(Im)Perfect Omaha - Day 1

Played my first 100 hands of "Perfect" Omaha yesterday, and, well, it wasn't completely perfect. I feel I played fairly well overall, but I definitely screwed up a couple of hands which cost me a fair bit of my overall profit (more on this in a moment).

The things I think I did well include playing very tight and selective. I tried hard on each hand to review the situation before acting preflop. My internal dialog would go something like this: "Okay, I have A-T-5-4 double suited and I'm MP. There's been a raise in front of me, but there are three people to act after me, including this bozo to my left who is a 75/50 player. This is one of those shiny-shiny-bright hands that Mr. Multi talks about. It looks pretty, but really is a weak hand. If I had this on the button, and there was at least one cold caller plus the raiser in front of me, I might consider it. But not in this situation. Ergo, fold."

Forcing myself to think through each hand like this helped a lot, especially in just plain keeping me out of bad situations with trap hands (well, mostly). Related to this, I also think I did a good job of playing position poker, which is said to be at least twice as important in Omaha as it is in Hold'em (mostly due to the variance of the game). For some reason, my helium hand wants to play lots of cards out of the blinds, which is a sure fire way to lose money in the long run. I had to constantly remind myself, "Hey, Bug, you're in the small blind! You will be out of position throughout the rest of the hand. What the hell are you thinking about here? Fold that cheese!"

Okay that said, what did I do poorly in this first 100 hands? Answer: two things. First, I lost my focus a couple of times. The worst was when my phone rang in the middle of the session. I didn't pick-up, but just that little distraction of thinking "I wonder who that is?" threw me off my game enough to cost me some money. The second thing I did poorly was play passively. I did a lot of check calling OOP, as well as not re-raising my big hands preflop. This can be addressed fairly easily, but the losing focus thing is going to be tougher to address, as I sometimes seem to have the attention span of a fruit fly. Sigh.

I won't bother showing my big winning hands here, as they really aren't all that interesting, but in the spirit of this improvement blog, here are my two worst offenders from day 1 of the experiment. Hopefully, I can retain what I learned from them:

Hand #1:
Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.10 BB (6 handed)

Hero (SB) ($11.56) BB ($0.28) UTG ($10.74) MP ($13.25) CO ($4) Button ($5.15)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 5, A, 4, 5 2 folds, CO bets $0.35, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.30, BB calls $0.18 (All-In)

Flop: ($0.98) A, A, Q (3 players, 1 all-in) Hero checks, CO bets $0.70, Hero calls $0.70

Turn: ($2.38) 10 (3 players, 1 all-in) Hero checks, CO bets $1.30, Hero calls $1.30

River: ($4.98) 6 (3 players, 1 all-in) Hero checks, CO bets $1.65 (All-In), Hero calls $1.65

Total pot: $8.28 | Rake: $0.55

Results: Hero had 5, A, 4, 5 (three of a kind, Aces). BB had 5, 8, 8, 2 (two pair, Aces and eights). CO had A, 10, Q, Q (full house, Aces over Queens).

Outcome: CO won $7.73

Synopsis: What the hell was I doing in this hand to begin with!? I'm OOP with a complete trap hand that has very little value. Then I'm playing it through all the streets like some kind of poster child for PCS anonymous (passive calling stations). The board has paired with straights and flushes possible, and I've got a weak trip hand. Terrible, terrible play.

Hand #2:

Full Tilt Pot-Limit Omaha, $0.10 BB (6 handed)

BB ($4) UTG ($3.25) MP ($8.61) Hero (CO) ($11.50) Button ($38.98) SB ($10)

Preflop: Hero is CO with A, 10, 3, A 2 folds, Hero bets $0.35, Button calls $0.35, 2 folds

Flop: ($0.85) K, Q, 3 (2 players) Hero checks, Button checks

Turn: ($0.85) J (2 players) Hero checks, Button checks

River: ($0.85) K (2 players) Hero bets $0.42, Button raises to $1.30, Hero calls $0.88

Total pot: $3.45 | Rake: $0.23

Results: Button had A, 7, K, J (full house, Kings over Jacks). Hero had A, 10, 3, A (straight, Ace high).

Outcome: Button won $3.22

Synopsis: Hard to say if the results would have been different if I'd play the hand differently (I think this particular player was going to the river with his hand every time). That said, slow playing was stupid. I should have bet on the flop, then I should have bet hard on the turn (actually, I was trying to CR on the turn and failed). Weak. Then, bet calling a raise on the river when it paired was equally dumb. A check-call might have been better, and might have saved me $.90 or so. Dunno.

Okay, those two ugly hands aside, how did I fair overall? Well, after 102 hands of play, I posted a net profit of $1.71, which is the equivalent of 8 ptbb/100. Unfortunately, this is pretty much meaningless, because it's only the first hundred hands. Still, given the two major losing hands I had and then still posting a profit makes me feel that maybe I've got a shot at doing semi-well at this little experiment. We'll see. I'll keep you posted...

All-in for now...
-Bug