LO/8 JJTT in Micro-Limit Game

[Buzz]

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Question: Should I factor in any set value with the Jacks or Tens?

[/ QUOTE ]Giant Fan - I'm not sure what you mean. You mainly have a pair of jacks and a pair of tens. You also have a JT straight draw, plus a non-nut flush draw.

AKQ, KQ9, Q98, and 987 on a flop without all cards the same suit make a nut straight. 256-16 = 240 nut straights... and 4 nut straight flushes (out of 17296 possible flops). That's an additional 1% or so for nut straights. Plus you have lots of straight draws. But mainly you want to make a set with this starting hand.

You should expect to catch a ten or jack on the flop and thus make a set about one time in four. The other three times in four you will miss but might have a straight or straight draw.

I'd play this hand from late position for one bet in a loose game.

But you're not in late position. If you play this hand from early position for one bet, you have to be very sure there will not be a raise behind you, since you don't want to play this hand for two bets.

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could the same principle apply here because of the propensity of lower-limit plyers to play high-only hands and thus the increased likelihood of a high straight?

[/ QUOTE ]I don't know what you mean. Your opponents will probably like high cards. But when you hold JJTT, nobody else will probably have been dealt a hand with four high cards. 0.00935 is the probability of any one opponent being dealt four cards of ten or above. That's small enough to multiply by the number of opponents to approximate the chances of being up against someone with four cards of ten and above. You have eight opponents? Then it's about 8% likely one of them was dealt a hand with four cards of ten and above, and 92% unlikely. Of course someone could also be playing a hand with only two or three high cards.

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A very marginal flop, but the pot was large.

[/ QUOTE ]No. It's not a marginal flop. You missed the flop. Period.

You don't have a playable hand after this flop.

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After I made my straight I wanted to knock players out. I knew that no-one would fold to one bet, so I hoped a late position player would bet, allowing me to raise and force others to call two bets cold.

[/ QUOTE ]You missed the flop, but played anyhow and got lucky. Your raise here is the correct play, in my humble opinion.

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Is the pot big enough to justify a call here?

[/ QUOTE ]Yes.

Tough luck on the river. But that's the game. Instead of thinking in terms of needing two cards from your hand, think of it as needing three cards from the board. After the flop, there is one three-card combination. After the turn, there are four three-card combinations. After the river, there are ten three-card combinations. Looking at it that way, you can clearly see that Omaha-8 is a drawing game, a river game.

Buzz

[Fiasco]

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Tough luck on the river. But that's the game. Instead of thinking in terms of needing two cards from your hand, think of it as needing three cards from the board. After the flop, there is one three-card combination. After the turn, there are four three-card combinations. After the river, there are ten three-card combinations. Looking at it that way, you can clearly see that Omaha-8 is a drawing game, a river game.

Buzz


[/ QUOTE ] Holy [censored] buzz, Ive never thought of it that way. You just blew my mind. (Im seriously not being sarcastic, I feel like somebody who just saw the candlestick between the two faces).

[Rush17]

I'm going to disregard the limits for a minute because it's very easy for making a case for almost any hand being worth .10 before the flop. And although this isn't a bad hand, by no means is it a good hand utg. As a beginner, I think you should muck all these speculative holdings and stick to the good O8 hands all in which contain an Ace (A2, A3, A23, AAxx, etc). It teaches discipline, which in this game, is so important because ALL the hands are going to look good and seem playable. It's better to play less and to observe more as you're learning O8. But whatever.

This flop is horrid for your hand. There's so many draws against your (thin) draw. Not only is there a low draw, but it's a wheel draw, which makes matters even worse. And, you have lost one of your K outs because the diamond king will bring the flush.

With that said, why are you checking this turn? No way should you be getting fancy here. Everyone's likely to call anyway and checkraising is not a good move, imo, because even though you currently hold the best hand, you have to dodge a lot of cards for your hand to hold up in this vey big field of players. If you had another strong draw to go with it, perhaps, but I'd just bet it straight out.

[sfgiants]

Thank you bbartlog, chaos, heron, hls2k6, buzz, fiasco, and rush for beating some sense into me. One area of my game that needs major improvement is figuring tainted outs vs clean outs and playing accordingly.

In this hand, I lacked the discipline to look at my hand objectively rather than thinking "OMG huge pot I call!"

PS. When I was talking about low-limit players playing high hands, I meant Holdem converts overvaluuing combinations such as AK, QQ, even JJ.