I primarily play either the 4/8 LO8 or 4/8 hi/lo mix (Omaha and Stud) games at my local casinos, and they're a gold mine if you're willing to be patient.

The other night in the straight LO8 game, I saw a guy limp UTG and end up calling three more bets PF with KKK8 (total rainbow, no less). When he, of course, won the hand with a case king on the flop and a boat on the turn, he said "I had to call, I was already in."

In that same game, I played A29J from the big blind, flopped the nut straight and hit nut low on the turn. I was called down by five people, none of whom had any piece of it.

Looks like play money play. With the only difference: it isn't.

Yes.

Pretty much. You have to throw out the majority of hand-range reading and lines you picked up while playing online (even at significantly smaller stakes) and be prepared for some horrendous beats, but the rewards far outweigh the drawbacks.

live O8 and online O8 are very different. when i started playing O8, it was live, and honestly, with the exception of the occasional tight or very aggro table, it's probably stayed the softest game that has a decent sized player pool. it's nothing like what's happened to NL in the last 5 years.

did the OP say he was playing in a 4/8 game w/ a $5 drop? that's ridiculous. taking 1.25 small bets out of the pot is approx 25BB's an hour coming off the table, so you'd have to crush that game to beat it. i'd never sit in a game like that though, no matter if everyone saw the flop, for the same reason i dont play at winstar, rake should be fair, i.e., not 10% up to (x), or 'taking a drop before a flop', or like the above, where a large buy-in (25BB's) is taken off the table every hour.

i think the difficulty level in a live 4/8 game is probably less than or similar to $.50/$1.00 online.

it was this time last year that i was playing a lot of 8/16 online and i found it to be similar to the 30/60 game that runs at the bellagio.

one of the bizarre aspects of live O8 is that, while not a set in stone rule but definitely true in many games is that the middle limits are often more difficult than the higher limits. the highest i've played is 80/160 during the wynn classic and 75/150 (which goes to 100/200 in a kill pot) during the series, i'd often take a seat in a 10/20 or 20/40 or whatever was available if i was going to play the 75 game, and the middle limits always had more grinders and the 75 always had more gamblers.


probably BBV but an example;

i think gobbo and i were discussing the topic of grinders in middle limits and gamblers in the higher limits of LO8 when we were sitting at the same table waiting for a 75/150 to fire, and about two orbits in i scooped a pot and put out the kill. it was 3 bet to me in the CO with 4 players already in the pot, i put in the 4'th bet w/ AA24, the BB cold called and the original raiser capped it (five bet cap live multiway, no cap on betting HU live play) and we saw a flop 6 ways of A-K-9 rainbow iirc. The flop got capped, with one player folding after calling one bet but having it capped when it came back around. The turn came a 5 and also brought a flush draw, and the guy who had pretty much announced he had QJTx on the flop and had been causing all the action being first to act and me being last to act checked, checked around to me, one bet, one fold, down to 5 players now (its funny when 6 people see a flop and you have 2 aces and an ace hits the flop, thats generally a good game). The river was a 9x, and everyone checked to me and i bet, and i got called in two spots. KKxx and Andrew (? cant remember his last name, won a bracelet that year, plays a lot of omaha, younger guy, enjoyed talking to him that session) begrudgingly called with A9xx. I think it ended up being a 36BB pot. I've probably played about 250hrs of 75/150 over the last few years and I can definitely say that the high stakes LO8 games are the polar opposite in terms of difficulty when compared to the online games.


My advice to anyone going to Vegas to play LO8 this summer is to not just aim for the Rio. The great thing about the Rio is that there's usually a couple 10/20's and/or 20/40's and a few 75/150's, so you usually dont have to wait and can play several different limits, but some of the better grinders who dont practice game selection flock to the Rio during the series. Try the Venetian, the wynn (sometimes the best imo), the bellagio, and even the orleans.



Sorry, tl;dr, but yes, live O8 is softer than online O8. But it's also slower...the rake is higher (try and get comps whenever you can and always log in if they keep track of your hours, i probably got 90% of my time rake back at one casino from tipping the floor, and $1.50 or $2.00/hr adds up when you're grinding 8-10hrs/day for 6wks, can be $500-$600 in comps just from logging in/out) and you usually need to be patient with the dealers and cut them some slack, most of them don't deal LO8 hardly at all and they might have never been trained how to stack a pot, or to leave bets in front of players when the action is HU, etc.

yeah, definitely be patient with the dealers. some of the cash game dealers for plo8 at last year's wsop were surprisingly good, however.

i played some live 4 8 lo8. 15 hands/hour for about 5 hours, roughly around 75 hands. i don't know if i could do this more than 2 or 3 times a week. it is boring as hell, unless if you enjoy watching paint dry...

15 hands an hour is gross, i've seen around 20, but ugh 15. It would be much faster if certain people would not do the same stuff they've been doing for 20 years. Doing anything quickly is not the strong point of most of the people playing.

calling station sitting to my left, hem and haw on every raise, he'd cut his chips out, think about it.. stack them up, think a little more, cut them back out.. stack them up and push them across the line, then cut them back down.. literally 30 seconds every time the action was on him, and he never folds so.. seriously when ur playing 288j for 4 bets pre, how much time do you need to think about stuff.

The people that have to look at their hand for 30 seconds at showdown drive me insane.. maybe rude of me but the other day I told the one guy after like 45 sec.. I said I know you're mucking, you know you're mucking, the rest of the table knows it.. throw them in or turn them over and let the dealer read them and lets get on with it.

I get a kick out of the people that have to look at their hand 12 times during every pot also. It's tilting just to think about everything they do lol. I'm going nuts from playing so much live omaha lol.

the guy that was taking a long time every hand was about 90 in a wheel chair with hearing problems. no one at the table wanted to be rude to him... funny thing though, he was wearing a mansionpoker.com shirt.

It's interesting that you believe a 4/8 LO8 game could ever get 40 hands/hour.

I've got a 117 hours sample playing 4-8 LO8 in Vegas. Net profit $1364, and that's tipping perhaps a tad too much. ( plus about $117 in food comps of course ).

Hard to make a living playing 4-8 but IMO definitely beatable.

astrobel, let's just say you are working 8 hours a day, you are making $93.26 a day or $11.66 an hour... i wouldn't call this crushing the game but i guess you are beating it.

^^^ agree but that's almost 1.5 BB per hour. It's 4-8 after all.

round two... this time, about 20 hands an hour and found 6 12. 7 nits, 1 donk, and myself. it felt like everybody at the table knew everyone. one of the regulars asked me where i usually play and i said online. and he said, he doesn't play online because they can see your hole cards. this is the typical belief on online poker for live players. we can all thank ap for that.

one thing live players don't do is play hu. when one person calls, they basically chop their bets and drop couple dollars for rake. what's the deal with seeing no flop but paying rake? this is so wrong. anyway, donk loses all his chips and the game breaks...

big difference in play at 6 12 than 4 8 or maybe it was just a bad table.

The reason they chop HU is because instead of dropping $1, they will drop $5 if they see a flop. Lose situation unless winner scoops a big pot. Usually not worth it to play and wastes more time.

I'm assuming you played at the bike or commerce, when they run 6/12. But yes, 6/12 plays a bit more tight aggro while 4/8 is loose passive.

Also house players populate the 6/12 game when it is short.

As long as you're hitting your draws.

8/16 at venetian was full of regulars but not extremely tough with bunch of calling stations. They had 2 games running pretty much everyday from noon till .......

I wish we could start O8 8/16 in Colorado casinos because we have some good 30/60 hold-em but no Omaha