lots of people play often/lots of tables for a variety of reasons. i think you're putting much too much stock into this.

also, chess ftw.

can Michael Phelps swim?

I wouldn't just write a post on one specific player unless I thought some aspect of the discussion would be generalizable to other opponents. It obviously doesn't really matter to anyone else how that one player plays, except as a specific case of how to observe a player to note more nuanced tendencies.

The real reason I posted this was to start the theoretical discussion about how much of our edge can be from preflop vs. postflop decisions. Secondarily, I wanted to lapse into topics like how our opponents' preflop leaks suggest postflop leaks that we should look for. I'm glad to see both of those topics developed here.

The problem is that my regular game is pretty LAGgy. The few passive players are, with a couple of exceptions, tight-passive rocks. The players building the five- and six-way 3-bet pots are the same ones making it tough to realize that equity postflop. At the very least, variance goes through the roof. Flopping marginally getting 19:1 not closing the action in an aggressive game is a both a tough spot and a high-variance spot, even if you are playing perfectly given the info you have.

(ROT/BBV:

)


Obviously we'd all rather have a table of loose-passives, but the question for me is whether a table of LAGs playing 40-50% of hands for multiple bets preflop is more profitable than, say, going to play LHE or NLHE elsewhere. Just estimating, how profitable do you think a $6/12, $10/20 kill LAGgy O8 game like this could be?

okay, so if you've run a simulation with say j753 vs a couple solid hands preflop you'll have seen that j753 is not a huge underdog, correct? and that the deficit it's at amounts to a fraction of a small bet, right? i'm not trying to be contentious or argumentative here btw, fwiw. just trying to clarify.

If you are running badly, that is the reason for you doing badly not the players you are up against.

I know what you are getting at. The variance is going to be horrible - a problem with live play at the best of times. The only way is to keep making the right decision and eventually (2050?) you are bound to come out a winner.

I find it tough even playing on Stars. Getting the chips in versus all these bad lags and time after time getting outdrawn. Its cool when it comes good though, big pots can be on offer......

ProPokerTools Omaha Hi/Lo Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Scoops	Wins Hi	Ties Hi	Wins Lo	Ties Lo
Jx7x53	27.58%	87,091	191,459	7,838	61,669	8,072
15%	36.19%	124,961	191,853	21,205	103,794	49,563
15%	36.24%	124,797	191,702	21,143	104,848	49,517

But even Mark Gregorich is going to have trouble making up that deficit in postflop play against mediocre players with solid hands. And my best opponents, though annoyingly aggressive, are no Mark Gregorich...

But wrongly assessing the players I'm against could lead me to overestimate my edge and continue playing in a game where I'm "running bad", but not really. Hence this thread.

Above you say you are 'running terribly'. Perhaps you meant that your results are terrible, and now you are trying to decide whether its run bad or bad play?

I probably don't need to say it, but - its important not to concentrate too much on results. Calmly analyse your play and decide from that whether you are losing money due to run bad or due to bad play. If you can't remember the hands after the event maybe you could take some notes at the live venue and go away and analyse the difficult spots later using ProPokerTools etc.

Maybe not if he knows you're 98% certain to have a strong starting hand.

Let me try to explain. Am I correct that you are probably reasonably certain to have a hand with an ace? Do you always have counterfeit protection when you play a low hand? If your A2** isn't always A23*, then when the flop has an ace or a deuce, any low draw you might have had has probably been counterfeited. Mark would know that if he played much with you (because I would and I'm surely not as good a player or card reader as Mark Gregorich). Similarly, a strong opponent who is familiar with you will have an idea of how much you probably like various board cards. (It's part of "playing poker" well).

It's much easier to play against an opponent who plays a tightly restricted range than one who plays a wider range. You can probably successfully get away with playing squeaky clean tightly in one of those rapid fire on-line games where nobody ever gets to know his/her opponent, but when you sit down at a table with some good card players, they're going to be looking at their hands, looking at the board, estimating what you might and might not be holding, and playing accordingly.

They're going to back away when they think you probably have a good fit with the board and they're going to push you out of the pot when they think you don't. They're going to milk their winners and dump their losers. When a strong player is "in the zone," he's going to make you wonder if he's psychic. He's going to adapt to you by playing looser... and he's going to beat you, even though you play tightly and he doesn't.

I don't know about your Villainesse (from your opening post). I don't know if she's a good card player (hand reader) or not. She might just have a knack for playing cards. Some people do. (You probably do yourself);

You can take advantage of your tight table image. But to do that you have to loosen up selectively. You still don't want to be playing tripe against your regular opponents, but you take advantage of your tight table image by opportunistic stealing and betting without the nuts in situations where your opponents expect you to have the nuts. It takes good judgement to know when you can get away with it, and you have to be adaptable enough to switch gears back to tight mode when you get caught once or twice. (Ideally you never get caught).

But if you're already successful, be very careful if you change your game. What works well for one individual (me, for example) may not work well for another (you, for example).

That's my take on it, anyhow.

Buzz

Good points in isolation, Buzz, but they have to play against the same field of 3-4 other opponents that I do. If I start playing (J7)53 to throw off my best opponent, I'm going to end up in multiway pots with very non-nut holdings.

I do in fact try to throw in a little bit of deception -- raising my good A3 hands, for example, raising Q(Q3)2, raising more liberally with something like (A5)KQ when I think I can get it 3-handed. IMO doing this in very multiway pots is just burning money because the extra players tend to protect the pot.

(I do make a lot of mistakes in HU hands against aggressive players in games that are usually multiway. I've identified that as a leak I need to improve on.)

In NLHE BalugaWhale talks about how you need two of three advantages -- cards, skill, position -- to make a hand worth playing. To what extent does this apply to multiway LO8?

i agree with you that it might be hard to make up that deficit. i'm not defending the loose player's play. i'm just pointing out it's not the hugest mistake ever. it's a fraction of a small bet over a reasonably large number of trials. we've all seen truly horrible players win in the short or medium term, so clearly we have an understanding of variance and how it can overcome even massive errors in play. there's no reason that variance + aggression + small repeated preflop mistakes can't = an annoying player to play against who hasn't gone bust yet over a small sample.

great discussion by the green people and the other LO8 regs here
a couple of things:

1) today's LO8 games are anything other than low variance. Mason's essays possibly had old time loose-passive players in mind. some of them must have passed away... as Mark Gregorich once said: "the game died with these players..."

2) like postflop isn't just hot/cold equity, preflop isn't either. trouble hands cost money on every street. playing them in the first place (preflop) is a mistake, and mistakes cost money.

3) OP, raising inefrior hands isn't exactly the way to "mix it up". the most important thing is the raise hands that are in different spheres. raise broadway hands sometimes, raise 4456ds sometimes. behind a lot of action from nits, do "The Matusow" and 3-bet QJT8 suited because your hand is live. "sometimes" is the 2nd most important word. "position" is the most important...

When I adjust my game, the trick is to adjust, but not too much. (J7)53 seems extreme.

I don't know. In general, be careful about applying Texas hold 'em principles to Omaha-8.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

If you have multiple players in the game whose ranges are that wide and you have a clue postflop, the game should be decently profitable, but like you said, also high variance.

If you play NLHE decently, I'd guess that your hourly in 1/3 would be comparable w lower variance, assuming most of the LO8 villains are decent postflop.