ITH Poker Forum

[kz282]

Hello Guys!

I have played about 30-50k hands of PLO8/NLO8 on 5c/10c and 10c/25c. I recently decided to try Limit Omaha Hi/Lo as well. I tried the 50c/1$ level and in some sessions I was totally destructed with about -25 BB/100.

I was thinking about this, and found out the following: in LO8 compared to PLO8
- The blind pressure is higher
- The implied odds is lower
- The fold equity is much less
- The pot odds is often good enough to chase bad draws
- There are more people on the flop, so the 2nd nuts is often not enough to win

These caused me to get very tight preflop. In the last session I made a 9/2 preflop, which seems to be waaaaaay too tight, as blinds ate my stack.

Is there a better way to learn this game besides going to lower limits, and grinding up? Are there some recent books regarding LO8? I read the appropriate chapters in Jeff Hwang: PLO Poker, but I think I must still work on it to fully understand the game mechanics.

[germanfalcon]

i'm also experimenting with O8 at the moment, mostly limit only.
there is a huge huge differenece between FR and 6max. While FR limit is a nut peddling game, 6max should be played very aggressive to get HU with marginal hands. From literature I'm aware of Doyles SS2 section, cloutier/mcvoy championship omaha (which i dont like very much). dan deppens omaha8 revealed is about plo8.
a little advice about lo8 u find in other forums, but all are a little bit vaque. if interested we could team up a little bt to work out a proper lo8 6max strategy, think fullring is enough stuff outside.

[kz282]

Thanks for answering, Falcon! I will read the appropriate chapter from the Super system 2 as soon as possible - maybe the next week which I will spend in Austria skiing without Internet will be a good opportunity to read.

I have read the Dan Deppen book as well. That is a nice book about PLO8, although there are some small editing errors there. The book could be a little bit thicker as well, but it is not bad for someone who wants to read more after reading the PLO8 chapter from PLO Poker from Jeff Hwang.

I have searched through Amazon.com for Omaha8 books and found these:
Winning Omaha/8 Poker by Mark Tenner and Lou Krieger - it is advised for the inexperienced players
High-Low-Split Poker for Advanced Players by Ray Zee - this could be read after some 10k hands

I don't know which category do I fit in, because I try to learn LO8 after playing PLO8 and people usually go the other way... I'm thinking of ordering them in february.

I will have to read a lot, and then I will try to play FR at first. After I start to feel confident I will be able to try 6 max. Maybe a developing FR table around 5-6-7 players would have the feel of the 6 max tables.

I was searching for some low stakes O8 6max traffic, and only found a few tables at Full Tilt. Stars has 6max O8 games only from 1/2$.

[Willem]

Limit poker and big-bet poker are just completely different games. I never played NL/PL Omaha8, but I suspect they differ as much as NLHE and LHE, which are two completely different games.

- The blind pressure is higher

Common for every Limit poker variant. Limit is often battle for dead money, NL is about making money postflop.

- The implied odds is lower

Again very common for Limit.

- The fold equity is much less

True, so you much make sure you valuebet very well, as people are forced to call down a lot.

- The pot odds is often good enough to chase bad draws

True, but calling down bad draws is still a mistake. Problem is when you hit you bad draw, you can still (and often will) lose to a better hand, especially when the pot was multiway.

- There are more people on the flop, so the 2nd nuts is often not enough to win

Yes, better hands are usually required to win. But you should really have a plan to scoop the pot when you enter one, which means you should have the nuts in one direction, and something in the other direction.