Saturday, August 16, 2008
I’m in the Big Blind and I see a flop for free. The flop contains a pair. I put down a min-bet. My bet is less than a third of the pot size, so this bluff only has to work one in three times to be profitable. But it seems to work a lot more often than a third of the time. Why?
This bluff works on both level zero and level one players. The fact that there’s a pair on the board makes it unlikely that one of them has trips, or even the other pair. So the level zero players will likely fold. As for the level one players, I’m representing trips and they know it.
Level two players? They don’t exists at these stakes. (Except when they do.)
The recycled wisdom from the big men who write big books about Omaha is that you don’t bluff in Omaha, other than the lone ace flush bluff. That’s true, except when it isn’t. I just bluffed and won in Omaha because I knew the other guy’s cards.
In highish position I’m dealt Ah 9s 8h Ks — high cards double suited. A lot of the time I wouldn’t play that hand, but enough people were already in the pot, and hell, I was feeling lucky, so I limped in with the other suckers. The guy immediately to my left max-raises. I of course immediately put him on aces. Most of the other players call to see the flop.
And the flop is Qd 4c 9h. I have a pair and not much else. Everybody checks to the raiser, who bets a buck seventy-five. Everybody folds to him and the action is now to me. He bet a buck seventy-five into a pot of nearly seven bucks. His tiny bet tells me that he has aces but doesn’t feel great about them or he never had aces to begin with and his hand stinks. Since I’m getting odds to hit my second pair (assuming he has aces) I throw in the easy call.
The turn is the ten of hearts, leaving me with still nothing but a pair of nines, and now a straight draw. He bets three bucks into the ten dollar pot. I’m still getting odds to hit my two pair or my straight now, so I call again.
The river is the five of clubs. All my draws have missed. However, his betting all the way along tells me that he only has one pair, and that he’s ashamed of it. So, I throw out a pot bet, and take it down. I get a nice sized pot with nothing but air. That’s not how Omaha is supposed to be played, but it worked.
The betting structure is limit. The play is exactly as in Texas Hold ‘em except that after each round of betting, you pass one card to the left and one card to the right. That includes the river.
P.S. After talking to Matt about this game, perhaps it’s true that the game should have nine streets, not just seven — a flop, a turn, a second turn, a third turn, and then the river. In doing so, it will generate more one card straights and one card flushes, which are much more sensible to build a strategy around than a two card straight or flush.
My general picture of Pot Limit Omaha at this point is kind of like it’s a hybrid of limit hold’em and no-limit hold ‘em, at least in a big-picture kind of a way. In limit hold ‘em, the money you make is in large part in the bets you don’t make. In no limit hold ‘em however, the money you make is in large part from when you juice the pot.
In pot limit Omaha, it’s both. Maybe that’s why it’s so freaking hard.
According to some good poker strategies I’ve heard, you need to be thinking exactly one level deeper than your opponent. If your opponent is thinking on level one, you need to be thinking on level two.
For those unfamiliar, here’s what that means:
- Level Zero
- What’s my hand?
- Level One
- What’s his hand?
- Level Two
- What hand does he think I have?
- Level Three
- What hand does he think I think he has?
… and so on unto insanity.
You can win a lot of Texas Hold ‘em games merely thinking on level one, since a lot of players are on level zero. But I’ve found that in Omaha, at least in the very low stakes, you just have to think on level zero, because the other players are thinking on level zero very poorly.
This Omaha is a strange game.
After a week of serious Omaha, I’m moving up in levels, having acquired my goal of ten buy-ins at the next level.
My week has been pretty solid, with no real errors, save one truly idiotic mistake. On a flop of 2J9o, I hit top two pair heads-up against a small stack. Two pair is good enough to push against a small-stack so I do, and he calls. The turn is a K, making the board 29JK. He pushes the rest of his stack in. I stare at the flop, trying to figure out what could have hit. I imagine that he has TQ, and keep saying to myself, “But that’s not a straight.”
I call. Of course it’s a straight. I just had a five dollar brain fart.
Of course, the classicest of all Omaha moves is to get all your chips in when you’re ahead, and that’s what I did. The thing is, in this particular hand, the other guy thought he was ahead instead, but he was wrong. All he had was the nuts on the flop, which was worthless.
I had 8c 9h Kh Jc. The flop came Ts 6d Qc. It might take a little while to decode it all, but the fact was, most of the deck gives me the nuts or the second nut. And I had the back-door draw to the second nut flush too. I hit a dream flop. The problem was, so did the other guy. He had a set of queens (6c Qh 4d Qs), and he was sure that I was crazy to keep re-raising him until we both got all in on the flop. He didn’t know it, but I was 58% to win.
The seven came on the turn and gave me the nut straight, and he didn’t boat up. He yelled at me for about five minutes afterwards. He still didn’t know, even after it all happened, that when the chips went in, I was ahead. He had the nuts!
The funny thing is, I was ahead of him pre-flop too, by six percent.
If you use Poker Stars under WINE, you know one of the few things that doesn’t work is the resizing of the windows. However, if you click the “Tile Tables” option under the View menu, it will make all your tables small enough to fit on your screen.
I forgot that rule. When the calling station bets it out, it means he has something.
I’m usually super tight and aggressive in tourneys. I’ll often fold very nice hands just so that I can stay alive on the off chance that someone has a truly boss hand.
I just busted out of a tourney in third place, and did so on what I think was a proper ATC push. Here’s the situation. We had just burst the bubble to go four-way. I and the stack directly across from me are tiny, and the other two stacks are giant. The other tiny stack is the BB, and I’m the button. UTG folds. I push my 3BB all-in with ATC. Here’s why. I figured that I had a lot of fold equity in the BB, since I could potentially bust out the other tiny stack, and he would prefer to fold instead of bust out unless he had a premium hand. I think I judged correctly. Unfortunately, the SB called me down with A8 and I lost.
