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PLO question - folding the flopped nuts.
Here's a spot I encountered on Friday night, in a £150 PLO Tourney @ The Vic.
The Tourney was 4/5/6 Card PLO, alternating every Level.
At the time we were playing 5 card, on a very limpy final table.
Blinds were big, 7 players left, (6 paid, but this is not relevant) I had plenty of chips. This was a Tourney I genuinely thought I could win, as, one player excepted, the final table did not include any PLO hotties.
Pre-Flop
EVERY player limps in. (!). I have the almost very nice K-Q-J-10-7 in the BB.
There is so much in the middle, I seriously consider squeezing here. I decide not to, as I'd prefer an ace in my hand, & that 7 is an ugly dangler. If the 7 were a 9 or A, I deffo squeeze here.
FLOP
It came 6-8-9, two spades.
So I have the temporary nuts, but I don't have any spades. I have the straight extensions all the way up, so I'm not bothered if someone has 10-J-x-x.
I decide, wrongly perhaps, to check, for reasons of pot control. I want to see a safe turn, & then I'll go potty pot pot, as they won't be able to call that if they are on the draw with spades or a set, so I planned to call any flop bet.
It goes....
POT
CALL
RE-POT
This will be a chip-leader pot.
What would YOU do now?
What can they have?
Well I sort of decided that at least one of them also had the flopped straight. They may be freerolling with the spades, too.
I assumed the other 2 were on the flush draw.
What is the correct play here with my hand?
In case any of you have read about this hand on another forum, I folded.......
Will tell you what hands I was up against, & what happened, after (hopefully) a few replies.
It's a really interesting PLO Tourney spot, I think.
So, in my spot, you would.......?
Comments
2. as you say you could be up against a straight with the flushdraw, and sets with nfd, so lots of draws that beat you and it is five-card
3. it is a soft field so why go to war yet, plenty of time to find a clearer spot
4. you're a nit
= easy fold
but then i'm not much of a Omaha player and have never played 5 card
Plan B had to be put into place after the betting though.
No back door flush draw, no.
I had the nut straight & improvers all the way up, but no flush & no set possibilities.
That was what I did, but the question is, was that a correct fold?*
I think it's close.
* By "correct", whether I would have won or not is irrelevant. It's the "10,000 times" thing, if we play the hands 10,000 times, what works out best, "as played"?
Some Big Boys elsewhere are fairly convinced it was a bad fold. They might just be right, too. An intriguing spot.
Out of interest, how short would you need to be to call here?
However, we wonder if maybe a 'min raise from you (the BB) pre-flop might have changed everything and also easier decision making, once you know how many players are then left in ? (Would players to your left want to call a min-raise with players to the right of them to act again?)
As you can tell, 'We' are having this discussion over lunch, but feel that the way the hand played, with the 'check' to the flop, then once all that action started, you were 100% right to fold ..(You don't want to be involved in 4-way all-in action at that stage)
PS.. Hope you cashed ? Tesla
I can't imagine much worse than being all-in 4 or 5 way here.
PLO & PLO8 are very different from NLH, & we can comfortably trundle along with much smaller stack sizes, & the traditional "M" values go out of the window.
Whilst it is not ideal, & we would prefer it not to happen, 10 or 12 Bigs in PLO & PLO8 is plenty. Even 5 Bigs, whilst bad, is not disastrous in PLO & PLO8.
When I'm short in PLO or PLO8, my golden rule is to try & get heads up, even if I only have spanners. My cards are almost certainly "live", & this is the perfect spot, as we can rarely be far behind. 3 way or more, no thanks.
In PLO, the 80%-20% scerios we see in NLH do not exist, it's rare to be much worse than 40%-60%.
It's a beautiful game, & requires much thought & nous, its full of nuances, you should try it, you'd enjoy the challenge I suspect. But make sure you play PL not NL, NL Omaha is a different kettle of fish entirely, & much more akin to NLH.
If I were King For a Day, I'd ban NL Omaha. Luckily for those that enjoy it, it probably ain't gonna happen.
Min-raise from the BB? Don't like that, position is VERY important in PLO, & I don't want to play a big pot OOP. I am looking to play for stacks, yes, but not OOP.
I did strongly consider a full-pot "squeeze", & maybe I should have, but I bottled it. It would have been tough to call, for sure. As you will soon see though, it would not have got through. Generally speaking, a full-pot squeeze might be the best play here, but I just bottled it, as I really felt I could beat this table without risking my stack yet awhile. "Find a better spot" as one wily veteran taught me many years ago.
You hope I cashed? Yup, managed that.
If you are genuinely interested in the little story of the Tourney, I did a bit of a write up. I keep a diary of a little PLO8 DYM Challenge I am doing, & post in it every day, but I go off-topic & waffle now & then, so I did a write up of the whole Tourney.
If you are interested, & to save you searching through 80 pages, it starts on this page, & continues onto the next page, starting HERE
No, the hand is just not good enough to pot pre (imo), that 7 sort of ruined the hand. If that 7 were a 9 or an Ace, yes.
The plan was to c/c the flop, as one card in PLO can change so much, & I needed a safe turn card. (There were something like 17 "bad" turn cards in the pack), & then take off if the turn was a safe card.
The ONLY hands that call me there are.....
The same straight, so I'm risking my stack for half the pot.
The same straight with freeroll flush draw
Any set
Nut flush draw & any flush draw.
To be honest, I think better players DO get it in there, but my game is a bit quirky, & I did not llike that spot at all.
Anyway, I'm still unsure what the right play should have been, reactions here & elsewhere are very mixed.
I think it's close, very close, & maybe there is no right or wrong answer.
So, what actually happened?
Remember, what happened does not make my play right or wrong, we can only judge that over a 10,000 hand sample, but for what it's worth.....
So, I folded, & THREE players got it all-in.
It went....
RAISE
Call
Re-Raise all-in
Call
Call
The hands were, in the same order.....
2nd nut flush draw.
Nut straight with exactly the same extensions as me, & no spades.
Nut flush draw.
The turn came another spade, & that was that. Oddly, & to my surprise, there were no sets out.
When the hands were tabled, I nearly fainted, because......
Pre-Flop, the kid on the button, after THREE players had limped, also limped.
His hand? Double suited aces.
Wowzer, what WAS he thinking?!
Three limpers, plus the Blinds, he has the Button & DS Aces & just limped.
His suits included spades, & he got the lot.
If I had been asked to "assign a range" to his hand, I'd never have got that in 1,000 attempts.
He eventually busted, despite that massive pot, in spectacular style when once again limping with good aces.
I can't think of any examples when limping with good aces in a PLO MTT is a good play.
Anyway, thank you for the responses, & if any of you have any interesting hands, or questions, please start a thread, we can all learn from them, especially if they involve PLO or PLO8.
I like to be the one "controlling" the action where possible, rather than hoping others will do what I assume.
'Our discussion group' ? err No, just two friends giving our opinion over lunch.
Well done on the cash finish.
Well yes, it all worked out OK in the end, but that does not make the fold necessarily good or bad, we need to make the right decisions on a longer-term view.
It felt a fairly easy fold to me, but it did draw a few raised eyebrows afterwards.
I nearly fainted whebn the button limper, 3rd to act, showed up with good aces. What was THAT all about?!