklansky's Gap Concept, as is the advice to pitch even seemingly strong but easily dominated hands like A2xx facing an early position raise.

Even though you're upping the aggression with shallower stacks, you still need to catch cards to win. Matusow is very clear that "you are mostly going to make a lot off players who aren't patient or who think they can outplay you. You aren't going to win an Omaha tournament outplaying anyone." It's very hard to win pots without a showdown in a split-pot gamed with fixed limit betting, so while you need to play aggressively to take advantage of situations where you can scoop in this way, you need to back off quickly if you miss and encounter resistance.

The most useful advice Matusow offers involves hand-reading and learning to recognize situations where an opponent is likely to bluff or allow himself to be bluffed. For instance, the pre-flop raiser, especially if he's in early position, almost certainly has low cards, as do the players who call him. Thus, if he gets a lot of callers, you can call with a high-only hand figuring to be ahead for at least that half of the pot. Also, if the flop comes high, you can often steal from the pre-flop raiser. Similarly, if you make even a marginal hand on a high-card flop, players may attempt to steal from you, and you should call down light. As the author puts it, "A lot of post-flop play later in the tournament comes from knowing your opponents and comparing the hands they play with the board."

The chapter concludes with a discussion of other key tournament concepts such as how to play the bubble and how to play as a short stack. Overcall, it's a good tournament article, largely because Matusow wisely chooses to focus on tournament strategy rather than the fundamentals of the game. I say 'wisely' because his advice for the early stages, which play more like an O/8 ring game, is fundamentally weak.

Labels: book review, O8, poker, poker strategy

Stumble It!