James Davis: $.10/$.25 PLO 6Max --Released 04/05/2010

[DTB Admin]

James heads to FullTilt Poker to play 4 tables of $.10/$.25 PLO 6Max. He goes over his play at each point.

[Dkar]

James,

I have recently started trying to learn PLO. You mentioned that you read several books and used other resources. Could you let me know what a few of them were?

Thanks!

[James Davis]

James,

I have recently started trying to learn PLO. You mentioned that you read several books and used other resources. Could you let me know what a few of them were?

Thanks!

Hey Dkar - sorry I missed this post! I read tri nguyen's book, hwang's first book, and watched many videos. I also read the forums at twoplustwo, which has a lot of quality players commenting with great frequency. A smattering of other stuff here and there, but this was the bulk. Hope this helps.

James

[kirkthompson]

I try my hardest to play a very positional, aggressive postflop game in NLH (recent posts notwithstanding ) and so I figure asking you about how you interpret the following spots would be valuable.

After a few thousand hands of 10/25PLO, I find that the following are bugbear spots for me:

Preflop
1. responding to 3-bets. How does your decision process differ?
2. In the CO/BTN with a weak player limping in front and a marginal/stealing hand. In NL, I'd almost always isoraise and play to pick up the pot postflop for non-SD winnings. How do you adjust for the fact that taking multiway flops are more common? Do you overlimp a lot or just fold?

Postflop considerations
1. What runs through your mind with an overpair and the nut flush draw with a 100BB stack heads up on the flop? Sometimes on a wet board, I don't really like my chances.
2. How about an overpair and more marginal outs?

Also, from the unsolicited compliment dept.- IMO, you are easily the funniest instructional video maker on earth.

[James Davis]

Hey Kirk! I am here and happy to help.

Responding to 3 bets. This is all about who the three-bettor is. A lot of players at small stakes only 3b aces. It is quite easy to play in a reraised pot against these folks. I usually dont call if I have an ace preflop, and then post I will do a quick equity calc against AA** using propokertools.com, until I get used to the equity. It doesn't take long to learn all these spots. Against a wider range..that takes more nuance than I can describe in a single post.

I still isolate a fair amount in plo, but definitely not as much. One way to utilize this effectively is to only iso weaker hands with tight blinds, and then to fire not only flops but turns as well. In nlhe people will often call the turn after calling the flop, but in plo people actually do give up from time to time. All depends on how fishy your fish are, but yeah you are definitely going to be curtailing your isolating as you transition to plo.

Postflop:
1. Funny, I just discussed this exact scenario with a friend. If the board is locked up(965hh for example) I will not play it fast. People don't often raise these boards without at least a straight. If the board is connected, but not locked up, like 974hh, I will still play aces with a flush draw fast(or kings with a flush draw if i believe my opponent would always reraise aces pre) because a lot of times my opponent has a wrap+flush draw which i have crushed. I don't play overpairs of tt-qq + flush draw fast at all because I will too often be against a bigger draw and often a bigger pair as well.

2) Overpair and marginal outs: If i am the reraiser, I am going to town with it. Otherwise, I just relax unless it's a board where my opponent is likely to have worse. Like if I just call AAT3 and the flop is 249r, I am probably going with it. If it's 249hh, I am going to slow down a little bit.

If you have specific Q's, happy to elaborate further.
Thanks for watching!

James

[MASTERHOLMES]

Here is what I get from this video

Our strategy is to try to make some good hands,, we can’t blow people off two hands or better so we are not going to bluff a lot. Alternatively we should not pay off too much as that is a leak. ,, so with that in mind Omaha is a game where we play the opponents and an really good way is to use the hud stats to help us define our action. Anyone starting out new to Omaha should of course start off 4 to 5 levels below where you usually play as you have to develop new Omaha instincts and understanding, as an example a wrap vs. an open ended straight draw.

Preflop we don’t just blindly raise the limper on our buttons when we have weak holdingg but if our hand has some value like a nut flush, or 3 connected cards we can limp along., as an example we open limp with a hand that has no raising value but it can flop a 8910 wrap for us..
(in jeff hwang first book,, the wraps he looked at involved 3 cards like 8,9, 10 x so I understood where you were coming from ). Since our money comes from getting villians into dominated situations like their king flush losing to our ace high flush,, their open ended straight draw losing to our wrap,, their bottom two pair losing to our top two, sets.

The 3bets we fold to figure to dominate our holdings which is why we fold it, plus we will be playing out of position,, the ideal thing to do is to call and try to outflop our opponent. A good example is when we bet a jack high flush discussion and we get reraised ,, we are most likely losing to a king high flush, ace high flush.

post flop
As you can see with the bottom two pair hand ,, two pair isn’t nuts ,, even top two,, so our only purpose of playing small suited rundowns is to try to flop a little straight that dominates the villian range.,, an really good example not in the video is 4567 domiantes 2345 for when the villian flops their straight we have the top end of it.
The last hand example is a time when we should of check behind if our hand has some value for if we raise and get reraised we would have to fold..

As a person who has watched a lot of videos on Omaha,, the best thing I took away from your video for myself is the top gap teacing,, as I tend to say 3 connected cards,, short handed I have to play it so I don’t’ get my stack eaten away,, but if I fold away most cards like 7810 queen , 89 jack king I will be avoiding getting dominated. I figure that probably applies to the middle gap as well . You didn’t’ mention a great deal about suited cards here ,, maybe just a second mention to having the ace high flush when you get play it preflop.
I think a double suited hand like 6789 we are playing mostly for the straights, and if we get it in with a straight on the flush board that has our suits they are flush blockers,, or we are up against the same straight but we got the flush redraw.

I think if you haven’t read them by now ,, you should read the advanced Omaha volume one,, which deals with floating,, the lag play which deals with attacking preflop the limper and the blinds and with good hands.. And the workbook. If anything just so you know what most f your viewers are reading, or so you can tell them to go read this book so they will understand what you are talking about if you incorporate some of these things into your game.

Now answer me this,, did you play the bottom two pair because he tilted you with the ace flush ? This was a replayer video so what was your feelings at the time ?
I know when I play bottom two after a big hand, the villian usually turns over an awesome wrap, top two , bottom set,, top set and I usually end up shipping again.. This is at a lower stakes then you but after a few dozen times even a micro player learns bottom two is a loser in the long run.

Example I saw a person take donw a 6 dollar pot at the micros beating out my flush draw , and someone else over pair and flush draw when he turned a full house and I rivered my flush.
So if he was results oriented he might say he made that correct play and start playing it like that as he moves up and get burned when he loses the big huge pot.

as a side note,, there is something to be said for the limp, call raise , flop somethin and bet and get paid off,, i seen some big stacks develop for the micros where people has used this techique , and even in two plus two omaha book the author says that can be a winning style if one masters it, and it would cut down on variance.

[James Davis]

Hey MasterHolmes! Welcome to the site! You do a very nice job of encapsulating many different points in the video.

The top gap dominance issues apply for middle gaps to a lesser degree, but still apply. Basically, the lower the gap, the lower your problem with being dominated in your draw.

As far as suitedness goes - we also like to be able to have backdoor draws on rainbow boards, and while we can't always count on our flush outs being good, they give us MUCH more equity when our opponent is playing fast with a set or two pair.

Regarding a bottom two hand...this video is quite old, and I simply don't remember the hand. I'll need more details there.

Thanks for watching!

James

[MASTERHOLMES]

ah well basically

you went all in with bottom two in the next hand after you just lost in aces vs aces situation where his aces hit the flush draw.
you talked about at this point how a no limit player might think we have nuts but in truth as you lookd at the review in the hand our equity was 40 percent to his close to 60 percent as he had the wrap ,, despite being 40 percent your two bottom two pair took down the pot as his wrap didnt'come in nor did he hit anny of his overs.
since this hand was the next hand , and it was a very low double suited rundown i wondered if it was a slight tilt move if you could put yourself back at the exact time.

also in your next plo video as this was done in may and it is now 2011 , can you mention what kind of changes your game has evolved to since your first video back in may for plo.
thanks for the feedback there.

[James Davis]

It's possible that I was, though I would think it unlikely that I'd tilt at a game of this level. I will be making a couple of beginner level PLO videos that should be released early next month, so keep your eyes peeled!

James