Posts Tagged ‘O8’

Their flawless software that is now the best and most secure in the industry apparently produced this little gem in the UBOC O/8 event the other day. The bet sizes were all screwed up, enabling people to limp in for 15 at the 50/100 level, and for the player in the Big Blind to move all in. Their response was to cancel the tournament, refund buy-ins, and offer a freeroll for affected players with about $10,000 in UBOC championship event buy-ins added.

Thanks to TwoPlusTwo poster FreeFalling for this awesome image!

I think this has been out for a few days, but I just noticed that Poker Stars has posted a tentative schedule for a yet-to-be-named tournament series in April. I love the format of offering a low-, medium-, and high-stakes option for every tournament and am frankly staggered that they think they will get sufficient interest in some of these events, especially the $2000 Triple Draw.

The 2+2 MTT community is mostly salivating over this, though some are a little concerned that the smaller events will actually discourage people from trying satellite into the bigger events. I don’t think they’re wrong, but I still expect the big events to be plenty soft thanks to tourney donks playing with relatively deep stacks for fairly big money.

The only issue for me is how to get enough money on Stars by April to enable me to play the ones I want without busting the bankroll. I may suck it up and make a wire transfer, which I’ve so far refused to do on principle since Stars makes the depositor pay the wire fees. It’s really preposterous- I pay enough rake in 10 minutes to cover the fees, and it’s clearly in their interest for me to have money on their site.

Anyway, the schedule:  Read the complete post...

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  Read the complete post...

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.  Read the complete post...

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

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!

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.

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.