I'm familiar with the differences between cash and tournament play in holdem. Are there any differences exclusive to o8?

In all games, tournaments have a death sentence when you are eliminated, so you should try to avoid highly volatile micro-profit situations (like putting everybody all-in in PLO8 four handed when you have a 26% chance to win). It's normally better to be alive four times in tournaments with stacks of different sizes than to be eliminated three times and have a big stack once, especially early on.

Even if the EV worked out the same, in a tournament you prefer high win percentage hands more than low win percentage hands that win big pots. In ring games it doesn't matter, but in tournaments you can't go into your pocket to buy more chips.

Sorry I just saw your reply, not sure how I missed it earlier. Appreciate the advice, and totally agree with you, but I'm looking for deeper strategy. The site I play on, which is the only option available in my area, doesn't normally offer buy-ins larger than $55 for plo8 mtts and I've found that the level of play doesn't change much from $2-$55. In fact it's often worse the higher you go so I guess what I really want to master is strategy for playing against tables full of the craziest maniacs you can possibly imagine. I know the obvious strategies for dealing with this, and they do work quite well, but the way I look at it is I'm consistently beating these games so what changes can I make to absolutely crush them instead?

There's so many ways to exploit these guys but I have to believe there's even more opportunities I'm not always seeing. There just has to be bc nobody can turn a long term profit playing 90%-100% of their hands. If I could isolate these guys I'd have no problem stacking them off first time I hit a flop but with so many hands being played 3, 4, or even 5-way you have to make hands to win. There's no playing the man in these situations. Not when people will cold call 60bb+ in a 4 way all in with no high and only a draw to the 5th best low. Really beats pf hand selection into your subconscious. Makes scooping potential even more important than it already is. I've gotten quite good at folding the nut low and even though it's sometimes a mistake it's saved me more chips than it's lost me by a wide margin.

I'm having a terrible time finding any intermediate-advanced level info for plo8 MTT's specifically. So far the best learning tool I've found is a video of Mike Matasow discussing his decisions live during an online wsop (iirc) tourney, but that's about it and I've watched that video so many times now there's not much left to learn. Gotta give the Mouth some props too bc his hand reading in plo8, at least for that tourney, was off the charts amazing. Idk if he's really considered the best plo8 player in the world like he says he is, but I can believe it after watching that video. He consistently showed Stu Ungar level reading ability throughout that video. Really showed me just how far away I am from that level even though I'm a winning player. Very humbling. Although he does have one big advantage being able to confidently eliminate hands from his opponents range. A luxury not afforded in most online games lol.

There's a wealth of info for cash games, and much of it applies to MTT's of course, but not all of it. If you know of any higher level resources for plo8 mtts, especially for super splashy games, I'd greatly appreciate the help.

Hope you have a nice Christmas. Thanks again for taking the time to reply. Take care.

Link to the video? Just for laughs

https://youtu.be/PCfMvWYcBlw

I was out of the poker world for like 10 years before I started playing again 6 months ago so I'm not up to date on all the gossip and such of the pros like I used to be. Is Matasow really considered to be the best, or in the discussion of the best, plo8 players in the world? Hard to tell with that guy. Either way he's def better than me...obviously and his thought processes opened my eyes quite a bit. I'm very capable of analyzing ranges on the fly in hold em but in online plo8 with 15 seconds to act I'll admit I've got a ways to go.

Never seen him play, but I'd be surprised if he was even half-decent. Will take a look at the video now.

In search of the best players I'd start from PokerStars lobby. There are players sitting at 50/100 every day.

10:00 limp CO 50bb AhQx6h6x, definitely not a great play. Min-raise turn not the worst play out there, but it's followed up with results-oriented analysis on the river.

11:20 min-raise HJ 52bb QcTc9x8c, again not a great play. Yes you can open some high trash, but why open a triple suited hand? Flop well and pot, something that I'd view as a mistake with this exact hand.

This is roughly what I expected, after what 3 VPIPs already many mistakes... The player in question is definitely not in the top 1000 of the world.

Lol I suspected as much. His play didn't blow me away but some of his reads did.

Of course in my amateur opinion it doesn't matter how good you do anything in o8 if your hand selection sucks. It's not NLHE where you can get overly creative with a lot of bad hands and still be a long term winner. Sure there's a place for that in o8 but you gotta be so much more careful when picking your spots. Hell at most of the tables I find myself at you are almost forced to abandon bluffing altogether except for a few rare carefully chosen spots against specific players. Of course the losses from folding such a high % of hands compared to NLHE is more than offset by extremely high likelihood of getting paid off by multiple players when you do scoop. I might only win a handful of pots in the first couple hours but every pot I win is huge.

I agree. In the games you describe the correct strategy is extremely dull. Push your equity advantage when you have it and fold the rest. That being said, on the rare occasion there is a HU pot, you might be able to bluff.