'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - 18th 'interesting spot' (hand 109) -

markycash

I finally have a little time to do this thread which I mentioned in my blog thread.

'StayorGo' aka Graham's similar thread from a live tourney was IMO one of the threads of the year. Obviously not everyone is playing big live games though so I thought I would do a similar thread but with the £5.50 PLO8 BH's MTT's. These games are relatively new so hopefully if there is some good discussion it can serve as a reference point to anyone thinking of trying the games.

I won't cover the basics of how to play the game so if anyone is in the position mentioned above and completely new to the game here is a link to the Sky poker Academy page explaining the basics.

I played 2 of these Pot Limit Omaha 8 Bounty Hunter tourneys on Thursday night to try and get a couple of hand histories which would be suitable for such a thread.

I finished 2nd in the first tourney and was going to use that. I also finished 2nd in the later tourney though and rather than select 1 of them I will just do both one after the other in this thread. They are small field sizes so collectively the number of hands should still only add up to the equivalent of a small/medium NLHE tourney hand history.

While I kick this off today I will go through both full hand histories on my laptop and edit the player names out etc so they can be copy/pasted and I have a record of them all in case they disappear from the Sky archives halfway through. 

I will briefly mention, but quickly move on from, any 'trivial hands' so that any players who are not familiar with the game can get an idea about hand selection etc.

Hands that have more interesting dynamics I will post the situation and allow some time (maybe 24 hours?) for feedback.

It would be great to have input from players of all levels.

Feel free to criticise, I know there are mistakes at points in my play (especially in the first MTT as I was playing a $160 buy in NLHE game on another site during that game which was taking most of my focus).

As mentioned I will edit all player names out, if you are happy to have your name left in just let me know and I won't edit it out.

Lastly, some may think... Why the **** would you do such a thread and leave your game wide open for all to see? This is a fair question but this is something I am happy to do for several reasons. Just a selection of these are... (a) The games are relatively new so if it can attract even just a few new people to the games then that is great! (b) If people participate in the thread then we all learn through the discussion (c) These games won't be the focus of my play going forward. (d) I try to react to what my opponents do at the tables so if everyone is suddenly making 'soul reads' on me after this thread because I 'play a certain way', I would like to think I can adapt my play. (e) Many people will obviously not read the thread.

Any ideas to improve the format of the thread just let me know and if it isn't overly time consuming I will try and incorporate them.

I will make a post straight after this about our general approach to the games and the swiftly post the first hand.

HENDRIK62

Nice one Dave, I am hoping this will rekindle my interest, I really enjoy OH8 but lately I have fallen out with it, consequently I am playing terribly when I do venture back from time to time.

markycash

General approach to these games:

They are Bounty Hunter games so we are obviously trying to gather as many bounties as possible right?

Well, no! While the bounties matter I personally feel the focus should be almost but not entirely taken away from the 'Bounty Hunting' aspect. The PLO8 format is less developed than NLHE and is more complex. There is therefore much more room for players to make errors so I feel it is beneficial to take an approach which looks to gather chips rather than take, at times needless risks, to snag a bounty. If these games are played in a manner that simply aims to accrue chips then the bounties tend to come to you regardless.

With that said, if there is an obvious opportunity with an acceptable level of risk to try and collect a bounty then we will obviously go for it. For example if it folds to us in the SB and the BB has 500 chips and we have a 10,000 stack and a mediocre hand we are going to get it in and try and snag the bounty. Conversely if we are at the early stages with a 3000 stack at 15-30, are in mid position (MP) with a mediocre but 'semi-playable' hand, and someone has potted before us and we have players to act afterwards... We are not going to be calling just because a BB may only have 400 chips. We do not know what the players to act after us may do and they may well reraise to try and isolate the short stack and before we know it we get dragged into pots we should not really be in and often end up heading for an early bath.

So instead we will try and focus on punishing plays from players who may be making equity mistakes by overly focusing on collecting bounties themselves.

If however we end up with a monster stack then we will at least be prepared to change gears and go after more than our fair share of bounties

markycash

Hand 1:

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	1890.00
BB	Big blind		30.00	45.00	2940.00
	Your hole cards	·         QC ·         3S ·         7C ·         8S
UTG	Call		30.00	75.00	5005.00
Hijack	Call		30.00	105.00	2970.00
markycash	…

Okay, this hand falls into the trivial category so we won't spend too much time on it. It is however a hand that can cause new players to the game some problems so we can briefly mention it and as always comments from everyone are welcome. Completely relying upon people getting involved to make the thread worthwhile.

We have Qc 3s 7c 8s in the Cut-off position. So we have a double suited hand that shoots for both the high and low pots and are potentially in position post flop if the BTN folds. We do not however want to go near this hand (especially at this stage of the tourney). None of our draws are for nut elements of the hand rankings and our potential low draws are very weak. If we do go with these hands, generally speaking, most of the hands that should be willing to get lots of chips in with us will in fact be beating us or at least splitting the pot so we shouldn't have much to gain but could lose a lot. Also, even if we flop the Q high flush with a low... We are going to have trouble extracting much value from the hand. We will have to tread carefully because as mentioned, loads of hands that will be willing to give us action will be beating us. Sure we could flop QQ8 or 333 etc but this is not going to happen often enough to justify putting chips in the pot here.

We can find better spots and therefore are moving on to hand 2...

markycash

I will keep flicking through these 'trivial hands' until I come to one we play so that there is an idea of what I am folding to give a better picture of the hand selection being used. I will pause when we get to one we play and allow time for input.

Hand 2:

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	2790.00
BB	Big blind		30.00	45.00	4840.00
	Your hole cards	·         Js ·         4d ·         Jc ·         10s
UTG	Call		30.00	75.00	2805.00
markycash	Fold

Trivial fold this one. We are in early position, have no nut draws and no low orientation to the hand.

On to hand 3...

markycash

Hand 3:

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	4945.00
BB	Big blind		30.00	45.00	2895.00
	Your hole cards	6 A K 6
markycash	Fold

This one is a bit more close. We are double suited with 6c Ad Kc 6d, have nut draws and a low orientation to the hand. We are however UTG and the low orientation is not ideal. If we limp or raise we do not know what we are getting into if we face action from other players. If we limp for example and we get an almost perfect scenario with a 234 all diamond flop and are 3 or 4 way. If players stick around we are possibly/probably chopping to begin with as they could well have the wheel. If the board pairs then we could end up with a brilliant looking hand that is actually being scooped which we feel we need to call off with.

Definitely closer but at this stage of the tourney I don't feel there is a pressing need to get involved here from UTG so we move to hand 4...

markycash

Hand 4:We have our first interesting spot and I will pause after this and hopefully we can get a few opinions on how to proceed.

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	2880.00
markycash	Big blind		30.00	45.00	2970.00
	Your hole cards	·         5h ·         2d ·         3d ·         3s
UTG	Raise		90.00	135.00	4215.00
UTG+1	Fold
Cut-off	Call		90.00	225.00	2505.00
BTN	Call		90.00	315.00	4930.00
SB	Call		75.00	390.00	2805.00
markycash	Call		60.00	450.00	2910.00
Flop
		·         4h ·         6d ·         2c
SB	Check
markycash	Check
UTG	Check
Cut-off	Check
BTN	Bet		225.00	675.00	4705.00
SB	Fold
markycash	Call		225.00	900.00	2685.00
UTG	Call		225.00	1125.00	3990.00
Cut-off	Call		225.00	1350.00	2280.00
Turn
		·         8c
markycash	Check
UTG	Check
Cut-off	Bet		600.00	1950.00	1680.00
BTN	Call		600.00	2550.00	4105.00
markycash	What now?

We move to our first meaningful pot. We have 5h 2d 3d 3s in the BB. It is raised to 90 by UTG and 3 players call and action is on us. We elect to call as there are a fair few chips in the middle, we are partly invested so only 60 chips to call, and while our high orientation is not good we have decent low orientation. With so many callers, and considering usual calling ranges, there is an argument for folding preflop as many of the aces (which we would ideally like to see on the flop with a couple of other low cards) may be held by our opponents. I feel we are priced in though and can get off it if we have to so we call and see a flop of 4h 6d 2c.

So we have flopped the nuts, woohoo! But wait, we have 4 other players on this flop and if they show interest they probably have A3 or A5 type hands and could be 'freerolling' on us so we need to show some caution, at least until we figure out where we are. If an ace falls it would give us the nut low A-5 wheel but as mentioned, with so many callers, our opponents are probably holding the aces making this unlikely.

Action folds around to the BTN who bets half the pot (225), we call to control the pot and 2 other players call behind. 4 way we see a flop of 8c, UTG checks, we check, and this time the cut-off bets 600 and the BTN calls and action is on us with a player to act behind. The turn fills some higher straights and also puts a club draw on the board, the pot is 2550.

So what would you do?

Reads: Initial preflop raiser can be aggro. We don't know too much about the other 2 players in the pot.

_kagawa_

I am so looking forward to this, I am average at these PLO8 BH MTT at best and would really like to improve at them.

Thank you for doing this.

Kags

eon1961

Hi Mark,

With 3 other players I think I would be folding early in tournament play.

In fact I wouldn't have been involved in it in the first place early on.No ace in your hand has given you this dilemma.

Best scenario would be halve pot.Worst would be nothing.When playing these we want a chance to scoop the pot.

Phantom66

Just typed a long post and lost it all.

The gist was I would fold pre - If was to be tempted in from BB without an A it would be with a high only or balanced hand with a big pair and preferably suits.

As played it kind of shows why this hand isnt great, we flop the nut high but have almost 0 chance of scooping, our best hope is to be up against 2 wheels to take half of a 3 way pot and there are plenty of worse cases were we take nothing as our hand is so vulnerable for the high or we get pushed off by strong river action after a scare card.

I suppose you dont have much choice but to check/call on the flop but after checking and the 2x600 bets call/fold/pot on the turn all feel bad now. I might check/reraise pot just to take away the tricky decision on the river but calling probably makes more sense.

Most importantly, thank you for starting this thread and I look forward to the rest of it.

markycash

Thanks for the positive comments folks.

I would have left this hand for a while to get more replies but to be honest Eon and Phantom have covered most of the points (thanks guys) so there is not point dwelling on it.

My own view which is not really far off of those expressed...

It is a speculative hand, we have no ace and as there are so many callers we are not likely to see and ace on the flop which is partly what we are ideally looking for. In general the 'correct' play is probably a fold. As I was getting good odds to have a look at the flop and as I was confident I could escape many of the disaster situations I called. We can chalk this one up to 'range balancing' ;-).

Anyways, now that we are in the hand we can't reraise the flop even though we have 'the nuts', some people starting out in the game could be caught out here. We know opponents are likely to have aces with low cards and hands like A35, which are quartering us, are a distinct possibility with so many players seeing the flop.

Even against A3 or A5 we are only currently chopping the pot. I don't really want to fold here either until I see what the turn is and how the players react. With the 8 on the turn a lot of better straights than us just got there. A different player leads which often means they have hit a different part of the board (the higher straight). So we fold. I am happy to fold here because the caveat of calling preflop was that we were going to get away from dodgy situations, of which this is one. Definitely a +EV fold in the long run IMO.

Now in the end the player who leads the turn had 2 pair and no low (their turn bet made no sense) and the other player had 2nd nut low. We would have split the pot but we are still happy with the fold here as most of the time I think we are dead in the water to this kind of action.

We now know though that this table is super loose and we can try to extract more value from hands going forward.

Will paste the full hand below then move onto the next hand...

<td style="border-style:none solid soli

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	2880.00
markycash	Big blind		30.00	45.00	2970.00
	Your hole cards	·         5h ·         2d ·         3d ·         3c
UTG	Raise		90.00	135.00	4215.00
UTG+1	Fold
Cut-off	Call		90.00	225.00	2505.00
BTN	Call		90.00	315.00	4930.00
SB	Call		75.00	390.00	2805.00
markycash	Call		60.00	450.00	2910.00
Flop
		·         4h ·         6d ·         2c
SB	Check
markycash	Check
UTG	Check
Cut-off	Check
BTN	Bet		225.00	675.00	4705.00
SB	Fold
markycash	Call		225.00	900.00	2685.00
UTG	Call		225.00	1125.00	3990.00
Cut-off	Call		225.00	1350.00	2280.00
Turn
		·         8c
markycash	Check
UTG	Check
Cut-off	Bet		600.00	1950.00	1680.00
BTN	Call		600.00	2550.00	4105.00
markycash	Fold
UTG	Fold
River
		·         6h
Cut-off	All-in		1680.00	4230.00	0.00
BTN	Call		1680.00	5910.00	2425.00
Cut-off	Show	·         Kh ·         Ks ·         8h ·         2h

markycash

In hand 5 we get 33TJ in the SB and someone pots it from mid position preflop. We have an easy fold.

Hand 6:

SB	Small blind		15.00	15.00	1170.00
BB	Big blind		30.00	45.00	2670.00
	Your hole cards	·         10s ·         4h ·         5s ·         3d
UTG	Raise		60.00	105.00	5320.00
CO	Call		60.00	165.00	5820.00
markycash	Call		60.00	225.00	2610.00
SB	Call		45.00	270.00	1125.00
BB	Call		30.00	300.00	2640.00
Flop
		·         9d ·         3c ·         6h
SB	Check
BB	Check
UTG	Check
CO	Check
markycash	Check
Turn
		·         2d
SB	Check
BB	Check
UTG	Check
CO	Check
markycash	???

We are on the button with Ts 4h 5s 3d. UTG has miniraised which we have seen them do often. We have an even more speculative holding than the last hand but we have just seen how liberal the table can be with their chips post flop and we have position on everyone we we flick the 60 chips in. Once again, we will be hoping to escape any bad spots.

The flop is 936 rainbow and gives us an open ender and a low draw we are not overly chuffed about. If there is strong action on the flop we probably just go away. It checks around though and the turn bring the 2d which puts a diamond draw on board and makes some lows but it also makes our straight. Again, as with the flop, there appears to be no interest from the other 4 players in the hand and they check around to me. The pot is 300 and blinds are 15-30. 

So how do we proceed?

HENDRIK62

Keep it relatively small, keep diamond draws in, it likely someone has a lo that you wont be able to push out anyway so you dont want to chase away the value and chop. 

If someone comes back over the top then you need to re-evaluate.

Obviously you have to ca canny and be wary of the flush on the river and you could also be getting freerolled by someone with a stronger low and your str8(however given flop and turn action thats unlikelyas)

Tikay10

This is a great read Mark, well done to you, & to all those who responded.

It's getting me a bit itchy to start playing again, too.  

Tikay10

"....Now in the end the player who leads the turn had 2 pair and no low (their turn bet made no sense)....."


Isn't that THE weirdest thing, when folks do stuff like that with 2 pair & no low?

Seriously, one of the biggest problems I have with this game is giving (some) players too much respect. I'd be folding to strength here, as you did (correctly imo) but then we see our man has turned up with a bag of pork scratchings & it's pretty frustrating.  

eon1961

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD?:

This is a great read Mark, well done to you, & to all those who responded. It's getting me a bit itchy to start playing again, too.  
Posted by Tikay10

Look forward to our battles commencing again Mr T

Enut

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD?:

In hand 5 we get 33TJ in the SB and someone pots it from mid position preflop. We have an easy fold. Hand 6 : SB Small blind   15.00 15.00 1170.00 BB Big blind   30.00 45.00 2670.00   Your hole cards ·          10s ·          4h ·          5s ·          3d       UTG Raise   60.00 105.00 5320.00 CO Call   60.00 165.00 5820.00 markycash Call   60.00 225.00 2610.00 SB Call   45.00 270.00 1125.00 BB Call   30.00 300.00 2640.00 Flop     ·          9d ·          3c ·          6h       SB Check         BB Check         UTG Check         CO Check         markycash Check         Turn     ·          2d       SB Check         BB Check         UTG Check         CO Check         markycash ???         We are on the button with Ts 4h 5s 3d . UTG has miniraised which we have seen them do often. We have an even more speculative holding than the last hand but  we have just seen how liberal the table can be with their chips post flop and we have position on everyone we we flick the 60 chips in. Once again, we will be hoping not to escape any bad spots. The flop is 936 rainbow and gives us an open ender and a low draw we are not overly chuffed about. If there is strong action on the flop we probably just go away. It checks around though and the turn bring the 2d which puts a diamond draw on board and makes some lows but it also makes our straight. Again, as with the flop, there appears to be no interest from the other 4 players in the hand and they check around to me. The pot is 300 and blinds are 15-30.  So how do we proceed?
Posted by markycash

You see this is 7th level thinking!

Great thread Mark I shall be wathcing with interest but probably leave the commenting to those with much better PLO8 games than me.

eon1961

Half pot bet will let you know,don't like giving players free cards.

A call could mean chasing flush.

A raise could be nut low,which we would just flat.

If no diamond,7,8 or 10 on river you go to war.

markycash

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD?:

This is a great read Mark, well done to you, & to all those who responded. It's getting me a bit itchy to start playing again, too.  
Posted by Tikay10

Cheers Mr T! Will be great to get a game with you again when you decide to return to the games  

markycash

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD?:

"....Now in the end the player who leads the turn had 2 pair and no low (their turn bet made no sense)....." Isn't that THE weirdest thing, when folks do stuff like that with 2 pair & no low? Seriously, one of the biggest problems I have with this game is giving (some) players too much respect. I'd be folding to strength here, as you did (correctly imo) but then we see our man has turned up with a bag of pork scratchings & it's pretty frustrating.  
Posted by Tikay10

Couldn't agree more. I tried to take solace in the fact this meant the table was loose and I could hopefully get more value out of future hands.

markycash

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD?:

In Response to Re: 'Stay or Go' Style hand breakdown of a £5.50 PLO8 BH MTT - Input from players of all levels is very welcome! 2nd 'interesting spot' (hand 6), WWYD? : You see this is 7th level thinking! Great thread Mark I shall be wathcing with interest but probably leave the commenting to those with much better PLO8 games than me.
Posted by Enut

Lol Enut, thanks for pointing that 1 out

Would be brilliant to hear your thoughts too! We always seem to have some interesting tussles when we play.