I am trying to make the jump from loose, passive $6/$12 and $8/$16 live FL O8 games to a $20/$40 HK game that includes multiple hyperaggressive players. There’s a lot of raising and three-betting, especially preflop and on the flop. There’s some raising and check-raising on the turn, and some thin value bets on the end, though in general turn and river play seem a little more straightforward than the first two betting rounds.

What adjustments should I make in response to this dynamic? I have a few ideas, but I’m interested in hearing others’ thoughts as well.

1. Play extremely tight preflop, especially from early position. If I’m not going to like a raise, don’t limp in.

2. Give less value to backdoor draws on the flop. My reverse implied odds go way up if I have to call one or more raises on the flop.

3. Be more inclined to defend my big blind or the kill heads-up (to protect against steals) but less inclined to defend multiway with a mediocre starting hand.

4. In general, pay more attention to my position and whether I’m closing the action than I have to in more passive games.

5. Remember to put the hyperaggressive players on a wider range of hands at every street, and therefore be more inclined to “play defense” (i.e., check and call) with a hand that doesn’t beat the nuts but does beat a thin value bet, a semibluff, an automatic C-bet, or a pure steal.

I was hoping someone else would respond. Since nobody has, I'll give you some feedback. Three things:

1. I think the concern here should be more about going from a passive game to a pre-flop aggressive game than going up in limits.

When a fixed-limit game is pre-flop aggressive, either the aggressive players like to gamble or they're trying to intimidate someone... perhaps make someone play tighter than is wise.

When you play with opponents who like to gamble, you're forced to gamble too. If that doesn't suit you, then don't play at that table.

2. Don't play for more than you can afford.

3. Be aware that the money odds are different if a lot of money goes into the pot early at a fixed-limit table. Adjust accordingly.

This is kind of a half truth. Sounds like you're playing scared. This is an indication you're playing for more than you can afford. Tight play is good. Extremely tight may make you easy to read. Position is important but not nearly as important as at a pot-limit table.

I don't think you should be giving much value to backdoor draws in your $6/$12 game.

Do what works.

That sounds right.

You have to "play poker" to be successful.

Just my opinion. I'm hoping someone else responds to you.

Buzz

Its not clear from your post what adjustments you need to make.. it also sounds like the new game is mostly full ring?

Anyways just start posting hands.. the most important thing to focus on at these stakes is 1. Fully evaluating/realizing your equity and 2. Handreading

backdoors are always super important so not sure if you are really overvaluing them? But you might need to start putting in some regular hours running simulations in lots of preflop and flop situations to see if you have leaks there

I believe that moving up in stakes in O8 can be somewhat tough. The usual super easy tight is right philosophy at the lower limits lets us feel that we are the best Omaha players, but you are really put to the test in the higher limits because these players are tricky and will keep the pressure on the tight players. Although a tight game is still beneficial I believe that position is more important and defending, semi bluffing, hand reading, raising for position, re stealing and tilt prevention play an important role. You have to be keyed into every hand. Also, I prefer to play two way hands with all four cards working together. You need to put your villians on going hi or going low hands and adjust accordingly, and move players with semi bluffs and such. But don't get sucked into their crazy way of playing unless you really understand what you are doing. Pre flop aggressive games totally feel like you are gambling, and like buzz said it seems that your bankroll cant take a swing when facing lots of preflop miss the flop action. It gets very frustrating to keep putting all that money in and then whiff the flop time after time, and believe me it happens. You can get stuck 500-600 just playing tight. Make sure you have 10k to play in this game successfully. Mind you, a bad week can cost you $2500 no problem. Where as you could keep killing the mid low stakes forever and make a great weekly paycheck. People bust their ass in the real world for 500 a week. I always try and remember that when I'm sitting in a beautiful casino eating great food, staying in beautiful rooms, playing comped golf, and being served by beautiful waitresses. Good Luck and ask yourself " Why am I moving up, am I ready, and can I handle the swings"

Thank you, Buzz and St.Boston. You’ve given me some good things to think about.

Am I intimidated by this $20/$40 game? Yes, I am. The stakes are 2-1/2 to 3-1/3 times higher than what I’m used to (I wish there were an interim step in my area, but there isn’t), and the two times I played it, the game included three or four of the toughest and most aggressive players I’ve ever faced in Omaha. Both these factors take me out of my comfort zone.

Do I have the bankroll to play in this game? Yes, I think so. I don’t work full-time, but I have freelance income that covers my expenses. I play poker one or two days a week and am up about $12K on the year. That’s $20/hour playing mostly $6/$12 and $8/$16.

But I’m not sure I have the psychological bankroll—in other words, I’m not sure I want to put up with the downswings I know I’ll endure if I play this game regularly (by which I mean once a week; the game runs only Wednesdays and Sundays, but for several logistical and practical reasons, I can’t play it on Wednesdays).

Last year was a winning year for me, but I had three protracted downswings of $2,000 or more. This year I’ve had two downswings of $1,800 or more. I can deal with such downswings over a period of several weeks or a month, but I’m not yet comfortable with the idea of losing $2,000 or $2,500 in a single session. (Will I ever get comfortable with that? I don’t know. I’m 55 years old and am fairly cautious these days when it comes to managing my money.)

So what are my motives for giving this $20/$40 game a shot? To test my skills against better players—I won’t ever know if I can beat them unless I try. To hone my game by putting myself in a situation that forces me to improve and learn some new skills. To see if I can win more than $10 to $20/hour by playing at higher stakes.

In my first session, I won $1,467 in 12.5 hours, but that session included a $1,650 downswing (I was up about $1,350 then gave it all back plus another $300 or more before grinding my way back up).

In my second session, I lost $95 in 16.5 hours but was in the game $2,000 and stuck around $1,700 at my lowest point.

But short-term results don’t mean much in poker. It’s clear to me that this is a very different game from what I’m used to, with several of the strongest players I’ve ever faced. I’m used to playing in games where six or seven players see the flop. There’s some betting on the come, but not a lot of pure bluffs. With so many players involved, someone usually has something; knowing this, the semibluffers usually check on the end when they miss. But in this $20/$40 game, with so much raising and three-betting preflop, it's not uncommon to have only two to four players see the flop. As in Hold'em, they could all end up with nothing (or not much), and the winner will be the one who takes the most aggressive line.

Here’s a hand that illustrates what I’m trying to describe. Villain A (a tricky, aggressive player) raises preflop. I defend from the big blind with 3457. The raiser could have A2 or AA, but he could have a wide range of other hands as well (he raises preflop a lot). Four or five of us see the flop, which comes 56T with two hearts. I have a pair of 5's, a wrap straight draw, and a weak low draw, though something like a non-heart 2 could be a scoop card for me. I check. Villain B (another tricky, aggressive player) checks. Villain A C-bets. I call. Villain B now check-raises. What does he have in this spot? A set of Tens, a flush draw, a wrap straight draw, some combination hand like A3Tx, an overpair? I really don’t know. One or two players fold to his check-raise. But Villain A (who was the preflop aggressor) calls, and I call.

The turn is an off-suit 9: 56T9, with two hearts. I check. Villain B bets. What does he have? A straight is now possible, but that’s not slowing him down. Does that mean he has the straight? Does that mean he has a set of Tens or something like A3T7 (with a straight blocker/gut-shot straight draw)? Or is he just continuing his aggressive line with the nut-flush draw or maybe an overpair (or both)? I really don’t know. Villain A calls and I call.

The river is another 6: 56T96. The low draws and flush draws missed. All the straight draws missed except exactly 78. If Villain B has been semibluffing the whole way, this would be a great spot to bluff the river, wouldn’t it? I check, Villain B bets, and Villain A folds. I have a pair of 5’s with a 7 kicker. But I’m getting about 10 to 1. Do I call in this spot?

In the lower-stakes games I’m used to playing, this situation comes up rarely, and I’m comfortable occasionally making a hero call for $12 or $16. But in the $20/$40 game, this situation seems to come up a lot. Sometimes I call light and Villain shows me a better hand (like a pocket pair of Kings when I have a pocket pair of Queens). In this particular hand, I thought about calling, looked at Villain B, couldn’t get a read, and decided I didn’t want to pay $40 to see ATxx or even A5xx of hearts, which would’ve beaten me. So I folded.

A few minutes later, Villain A asked Villain B if he'd had a full house in that hand. Villain B said, “No, I had a flush draw that missed; I think everyone missed their draws.” From his friendly tone, I believed he was telling the truth. His answer gave me some insight into his thought process, but I still have a hard time knowing how to respond to such relentless aggression in the heat of battle.

Ive been playing regularly in a 20/40 HK game and trust me, you can get stuck more like 1.5-2k through no faults of your own. 500-600 is maybe 2 hands of run bad, add in another two hands of run bad and your there.

having said that, its not uncommon to go on 5-6 rack heaters also if your running good, playing good, and the game is good

Its possible to get by with a 6-8K roll in this game if your winrate is high, but its not possible to know this starting out

I would say the number one factor to success at this limit is hand reading. alot of players play their hands in obvious manners, which makes the correct play (or counter play) on your part very obvious.

You can (IMHO) play much looser than what conventional strat or others on this forum my dictate, but these must be minimal investments from late position, and you have to not get sucked in chasing on the flop with marginal hands (this goes back to hand reading)

and dont be afraid to jam the crap out of the pot with the bare nut low. if its 3 handed and you're wrong and someone else had the nut low its costs very little, but when you are right and you are the only nut low these extra bets pay for the times you get quarterd. 4 way+ with the nut low go to town all day

plus its tilts the **** out of people when you jam and you know you might get quartered. the entertainment and tilt value alone may be worth the small expense

good luck

PL Blow, awesome segment. What I meant to say is "stuck 500-600 in one dealer, before you even get settled in" But yes, you nailed it. Talk about being out of your comfort zone if you are not used to it.

Agamblethen- If you are killing the games you are currently in, why change? You say to test your ability against better players. Play a tourney and win, you will challenge yourself and get fulfillment. Right?

Believe me it feels good to win a tourney.
https://www.foxwoods.com/uploadedFil...ha%20Hi-Lo.pdf

Are you John or Shawn?

Why does Shawn win the trophy when John is listed as first place and wins more money? (Did they make some kind of settlement and then play it out)?

Anyhow, if you're John Echevarria or Shawn Robinson, congratulations.

Buzz

The first thing to worry about is your bankroll. Going from a more passive $8/16 game to a hyper aggressive $20/40($30/60) game is a huge jump. The reason why I mention BR is because you don't want to be forced to play extremely tight if the game doesn't warrant that; not saying that tight play from the early spots is wrong(it isn't), but you should feel comfortable playing ALL of your hands in any game you sit down in.

Don't get so hung up on this "hyper aggressive play" that it causes you to go into defense mode or call down mode. Yes, the play gets more aggressive as you move up, but you still have to play solid and develop really sound reads on your opponents.

#1: that should go for ANY limit you play in.

#2: Don't give less(or more) value to anything! Every hand is situational, you'll have to figure it out.

#3: No. Don't defend with garbage. Play right.

#4: Yes. Don't make that the sole reason why you enter pots, though.

#5: Even the hyper/players get hands, too; the last thing you wanna do is be the guy who pays off EVERYTHING. Imo, making a good fit on the flop is still your best play regardless of limits. Yes, sometimes you'll be peeling on flops where the back door draws are really clean and pure to the nuts, however, that should depend on pot size, your position, and the players involved. Lastly, "checking and calling" is rarely the correct 'go to' play when dealing with ANY opponent. Play solid and be aggressive when your hand and the situation calls for it. Seriously, if you're going to be a calling station(I don't care what reason you give for playing that way) you're going to lose massive value on so many of your hands while probably giving yourself the LEAST chance to win the pot. Think about it.

GL

Hey Buzz, I'm Shawn....thank you! I won the tourney, Foxwoods got the info wrong and never changed it. Its ok, I'm there for the money not the glory, lol!

Great Advice Rush! You nailed it!

agamblerthen: The live hand you described and the sessions you state that you have played seem like you were on a rollercoaster ride with a blindfold. No offense but wow I was cringing reading them. It seems like you didn't know where your opponents were at and were you were at in relation to the hand. Also you had some huge swings, but rebounded. Congrats on that! I think its great that you are trying to move up, it takes courage and practice. Read, read, re-read, highlight and ask questions here. Ray Zee's book on Omaha gets into the higher stakes a little, but gets you in a good frame of mind.

I'm the villain from the hand you posted (if I recall correctly) and in Hero Value's well you also asked about a hand where I was the villain in that hand as well (I three bet your raise if I recall with AK95).

I was inclined to not respond to this (since we play in the same game I figured your improvement would hurt my win rate), however you're likeable guy and your attempt to move up mirrors my own of a couple years ago so I'll throw you a half bone.

Background: I was playing the stakes you have been playing, then in Vegas I decided to move up to 15/30 and was moderately successful. I ran bad in a tourney but ran SOCIALLY good in that I sat next to Mark Gregorich and he agreed to let me buy him a beer and pick his brain. I asked him the same philosophical questions and he gave me advice for an hour, specifically that during the LAPC I should take 5/10k and take a shot at the 40/80 game and see how I fared. At the time I felt that was huge, and I can identify with your current journey. I hit the ground running in the 40/80 game, was a solid winner at the HP game, and a very small loser in the commerce 40/80 hk. I was also very lucky in that I was friends with Andrew Barber who I was able to run hand analysis with.

1 - I don't agree with this. I think the better you get at hand reading the more you can open a wider range (assuming it's not total garbage). Frankly if you play too snug then a good hand reader can assign you a very specific range and can maneuver you off your hand, your back door draws, and kill a lot of your equity. In this and other higher limit 08 games, I've seen snug players with your style struggle to have huge wins or stay above even. By playing a wider range you become less readable and get paid off more.

2 - I guess I agree with this if you are going to play a passive game, but I prefer to make my own destiny and play my backdoor draws in a less standard way that allows me to maximize my equity on future streets when I get there and minimize my opponents equity when I whiff and they get there.

3 - I almost NEVER fold my big blind, and the better you get at hand reading and post flop play the more that this is correct. I'm probably still defending multiway just because I didn't come to the cardroom to fold.

4 - Position is important ... I don't know if I would say it's more important at this level ... Part of me thinks it's more important at the lower limits where getting stuck in the middle with unknown callers behind you can really hurt you. At these limits I personally am far more showdown bound with each hand so therefore position matters slightly less other than for pot control and taking the initiative .... However my thinking isn't fully developed in this area.

5 - I think this is your biggest weakness. You are looking too hard for a "formula" to beat "hyper aggressive players." Given the hand you described, and the other one on another post, you must think I'm a hyper aggressive player. But I have nowhere near the level of aggression that some of the toughest opponents I have faced have. The better you get at hand reading, the more that your opponents aggression becomes indicative of whether they are maneuvering the other players or building the pot for when they realize their equity. There are significant differences between a semi bluff, pure steal, and thin value bet ... So you can't have the same counter move for each of those. In some cases I am calling, other cases I am bluff raising or check raising, or finding a fold ... It all depends on my opponent, the action up through previous streets, and how the board texture developed. This is why you can't just develop a formula and stick to it like you can at the lower limits. The sooner you realize that all the players that you have been playing with at the 6/12 oaks game are awful (yes AWFUL - there is not a single good player there), the sooner you realize that everything they are doing is wrong, and that your opponents at the higher level are thinking players who are thinking about not only their own hand, but your hand, and the deeper thinkers are thinking about what YOU are thinking about their hand and acting thusly. Half of the players at the lower limits aren't even fully thinking about THEIR hand.

As you can see, hand reading is critically important to being able to not only survive but to beat games at this level and above for any meaningful amount of money. I read somewhere that a distinguishing characteristic of world class players is that they adapt to their opponents and to the game far more quickly than non world class players. I don't put myself in that class, nor anyone we play with, however this illustrates the point that as you go up in limits you have to always be assessing your opponents and adapting your play faster than they adapt to you.

Case in point the ak95 hand ... Sometimes I'm three betting that pre, sometimes I'm flatting, other times I'm folding ... It all DEPENDS.

Rush gave you some excellent advice. First, check calling is a style of play that "good" players at the lower limits have developed as a default because there are so many atrocious players that donk into you that you can check call to pull other people in and get half a huge pot with a2xx. At the higher limits you have fewer donks, fewer pots are multiway (so getting half with a2 does not get you as many BB as you get in lower limit games), and thus you have to open up your range and play in such a way that allows you to maximize your equity when you get there and pick up some pots when you don't. Gregorich told me that he truly believes that your success in poker is highly related to how well you steal. This is why I made the joke about omaha players who are over 65 ... I really believe that most older players who came up pre 2003 and are not trying to move up are at a disadvantage. Pre Internet poker people were so awful at poker that you could just nut peddle with a2xx and make a tidy profit. To a degree this is still true at 4/8 and 6/12, although the bad players aren't AS bad as they used to be. Post 2003 though there was such an explosion of resources that some of the younger players got really really good, really really fast and moved up in limits and now live there. They developed a skill set that the older players didn't, and they did it at a time when they were in the formative stages of their career and not so stuck in their ways. Gregorich joked to me that back before the mid 2000s, if a young guy sat down at the omaha table, everyone would salivate. Now the default is to give the younger player more credit, and salivate when the older guy sits down because the older guy's play is going to be so standard and nitty that he will never get paid off and he will get pushed off a lot of hands. The moment you realize that a234 has almost NO high equity and is not as pretty as it seems is the precisely the moment that you might be ready to take a shot at higher limits - your success depends on similar paradigm shifts.

Lastly, Rush again touched on bankroll considerations. You CANNOT play scared money. When you first played in the game it was clear your fear of losing money exceeded your willingness to take bigger risks for a win. This will be TOTALLY exploited by any half decent player at these limits. 20/40 with a 30/60 kill ... You can EASILY run bad while playing good aggressive poker and get stuck 2-3k .... I would say that I am usually stuck 1-2.5k during 30% of my sessions at some point before getting even and making a profit ... Though I purposely play a higher variance style. Long bad runs at this limit can hurt - I lost 10k over 6/8 weeks before WSOP and frankly, that's just barely over 200 BB which is a somewhat rare but not realistic downswing ... You have to have the stomach and bankroll to endure that.

Since we live close together and we play in the same game I would possibly consider a coaching arrangement where we go over hands in detail or some such, but it would have to be financially worth it for me since your improvement would unfortunately diminish my win rate. There are some excellent resources online that I have found that aren't the standard Ray Zee / Super System 2 books, but I'm not sure I'm prepared to share all that just yet.

Your pair of 5s were a MONSTER in that hand ... Glad you didn't call

... Next time I'll have 10s full though so find a fold next time

Very nice of you figdog. Well stated. We never give lessons, so this is very noble of you. With sound advice. I love where you state that the small limit Omaha players are AWFUL, they are.

full ring is full ring.

Very nice post!

"The moment you realize that a234 has almost NO high equity and is not as pretty as it seems is the precisely the moment that you might be ready to take a shot at higher limits - your success depends on similar paradigm shifts."

Can you elaborate the statement above? TIA

He means 1234 is generally playing for half the pot. Which losses value when less players are in the hand. Doubt he is folding it pre flop tho