Can you explain why a good player should prefer playing with a kill?

It is quite literally a tax on winning.

And it basically forces you to put money into the pot with a bunch of hands you should be folding. In other words, it forces good players to play hands that the bad players are already playing regardless.

I wouldn't necessarily call that a penalty or a punishment... Especially because, don't you WANT to play bigger pots with loose, gambly players? And think about it this way: A lot of people share that fear of the kill, and you have a perfect opportunity to exploit that by raising preflop.

That's only true assuming you're the only one that ever wins the kill button... Let's (properly) assume that you win the kill button about 20% of the time it's awarded (because you're a good competent player), 80% of the time you have a CHOICE to play your hand for that additional cost.. And using your logic (which I wholeheartedly agree is sound logic), you can "tax" that person with their marginal hand.

I agree, if you win the kill, you are most likely going to be dealt a hand that you probably wouldn't normally play, but that doesn't mean you can't win. It's Omaha8! Anything can win! lol

But you're not taxing the other player in the kill if that player would be playing their hand regardless. The kill is forcing me to make a mistake that other bad players are already making.

You're taxing everyone at the table, not just that player... But mainly, you're taxing that player.

I don't think it's a mistake to take down a (at least) 5BB pot, then see the next flop for 1.5BB. Plus, what about the times you DO pick up a great starting hand? I feel like you're being a little too pessimistic and only focusing on the worst case scenarios. If you're anxious about kill pots, check-fold all of your 2 pairs and not nutted straights.

You clearly don't understand at all what I am trying to say.

The "mistake" is in playing a poor starting hand.
Your loose/bad opponents are already making this mistake, whether they have the kill or not.
You make money in the reciprocal situation by -not- making this mistake.
But if you are in the kill, you no longer have this choice, you are now forced to play the way that the bad players play.

Generally speaking, if you remove the opportunities for making meaningful decisions in a game, you are reducing the skill involved in that game. Forcing players to post a kill removes a very meaningful decision: whether to put money into the pot preflop.

But in the context I eloquently laid out, you are making a mistake in assuming that you’re the only one that ever wins the kill button... And in those situations where you do win the kill button, you’re also assuming you get dealt a ****ty hand.

Here’s a solution for you: you can make the +EV play (by your standards and expectations) by FOLDING your kill whenever you get it, even if it’s limped to you. That way, the 80% of the time someone else has the kill button and is void of that meaningful decision, you can exploit them by putting pressure on their hand... But seriously, don’t even go to a flop if you’re the kill button. People NEVER win hands with something that’s not exactly AA23 dbl suited....

One more try:

He's not making those assumptions. He's saying that when bad players have the kill button and get dealt a bad hand, it doesn't punish them, because they would have likely played their bad hand anyway. When good players get the kill button, they are forced to play their bad hands.

When a good player is forced to play the same way as a bad player, he loses some of his comparative advantage. Of course sometimes you get a great hand with the kill button. But more often you get a bad one, and those make quite a difference.

These are all compounded by my point that good players likely get the kill button more often than bad players.

Then my original point stands. Get the donks that are going to play poorly regardless to put in more money.

Btw, who says just because you’re dealt a bad hand preflop, you’re doomed to play the hand exactly the same way as a bad player would. The reason we’re better than them is because we make much better decisions than they do.

When a player defends their kill with a mediocre hand, they are often correct to do so. But when they cold call with a mediocre hand, they are almost always making a mistake. So the kill takes a loose player's bad plays and turns them into good plays.

(That isn't to say that you shouldn't play aggressively against a kill; you'd still rather force a player to put in an extra bet with a mediocre hand than be able to check it. But aggressive play here usually benefits you less than it would in a situation without a kill.)

When you're dealt a bad hand preflop in the kill, you are forced to play it the same way a bad player would (at least preflop). This isn't true without the kill. The kill removes one of the points at which we can make a better decision than our opponents.

Of course, we can still play better post-flop. But this is true regardless of whether there is a kill or not. And the inflation of the preflop pot size in kill pots makes post-flop play comparatively less important than in smaller pots without a kill.

Interesting points except for we’re forgetting that we are not chasing bad FDs and bad SDs, bottom 2 pairs, etc. We are losing the minimum on all pots, hopefully. I get where preflop with a kill it negates our options for playing the hand or not. We’re in the hand.

I would still rather play a kill any day of the week because any opportunity to get bigger bets on the table against these clowns is an opportunity for me to make more $$$.


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Simple hypothetical scenario:

You walk into a casino's poker room and there are two 4-8 O8 tables running. Table 1 has a half kill and Table 2 has no kill. Both tables have one seat open. Which seat is most likely to offer the most EV for you "good, competent poker players"?

The answer is almost always Table 1. More action will be created. Bigger pots on average. Loose splashy players will more likely be sitting at the half kill game.

Sorry boys, poker isn't always about mathematical analysis. That's why when you're at a table where people want to do a round of live straddles, you shouldn't simply say "No, it hurts my equity to post a straddle." Making small mathematical mistakes can be incredibly good for the game and fantastic for your EV!

Sounds like that part of this thread is over. AlexJ and Endo just checkmated everyone's argument about not having a kill.

Simply put: 4/8 players are going to make a ton of mistakes, and when the limits get bumped up, they are even MORE prone to make mistakes because of the perceived pressure of a "bigger game."

But Johnnycher was making an argument that the kill actually gave better players a strategic advantage over bad players.

It may well be that bad players prefer playing with a kill (and they should, since it lessens their disadvatage over good players!). And if that is true, and the bad players gravitate toward this kill, then of coure you should exercise good game selection and play in the kill game. But you are playing in that game not because it has a kill, but because the opponents are worse. If you hold the opponents constant, you should prefer to not play with a kill.

Here's a way of thinking about the question. Let's say you enter a single-table O8 tournament, and after the tournament has started and the field has been set, the tournament director give you the option of changing the rules to add a kill. Should you do it?

My original point was that good players want to play with a kill because it's good for the game. Bad players complain about a kill and look for excuses to not have it.

Let me address all of this together:

Adding a kill to a 1 table tournament means that the tourney will end sooner because it will create more action. Btw, I know the other implication your trying to ask, which blown out to the extreme end is: "give 9 people 1 BB in a tourney... Does the idiot win a majority of the time?" So, the tournament example is a nonstarter because we're talking about the TIME differences between a cash game and a tournament...

What I mean by this is that in a cash game, villians, bad players, donkeys, whatever you wanna call them... They can leave the game at any point. This is a bad thing. Tournaments have to be played until there is one winner, so all players (except 1) losing their stack is inevitable.
I will say that to your point; Yes, if you could perpetually play against a specific bad player until he loses all of his money, you'd be slightly favored to do it in a non-kill game, but it would take a lot more time.

Now let's consider the realistic example:
You're playing in a cash game with a guy who's never played before and he's making mistake after mistake, but somehow he's winning a couple of big scoop pots. He's feeling great and thinking Omaha8 is the easiest game in the world. Do you want him to get away with a mistake-filled winning session and never see him again? Is it better to play a game that's a little more volatile while retaining your same edge to hopefully get him BEFORE he leaves for forever?

The flipside to that example is that the lucky donkey DOES get away with a big profit because he scooped all of those kill pots. Is he now more likely to come back to the game because he won so much money? Had there not been a kill in effect and he yielded less profit, would he come back then?

Let's take the time aspect 1 step further:
Most of us play an Omaha game once or MAYBE twice a week (whenever it's offered (which is usually very limited)). We aren't sitting there for 40 hours a week playing against the same exact same lineup day in and day out. We need to make good use of our 10 hours a week playing against a variety of different players with different skill levels. So, playing a slightly more volatile game isn't against our best interests. We know how to minimize our losses and maximize our gains, especially against players who feel uncomfortable playing a perceived "bigger game."

The problems with this argument is that there is never this choice, and it's not really relevant, If the same skill level players were in both games, of course the kill game would be better, but only because there is more money being gambled, not because of the kill per se.

If there were a 3rd table that was an 8-16 game with no kill, which one would now offer the most EV for good players? I would choose the 8-16 game.

That's why he prefaced it by saying "hypothetical scenario," and your option C just negated the premise of the question.

It seems like Chillrob and NickMPK have been on the same side of the argument, but their reasoning just diverged from one another.

His hypothetical scenario was trying to tell the virtues of a kill, but it really just shows that a bigger game is better. No one was ever disputing that.

Yes, but within your answer to the hypothetical, you said the kill game would be better because "more money is being gambled, but NOT because of the kill..."

I think you're the only one that's ever going to argue that the "more money being gambled in a kill game ISN'T a result of the kill being in the game." I don't even know where you would begin to justify that to pass it off as truth... But go ahead! lol

This still seems incoherent to me.
Usually what is "good for the game" is whatever appeases the bad players. So if the bad players were the ones who didn't want the kill, why would the good players ever insist on including it?

You left off the "per se" from my quote, which was the part to explain why you totally missed my point.

Anyway, looks like we have either an idiot or a troll here. No more feeding him from me.

Kills have a minor redistribution effect, in that good players who scoop more often, are forced to give back a little (and invest in defending hands they might not otherwise get involved with)

But playing in games with kills should still be advantageous to good players for several different reasons.

To clear that muddle up a bit, I was referring to "bad players" in this situation as (generally) old, tight, complainer-type players. They think they know how to play O8 perfectly, but in reality, they're just limping, checking, and trying to hit promotions, and anyone that doesn't fall into line with them is "ruining the game." I should've called them "timid" instead of bad, but they are bad regardless.

Incompetent players (AKA bad players, but a different type of bad) "Fish, Noobs, etc" typically don't know what a kill is and don't mind it being a part of the game because they don't really understand what's going on. Those are the players good players are targeting and you want them in a game with a kill.

Does this work?

Examine the 1/2 kill game as 2 separate games: one game is all the non-kill pots and the other game is all the kill pots.

The question is: at what rate do we have to win to be profitable in the kill pots with the following assumptions:

We're on the kill 20% of the time.
We fold every time we're on the kill.
We win X bb/hr.

We're playing 80% of the time but 20% of the time we're actually losing 0.5bb.

So our new win rate is:

(X*80%) - (0.5*20%) = 0.8X-1 bb/hr

Solving for profit:
0.8X - 1 > 0
X > 1.25

So if our win rate is greater than 1.25bb/hr then we're profitable in the kill game.

I would argue against that last sentence here.

Good players are playing tighter pf. loose/bad players are playing that same range a good player plays plus all the marginal and terrible hands the good player folds.

The loose players will end up posting the same kills for scoops with strong starters, plus additional kills when his terrible starters luck into scoops.

The tighter you play, the less kills you will post relative to your opponents. So effectively the kill punishes loose players more than tight/good players.

Even though it forces the tight player into playing weaker hands sometimes it is a net benefit to him as he gets more chances to iso, or just build bigger pots at 1.5x the normal stakes with his good starters vs weak players with extra dead money posted.

And the looser the player pool, the better a situation it is for the one guy playing tight.