Why Play No-Limit Omaha/8?

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

I generally do not make specific requests for blogger guest posts. Most of these guys have been writing for far longer than my amateurish scraps, it wouldn’t seem very fitting to use too much direction. Pick a topic and riff away. That changed a little when I received another late night Instant Message from Drizztdj with a standard message, “come play some NL08!”. These messages generally arrive late night/early morning on the weekends after the man has consumed at least a handle of his most favored Captain Morgan and I finally took him up on the offer.

What I found was by far the craziest push monkey game I have ever seen. 100 BB shove preflop was standard, post flop play was non-existent, minor tribute was paid to the gods of hand selection. It is truly and honestly the purest form of four card bingo on the planet and Drizz loves it almost as much as his two offspring (or his spiced rum). It was a shocking display of bankroll mismanagement but players would shove/bust/reload almost non-stop and just keep trying for the double up.

I asked Drizz to please please write up a guest post to explain the who, what, and gods help me WHY anyone sane would actually put any part of the roll in this game. Here’s what he sent me. Enjoy.

No Limit Omaha/8, Gamble it Up!
by Drizztdj

Think about the last time you adventured out to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or your closest Indian reservation casino. You, the poker enthusiast, walked calmly past the smoke-filled rows of slot machines and video poker boxes cloistered as over grown video games. Laughing about how people/gamblers would throw money towards a casino game with such lousy odds on winning while confidently walking towards the back poker room. Out of the corner of your eye you see games like Pai Gow, Crazy 4-Card Poker, WAR!, and Ultimate Texas Hold Em’ but that wad of bennies in your pocket isn’t going to be used to chase the dragon and 7-card straight flush bonus on the Pai Gow poker table. No, you’re the man/woman with a plan of timely check-raises and positional continuation bets. You’ve read the forums; you stop by here to check out our red letter pros dropping their knowledge to improve your chances against Vern, the rock in the seven seat who gets so excited three-betting kings pre-flop that he nearly knocks over his wife’s packed thermos of Sanka when he has a hand.

Yes, as you step up to the cashier’s cage for a rack of red for the $1/$2 NLHE game your game plan complete with Bose noise canceling headphones and chip tricks to bide the time while getting a feel for the table, is all set. Then the cashier throws a lure out there, “There’s a new game being spread today would you like to try it?” It’s called Omaha Eight-or-Better. You think to yourself, “that isn’t very new, isn’t that a game for the oxygen tank sucking crew back in the corner?”. Undeterred, you ask for the first NLHE seat available, but the cage throws another line, “this isn’t limit sir, they are playing No Limit Omaha Eight-or-Better”. After playing H.O.R.S.E. several times online and obviously being familiar with no limit you decide that there’s an advantage to be taken care of as several regulars of the cardroom already sat down with double and triple stacks that would make catching up at the NLHE game much tougher.

“Sure, give me a seat at the NLO8 game” you say confidently.

Hook. Line. Sinker.

The first hand you receive As2hAh6d, internally smiling you toss out a three red chip raise. Folded around to the oversized guy in the jacket he received from the casino for putting in over 100 hours at the tables, he announces that he’s all-in. “This is too easy” you think to yourself as his rack is about to make a short trip across the table into your stack. “Call” and see his weak little 4d9dJcKc. “Amateurs, getting it all-in” you think, with a junk hand like that still visually stacking those new redbirds into your pile. But as the dealer rolls out 8d-Jd-Qd giving him the flush and finishes you off with a couple of dancing deuces on the turn and river. “YOU KNOW HOW BIG OF A FAVORITE I WAS PREFLOP!!!!” you exclaim as the chip runner fetches another rack. “Actually, I do, do you?” says the regular who is calmly stacking your $500 next to his that should have been sitting next to the 16 GB iPod touch you just got from the Full Tilt rewards store.

To say NLO8 is pure gambling like spinning a roulette wheel and hoping that black bounces your way for the 12th straight time is a bit of the misnomer. There are premium hands (much like the one that got cracked) where suitedness and connecting cards will help you hit flops more often than not. Sometimes if you’re lucky post flop play will be introduced where skill sets in to determine if your queen-high flush is good or if calling the big river bet with just a nut-low and a small pair will cost a quarter of your stack or rake in a big win. Call this post a rude introduction to the everyday game of NLO8 found here at Full Tilt. The hand above is a bit extreme but after playing this game for several years online it is very plausible to see such a thing come down the pipes and leave you shaking your head afterwards. The swings are big since the percentages to win are flatter, especially preflop. Take for example the sample hand above, the aces were “only” a 67% favorite, meaning one in three times that junk hand would win. Compare that to hold em’ if the aces were up against 4d-9d, you’d be an 83% favorite, that’s 16 times out of 100 hands more you’d walk away with the double stack and have your next poker trip paid for.

Also factor in that post-flop play happens much more often in hold em’, if the mono-tone flop came out and you got check-raised big by that junk-hand holding the flush, the urge to fold and save money would be much greater (but only pros fold aces right?). Again, there is a skill set to this game which I will not cover here because a) I’m not fully qualified to give such advice based on my horrid cash game record (C’MON HIT ONE TIME THIS YEAR!!) and b) this post is just to scratch of the NLO8 surface to hopefully lure a few more NLHE rounders to our tables to overplay aces and dust off a few buy-ins when they get “cracked”.

Next time you pull up the Full Tilt menu and start scrolling through the games in search of some action, take a walk over to the NLO8 side and throw a few coins in poker’s slot machine, maybe it’s your time to get lucky.

Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts