Aces in early position 10/20 Omaha/8

[LA_Price]

I think I screwed this one up initially. But what would everyone do here on the flop? Fold, raise, or call. I think each can be argued here and i am not sure what i should have done here. This is limit Omaha/8 even though converter doesn't say it.

Poker Stars
Limit Omaha Ring game
Limit: $10/$20
8 players
Converter

Pre-flop: (8 players) Hero is UTG+1 with 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]
UTG folds, <font color="#cc0000">Hero raises</font>, MP1 folds, MP2 calls, CO calls, Button calls, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop: 5[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] T[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] (12SB, 6 players)
SB checks, <font color="#cc0000">BB bets</font>

On hero and your action with 4 players to act between you and the BB?

[Buzz]

L.A. - I think your starting hand is playable, but how exacly to play the hand is entirely dependent on your opponents and how they play.

In general, I think raising before the flop with the hand is better in a tight game than in a loose game.

Since five or your seven opponents chose to see the flop despite your raise, I'd rate your table as loose.

My tables are loose too. Usually not 5/7 after a raise loose, but loose. But maybe you raise enough before the flop that your pre-flop raises don't have much meaning to your decent opponents (and your poor opponents are oblivious to them). At any rate, when not posting the big blind, I see the flop with roughly three out of ten hands - and probably close to 90% (at least over 80%) of those hands have at least one ace.

Since you have two of the aces, but five opponents are seeing the flop, obviously at least three of your opponents do not have aces. I'd guess at least two of your opponents, and probably three or four, are playing starting hands I'd probably muck. Therefore, your game is a loose game by my standards, looser than my games usually are.

With that many opponents seeing the flop, probably a straight, a flush, or a full house will be needed to win high.

But your starting hand doesn't really have good chances for a straight and since your starting hand is a rainbow, you can kiss off flushes as well.

A full house is also remote for you because with that many opponents seeing the flop, (1) you probably need to see an ace on the flop for your pair of aces to be worth much, and (2) both of the missing aces are probably unavailable for the board. Therefore you can mostly kiss off full houses too.

Therefore, your hopes for high are dismal.

With that many opponents seeing the flop, a nut low or at least second nut low is probably needed. You need both a deuce and a trey for a nut low, but either one will do for a second nut low. Second nut low is not something you want to be drawing for, if that's all or mostly all the hand has going for it.

Oh well.... it only cost you one small bet, and if you get a miracle flop....

But the flop is not a miracle. Instead, your hopes for high are dismal and you have only the 4th nut low draw (also dismal). To top it off, you have horrid position and there very well might be a raise behind you if you call. If you make it three bets, will that limit the field? (I don't know, but I seriously doubt it, considering the number of double bet callers on the flop).

I think you have to fold to the flop bet.

However, the pre-flop raise was not a terrible mistake because now you have learned that you can't raise before the flop to limit the number of this particular group of opponents who will see the flop. Doesn't mean it's not a bad play against some other group of opponents. And it might work next time against this group.

But I wouldn't try it again.

Generally, against my typical opponents, I'll usually call from early position with a starting hand like this. If I raised from early position some of my opponents would guess I had a hand with a pair of aces, and then with a more favorable flop, they'd play me for a flopped set of aces. I'd get that one extra small bet out of them on the first betting round, but that would be the end of it.

(I don't think you can equate playing more starting hands than you think is proper to being a total idiot).

Buzz

[Habib Marwan]

fold flop, probably fold preflop

[Dire]

I muck the flop. I would also fold preflop since your table seems donktastic and AA4 rainbow sucks multiway.

[LA_Price]

I did fold the flop. I just wasn't sure if that was the right play. Of course I would have scooped the whole pot if I had stayed in with just my aces but that's probably a results based analysis. About how many people in do you guys think it would make this flop a raise or a call? I was thinking raise if there is only 1 person behind me a call if there are two and see what develops on the turn. I usually do limp preflop but I was playing at a tight table before this one and i was still in tight table mode.

[gergery]

i would never call there, either raise or fold with fold being preferred with that many people.

I also woldn't have raised UTG

-g

[Ray Zee]

these kind of hands play terribly out of position. maybe they win okay in tiny games but not against players that think. so fold preflop or limp if its not an aggessive preflop game. then ditch it on the flop as you missed and your hand is much worse now than before.

[Buzz]

Habib - The hand definitely needs to be folded after this flop. There’s no question about that.

But AA4Tn, despite its obvious flaws, is a very playable hand in a typical casino game. It’s certainly and absolutely playable at a table with 5/7 opponents paying two bets to see the flop when Hero holds two of the four aces in the deck! (However, I wouldn’t raise before the flop with it at such a table).

AA4Tn, although not a great starting hand, is a good starting hand. Over the long haul, it doesn’t figure to be a hugely profitable hand, but it does figure to be profitable over the long haul. And if you don’t play hands as good as this one, the hands which do figure to be hugely profitable over the long haul, while still profitable, become less profitable, because your decent opponents take into account how tightly you are playing.

On the basis of simulations, I’d rank AA4Tn in roughly the 90th percentile as a starting hand in a full (nine or ten player) game. That’s about where Bill Boston has it ranked too.

In other words, in ten full rounds of a ten player table, AA4Tn is probably better than about 90 of the 100 hands you’ll be dealt. And in eleven full rounds of a nine player table, it’s probably better than about 90 of the 99 hands you’ll be dealt. (Something like that is what “roughly the 90th percentile” means to me).

It’s pretty tough to play less than ten per cent of the hands dealt to you, at least for very long, in a casino. I’m not saying nobody can profitably play that tightly, just that it would be a grim way for me to spend my time.

In between hands I play, I keep interested in the game by focusing my attention on trying to figure out what my opponents are doing, but doing that for nine hands out of ten would simply be too much for me to bear. I think Steve Badger coined the phrase “boring as watching paint dry.” That’s what folding nine out of ten hands would be for me.

However, playing simultaneously in three on-line games, if you play only the top 10% of the hands dealt to you, you’ll be playing about the same number of hands per hour as I voluntarily play in a casino, assuming about thirty deals per hour with a shuffling machine, a competent dealer, and no player who unnecessarily holds up the game.

Thus when you suggest folding this hand before the flop in a limit game, you’re marked as primarily an on-line and probably a multiple-games player rather than primarily as a casino ring game player. (You could also be primarily a tournament player or a high stakes player).

I live in Los Angeles and there are a number of casinos within driving distance. Hollywood Park is the closest, slightly less than a half hour away with light traffic, and every time I have gone there, at least one Omaha-8 table has been operating.

I get enough action (for me) by playing roughly 30% of the hands dealt me, aside from the big blind. I stay interested in the game when I’m not in a hand by focusing on figuring out how and why individual opponents are playing.

Obviously it depends on your particular opponents, but I don’t think anybody can consistently profitably play fewer hands than ten per cent in a typical casino limit-Omaha-8 ring game in the 3/6 to 10/20 range. Ten per cent or less and you simply usually don’t get any action when you do play a hand. Let me take that back. I think I might be able to eke out a small profit by only playing 10% of the hands dealt (outside the big blind), and it would be ultra-safe. But it’s certainly not an optimal way to play at a typical table - and it would absolutely be an extremely boring way for me to spend my time.

My motivation in playing Omaha-8 is recreation, rather than making money. I can think of many better ways to make money than only playing the top 10% of the hands dealt to me in a low limit or mid-limit casino Omaha-8 ring game. Even playing four simultaneous on-line games like that would be tedium. If you simply couldn’t get a decent job doing something else, maybe that would be the way to go. But it seems such a waste of good potential!

That's just my opinion.

Buzz

[comic2b]

Buzz the toughest recrecation player of all time. When you play O/8 online how many tables do you play at once and what is your flop seeing percentage.

[Buzz]

Comic2b - I've only played on line twice, once in a hold 'em tournament in which I did dismally (meaning I didn't make the final table), and once multi-tabling three tables playing Omaha-8 at a friends house. (That was somehow a dizzying experience for me and I left feeling somewhat disoriented). I generally play several times a week in live limiit-Omaha-8 games in local casinos.

If I did play limit Omaha-8 on-line, I think to avoid anihilation, I'd have to play much tighter than I have to play in live casino games. And then in order to avoid total boredom, I think I'd have to play three or four tables at once, folding anything not in the top 10% of starting hands. But that honestly sounds more like a grind than fun for me, more like work than recreation - and the pay would be a pittance. I think to make enough money to earn a decent living playing Omaha-8, you'd have to either play pot-limit or find some juicy private high-limit games.

As recreation, limit-Omaha-8 is fun, but I don't think you can make much of a living playing it. Games above $6/$12 are rare and evidently cannot be sustained on a regular daily basis at any casino in the Los Angeles area. Even the $6/$12 games are tough to keep going. Hollywood Park, which is the closest casino to my house, regularly sits $3/$6-kill and $4/$8-kill games. But that's it. Every Omaha-8 game they get going at higher limits seems to soon fizzle. (And that's really fine for me, since I'm purely a recreational player).

Buzz