Welcome to week 4 of our study group. As stated earlier, the study group has been very successful up until this point. This is where things tend to drop off with most groups, so if you guys want to get full value out of this, lets maintain the high level of participation we've had so far.

For those of you playing catch up:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3

As for this week (May 26 to June 2) we will be reading pages 102 – 158.

Chapter 6 Situations and Practice Hand Quizzes.

To start things off, I want to point out two of the Hand Situations that have been really important for me to take in. As a player coming from a mostly NLHE background, the hands mentioned in example's 29 and 30 have been very important to see. In both cases, you connect with the bottom card on the flop (underfull on example 29 and bottom set in example 30.) Both are situations that I've been struggling with. In NLHE, this are situations that you are hoping for, yet in PLO (with deepstacks in particular) you stand to lose money when you're trying to draw against 2 players who hold the overfull with a flush draw (29) or against players who hold a made flush and a higher set (30.)

Also,I think this is a great week to bring up hands that we've struggled with, or found interesting, in our own personal sessions. This weekends study-group cash game went off very well, with over an hour of play between us. It was a great learning experience, and I would love to see it happen again.


http://www.pokerhand.org/?2661993

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2668125

Just 2 hands from the last session.

The second hand might look spewy to those who haven't seen this villain. This guy is probably not a 2+2er, sat down at the table and played 81/11/0.5 (88 hands). He'd see almost every flop, then never fold if he had any kind of draw. If you checked to him, he'd sometimes bet, but mostly when he got aggro it meant one of his draws hit. I think we all know these players and mostly we welcome them, but this one was on a sick heater. There's a couple of hands where one of us tried to get to him. Almost all failed.

Here's Akolades' equity vs villain's hand, street-by-street: Preflop 41%, Flop 48%, Turn 35%, River obv 100%. But villain's hand is near the top of his range, he does'nt need a big pair or a K to play like this, while Akolades' hand is near the bottom of his range, he more often than not has a K or AA there.

Hand #8, p. 105: this play is standard against tight players who only reraise with AAxy. You call with a hand that can flop twopair or a straight draw, and when you hit, you raise his cbet, since his hand is face-up.

Against looser players you have to be much more careful. This villain is 1. "a very loose raiser with a $10k" stack, 2. he cbets "virtually in the dark", and 3. your raise is all-in. With these three informations i like the play.

In absence of informations 1 and 2, is 3 sufficient for committing here with top two? Or would we need additional info, like villain's cbet-%, or reads on weak hands he has shown down in the past?

What if this particular villain checks, we bet, and get raised all-in? Call or fold?

Yes to the first question. The one thing I didn't talk about in the first book but will get to in the second one is how SPR affects your decision. In this particular hand you have an SPR<3, which is small enough that you can commit with top two pair here and come out ahead.

I think you are committed to the hand at this point.

Jeff

Won't say much about the tard, I'm sure 4h 5h 6h Th is a good hand to defend the small blind with facing an under the gun raise (should of blocked his avatar image to save myself some money )

Anyway got a hand against said villain, and find this is where i'm having my biggest problems, because he's loose it's difficult to put him on a hand, pretty sure a diamond draw was possible but no idea what else he had.

So my question is except for folding the river, how should this hand be approached, I know we've gone through the fold the nuts if you think their on a massive draw, but then don't we become predictable when we do go mad betting, and are we allowing to many free cards and giving up to easily.

How does this all change as well against different playing styles LAG,TAG etc.

Joker Stars $0.02/$0.05 Pot Limit Omaha Hi - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $8.82
SB: $4.74
Hero (BB): $10.91
UTG: $12.33
MP: $9.70
CO: $7.65

Pre Flop: Hero is BB with 5 7 4 6
3 folds, BTN raises to $0.17, SB calls $0.15, Hero calls $0.12

Flop: ($0.51) 7 3 4 (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.51, BTN calls $0.51, SB folds

Turn: ($1.53) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $1.48, BTN calls $1.48

River: ($4.49) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $4.29, Hero calls $4.29

Final Pot: $13.07
BTN shows 8d 2s 5s 5d (a straight, Five to Nine)
Hero mucks 5c 7c 4c 6h
BTN wins $12.47
(Rake: $0.60)

Thanks for any input guys.

I'm really looking forward to that. One of the things that keep baffling me about PLO ist that sometimes it's correct to fold a straight on the flop, and sometimes you can stick it all in with two pair. I feel SPR considerations might even be more valuable for Omaha than they are for Hold'em.

I disagree.
SPR vs hand strength is fundamental to all poker games.
Would you commit top pair in holdem when your SPR is 100?

Within the game, it also changes with conditions liek number of players, villain's range, aggression , etc.

Of course some of the decisions will need more than SPR to play optimally (hand reading, betting patterns, reads, history, etc). But SPR should serve as a starting point for all our decisions.

One thing I am not sure is how authors arrive at conclusions like
" Holdem - Top pair top kicker is good enough to commit if SPR < X".
I am sure they are true because they are based on experience.
But it would be nice to simulate millions of hands and provide the results (profits, percentage of wins etc).

I am definitely looking forward to this discussion in Jeff's vol 2.

I hope Jeff includes SPR ranges for various conditions (atleast full ring and 6max).

Yep, that's true.

If i know that my opponent will commit for 100 SPR with middle/bottom pair, overcards, and gutshots: sure.

Most opponents wont, though, and that's why getting it in with top pair is normally a mistake.


The important question is. How big will villain let the pot get with hands that i beat? That determines your target SPR.

In Hold'em, villains can nutpeddle. They can play so that they will only put a penny in on the flop if they can beat you. Setmining is not strictly nutpeddling, but close enough for most on the uNL level. And if you never fold a set in Hold'em, you are not making a big mistake. So for setminers, making correct SPR decisions is easy: they'll commit very little if they miss, and their whole stacks if they hit. Beating that requires you to apply pot control, bluff them a lot out of Qhi flops with AK, in short: while your strategy against them may be +EV, your margin of error is smaller than theirs.

Nutpeddling is a lot harder in Omaha. There are no safe flops, bottom set is not the nuts, slowplaying gets punished harder, in short: they can't sit back and wait for the nuts in Omaha. They can't play a marginal strategy that makes their SPR decisions easy. In Omaha, the margin of error for commitment decisions is small for everybody.

Conversely, it's harder for villains to evaluate their equity. That's why you see people, especially at the small stakes, happily pushing their chips into the middle while being huge underdogs.

So, if you grasp SPR better that your opponents, and make better decisions based on it, i believe your advantage will be bigger in Omaha than in Hold'em.

Very nice post

I think I kinda get what you are saying.
Let me try to rephrase what you said and make sure I got that right.
1. Post flop play is much important in Omaha compared to Holdem.
2. In high SPR situations villains can stack off easily. Hence if you apply SPR concepts well and play postflop well you will have an edge over opponents.


I think there is small distinction between target SPR and max SPR. (at least PNL authors seems to think so).

Target SPR is what you are targeting to achieve by manipulating preflop action. If I hold AAxx my ideal target SPR is 0. (I want to get as much money in as possible).
But there are several practical conditions that may dictate my target SPR to be a range instead of the ideal target SPR.
If I find myself and cannot achieve low SPR, then I might try for very high SPR by just calling instead of playing big pot out of position.
So in general AAxx target SPR is roughly [0-4]U[24-infinity]

Max SPR is the SPR that I am willing to commit. It is a single number because it is a maximum.
This max SPR is dependent on your hand strength.
There are guidelines what this max SPR should be for various hand strengths.
e.g In holdem the guideline for Max SPR 4 for TPTK.
But as you said, it also depends on villain. if villain is donk who like middle pairs then I might override this guideline of max SPR from 4 to 8.

Useful chapter to see how it works in practice. A couple of questions and remarks nonetheless:

Situation 8. Wouldn't you usually fold an Ace + straightening cards when facing a reraise, or was it the raiser's looseness that tipped the balance towards calling?

Hand #1 What would you do if you didn't get your A+J-high flush (and there was no flush possible), and all that you had was top two? How would you deal with the river bet then?

Hand #10 I realise that the main idea of this hand is to make the full bet on the end if you hit your unlikely nuts, but how far can you stretch this idea of calling with backdoor draws? This would probably be a little bit more important in LO8, right?

By the way, what would next week's topic be? Are we going to delve into LO8 yet or will this have to wait for another week?

Gentlemen I have to take a little break from the thread. I have purchased a home and my work is getting quite busy being self employed.

I've been thinking about that. I think this is true in the sense that SPR considerations are a bit more rigid in Omaha, and somewhat universal almost regardless of the opponent.

For example, you can't fold the bare nut straight for one bet (SPR 1) no matter who your opponent is. Similarly, if your SPR is 40, all you have is the bare nut straight on a board with a two-flush and you are facing a pot-sized bet, you are still probably not going to raise your opponent no matter who he is. The same goes for something like undertrips (like 8-7-6-5 on a T-8-8 board) -- you are not going to fold for one bet regardless of the opponent, and it would simply be bad poker to raise with an SPR of 40 no matter who your opponent is.

In contrast, I think SPR considerations sometimes may be a bit more player dependent in NLHE.

I think you are going to find that the SPR ranges are the same for both 6-max and full-ring. The main difference between 6-max and full ring is simply that more pots are contested short-handed (and heads-up) after the flop in 6-max than full ring, which places a bigger emphasis on position and control. You still aren't going to play big pots in 6-max with low SPR hands like bare top two pair, undertrips, or the second-nut flush.

Basically, high SPR hands (Big Play hands) are still high SPR hands, and low SPR hands are still low SPR hands.

Jeff

Part of it is the raiser's looseness, but the biggest part is that you are only facing one raise -- and not even a pot-sized raise at that. If you were facing a pot-sized raise and pot-sized re-raise cold, then you are probably better off folding any hand with an Ace in it.

On one hand, I think it's a tougher call in that case because there are now more hands that can beat you. On the other hand, his bet is still either/or -- either he is very strong or he is nothing.

I'd probably lean towards folding, though.

This is something I've been thinking about. The thing about Omaha is that it is possible to have a lot of outs to a lot of outs, and a lot of those backdoor outs come with big implied odds. I think if you are deep enough, backdoor draws can make it profitable to draw to otherwise thin hands.

For example, if you have AQJ10 and the flop is K83, maybe you take a card off for $25 if you have $1,000 stacks. Because now a Q, J, 10, or 9 gives you a 13-card nut wrap, possibly with a flush or nut flush draw. An Ace gives you an inside wrap, and the A gives you an inside wrap with the nut flush draw and a pair of Aces. The 7 gives you a gutshot and the nut flush draw.

Moreover, hitting a backdoor draw like that is fairly well-disguised, and so you are more likely to get a big payoff. And so I think in some cases there must be some merit to it when you hit your key card with a wrap hand.

I think it's something to think about, anyway.

Jeff

Jeff I have thought of this as well about calling bets when deep stacked if certain cards fall that increase my out range as you state in the AQJ10 hand.
Glad to see that I am getting the idea behind this game. Yes the pay off is well worth the cost.