[Buzz]

Slik - Mike makes an interesting point, one worth pondering.

If you pull Mike's cards out of a deck (I made his hand a rainbow, since he didn't specify suits) - and then if you pull out the four aces, three deuces, three threes, three fours, and three fives for Mike's four opponent's hands, there are 32 cards left in the stub, enough cards to deal out 10 flops if you don't burn anything.

I shuffled and dealt. I couldn't believe Mike would find many favorable flops for his hand, even with the aces plus twelve low cards pulled from the deck.

And he didn't.

But then it dawned on me - nobody else did either!

There are 17 high cards left in the stub, but only 15 low cards left in the stub and they're bunched (mostly sixes, sevens and eights). We could list all the possible lows, tabulate how many flops could have three low cards, two low cards, one low card and no low cards - but we don't even have to do that. Intuitively the number of possible flops with three low cards is low, and the number of flops with two low cards is also low.

When I tried the experiment - pulling Mike's cards and the sixteen low cards for Mike's opponents out of the deck, then shuffling and dealing the ten flops, there were only three flops out of the ten that had at least two low cards (eight down).

The problem was, holding Mike's cards, I would only like three of the ten flops myself.

But Mike is a Texas hold 'em player! Mike's perspective is that his opponents probably do not have good flop fits!

And he's absolutely right!

It's a tournament. Mike presumably has reasonably competent opponents. They're all generally prudently getting the Hell out of the pot if they don't find a flop fit!

Playing Omaha-8, at least limit Omaha-8, we don't usually look at possible flops from the perspective of how poorly they will fit our opponent's hands. Instead we think about how well they will fit our own hand. We do that because if four opponents see the flop, usually one of the five of us will have a decent connection with the flop. Our reasoning is, "If it isn't Hero, then it must be one of the Villain clan that has the decent flop fit."

At any rate, Mike has a very interesting, and maybe not all that unusual, perspective, one worth pondering.

Mike's starting hand is trash and he's not likely to have a good fit with the flop - but his opponents are not likely to have a fit with the upcoming flop either, and even less so because he has the one deuce. Capping is still a gutsy play by Mike, not one I'd make, but not entirely unreasonable, if you're playing your opponent's cards as well as your own.

Thus Mike's strategy here is not as whacko as it first appears.

I don't think the strategy would work well in most of my own games, but it's food for thought.

Buzz