So I've been playing limit O8 for a few months and am hooked. I play mainly 6 handed limit 25c/50c and 50c/1 on FTP, and I play twice a week in a live 3/6 limit dealers choice game where the game is primarily O8. I'm mainly looking for info on 9 handed limit strategy since that is the game I'm most interested in.

The local game I play in is always regulars mostly old guys and is a very loose game (like most 3/6 of any game), and they all give me crap for being the tight guy at the table and I admit that I do play tight at times especially 9 handed. I haven't had much successes or failures in the game. I usually win a buy in or two 1 day, then I will lose it back another day. I feel like I should be killing this game, but I haven't had many huge wins.

I've read some Omaha strategy, and they talk about A hands B hands C hands etc. Sometimes I wait for these hands, other times I will lose patience and turn into a calling station every hand (especially when playing online).

So I'd like your guys point of view instead of info from a book. What are the ranges of hands you raise with p-flop (other than AA23 obviously)? How do you play hands with a pair but no lo-draw... like KK105 for example. With a hand like that would you call p-flop and fold the flop if you don't hit? Do you chase straight draws with a flush draw on the board? Do you chase flushes with full house on board? Do you chase with a bad flush draw (like 8 high). Do you chase 2nd 3rd or 4th low draws? I know strategy changes with based on reads at the table, just looking for general strategy info.

I've lurked a bit in the hi/lo content thread, just looking for general info on how you guys attack this game.

I always base hand selection on my position and the general feel of the table. I will fold a hand lik AA68 UTG without hesitation in all but the tighest of tables.

A good general rule of thumb is to play hands with 6 posibilities. A hand like KKT5 (to use your example) is insta-muck outside of blind defense simply because of the problems with it. The 5 is useless to you (with KK you have far less chances to make 2 pair anyways), the T makes your only straight potential a 2 gapper. This is *not* Hold Em.. Flopping a set doesn't give you the 80%+ chance to win the high hand like it does in NLHE.

You're sole purpose in most games is to make some form of the nuts. You want nut flush potential. nut straight potential. You need multiple things going for you in each hand you play. A2xx is nice, but it's 3 cards (out of 5) away from locking up 1/4 to 1/2 of the pot. A hand like A246 is going to give you a chance to make a low and hit a superior version of the wheel to lock into 3/4 of a pot (or better). That's the much more exciting hand to be betting aggressively. Plus a lot of profit comes from having backup low cards (counterfeit protectors). So when that deuece hits on the river, your A246 still can pull down the low side. There is nothing more frustrating than playing a naked A2xx, because you need to hit 3 of 6 different low cards without pairing one of yours.

Avoid 9s like the plague. Avoid middling cards. A hand like 5689 double suited looks nice, but it's never making the nuts for you + making you money at the same time. Any straight you make will either put a low on the board (which sucks out half your profit) or won't be a nut straight (like TJQxx). Your flushes won't be nut flushes (and will more often than not cost you money if you hit them). Even the dream flops like 347 just give you the nuts on the flop (for 1/2 the pot). Even if you are the only one hold 56, jamming the pot can be deadly once flushes and board pairs show up by the river.

Always remember it's a split pot game. You are taxed via rake / potsplits on your wins, but any hand you fold and save a bet on PF is like winning a small bet. You need to have a realistic idea of a legit flop/board that would be favorable for you before even completing a small blind. J823 needs an ace to flop to even start a low possibility, and if 6 ppl have limped or raised in front of you, there's not likely to be many (if any) aces left in the deck.

But ya, i'll say it again.. i *always* look to see if all 4 of my cards are working toward something special. QQJT can make some straight/boats.. A356 can make a nut low, and can make a higher straight that others jamming their A3s on a 2xx flop.. I always look for suited aces (with reasonable off cards), multiple wheel cards, or 4 cards 9 or higher.

Don't bluff into lowish board. If it comes out 58Q, that's an awesome CB flop in hold em.. In lower limit O8b someone with A2 is taking that hand to the river (and god bless them for it). The *only* good exception is if it's just you and the blinds, since they can actually be involved in a pot without a solid low.

On the other end of things, you aren't the only player aggressively betting and jamming your good draws. If you find yourself facing a river bet HU and the low/flush just missed.. CALL LIGHT. It's one bet to win a *whole* pot, and you'd be amazed at what catching a couple river bluffs can do for your hourly win-rate.

Use both features of your hand aggressively, esp when heads up. If you got A3KK heads up against another player, expect your KK to be good for high or your A3 to be good for low. He'll need *4* working cards in unison to beat you on most boards.

The opposite is also true: stay the hell outta pots and fold readily when it only takes 2 low cards (say a 346xx board) to scoop the whole pot. I don't care if you have 44... You'll do better in the long run not putting a lotta money into pots whre it only takes 2 cards to scoop the pot, and you ain't got em. 345xx is the scariest board in hold em, and the *only* time you will ever pat yourself on the back for playing garbage like 67xx when it's 3 bet before you even get to act.. Can you see why?

PM me if ya want more.. I just ramble a lot. And as always: Checky knows more. So do Aho and Anti. But everyone will tell you the same thing: get 10k hands under your belt, take your gains/losses.. Then you'll have a better feel to what needs to be done. It isn't a sit tight and "bet the nuts" game. It's just not as bluffy in most spots as hold 'em. It's still much easier to make a bet then to call one. GAP theory is prevalent against all but the loosest of calling stations. Best of luck on the tables .

edit: probably the main reason you are treading water live is the ginormous rake. I can't even fathom playing a split-pot game live. Yikes.

As with most questions in poker it depends. It depends on your position/number of players, how tight/aggressive is the game, and how capable you are relative to your opponents on later streets. If I was just starting playing Omaha 8 I would stick to playing hands that can scoop such as AKQ2 or AAJ3, rarely open without a Ace, and would play full ring games until I get the general feel for Omaha 8.

Ty cappy that helps a lot.... I will Pm you if I have any additional questions.

The rake isn't bad for me if its 9 handed... but like I said it is a bunch of old regulars who play, so they all get there at the same time, and leave at the same time... last night I got stuck playing 4 handed... the rake destroyed everyone lol.

tanner I'll just give you one piece of advice that works for me: play omaha hilo in tournies. I kill the tournaments and lose my ass in the cash games.
about hand selection I am usually playing like a23, a24, a34, and any aaxx, akq10 and stuff like that prob top 20%. cappy gave a great overview and I want to echo his suggestion to stay away from middle cards they are bad news.

Do you notice any better play at .50/1 on full tilt? I'm playing .25/.50 now, and I can't believe how bad people are at this. I said it before...yesterday. But I can't get over it. I'm with you Tanner, having fun playing it, too. The section on it in Hwang's PLO book seems to have been very helpful. Might consider checking it out. A lot of quiz and scenario stuff, I find it helpful. Especially considering the relatively low frequency of strat posts for this game.

Yes I do notice a change between the two games on Tilt. In .25/.50 every player enters the pot and are calling stations. At .50/1 there are more raises and folding than there are at .25/.50. I've had way more success at .50/1.

I've read a few books on it... but they were pretty much strategy guides instead of books written by accomplished players. I will check out Hwang's book.

I'm going to play in this live game tomorrow... I will post any weird situations if they come up (I'm sure they will). It is such a fun game because all the old guys cuss at the dealers and get in arguments with the other players and the dealers and floorman do nothing about it lol.

as others have already stated avoid the middle cards. I think playing position is as important as any other aspect in this game. You can just tell where you are at so much easier when you play a hand in position. I have no problems raising it up with 1 or 2 limpers to me in the CO or on the button with hands as weak as A48T with an ace suited. Vice versa I wouldn't even limp with that hand UTG or UTG+1. In general if you avoid playing hands with out an ace in them you will be in much better shape as well.

Curse you guys for sparking my interest in O8 again.

LOL.... welcome back to the dark side jmbreslin

Well, things aren't going well lately in my marriage to Stud-8 so I need a mistress. I'm very fickle when it comes to my poker relationships. I'm like a poker man-whore.

I had a stud8, o8b, razz, and badugi table open at once night before last. I am the master of anti-commitment.

I decided for now I need to put some effort into saving my relationship with Stud-8. I'm going to review hands where I've lost big pots, run some numbers through a calculator, and see what, if anything, I've been doing wrong. I did intend to sit down at LO8 last night but there weren't any open spots at .25-.50 so I just played Stud 8 again.

I almost never raise pre in O8. O8 is a drawing game and as far as I'm concerned, my hand has no real value until I see a flop.

I look for A2xx, preferably if the x's are also wheel cards, and/or one card is suited to the Ace. You want 3 or 4 separate low cards to reduce the risk of counterfeiting, but you can play 2 for cheap. Seriously, if I'm seeing a flop, more than half the time it's with A2. And yes, I'm folding a LOT, but that's a lot of spew I'm not donating to the rest of the table.

A3xx is playable at LP or at passive tables. AAxx is very overrated in LO8 unless you have wheel cards to go with it, because it rarely hits a flop hard and usually gets outdrawn for hi. Half the time I see a preflop raise whether live or online, the player has AAxx, and they don't take anything down half the time.

If several players have called, I'll play a high only hand like KQJT in LP or from the blinds, even for a raise. I can dump it if the flop comes 2 or 3 low. I think of hi only hands like you think of Ace-rag suited in HE, but make sure no card in a hi only hand is lower than a 9.

Same with 23xx: I play it for cheap in LP and dump it if an Ace doesn't flop.

I only complete the SB with the sort of hands I mentioned above. Seriously, even if I have great odds, I'll still dump it. Half a bet here, half a bet there, and suddenly you've got a leak.

Of the 5278 possible O8 hands, there are only 9 or 10 profitable hands that don't contain an Ace. Basically, if I don't have an Ace, I muck it unless it's an aforementioned hi-only hand or a good 23xx and I can see a cheap flop. Even when I do have an Ace, I won't play any hand worse than A4xx, which itself needs a ton of help to spike the nut low. I muck A5xx, A6xx, etc.

If I'm not sure whether to play a hand, a good basic rule of thumb I follow is to look at my hand and find the worst possible Hold'Em hand out of your 4 cards. If I wouldn't play that in Hold'Em, I muck.

Bill Boston wrote a great book (helpfully entitled Omaha Hi-Low) that focuses extensively on hand selection and profitability for each hand. The book also has a complete chart of the EV for literally every Omaha hand possible. I'd give that a look if you're still unsure about hand selection but want to expand your selection. Or, better yet, you can learn Hutchinson's Point Count System, which is fairly reliable in determining when to profitably play an O8 hand because it doesn't overrate pocket pairs like most point counts do. You can learn it back to front, follow it religiously, and over time you'll get enough of a feel for what hands are playable that you won't need it after a while. I used it some and it proved helpful for minimizing my spew while putting me in profitable situations more often.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their info here. I know I'm not the OP, but I recently started playing O8 and am enjoying it so far. I'm only playing micro limits, but there are just so any bad players (me included). I think it's because Hold 'em gets the press, and therefore more players, but along with that press comes basic strategy. Let's face it, even most of the bad Hold 'em players have some idea of what they are supposed to do. When they need a break, they head over to this game and play it like they play Hold 'em.

what about two-pair hands?

Depends on the two pair. TT88 is garbage. KKJJ can actually stack up pretty well against several low hands. The bottom line is that your pairs need to be high enough to (1) give you a good shot at top set if you hit; and (2) reduce the likelihood of splitting with a low hand. Playing a two pair like 8866 is pointless because if you do hit your set you risk being oversetted and splitting with a low.

I read somewhere recently that the odds of flopping an Ace and another low card with a hand like 23xx is 5-1. So you really want the pot to be multi-way to ensure you have the pot odds to play it.

cappy's post is really, really good, imo, especially the part about picking off river bluffs.

something else worth saying is that when you're playing low stakes at very loose tables, it's not a bad idea to raise every single hand that you're going to play preflop, no matter what, because you're going to get called by hands that are significantly worse than yours, and that will inflate pots to where you're winning a decent amount on your half pot pickups. just don't commit yourself to c-betting unless you catch a bet-able piece.

This is a good point to add. Seeing the flop with 23xx is a lot like set mining in LP in HE: make sure you're seeing a cheap flop multiway with several callers.

In the lowest limit games, checky's advice is also sound. If you're only playing hands that give you a strong equity edge over most holdings, then raising to build a pot is a great PF play. You can just dump your hand when you don't hit the flop and you only lose two bets, but when you hit the nuts one or both ways (which will happen more often since we're only playing superior hands), a lot of lesser hands will pay you off because the bigger pots will entice more players to draw.

Unless you are getting in from the blinds, dump pre-flop.

This isn't NLHE. Most times I visibly groan when I hit a set on the flop. Your reverse implied odds are huge "playing for sets" since it's so easy in lo8 to flop a set and either flipping a coin *at that point*, or already dead to a higher set/straight/flush/etc. Not to mention the likelihood that someone else has 2 pair and is drawing at a lazy higher boat should the board pair wrong.

Trying to make sets hold up in a split pot game for half the pot will prematurely gray your hair. Trust me on that.

Yup, but that's not the crippling aspect of playing 23xx..

You are in the neighborhood of 5-1 to flop an ace.

You are in the neighborhood of 413431531-1 to make any form of a high hand.

Flopping an ace doesn't automatically qualify you to make a low. You are still going to need 2 other cards behaving in your favor, and those cards can't be a 2 or a 3 (but bet your sweet a$$ they often will).

Playing 23xx is really only profitably nutpeddling in loooooooooose games where 1/2 a pot is usually a ton of big bets.

As a generally rule, most of your lo8 profit will come from seeing cheap flops and nutpeddling in tight games, or raising complete hell in tight games (which is far more fun). Burn that above sentence in your long term memory, *anyone* who reads it.

Also, when you flop a nut low draw with 23xx, you are drawing to half the pot, and someone else already has a pair of aces for high. Thats your 'favorable' scenario.

I think the real problem with this is when u r playing the pot multiway most of the aces u r trying to hit are dead. I prefer to play hands like this OTB when all have folded to me and I have a real chance of having the best lo draw and can rep a lot of hands when I bring it in for a raise preflop

Problem is that so few tables at low stakes are tight tables. Or did you mean raising complete hell in loose games?

Not necessarily, I continue to be amazed at the crap that people play in the .25-.50 games. Most of these players have VPIP's in the 60-80% range. But you're right that the Aces are still more likely to be live when it's folded around to you in late position.

Thanks for the info in this thread guys.

Last night was playing 3/6 limit with 4/8 kill at my local cardroom and a bunch of drunk dudes who are used to playing NL came in and I had my most successful session ever. Dudes were capping pots with 2 pair and other shitty hands. It was weird because I'm usually a pretty tight player, but ended up loosening up a lot considering my competition and the size of the pots. I won $700 in about 5 hours which is pretty ridiculous for that game. I was kind of catching hands also but was scooping with ridiculous hands like bad straights and trips with a flush on board.

/brag lol