in this thread, there is a discussion about how playing limit o8 as a pro might be more difficult than big bet o8. specifically, some say that limit: 1) requires a larger bankroll for the same earn, and 2) the swings are larger. this thread is to discuss this matter in more detail.

personally, for o8, i think that there really isn't that much difference between the two if you adjust for stakes. i think game selection within the pool of big bet and limit games would have more impact on profitability than which game format is chosen.

let me give two examples:

assumptions
- semi-pro = winning player who plays for secondary income
- pro = winning player who plays for primary income
- bankroll = money for playing poker (i.e., not living expenses)
- player will pay himself his hourly rather than cash out during every heater
- player is willing to move down but strongly prefers not to
- player will not redeposit and cannot replace bankroll
- games are full ring or 6max (i.e., not hu or short-handed)
- games are generally soft and are not filled with maniacs


plo8
- 4-tables 200plo8 (let's say at tilt w/ 27% rb)
- earn rate of approx $40/hr (5ptbb/100 * 200 hands/hr)
- rakeback of approx $10/hr (correct me if i'm wrong here)
- bankroll of $4-5k for semi-pro and maybe $10k for pro
- downswings of $1000 are not uncommon, and $2000 downswings are rare and contain ridiculous beats
- primary strategic goal is to have opponents make big ev mistakes -- relatively rare, but very profitable

lo8*
- 4 tables of 5/10 lo8 (again at tilt w/ 27% rakeback)**
- earn rate of approx $40/hr (2bb/100 * 200 hands/hr)
- rakeback of approx $15/hr (again, correct me if i'm wrong here)
- bankroll of $2500-$3000 for a semi-pro and $5k-$10k for a pro (depends on games)
- downswings of $500 are not uncommon, and $1500 downswings are rare and contain ridiculous beats
- primary strategic goal is to have opponents frequently make small ev mistakes

* my lo8 experience is mostly really soft full ring games that are mixed in with big bet games that i'm playing or hu/sh. as such, i'm not sure about the accuracy of my "grinding" numbers. feel free to correct.

** i realize there probably aren't four good "full time" tables at these stakes at tilt, but work with me for the sake of an example.


i'm not sure how accurate the above characterizations are, but i don't seem much core difference other than the blind levels and the fundamental strategy. the "real" difference, in my opinion, is that the poker world has embraced big bet games, and these big bet games are probably softer (in general) and more prevalent than the limit games these days.

personally, i think i could multi-table many more limit tables than i could big bet games. right now i play 4-6 big bet 6max games comfortably. i think i could play 8 limit games with equal ease (thereby increasing my earn). not having to deal with bet sizing simplifies multi-tabling A LOT, imo.

thoughts?

yes.

I have no idea if your #'s are close to accurate. I plan to start mixing in some small stakes PLO8 games during my LO8 grinds and see how I like it. I'll post some details after I get a few K hands or after I implode from mega monkey tilt after a few bad beats.

I know that on any weeknight I can open up at least 6 tables of LO8 .5/1, 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 5/10, 8/16 mix of limits basically and all of the tables will have between 1 and 5 small to huge donators. No idea how bad the PL games are, but I'm guessing just as bad.

Unfortunately I can't say much about big bet O8 because I suck ass at it and also hate it, but I think it's also important to consider the stress factor when comparing the games.

It seems to me that limit O8 is far less stressful, at least hand for hand and bet for bet. Your ass is never on the line in limit on any given street. Limit is about steady whittling with no fear; big bet is about waiting and pouncing on rare-ish moments where the stars align, but that (often) involve massive fear.

Then again, there is less control in limit, both hand for hand and session for session, and where there is a lack of control, anxiety arises.

Sorry for the question, but what's meant with big bet o8?

welcome to the forum.

pot limit omaha hi/lo 8 or better (plo8) and no limit omaha hi/lo 8 or better (nlo8). i personally find "big bet o8" easier to say than "plo8/nlo8" or something like that.

Fixed-limit is less difficult for everyone to play than pot-limit or no-limit. Here's why:
• 1. For the same blind price, mistakes are less costly in fixed limit than pot-limit or no-limit.
• 2. There's considerably less bluffing in fixed-limit than pot-limit or no-limit, and it's easier to play when there's less bluffing because you don't have to know your opponents as well.
• 3. Fixed-limit does not involve the additional inherent complexity added by "bet sizing."

If you buy those reasons (and I believe they're correct), then since fixed-limit is less difficult for everyone involved, the expert has less of a skill advantage. (Call the expert a "pro" if you like, but I prefer not to do that).

And with less of a skill advantage, it's more difficult for the expert to win money from a weaker opponent.

I'm assuming an opponent or opponents of equal skill levels at either fixed-limit, pot-limit, or no-limit. Obviously playing another expert in a fixed-limit game, is more difficult than playing a tyro in a pot-limit or no-limit game.

Of course.

Very interesting and insightful point of view. Thanks for sharing.

You're implying fixed-limit is an inherently less complex game than pot-limit because it doesn't involve the additional step of bet-sizing.

I agree.

Buzz

based on the strategic goals that i stated, i'm not sure that this is true. an expert player in lo8 will make many fewer mistakes than a casual player. these mistakes may not be obvious to an observer, and they may not pan out on any given hand, but the multitude of opportunities for a casual player to make mistakes that an expert won't is what makes limit a pretty much guaranteed earner for the expert player. said another way, it will be very easy for a casual player to make mistakes that he doesn't notice and therefor will not correct. in big bet o8, i think a lot of the big mistakes are noticed and often corrected if the player hangs around (e.g., calling all in on a bare nut low draw). the main concern for profitability of lo8 games is the influx (or lack thereof) of casual players. if limit becomes popular again and/or when the uigea is repealed, i think lo8 at the 5/10 and higher levels will become extremely profitable money spinners.

while i do think that bet-sizing adds some cognitive burden to big bet o8 games, my main thought with regards to multi-tabling was simply the logistical mechanics of moving bet bars, clicking bet bars, scrolling mouse wheels, and/or typing in numbers. when a player is constrained to x number of actions per minute (a common metric in video games like starcraft -- the game elky played), the bet-sizing component will likely require more actions per table (per minute).

Omaha cashgame overall profitability & availability on FTP/PS at similar stakes ATM IMO: PLO > LO8 > PLO8 > NLO8

the variance in limit games will always be higher than in big bet, equivalized for earn rate. And your earn rate in a game will always be most dependent on the worst opponents at the table, adjusted for tilt.

But there's a lot to be said for minimizing the affect of getting luckboxed. It might just be personal preference, but I find that there are many many more chances to make a mistake in limit than in big bet poker. This leaves a lot of room to exploit these (smaller) mistakes. You also get rid of the aggravation of being busted from a tournament or getting stacked on a 3 outer.

I know that you can say that if you play enough hands and are adequately rolled it shouldn't matter because it evens out, but for personal preference I find myself liking limit better today.

Once you get to a level where there are fewer bad players, you have to find the smaller edges. I find them in limit action. As you probably know, I'm big on mixed games now, and I find that more of my earn comes from the limit games where people are either willing to throw a bet away badly without thinking about it or think they are better at all the games than they are and just don't realize the mistakes they make.

The answer may also be different online vs. live.

Completely agree with all of that.

Limit, in general, is about finer decisions, which may not matter much on any one hand or even 50 hands, but that accumulate over time.

i think plo8 is the better game to make money...ive read threads about how live plo8 never runs because the good players beat the bad players too fast...well welcome to online poker, as fast as u beat some donkey their is another to take his place.take my advice guys, if youre a good player dont "LIMIT" what u can do or the moves u can make

imo, this is a matter of depth of bankroll and tiltabilty. if major tilt is a factor, donking off in big bet can be a disaster taking weeks/months to recouperate. in limit, it can take a few days off and a couple focused sessions to get it back.

personally, i'll play live big bet and chop up fools playing limit online. generally it's because fish don't see the mistakes they make in limit and i can adjust easily to my own mistakes in limit while not costing me my stack.

I disagree that limit is easier to multi-table. In limit you're often playing against more opponents and playing more turns and rivers for obvious reasons (pot odds etc.). Thus in limit you're making more decisions which makes it more difficult to multi-table.

I agree completely that in limit our edge is smaller because our tools are limited. I think we can all agree that in order to be successful poker players we are required to win dead money (steal) and outplay our opponents in ways that go beyond simply looking at our cards and betting for value. If nut peddling earned a monstrous winrate at O8 then we'd all be pros. In limit it is very difficult to manipulate our opponents odds to draw. It's also difficult to bluff when they're getting odds to call. We're just so limited.

In limit we can only win so much per hand. Sometimes in LO8 we can win huge multiway pots but I feel these are offset by the loss of equity in multiway pots. I.E. for everyone one of those huge pots we win there's a few that we lose because there are x amount of players in the pot that all have a few outs and when their equities are combined against us it drastically hurts our equity (basically the concept of schooling). In big bet O8 we have the potential to exploit our equity advantage against one opponent to the max and possibly double up our stack.

In equivalent stakes, the rake at limit games will be worse than the rake at big bet games. This becomes less true as you move up in stakes but a thousand times more true when you move to stakes below the 5/10 limit game suggested in the OP. The rake back is better at limit and 5/10 is kind of a turning point but I have a strong suspicion that limit games are still more expensive to play per hand. My math supports this but due to wiping old databases and the supposed problem poker tracker has with reporting O8 rake back correctly I can't be positive about this. Does anyone know how to discern the correct rake back number from poker tracker? If we could get people to submit rake #s for 50k+ hand samples of 5/10 LO8, 200PLO8, and 200NLO8 from the same site we could see if my theory is true.

My primary strategic goal is to win money and there's a lot more to it than just exploiting huge mistakes. For example, we can also exploit our opponents small ev mistakes to the max by getting our stacks in. We can't do that in limit. There are many more ways to exploit mistakes at big bet games that I wont list here.

My biggest reason to doubt LO8 is that I've played thousands of hands of all varieties of O8 poker and LO8 cash games are where I do the worst. I've crushed both big bet and limit tournaments and sit and goes. Done great at big bet cash games. I've put in an extensive amount of time studying/playing LO8 cash games and I see my opponents making tons of mistakes that I can explicate with both theory and math (not a big math guy though).. yet I never seem to be able to capitalize on my opponents mistakes. Schooling is a huge factor that can squash your equity in very loose O8 games and these are the games that people stereotypically crave. In the long run at LO8 I've ended up as a marginal winner. I've noticed that I do better the higher I play and that the lower stakes are harder to overcome. Obviously I suspect that rake is the culprit here but if the game is so bad that it's difficult to overcome the rake at 1/2 then maybe it's not such a great game after all? I'm not saying it's not a beatable game... I personally just think it's not that +EV for a good player. On a per hand basis I think players would do better at big bet games. And why are so many people who play LO8 relying on rake back? LO8 sure is fun though.

Everyone should read the thread "Findings:LO8 is a crapshoot." Very interesting stuff.

Anyway, I'm getting very sleepy, hope that made sense, that's my .02 for now.

I agree with a lot of what you say about the game, but I can't understand why you would talk as if schooling is a problem in O8. O8 is the one poker game where schooling isn't just not a problem, it's actually an enormous benefit, some would even say essential. You WANT schooling.

The basic problem with tightish limit O8 games is that the average net win, especially on a split pot, is pitiful in relation to the blinds. In a game where 7.5 players are dealt into each hand (8-9 handed games), you're putting out 10 BB in blind bets every 100 hands. Meanwhile, winning a half-pot is generally a negligible net profit. So you've either got to scoop a lot or win more than your share of pot-pieces just to keep up with the blinds, to say nothing of recouping the bets you lose in the (significant number) of hands that you play and don't win.

These people who sit in these tight games and play 1 hand per round outside the blinds simply cannot win. It's mathematically impossible.

I agree with a lot of what you say about the game, but I can't understand why you would talk as if schooling is a problem in O8. O8 is the one poker game where schooling isn't just not a problem, it's actually an enormous benefit, some would even say essential. You WANT schooling.

The basic problem with tightish limit O8 games is that the average net win, especially on a split pot, and your return on investment in split pots, is pitiful in relation to the blinds. In a game where 7.5 players on average are dealt into each hand (8-9 handed games), you're putting out 10 BB in blind bets every 100 hands. Meanwhile, winning a half-pot is generally a negligible net profit. So you've either got to scoop a lot, or win more than your share of pot-pieces just to keep up with the blinds, to say nothing of recouping the bets you lose in the (significant number) of hands that you play and don't win.

These people who sit in these tight games and play 1 hand per round outside the blinds simply cannot win. It's mathematically impossible. In the short term it'll just come down to who catches the cards. In the long term the rake will destroy them all. I am convinced that if there's a way to win in certain tight games, the strategy would have to revolve around playing more hands than you're "supposed" to.

In the summary section, divide the total rake by the Plyrs Rkd number.

I pretty much agree completely with AliasUnrise. When I first started playing the game almost 5 years ago, on party poker, all I played was limit. Slowly but surely, I made the transition to PLO8 and am even enjoying the NLO8 action from time to time. Alias is correct, there is just so much more room to capitalize on mistakes in big bet O8, and alot more money to be made PER mistake. In limit you HAVE to scoop big pots to profit. Hands where you'll see 5 people all the way to the river. Alias is 100% in his assessment that having that many people in hurts our equity drastically. Think about this hand, shoving in big bet O8 with a hand like 2368 on a board of A479 when a guy has AA2x. Freerolling HU against a set of aces is one of the many many ways you can win a nice pot in big bet. I know I'm rambling, but I haven't slept in a long time now, Big bet O8 IMO

For LO8 to be profitable against tougher players, you really have to be playing high enough that the rake is negligible, or in a game where the rake is negligible or nonexistent, like when you find a good home game or get a great prop deal.

Grinding 1/2 LO8 online, even with RB, seems like a nonstarter to me in 2009. I mean, I know you can make a few bucks an hour consistently if you're good, but you can do that at Starbucks too and the coffee is free.

you are crushing my dreams man.. now I'm gonna have to alter my dream to becoming a barista. but I actually believe what you say. I've done some .5/1 up to 3/6 grinding in the last 2 months and I honestly believe it is terribly difficult to be a big (2BB/100+) winner here and the rakeback just does not cover it because you play so few hands in comparison to LHE. I'm playing a lot more PLO8 the last few days and either running really well or just murdering the $25/$50 games. grinding low stakes LHE on the other hand can be very profitable. I still kill the low limit 6-max HE games for 2.5BB/100 and the rakeback is pretty decent since you are getting 80-100 hands/hr per table.

-wack

So, I take it that LO8 is a game where once you reach a certain level of competence you simply don't have a significant edge over other competent players? But then I hear people saying that FR LO8 is just a nit-fest. What about <= 6max LO8, where people have to loosen up to beat the blinds? It seems like the game would suddenly become so intricate that very good players would definitely have a good edge over merely competent players. Obviously not through bluffing and the leveling games that surround it in big-bet variants, but rather a leveling war should take place with regards to how far from the nuts players are willing to venture, and how predictably they do so. It should be like people trying to climb over one another to escape a sinking ship, where the ocean is the rapidly circling blinds and "climbing away from the ocean" is gradually adjusting your hand valuations upwards.

In fact, a merely "competent" player would probably just drown in this situation, and some "good" players would lose their asses by going too far in lowering their valuation standards. The really good players would know who's who and be able to adjust their valuations so that they're always getting paid off by weaker hands and never paying off stronger hands against the "merely" good players, and, against the nits, always stealing pots from perfectly decent hands that the nit is seriously under-valuing.

Yea I probably didn't explain myself well on that aspect.

I think schooling is a profitable thing for us in the long run. My point was that I don't think LO8 provides as much of a +EV situation for us on a hand per hand basis.

I agree with what you're saying about the tight LO8 games online. It goes along with what I was saying regarding our necessity of being more active and stealing pots in all the right spots (even though that's more difficult to do). If everyone at the table is simply nut peddling, we're losing to the rake in the end.

The additional point I'm trying to make is that, even if we could play in what a lot of people generally think are the most ideal games i.e. the loose games that have people drawing badly - even in those games I don't think we're killing it because schooling lowers our equity. Basically we win really big pots at the expense of getting rivered in a bunch of pots that we put a moderate amount of money into. I've played in many games online that had schooling going on but the players were generally adept enough to not be drawing "too badly" and they can get out of the pot when they should... the general effect is a Hero verse the table situation equity wise i.e. hero has only 35% equity because villains 1,2,3, and 4 are chopping up the other 65%. It's hard to quantify this exactly and it depends on a bunch of specifics but the general question would be: Do the big pots we win due to schooling make up for all the pots in which our equity is diminished? My answer is that in most online games our profit is small overall in these situations, but I could be wrong. At any rate, it seems obvious that it would take a much longer time line for the variance to work itself out in this situation, in other words, this would be a high variance situation which is contrary to most people's belief that LO8 is a low variance game.

I think if we look at the actual math involved with the limit structure when compared to the close equities in O8 we will be surprised to find that due to the pot odds, people are getting the right price to draw badly against us much more often than we'd originally think. The more players that draw badly against us the more correct it becomes for another player behind to draw badly against us. And I think it's clear that even in a lot of situations where they're incorrect to draw against us their mistakes aren't as costly as we'd wish because they're getting great odds.

Looking forward to hearing more thoughts on this.

Regarding 6 max, please see my post above regarding some thoughts on schooling as I've found this type of play to exist more often in 6 max games right now.

A crucial component of 6 max games is rake. Rake is already bad in LO8 because it's a split pot game.. many times you will end up splitting pots between 2-3 people and the rake gobbles up any profits. In 6 max you're absolutely forced to play a lot more hands to beat the blinds and that means more marginal situations and a lot more split pots.. it's a very expensive game to play rake wise. I agree with what was stated earlier in the thread in that you need to be playing higher stakes to beat the rake. At low stakes I'm not even sure that playing with absolute droolers would be enough to get you a good winrate in the long run with the rake the way it currently is.

Yes.

Also applies to: every other poker game.

Not really. The best NLHE players have an edge over even very good NLHE players. The same is probably true for PLO. I guess a better way to look at it would be to ask, "How high is the level of competence required before no one can have an edge over you?"

I would be interested in your opinion of LO8 within the analytical framework that I've outlined in this thread.