Omaha at the Micros

I haven't been playing much poker lately--work and home stuff have pretty much been consuming my waking hours--but the little I have played hasn't been Hold'em. Instead, I've been TAgging it up down at the microstakes ($0.02/$0.05) at the 6max Omaha tables on Bovada. And boy is it a hoot.

I literally isolated a couple of bucks in my online bankroll to see if I could build it up in Omaha. Because of the work Le Monsieur and I have been doing on the Hold'em lessons, I wanted to see if a beginner at Omaha could achieve the same types of results achievable in Hold'em by applying the same types of tactics and strategies-- modified of course for the vagaries (read: variance) of Omaha.

Specifically, I'm using all the types of things that work at Hold'em, but I'm doubling down on them at the Omaha tables. Chief among these tactics are, of course, position. Probably more than any other factor, playing positionally-aware in Omaha is the key to success. Got a hand like J-T-9-3 single suit in EP? Throw it away. Got it on the button and you're facing some limps? You're gonna come in, baby, and come in hard.

Pot control vs. position is also another key factor. Got Aces in the blinds and there are more than a couple of active players already in? Don't raise, as it's only going to bloat the pot in a situation where you're OOP, and will probably be called only by better on flops when you have to donk lead and/or check-call.

And tight-aggressive works just as well at PLO as it does in Hold'em.  As does REDi....

And so on.

See folks, poker is poker. It's about hand reading and exploiting edges. It's about encouraging your opponents to make mistakes-- while you minimize your own. It's about position. And reading board textures. And calculating equities. And folding. And folding some more. And then folding even more. And then hammering with balanced 3bet bluffs and value bets.

While PLO is wonderfully different than Hold'em, and Hold'em is wonderfully different than Stud, and Stud is wonderfully different than Razz.... they're all the same, too.  Poker be poker.

I've been telling Mr. Multi for years that he should learn Omaha, as I think it would help his Hold'em game. I suggest you do the same. What have you got to lose?

Oh, and did I mention it's a hoot to play, too?

All-in for now...
-Bug

PLO Question

Here's one that's been rattling around in my still-jet lagged brain the last couple of days:

In a pot limit game like PLO, a villain can bet at most the size of the pot. This means that a potential caller is always offered at least 2:1 pot odds. In other words, one only needs 33% hand equity to call a pot sized bet.

Because equities run so close in PLO, this would seem to mean that calling is much more frequently the right play (especially in position) than it is in, say, NLHE, where the equities tend to be further apart.

In other words (and yes there are a lot of factors that go into the decision), calling would seem to be the default decision when facing a bet in PLO. In contrast, the opposite (i.e., folding) is generally the default in hold'em.

Yes, no, or ??

All-in for now...
-Bug

4 starting cards are twice as much fun as 2 cards...

Been playing a fair bit of PLO cash sessions lately. Mostly $25 buy-ins, but I'm also dabbling (way) above my bankroll (for my skills) at $50 and $100. Had a pretty good session today, banking a solid $200 for about two hours of seat time. The variance is tough at times, but overall I'm feeling relatively good about my poker play...

....except it really isn't poker that I'm playing. The word "poker" would imply reading players, bluffing, and all the other REDi and meta-game stuff I'm so comfortable at in NLHE. Am I doing any of these things in PLO? Uh, no. Basically, I'm still just a beginning player, but I'm finding a lot of success by just letting other (bad) players make bigger mistakes than I am.

Yep, that's right. I'm playing just a "nut peddling" approach to the game. Playing very tight in the first few seats, waiting for big cards, and loosening up and trying to see flops in later position with more "bust'em" type hands. Occasionally, I limp-reraise big hands from up front, and very rarely I actually bluff at scary boards when heads up in position. But for the most part I'm just playing an entirely exploitable level-1 approach to the game. I'm waiting for cards and position, playing mostly fit or fold, chasing my monster draws, and varying my bet sizes based on hand strength. I'm making good money doing this, but only because the other players are actually far worse than I am...

... well, most of them. Occasionally I run into players who have tripled or quadrupled their starting stacks, and they seem to know what they're doing... but so many of the other players are, well, playing terribly. Bad starting hands, playing OOP, cold-calling raises with marginal hands, chasing with hands that are clearly beat, getting married to aces on wet boards, etc. I'm no PLO expert, but even I can see really fundamental and basic mistakes being made by more than half the fields I face.

It's fun and lucrative, even if it isn't real poker.

All-in for now...
-Bug

Omaha & Jet Lag

Here in Spain for a full week of factory testing-- which means mostly standing around for hours, waiting for technicians to complete setting up a test, then witnessing said test for about five minutes, recording the results, and then back to waiting. Hours of boredom, punctuated by minutes of, well, something only slightly better than boredom.

Jet lag is, as usual, rearing it's ugly head, often at ~2am for an hour or so. To fill the void, I've been reading (re-reading Guterson's Snow Falling on Cedars, plus slogging through Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) and  of course playing some poker. My game of choice this week is $.10/$.25 Pot Limit Omaha on Bovada. The games are pretty soft, and I've found that playing a 95% Value + 5% Bluff approach, sprinkled with a liberal dose of Patience and Position, has netted me a fair bit of green.

PLO is not my area of expertise by any stretch of the imagination, but a significant fraction of the other players are bad enough that it doesn't really matter. I'm basically playing a Level-1.5 approach to the game: What are my cards? How scary is the board? Am I getting heat from another player? And so on... I.e., no need to get tricky when the other players are willing to stack off with bottom two pair and weaker. PLO is by nature a high variance game, but if you're willing to be super patient (read: fold a lot when in doubt) you can minimize the swings. Three nights in a row now I've cleared a couple hundred bucks by just playing my own cards in a me-scared fashion. Dunno if I should be proud or ashamed...

My wallet is happy tho...

All-in for now...
-Bug