Quote:
Originally Posted by monikrazy
O8 is a game about maximizing equity on every street, giving free cards to the blinds with any strong starting hand is a disaster, you can scoop big pots with any a2 hands, and win large portions of others
Knowing how to play postflop is obviously important but being risk-adverse with these hands will cost you more than it saves
In a game where everyone is a good player or you are against very tight players with well defined ranges you can slow down with some a2 hands and situationally fold some weaker a-wheel hands (to a raise)
Also, raising a lot of a2xx hands is extremely valuable in an overall range context, so even if the bottom end of it isn't making money or is even a small loser its worth it to protect the other parts of your range, the more agressive a style you play the more valuable that becomes, the typical low-mid stakes player is just not going to be able to understand enough of your strategy to hand-read effectively
So by extension, I would often 3b a hand like qq86ss or jj43 against an early opener in an attempt to knock out the blinds, even if I am 40something% vs a reasonably tight open, that still puts me in a good spot, especially if I have position
I should also note its extremely rare for there to ever be more than 2 (really any) strong players at a table below 30/60, there are sometimes disciplined TAGs who are not bad players but they don't recognize a lot of the value spots players who have really studied the game will see.. o8 literature hasn't really caught up to the modern winning-est styles and I hope it stays that way
Ok back to this massive chunk of wisdom. At this point I am just jumping off with a few of the more basic tenets and how I have changed my play.
A lot of the principles of fixed limit poker I had overlooked, since I moved to NLHE for years and never really spent the time to learn fixed limit.
Also, the observation about there being almost zero strong players at micro FLO8 is very true. The number of players is small for starters and they are from the subset if players that:
Play small stakes...
Play Omaha...
Play split games....
Play short handed....
Play fixed limit (knowing the rake is tough)...
AND ARE GOOD AT ALL THESE THINGS...
With the small playerbase on US sites this has to be a very small group and those players will be easy to keep track of.
Anyway the point is to exploit the weak players and for me that will mean beat the rake over a decent sample size.
Heads up with the small blind and the button, the range to raise with is so freaking wide, and gets wider the worse the opponent is. If they are tight, they will need a run of good cards and be aggressive and fight back. This can happen of course, but the odds are they will get run over. If they are loose and play any four cards heads up, then they will likely be aggressive and fight back, which actually makes them a better player than the overtight player. All it takes is to quickly review the hand and see why they played a certain way and they are quite predictable. Lots of chips get pushed around and lots of rake gets paid. Heads up does not last for long though, there is a group of about a dozen players that are always willing to play so one or two of them will come and join.
Three handed becomes more about proper blind defense, since 2/3 of all hands will have this decision to make. As monikrazy pointed out, to give the blinds a free flop is absolutely the worst. One limp to open on the button, and you know that player is awful at poker in general. On the other hand, to receive infinite odds to see a free flop in the big blind can be tempting to misplay. Flop a second best double draw, and check fold. The pot is tiny, you had infinite odds to flop quads, and missed.
Four handed and now there is the decision of the two players not in the blinds, who will go after the blinds? Now ranges are becoming more sensible. If im on the button, and the UG player raises, i would suggest there is virtually no flat call range. There may be one, but to raise those few hands anyway cant be losing much EV. So button play becomes pretty simple, based on the reads of the other players, either raise it up or fold.
Five and six handed should have a few hands that are raised against 5 opponents but would be folded versus 8 opponents. Have not gathered enough data for this, other than to say I dislike the middle strength "sorta low and sorta high" hands because they lead to more difficult decisions postflop. And FLO8 tends to have easier decisions at least on the flop than holdem, and therefore easier to exploit the bad decisions of the other players rather than put myself in tough spots that I am nor practiced with enough to be +EV.
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