I am beginning to wonder how beatable O8 tournaments are in general. Most authorities both online and in print cite O8 as a low variance game, yet my experience is that O8 tournaments are extremely difficult to cash in. The large number of opponents on (seemingly) every hand seems to make each individual hand quite the crap shoot - even for players who are able to lay down a (formerly) promising hand when it hits a bad flop.

I have spent a long time studying FL Holdem tournament strategy and I have gotten to the point where I can cash in better than 20% of FLHE tournaments I enter. But so far I am cashing in FLO8 tournaments at a really pathetic rate - so bad that I question whether FLO8 tournaments play is a game where it is even possible to have much of a positive expectation.

I know I need to improve my O8 play. No question I am not an expert. But in my experience in FLHE tournaments, it appears that even the donks have a higher cash rate in FLHE tournaments than I do in O8.

Are FLO8 tournaments a total crap shoot? Or do I simply have miles and miles to go before I have the O8 skills to beat this game? And if I have miles to go, then could it ever be worth the trouble?

Limit Omaha 8 is among the most widely spread non-NLHE tournaments out there. Live O8 tournaments seem to have a fair number of bad players in them, which makes it seem like a promising game, but my abysmal result online suggest to me that either:

1. Limit Omaha 8 tournaments are extremely high variance,

and/or

2. Despite making a careful study of the game, I suck.

What do 2+2 participants think? Do any of you specialize in FLO8 tournaments? What % of the time do good players cash in FLO8 tournaments? Is it possible that Limit O8 cash is low variance, but Limit O8 tournaments are high variance?

No. That is, I don't think so.

I don't know.

I don't know that either.

Speaking only for myself, learning something in which I was truly interested was never "trouble" for me. However, learning something in which I had little interest was always difficult for me.

I live in Los Angeles, California. Almost all of the tournaments here involve Texas hold 'em. Ten years ago there were six or seven Omaha-8 tournaments per week (not all in the same casino). Now I think there's only one Omaha-8 tournament per week, the one at Hawaiian Gardens on Tuesday afternoons. (And sometimes there's an Omaha-8 tournament when one of the casinos has a big semi-annual or annual event). Otherwise, all the tournaments are Texas hold 'em tournaments. I wish that were not the case, but I think it is. (If I'm mistaken, please, someone, correct me).

I agree with that statement.

I used to play a lot of FLO8 tournaments (when there were O8 tournaments).

The answer may depend on what you mean by "good." For a good pro or semi-pro, 90% of the time seems reasonable to me, based on my experience. In a weekly tournament in a brick and mortar casino, a subset of the same limited group of people tend to end up at the final table week after week after week.

Is it possible? I suppose maybe it is.
Is it probable? I don't think so.

Buzz

no way that this would be possible online
plus LO8 is even rarer in europian casinos

ps:BUZZ have u ever played(won) a LO8 tourney online?
psps:will u play online poker if it becomes legal again in the states?

90% sounds pretty unreasonable to me

OP, I don't know anything about your game, but one mistake I see solid LO8 players make in tournaments is failing to adjust to high-blind situations in the later stage of the tournament.

A couple of things:

1. Hand values run closely together, so it's much more important to win the blinds uncontested than it is to get in with a premium hand

2. Two way hands are extremely important. AK35 is a better hand than A234. Hands are usually HU so low-only hands will often win you half or nothing unless you make a wheel. You will typically see the tighter players that were able to last through the early stages of the tournament waiting for hands like A2xx, but you can often be in a dominating position if you have a high pair and some wheel cards, or a high sidecard with your A. It costs too much to draw to half at this stage, you want hands that can win the high with as little as a pair and also back into a low if need be.

I believe you. I stipulated "brick and mortar casino."

I believe you. I stipulated "brick and mortar casino."

Never played in an on-line Omaha-8 tournament. I played in one on-line Texas hold 'em tournament several years ago (and lost).

Probably not much. I feel I spend too much time on this computer the way things are. And with all the faults and added expense of brick and mortar casino play, I prefer sitting face to face at a table with my opponents. (To each his/her own).

Just before the turn of the century I dropped my wife off at the airport (LAX) and was to be "on my own" for a couple of weeks. I had a vague idea of where Hollywood Park casino was and decided to see what was happening there. It had been probably forty years since I had last visited a Los Angeles county poker casino.

Anyhow, I found the place and entered. There were two huge gambling rooms, one of them filled with five or six hundred poker players.

It's hard to describe my feeling. I thought I was in heaven. These were my people. I still get the feeling when I visit one of the local casinos.

I get a similar feeling when I'm in Las Vegas or Reno. It's just a matter of "being there." I like "being there."

Go figure.

Buzz

Yeah but 90%? I mean look at how many hands/hr are dealt in live O8...maybe 20? How can you possibly have that big of an edge over the course of a single day in a limit game? I don't care if all your opponents think they can play 4 from their hand, 1 from the board, nobody has that big of an edge.

Its interesting to think about how you would have to play in order to realise that sort of edge. If you can continually steal from the button that is one thing. If not, I think you can only commit a large number of chips when you are fairly certain to win the pot. As far as I can see you can't afford to commit a large part of your stack when you are a 60/40 favourite.

Not that I play these things.

DQ, thanks for your perspective. I think your point #2 (regarding what kinds of hands are worth being all-in (or nearly all-in) with preflop is an excellent one. I had not fully considered what you say above. Your point #1 is also important, though I have not often been getting deep enough in the tournament to make blind steals even a possibility - i.e. the blinds never fold. But that is also partly a function of the fact that I am playing in $10 and $20 daily tournaments. With a buy-in that low, you can't expect very many of the players to take it all that seriously (which is why there are so many multi-way pots with so many surprisingly atrocious starting hands in these events).

Buzz, thanks also for your input, though 90% is clearly far too high a number. No one has that kind of advantage. If anyone could be that good at the game, then it would never get spread as no one would ever want to play. I suspect that cashing in 30% of O8 tournaments would be an amazingly high rate and wouldn't be surprised if no one achieves even that (for any significant length of time). In FLHE tournaments, cashing in 25% of events entered is the highest rate I have ever seen (i.e. by looking at opponents stats on OfficialPokerRankings.com or the like). It is hard to imagine that that stat is 3.6 times higher in FLO8 for anyone. In fact I would guess that the vagaries of FLO8 are such that the cashing rates for the best FLO8 tournament players may well be less than 20%. But that's just a guess.

Regarding the decline of weekly FLO8 tournaments in LA cardrooms: I am mostly interested in scheduled FLO8 tournaments that are part of a featured tournament series which tend to have larger prize pools than weekly tournaments. Frankly I am not aware of any casino that spreads FLO8 tournaments on a scheduled routine (except that you implied that there is one such in LA). I think maybe the Orleans in LV has a weekly O8 (or did in the recent past).

But I won't be playing any live O8 events for a while yet, as it seems clear that I have a long way to go before I could possibly be +EV.

it's a limit tournament with relatively short stacks and relatively quickly increasing blind levels. of course it's going to be a variancefest. you can be +ev and play lots of them and not do well. that's variance.

@op - what's your sample size for lhe tournaments?
@buzz - 90% is a very unrealistic figure in any venue (online or live), unless you're talking about tournaments with 15 entrants or something. i assumed OP was talking about multiple hundreds of entrants in each tournament.

I was referring to placing in the money in a weekly Omaha-8 tournament in a brick and mortar casino with 60-100 participants each week. I believe very strong (top notch) Omaha-8 brick and mortar casino tournament players do that well.

Buzz

Indeed, perhaps that's what happened.

Buzz

Interesting thread. I literally gasped when I read 90% ITM from Buzz. Wow. I just played my first two live FLO8 tournaments a couple weeks ago. I finished 21 of 107 (top 9 paid) and 32 of 131 (top 18 paid). So I'm at 0% live. Online, I played mostly PLO8 tourneys, but I can't find that anywhere live. I don't play online anymore and live 4 hours from the closest casino, so I'll never get a large enough sample size.

But, Buzz, I DID love being there.

Maybe, but I doubt it. FLO8 tournaments may have declined in LA, but they are still the third most common tournament type in America (behind NLH and PLO). FLO8 is a game that prominently features in the WSOP and I doubt that that would remain the case for long if it were so thoroughly dominated by anyone.

Then you understand, and you're my kind of people, win or lose.

During non-rush traffic hours it's about a half hour for me to get to the nearest casino. I'd like to live closer but I could never get my wife to move away from Pacific Palisades. (She loves being here).

Take care.

Buzz