defending the blinds in omaha8

[TStoneMBD]

lately ive been feeling really unguided when approaching blind defense in omaha8. what is a common fbbs? at immediate glance it seems that you should defend your blinds more liberally in omaha than in limit holdem because hands arent nearly as dominated preflop in omaha as they are in limit holdem, however, reverse implied odds seem to be substantially more severe which would indicate that you should have tighter blind defense stats than a limit player.

any insight on omaha blind defense is greatly appreciated.

thanks

[neverforgetlol]

i would at least defend with any WWHH and go from there. (wheel, high card)

[ThaMaster]

Defending the blind in omaha 8/better is often correct i would seem cause no hand is usually dominated or a favorite over but i wouldnt defend with just plain garbage gotta have a decent hand. It depends who else is in the pot if their tight or aggressive and if they raised or limped and so on

[DCJ311]

prime cards A-5 are very valuable with the 6 being slightly less so. usually go with any 3 A-6, and any 2 A-5 + reasonable high cards and give stronger preference the higher and more connected they are.

Suited/doublesuited obviously are very valuable. Pairs become less valuable in general. Hands like JJ73 arent so great HU to defend with, but hands like 23QJs are.

Interestingly enough, I seem to book a losing session every time i play shorthanded o8 so be careful with this advice.

[Fiasco]

I know that this is a completely useless answer, but isnt this mostly dependant on the opponent and their blind steal frequency?

Is their a solid answer to this question in LHE? something along the lines of "play anything you would normally play, plus an extra 5-10% of all hands"?

Is there some sort of Sklansky/Negreanu theological dispute im missing out on?

[Scott Y.]

Reverse implied odds aren't such a big deal heads up, and assuming you're OOP there are a bunch of hands you should ditch preflop, but honestly if you're comfortable (you probably aren't yet) and have strong reads you can play just about anything with 2-way potential. High hands are good too if you have an image that gets random bluffy action when you flop well. All of this is v. v. good for your metagame, esp. at a full table. How you play is much more opponent dependent than flop dependent (like say LHE).

But, if you defend loose and play nitty postflop you'll lose a lot. You also lose if you don't understand approximately where you stand postflop in a HU pot, which is a little harder to do. Until you can do that, you should probably be folding pre a lot imo.

(I'm talking about steal situations btw).

[LA_Price]

This is currently the worst facet of any of the games I play. I ususally end up defending with something sort of weak thinking my opponent isn't that big a favorite over me then I end up spewing lots of bets . I'm almost to the the point where i say to myself that i should just play would I normally do not because I shouldn't defend more but because I play badly when i do defend so it ends up costing me more bets than it would have if I hadn't defended. I'll try and look through my database and see if i can post an example of a tough hand.

[Dire]

[ QUOTE ]
Reverse implied odds aren't such a big deal heads up..

[/ QUOTE ]

Can you elaborate on this? IMO, reverse implied oddds are most significant heads up in O8. In multiway pots the nuts, or near it, usually wins so there's almost no decisions to be made with medium strength hands. Heads up, those hands suddenly may be best but you'll often have no clue where you stand especially against the typical passive/bad opponents, leading to lots of potential spewage due to reverse implied odds.

[Scott Y.]

idk, I think people generally worry too much about what their hand is and how it looks on the flop when making decisions. If there are 80%+ flops and 2 ppl in the pot, the importance of figuring out what your opponent has (and even what he thinks you have) skyrockets. Sure you might have some weak hand that could be ahead or behind, but a lot of times your opponent does too. If you always called or always folded or always got to sd cheaply (basically playing level 1) you won't beat anyone worth a damn.

There's a ton of value in playing aggressively + finding your opponent's threshold for, say, calling a 3-bet in and out of position vs. capping. You end up forcing them to make the tough decisions as often as possible...which is cool, b/c most players make tons of mistakes in these spots (it's hard not to) and don't punish your aggression nearly enough. This means sometimes you spew when caution is more reasonable, especially early on, but it pays off if your opponents give away a lot of info and toss you a lot of calls w/ those reverse implied hands. This is basically tilt. At least that's how I think about it.