What I’m about to write about, I hope, applies to any game, for any stakes. If you play Hold’em or Stud instead of Omaha 8/b, or play SNGs or MTTs instead of cash games, please read on anyway. If it turns out that you wasted your time, feel free to start a thread trashing me. <READMORE>

Over the last week, I’ve had the most successful string of cash game sessions I’ve ever had, multi-tabling limit Omaha 8/b tables and averaging almost 6 big bets per hour profit over 40 hours of table play. More importantly, as objectively as I could look at it, I didn’t see where my luck ran hotter than I would expect it. I sucked out some hands, got sucked out on others, didn’t see any more great starting hands than normal, etc. I’m confident that I was playing simply, strongly and better than my competition. So I decided to take the $300 or so that I’ve profited in the last three of those nights and move from my normal 2/4 or 3/6 to 5/10. Those stakes still don’t violate my “300 BB rule” for a bankroll, and I looked at it as a freeroll from my recent success.

Anyway…I took a beating. My 30 big bets were gone in three hours. But it wasn’t a total loss. Hopefully, there’s three lessons I can keep in mind for my own game, and someone else out there can learn from my night too.

Lesson #1: Higher doesn’t mean better

At my typical 10-man 2/4 table, I’ll see at least two players who are putting $200 in play with no apparent knowledge of the strategy behind Omaha 8/b. Like anyone who doesn’t know how to play any form of poker, they play way too many hands, chase down cards they shouldn’t and, in general, do their damndest to give away their money. So what did I see at a 5/10 table? At least two players who were putting $500 in play with no apparent knowledge of the strategy behind Omaha 8/b. For some reason, I didn’t expect this to be the case, but it sure was. I didn’t let that possibility even cross my mind. The problem, as I saw it tonight, is that I let these players sucking out on me affect me 2.5x as much as it normally does, because I was playing 2.5x higher. It shouldn’t have. But it did. This leads to….

Lesson #2: Don’t forget what got you there

My general approach to Omaha 8/b play pre-flop and on the flop is to play my high-only hands very aggressively and low hands very passively. On the high side, I’m looking to get rid of as many players as I can who would be chasing down a runner-runner low, or make it as painful as possible for players to draw to mediocre flushes and sucker straights. On the low side, I’m looking to lessen the pain of getting quartered, if someone has the same low that I do, and if I end up with a three-quarter or a scoop, I’ve done it with the biggest pot I could build without risking losing money.

Anyway, after I got down the first 1/3rd of my stack, I started to deviate from my strategy. Why? I think I didn’t recognize Lesson #1 soon enough or strong enough, for starters. I was working from a general assumption that I would have to try different things, to handle more skilled players. And there were some players that are better and more experienced than I’m used to. But that doesn’t mean that I needed to do something completely the opposite of what has been successful for me, especially once I saw that there was a regular stream of bad players to take advantage of.

The other reason that I changed what I knew would work is that, well, it wasn’t working to that point. I was getting about as unlucky as I could. I’d raise with AAKJ and the flop would be three suited low cards. I got quartered three times in an hour on the high side of pots, which is something I’ve never seen before more than once in a session (hell, you can go a week of regular Omaha 8/b play without seeing it). Every flop came high when I called a 3-bet pre-flop with A23x. I ended up on tilt, which is a dangerous thing in a game that often requires pot management and patience. Omaha 8/b is, in my opinion, the most relaxed poker game, especially in the limit form. Raising, re-raising, bluffing and bullying will usually just get you stuck and buried in a hurry. Of course, what did I end up doing? Raising with low hands. Firing out bets and raises with top two pair when the flop was three suited cards. Calling down my made flush or straight after the board paired and I knew someone else in the hand had a full house. I was throwing away money, which led to the last hand, which sums it all up.

Lesson #3: Don’t be a slowrolling jerk

OK, that really isn’t a lesson to apply to my game. But I beseech you, please stop, dammit, whomever you are. My last hand went as follows:

I had AKJ3, with the KJ of clubs, in the big blind. It folded around to the small blind, who called, I raised, he called. Flop came TTA, with two clubs. I’ve got the gutshot straight flush draw, plus top kicker on the ace. SB bets, I raise, he calls. There’s a good general rule-of-thumb in Omaha where you should never draw to a straight or flush when the board is paired…you’ll get beat by way too many boats. But I’m just throwing away money at this point, remember? Turn is a non-club three, giving me two pair. SB bets again, so I put him on the ten, maybe with two clubs of his own…I’ve still got my nut straight and flush draws, so I call. River is a club…the 3 of clubs, giving me 3s full. For whatever reason, I never put him on the full house, just on a third ten, so I’m very happy to see this work out how it has. SB bets, I raise, he re-raises…and like a tilting fool, I cap it. SB takes the time to say “yummy”, and then “thanks for the donation” before calling and showing me the other two tens. I was drawing dead to a 1-outer, which is my own damn fault. I read what I wanted to into the hand at every step, rather than trying to accurately read what he had.

Slowrolling like that, though, is just bullshit. Tom Cruise went from being one of my favorite actors in a wide range of movies to being a friggin’ joke over Katie Holmes because, in the words of one of my best friends, he couldn’t “act like he’d been there before”. That’s how I view a slowrolled hand. Even if you’ve never flopped quads before, dude, act like you have. If you want to rub it in and gloat afterward, well, I can’t stop you. But delaying the inevitable is bush-league. Bush, I tell you. If you were a man, I’d punch you right in the mouth…oops, Ron Burgundy flashback. Sorry.

Anyway, I topped off my night by heading back to a 2/4 table, winning 5 big bets in a hour and logging off. After all, there’s some lessons to be learned, and it can take a bear of little brain (or a poker player of little brain) time to digest them. So I’m trying to unravel why I unravelled like that, and maybe you can do the same.
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