I encountered this spot today in a PLO8 MTT which may or may not be simple. It's somewhat close to the final table, but top heavy payouts so let's just ignore ICM.

UTG limper = I have 13 hands on him, 42/8 (VPIP/PFR), 29% openlimp (twice from EP). I'm 20tabling on a Sunday playing NL, PLO and PLO8 at the same time so no reads beyond these numbers.

SB = total drooler, he can have like 63xx here, we are absolutely crushing him. (He had 0,7% equity in this hand on the flop, for example)

[converted_hand][hand_history] (500/1,000 blinds) Pot Limit Omaha H/L Tournament, 5 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: 10,022.50 (10 bb)
Hero (BB): 39,037.50 (39 bb)
MP: 47,548.10 (47.5 bb)
CO: 17,365 (17.4 bb)
BTN: 50,620 (50.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K J K Q
MP calls 1,000, 2 folds, SB completes, Hero checks

Flop: (3,000) 6 3 K (3 players)
SB bets 3,000, Hero?

SB has 6k more behind after betting so he's committed, me and UTG are 38k effective on the flop.


Basically my question is this. Do we want to repot to iso out UTG's random low draws etc that have a bunch of equity vs us, so that we can get it in as almost certainly a big favourite against the fish? Or do we want to call and induce UTG to do something stupid? If we call and UTG repots it we just push it right, even though we are kinda screwed against A high fd + lowdraw?

On one hand it feels a bit stupid to me to push as by doing that we basically make it hard for UTG to make a mistake (he either has that A2ccxx type hand or not), but at the same time protecting our equity against the fish seems kinda key.

I realize it's a spot where it's going to be pretty hard to make a big mistake, but I'm just interested in what's the optimal approach here.

Pot or minraise and shove over all in, we really don't benefit from keeping the pot small here so we might as well try to fold more marginal low draws that can freeroll on good turn cards

I think not raising here is a mistake. Many turns are awkward for our hand if UTG overcalls. We also deny equity from a lot of hands by simply raising the flop.

Obv agree with moni and amok. Only time i would call is if i had the a2cc. Any consideration to raising preflop to try to iso sb? I suppose 20tabling makes that harder.

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you need to have an idea of what you're going to do on various turn cards, have a mental tree of possible outcomes and actions in event of those outcomes, before you act on the flop. in general the deeper you are the more likely you should just be folding low-enabling turns, or more to the point, the higher your SPR.

two ways of going about it. for the record, i'm not advocating either one, just trying to light a fire on some thoughts.

you make it 12bb, MP calls 12bb, SB calls all in for about 10bb, that's 32, plus the 3 in the middle, 35bb. you're going to have around 0.7 SPR so it's never gonna be that bad to just get it in on any turn. that sort of SPR and you're in "shrug, so what if he's freerolling me" territory. question is, do you want to open yourself up to that and is it better than the alternative? it could well be.

let's say you call, and MP calls, 12bb pot, now you've got ~3 SPR. you're going to end up losing that 3k more often than not, assuming that you're just check folding low cards, i'm guessing that there's more bad turns than goood turns. i'm counting 21 good cards - board pairs and high cards. 46.666% of turn cards according to my calculator. maybe an ace is good for you. but so what, it's 3k, right?

so that seems fine, this route gives you more control. better for you in a tournament. potentially you can make enough profit from good turns to overcome losing the 3k more often than not.

but then you have real problems on the river if you get a good high non-board pair turn but low straight enabling river, or if it's a backdoor flush.

in that event, are you going to check/call a PSB with the HOPE that you get it back? wouldn't this be much simpler if you had position? can't really do anything about that in a free flop in the big blind spot though.

food for thought.

Good post Lucius - yeah I still think this spot is sort of interesting.

In-game I potted, and got re-repotted by UTG and got it in vs his A2cc45 and ended up having just 38% equity as SB had K332. Obviously that's the nut nut worst scenario, but my brain sort of feels like this is the type of spot where people coming from a NLHE background generally make mistakes in this game by not keeping the opponent's range wider. Like, if I repot, UTG will basically only give me action with A2cc, A45cc etc, in which case I'll be a dog, but if I just call he has room to make big mistakes.

But on the other hand I do feel like since SB has 10BB he is likely to get in almost dead against us, it's different from if he just had 4BB to start the hand since that's a lot more BBs of equity for us to protect. So maybe the correct answer here is to repot because of SB's stack depth, and just flat if SB only had a few BBs?

I just don't think he can make big mistakes if you call. Getting 3:1 makes calling with any 2 low cards fine whereas if you repot he needs about 15% more equity.

I do think you're right that SB's stack depth should factor into our decision.

what was the buy in ?
low buy in > pot repot shove
medium buy in > pot repot shove
high buy in > pot repot shove

why not want to play headup with the guy who has maybe nothing instead of sucking in someone who will definitely have a hand that can be bad for you even if you have positive equity with it.

so my play would be to do what i thought would get me headup up with the short stack who is going in no matter what. and forget about a three way pot.

Problem with trying to induce 'mistake' overcalls is you could be inducing him to tag along with a bad draw that he otherwise would have folded to your pot. That board is far too wet to let someone see a cheap turn vs your hand. It's just not worth taking such risks in O8 MTT poker.

You basically got coolered. If you just call and UTG pots are you really finding a fold anyway?

Thing is that even a total crap low with no high has great equity vs us since we have no low potential,so if turn is any low card we are playing for half,meanwhile if the turned low card is a str8 or even a flush card then we are potentially DRAWING to half.

On the other hand,while in other poker variants there might be some incentive to flat in order to induce players behind to either call almost drawing dead or be aggroturds and shove light,in O8 thats not the case imo.The studipest thing the player behind us could do is what- overvalue and jam an A2xx hand or a 246x??It wouldnt be such a big mistake considering all the dead money and the fact we aint got a low draw,and since this is an MTT thus preserving is worth more than gaining more chips,id say its a clear iso shove.