I agree, thank you, its tough becuase i made this topic because even tho the sample size is dog****, I do feel I made poor decisions but cant really post HHs as I folded a **** ton lol, I just need to play more hands LP and then see from there then post back with sticking points or what i think are leaks

Michael Cappelliti wrote a great book on low limit Omaha hi low. Find it, read it. Win money.

Ultimately, you were a smidge too tight, but just ran bad.

In the orleans game, if you wait for a-2, you will make money.

Don't get tricky. Bet your a-2, if raised, call.

you'll be a break even to slightly winning player incorporating the rake.

you just ran bad. Need a few hands where you back in the nut straight or flush or nut straight with the nut low.

However, get aggressive with your blind calling range.

This is probably a nitpick, but I would caution people against making generalizations based on the casino, or the stakes, or the game. Every single table and every single villain can be different. When a player sits down the player MUST immediately start paying attention and at least trying to identify the maniacs, the stations, the solid players, the weak-tights etc. and vary their play when appropriate based on who is in the hand.

One big difference on improving my game was when I stopped auto-folding my big blind to a raise. If a calling a raise from the blind means it's going to be heads up or 2-way, I no longer need Awxx to go; a big pair with two low cards, or two suits, or a rundown is worth calling a single bet, IMO. Calling a raise out of the big blind makes my hand well-disguised and has won me some huge pots.

(FWIW, this is my strategy when playing the 8/16 or 15/30; it'd have to be a pretty tight 4/8 game to be just 2 or 3 to the flop.)

OP, FWIW my experience ended up being almost exactly the same as yours. I probably played almost exactly 30 hours of O8 this week. That's only about 800 hands. And I also finished the week down about $300.

I think my favorite hand was the first hand of my last session where I got to build a 7-way capped pot (and at the Orleans the cap is FOUR raises, not three!) with A23T with a suited ace. I flopped a nut low draw with backdoor NFD, turn was a high card that gave me the NFD, and the river paired the turn card. Naturally I pushed my equity all I could on the flop and turn, and equally naturally I got nothing LOL. You should have seen the mountain of chips that comprised the final pot.

Another one was late that session when I completed the SB after 6 limpers with 99xx (don't remember what the xx were), flopped 9s full of 10s and a villain made 10s full of 3s on the river (that's not actually a particularly bad beat - if he flopped trips he had 9 outs to a better boat).

Anyway, if you estimate that 18% of hands are playable (see this post to see where I got that figure: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...72&postcount=9 ), on average I'm going to get dealt 146 playable hands. BUT: Most of those playable hands are only playable in late position after multiple limpers and when NOT facing a raise. So, conservatively, let's cut that in half and say 73 playable hands (though in reality the number is probably lower than this).

So over 30 hours, I'm already looking at BARELY playing 2 hands an hour.

Let's say, conservatively, that your hand NAILS the flop 1 time in 3 (in reality it's probably less than that), and still has a strong chance of winning at least half the pot on the turn 1 time in 4 (again, that's probably optimistic). You're already looking at one pot every 2 hours and we haven't even accounted for getting phaserblastered by the river.

One more factor to bring in - I had to table-change several times at the Orleans because I kept getting stuck at tables where people knew what starting hands not to play. There's a huge overall difference in getting dealt good hands when you're going to get to play a 6-way pot vs. stations and maniacs and when you're going to get a 3-way pot against people who actually have some clue. With that said, at least from my observation there was always at least one juicy table SOMEWHERE in the poker room and I never had to tablechange more than once to find it.

The point is, a 30-hour card-dead downswing actually isn't at all improbable.

I just wish I'd done all this math BEFORE I went to Vegas so I didn't come home so disappointed.

You are saying you think the correct vpip in a soft o8 game is less than 9%? I contend the “correct” vpip in such a game is around 30%. I define correct as “will win the most money” probably would need to be tighter in an actual tough game.

Poker will become way more fun for you and you will get better much faster if you play situations and learn to navigate them. It’s impossible to learn how to handle marginal spots by avoiding them. It’s also boring and it’s not profitable. The only upside I can think of is you lose your money slowly and you get to feel superior to the fish who turn over “bad” hands.

I think 30% is a lot closer to optimal than 9%. Some of this will depend on how often it gets limped to you in the BB. If you usually aren’t forced to VPIP the BB, I suppose your overall VPIP should show up as a little lower. It’s not clear to me how often the OP was confronted with a raise from the blinds, but from his description I imagine he was losing a lot of value from folding them too much.

I probably VPIP around 23-25%

Examples of Hands I fold and their PPT rankings 10 handed

A6(47) r 25
A5KQ offsuit r 20

Examples of Hands I play

2(3K)Q r 28 - unless it's clear many aces are out
K(KJ)T r 23

PPT rankings are useful in that they assume only "good" hands play but they are "hot/cold" equity so we must access playability and implied/reverse implied odds and so forth

hey guys im trying to go to vegas this summer again and play mostly o8 games at orleans.

dont want to make anew thread so I ll bump this thread. firslty all of you are right that 30 hrs is ****ing dogshit sample size. I just felt that if any one of you were in my shoes, maybe you guys go even or dont lose as much, prolly make money as well for all that matters. so thats wy I didnt want to take on the variance bit. you guys could have done way better than me. so therfore I neeed to improve.


secondly, I only raised pre like once, even with big hands, I assumed that if 4-6 people are seeing the flop(which happened every hand for most of my first 15 hr session), raising would create even bigger variance for me so i opted to play my hands very passively. This thinking is proly a major leak tho so please help me fix it.

its been months but I did only play at times, like 1 hand every 2 hrs. unless I checked in BB. I DID NOT PLAY any of my high only hands even in LP, lookin gback i will try to loosen up in LP when there are multiple people seeing cheap flops w okayish hands.


other than my other question above, should I at least be a small winner by being tightest player at the table in a loose game? even if my raises or bets arent being completely respected even tho they know im tight

see I thought 30% would be way too high, not counting or not sure how much affect that would have when you are checking BB every orbit or other orbit. the first 15hr session was a game you all woudl love to be in. nobody really raised pre, maybe once every 4-5hands and would always get like 2-5 callers on board. 25-55$ flops heading to flop were kinda common

I just don't want to lose money by playing poorly, and sounds like playing super tight can be considered playing poorly. I made this topic hoping, like some of the posts above, woudl give me some more rough details or info as to what maybe i did wrong even if I dont post HHs.


i think next time I go I will write down some hands that I fold pre and some actiosn and post about 20-30hands of them here and see what peopel think. not being able to play online kinda stinx tho

The kill pot is just a massive rake for someone folding 97%

ya a lot of kills were at the games i played esc first day

Steve Badger has written a very helpful article on Omaha myths. He addresses the often-expressed view that one shouldn't raise preflop in Omaha. Read it and see if you're convinced:
http://www.stevebadger.com/poker/omaha/myths/

I do know many players at $4/$8 and $6/$12 who will never raise preflop, not even with AA23 in late position. These are generally losing players.

Omaha is a game with four betting rounds. You need to make good decisions on every street. When you talk about being the tightest player at the table, you seem overly focused on the preflop betting round. You also seem to be looking for a strategy that will guarantee you a small win, which is not good poker.

No one in this forum can guarantee your results because we don't know enough about your game, including non-betting decisions like game selection, emotional control, and time and money management.

I do know a couple of players who are extreme nits preflop. They are small winners, but their strategy is easily exploitable. And I know a couple of players who are so tight on the turn and river that whenever they bet, you know they have the nut high hand. They are nice guys but losing players. They don't get enough value from their monster draws and non-nut made hands. And they don't get maximum value from their nut hands either, because attentive players can confidently fold the second nuts to them.

My advice if you're new to the game: Read Badger's three articles on Omaha; look up Ed Hutchison's point-count system for Omaha (which might give you some guidance on how to play more starting hands); and try to have fun. Good luck!

Raising with big hands should actually lower variance as you escape for bigger halves and scoop bigger pots.

thanks for the last two posts, appreciate it, yeah ive read his artilsd before, good stuff.

yeah im raising my top premium hands form now on, **** me for being a ***** and not doing it last time lol

New to live low stakes FLO8 with similar results to OP.

Ten sessions, about 60 hours in total, with minus ($600) in losses.
$10/hr in losses, which matches the OP's hourly loss.
Not one winning session in the 10 times I've played live FLO8, how pathetic is that? This losing 10 sessions in a row, my total history of live FLO8 irks the heck out of me! A donkey should be able to get lucky once in ten sessions, not me thou.

I'm the tightest player at the table, thou nowhere near as tight as the OP.
Outside of the blinds, I probably play 2 in 7 hands, plus playing about 50% of the hands while in the blinds. Playing ~30% of hands dealt, I was clearly the tightest player at the table, every session.

The solace I can take out of the situation, and I don't take any, is my "win rate" of minus $10/hour is better than ~75% of the people who play live low limit Omaha8. I'm beating the other players at the table (barely), I'm just not good enough to beat the rake. I'm guessing the house is taking $90 to $110 an hour off the table in rake, plus another $20 an hour in tokes is leaving the table. So on average ~$120/hr is leaving the table, you can literally see people's stacks shrinking away every hour, right in front of your eyes.

Granted, I only have ten sessions of experience to fall back on, but on average, only one, possibly two people on average are leaving a table a winner of anything worth mentioning (+$100). It shouldn't irk me so much, but losing ten sessions in a row, my total experience playing live O8 is still hard to comprehend. I have never been up, even $50 in any of these sessions, and I honestly think I might never have been up anything at all in 8, possibly 9 of these sessions. I have an incredible knack of coming out of the gate losing my first few hands in live poker, and never getting up for the whole session .

Forget results.

Losing 10 sessions in a row, my only experience playing live O8, is not easy to forget. It's telling me live poker is a son of a biotch to beat. I realize I have some issues with my O8 game, but not 10 sessions in a row worth of issues.

I didn't say it was easy. It doesn't matter if you lose 10 sessions in a row. Variance is not fair.

Haven't been through more than the first 2 - 3 posts on here so if someone else has pointed this out I apologise.

How much did your ranges vary by position? Pretty important IMO to be ultra tight UTG and go much wider in later positions

Also feel that you have to take aggressive lines in appropriate spots, to reduce the field size thereby protecting your equity.

Flo8 can be quite tough to beat due to rake alone.

You addressed this to the OP, but I'll add my two cents ...

The way I approach 'position' in low stakes live O8 is:

If the table is being played as a limp-a-thon, where there's little chance, (<75%) someone is going to raise behind me, position means close to zero.
I either have a playable pre-flop hand, or I don't.

If the table has one chronic pre-flop raiser behind me, or worse, two or more chronic pre-flop raisers behind or in front of me, then the answer gets more involved, basically I'm folding all but A3WB, A3BB, A3PP or better type hands.
An answer to a question like this can fill a book chapter. How many chronic raisers does the table have, how many are acting before me, after me etc, etc.
Do the chronic raisers, raise and re-raise? How many bets do I have to call to see the flop?

My limited experience playing live low stakes O8 is as follows ... 1/3rd the games are limp-a-thons, with little pre-flop raising, with plenty of people seeing the flop, 1/3rd the games have one chronic pre-flop raiser at the table, and 1/3rd the games have two or more chronic pre-flop raisers at the table. The more chronic raisers at the table, the less people see the flop.


I couldn't begin to answer this question, or even identify what those spots are.

my range was basically nitty af unless I was free flop from BB. i guess when I see 3-4 callers in front in LP I can start limping in with A5Wx type hands right? I just hate playing non nutty hands

i never thought abut it that in depth until i read this thread. I was like damn 2 hours of not playing lotta hands and im down big time without losing pots or entering any. then i thought about it and it does seem people lose chips to the rake kinda more frequently then I notice in NL