Posts Tagged ‘O8’

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?  Read the complete post...

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.  Read the complete post...

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.  Read the complete post...

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.  Read the complete post...