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PLO8 - Drawing to the nuts in both directions
YoungUn
Member Posts: 422
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| tikay1 | Small blind | £0.10 | £0.10 | £23.90 | |
| YoungUn | Big blind | £0.20 | £0.30 | £21.60 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| alexis74 | Fold | ||||
| BIG0NAY | Call | £0.20 | £0.50 | £15.86 | |
| TommyD | Call | £0.20 | £0.70 | £19.56 | |
| dylan12 | Fold | ||||
| tikay1 | Call | £0.10 | £0.80 | £23.80 | |
| YoungUn | Check | ||||
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| tikay1 | Check | ||||
| YoungUn | ????? | ||||
Looking forward to seeing whats said about it, because he wasn't the only one that was going to comment by the looks of things
Comments
Hi Young Un.
Sorry I was unable to answer the question when you asked me last night, as I can't reply properly in the Cardroom Chat-Box when two-Tabling Omaha, it's just not possible to answer such complex "open" questions at that juncture.
I will reply now, though, via my next Post.
Loved the Table last night - very relaxing, & the perfect way to end the day.
By the bye, I am on PTP Duty tonight, so please look out for the Thread in General Poker Chat, as it'll be Omaha Hi-Lo Tourneys galore tonight.
Any 4, 5, 6 or 7 will give you the nut low so you have 16 cards to hit twice so I'd guess about 60% to make the nut low - I'll provide the exact figures if anyone is desperate to know.
You have two 2's in your hand so that reduces the chance that you will split the nut low if it occurs.
Also it reduces the chance of a 2 coming on the turn or river to counterfeit your low hand since there are only two left in the pack. If the 2 does come, you obviously have a set but it doesn't play well against a bigger set.
You are also roughly 2/1 to hit the nut high which may well get you paid by someone with a smaller flush and a less than nut low.
I would try to build the pot now and hope that people are drawing to slightly worse hands than you.
With regard to the size of bet, it's generally a bad idea to use different size bets for different purposes against experienced players since they will be able to put you on a hand more easily. You appear to be playing against one seasoned campaigner who is adept at accumulating a stack at this form of the game (and many others) so act with caution.
OK Mr Young Un.
I love the question for a particular reason - it addresses the very fundamentals of Hi-Lo, & it does so in two clear ways - neither of which I have seen a single mention of since the Site started laying Hi-Lo Omaha.
1) It seems to have escaped the notice of most that what we are must be trying to do in Hi-Lo Omaha is win both pots, or to use the jargon, "scoop". There is absolutely no point in persisting to play pots where we have, at best, half a chance of one end. All that does is end up - if we are lucky - in a split, & then, as we have already seen, players start moaning about the rake! Well they WILL end up with a lot of splits if they think winning one of the two pots is the idea. It is not.
Of course, in pursuit of scoops, we will end up with a lot of split pots, but we must ONLY play hands that have a chance of both, & when he have a lock on one end, we can bet accordingly (or NOT!), to maximise our value.
2) Now we come to the real skill of Omaha Hi-Lo, & it applies fundamentally to most split pot variants. I've not seen a shred of evidence yet that anyone here has addressed this.
In NLHE, unless we hold the unbustable nuts - which is extremerly rare - we BET to protect our hands. A set of Aces on a 2 heart flop, for example, has to be protected.
This, more often than not, is NOT the case in Hi-Lo Omaha.
Let's imagine we have the nut high, we have a lock on it, & the Pot is 4 way. Our "read", judging by the board, is that the other three are all on the low draw.
Do we want to bet them off, or do we want to "keep them"?
Assuming they all have the nut low, & hit, the Pot will be split in half, & we will get 50% of the total. Each of the three Low "Winners" will receive 16.666% of the Pot - they will be "quartered", or, more correctly, "sixthed". This is like having a money tree in our back garden.
So the skill is deciding when we want to keep our customers, but build the pot without scaring them away, & when we want to bet them off.
Multi-Way, if we have a lock on one end - usually the high, as the Low is more often contested by more players - then we want to keep them all, for as long as we can. For every street - pre, Flop, Turn, & River - that we can get them ALL to contribute to the Pot, we are getting at least 50% of the entire pot - whereas they are drawing to, at BEST, 16.666% of the Pot. What could be better? Is our interest best served by betting them off? Certainly not!
Heads-Up, if the others fold, & it's just us with the nut High, & our man is drawing to the low, then this is completely different. In this case, the split is no good to us, as we only get back our investment, minus rake. So here, we want to build the pot as much as we can, BUT get rid of him if we can before the end.
Imagine, for example, we have the nut, unbustable high, & we think our man is on a dodgy, marginal, Low draw. We don't want to split this, & unless our man has the NUT low, we can put an incredible amount of pressure on them by betting as hard as we can on the end.
Imagine it were you, & you had a bad low, & oppo bets it strong. Could you risk calling for a big pot knowing you will, AT BEST, get half, & in fact, may be losing both pots?
Another angle when we have the High locked up is that we might just "quarter" the oppo, by winning the High & chopping the Low. Again, in this case, we want to build the pot as big as possible, as we are printing money now.
So the answer is a complex matrix of different & dynamic circumstances. Sometimes we want to keep as many opponents as we can, other times we need to get them off, & the equation changes dramatically depending if we are multi-way, or Heads-Up.
"Strategic betting" is critically important in split-pot variants.
Hi-Lo Omaha could not be more different to NLHE. Apart from using a standard deck of 52 cards, & having a Board, everything else is fundamentally different, & we need to approach it differently.
The "value" in Omaha Hi-Lo is in playing NLHE players who have not adusted their game, & are simply playing as it it were NLHE with 4 cards. It's not - it's an immensely different game, & skillset.
GREAT question!
Oh, and Mr Kendall is already registered in some Hi-Lo tournaments this evening, which can be found here:
7.30pm: £5.50 buy-in. Register here (opens in a new window)
8.30pm: £1.10 buy-in. Register here (this one also opens in a new window)
9pm: £11 buy-in. Register here (new window... you get the idea now, right?)
9.30pm: £3.30 buy-in. Register here.
10pm: £5.50 buy-in. Register here.
10.30pm: £11 buy-in. Register here.
As you can tell, Tikay is partial to a bit of Omaha Hi-Lo. He's also not too confident of a deep run in any of these :P