Do you guys ever play it? I decided to try it for the first time last night, basically experimenting in a $1.75 18-man turbo SnG on Stars. I took it down and it left me wondering if the NL structure actually increased my edge over the weak competition because I could get full value from my hands and really charge people the max for bad calls. Just wondering what your experience is of NL08 in comparision to PLO8 and LO8.

It also increases your variance at the same time to some degree. I'm not sure whether or not that will offset your play skill. It's probably worth a shot, you can always stop playing them if variance is too large to make it worth it/

it depends on what kind of bad they are and how you play. from what i know of you if you are playing deep stacked against total calling stations this might be a good game for you. you can just wait for a good hand and then get a gazillion chips in the middle without all the pesky jumping through hoops tricks that you need to build a big pot in a PL game.

do understand though there is a lot of variance in waiting 500 hands to finally get it all in as a 60/40 favorite.

back when I started i was able to turn a profit playing solely NLO8 on Absolute. When I went to Stars I lost about half my bankroll before I started playing lo8. I played extremely tight and basically got it all in anytime I was a favorite. It is profitable and it is also frustrating. Wait wait and wait some more get it all in either hold or get sucked out on reload and try again. That being said if you do decide to give this a go and play the super tight route when you double up a buy in you need to leave the table and not come back until you can reload at your original amount.

I've only been experimenting with the 18-man turbo SnGs at this point. But I see what you mean about the variance. Busted in 9th last night when I got it in as a 63% fav on the turn with a flopped high straight against bottom set only to have villain river the boat.

What do you mean by not coming back until you can reload at your original amount?

when playing cash tables. When you leave a table I think it's 15 min before you can come back to a table with out having to buy in with the same amount you left with.

Ahh, I see. Instead of hitting-and-running you hit and squirrel away your profits.

Any thoughts on how one might adjust to a tourney structure? I've been playing pretty tight and focusing on getting as much value as possible from my big hands. The play overall is terrible, and I think it's worse than in PLO8 or LO8. Probably different at the cash tables, though.

These 18-man turbos definitely have a lot of potential. Tonight I made a couple of loose calls early and wasted some chips, never hit a big hand, and was still able to go deep and finish 6th. The only big pot I won was in the middle at blinds of 50/100 when I minraised a suited A24x hand, got a few callers creating an 800 chip pot, and then I pushed my remaining 875 on the flop with the nut low draw. Everyone folded and I almost doubled up. Got knocked out when I pushed a suited A3xx and ran into the huge stack with a suited AA2x.

anti where do you play this game and what limits? I saw you in another thread reference it as your main game. What's your winrate and the player pool like?

Just curious; I have no intentions on playing it like ever.

i mostly play at ftp at .50/1. they player pool is small, mostly weak tight regs who lose very slowly. beating the game is mostly a function of getting these players to make bad folds in medium size pots. there is one reg who i am weary of and won't play if the game isn't right and i don't have the right seat on him. everybody else i am not afraid of but i still game select tenaciously because there is little money to be made playing against a table full of tight regs, the dynamic of the table changes and without a fish or two they all shut down and start playing good. i don't have what it takes to lag it up to beat that kind of table even though in theory i could tell you how to.

all in all there are probably 15 long term winners in that game. that number might be generous. a lot of the same players play 1/2. the game seems to play exactly the same to me although when i step up i can't win. i can show that if the ev on my big pots broke even i would be way ahead though, so i'm confused about that one (i shouldn't have lost over this many hands).

i have no idea what my winrate is right now. forever it was around 4-6 but then since like november it shot up to 11 and i sustained that over a very significant sample until 8.5k hands this month at -4.

I have found NLO8 50/1 to be the juiciest game. Especially when 1stock1 is playing. I have played over 150k hands this year (not that much but still) and am up quite a nice chunk of change. Had I not cashed out a bunch to buy a car, id be playing 1/2 since I have seen a lot of very bad players like Kideddie7 and 1stock1 play there frequently. FTP forced me to close my old account though so I play as Ralgoth now.

so thats you.

Lol yeah. I learned a ton about poker tracker now. I have 14,000 hands on a friend of mine and it shows him being down $400 net but hes up a lot over 30k hands. I stopped looking at $$ won and lost when I had Bourgoune I think that's how you spell his name... up $1200 over 35k hands, but my friend had bourgoune DOWN $1500 over 30k hands.. I look at the autorate player thing eventhough I think it is a little too strict (out of 9,000 people in my DB only a handfull are the Moneybag sign...The standard auto-rate player thing has me rated as an Eagle.

Starting to experience the variance in the NLO8 18-man SnGs. It's deadly in the turbo structure. Still have an ROI of about 15% but have busted in my last 8 consecutive tourneys. We'll see how things progress as the sample grows.

LOL, variance is funny. After busting in my previous 8 consecutive tourneys, I cashed in 4/5 last night, including two wins. In one of the victories I was down to about 600 chips and mounted a fantastic comeback thanks to a spewy bigstack.

One of the changes I've made since I first started playing these is to avoid preflop all-in situations as much as possible, unless circumstances are such that I have to make a big call or the situation is perfect for an open push. Since preflop hand values run so close in O8, and micro stakes players often call widely reducing my fold equity considerably, I'm usually better off limping (even at high blinds) and then getting it in on a favorable flop. It also enables me to consistently go deep even when I'm running bad because others will inevitably make mistakes and bust out ahead of me.

bravo keep grinding man best of luck to you

One thing's for sure, the play at .01-.02 NLO8 on Tilt is absolutely terrible. For some reason the NL structure seems to attract the people who have no clue how to play the game. After 15 minutes at the table I've already lost count of the number of times I've seen people limp or call raises with hands like QT94 or KJ53. And there seems to be a group of players who basically approach the gash game with a double-or-done tourney strategy, getting it all in preflop with hands like the ones above hoping to double their stack.

ive been playing this more lately. give me two more weeks or so of grinding and i'll have quite a bit to say about it.

one thing that i like is that its a lot of the same regs but i play the same in a much different way than i play plo8. if they think that i'm pretty much playing the same game then i'm gonna get paid off a whole lot.

so far one difference that ive noticed is that i like to keep the pots smaller preflop and on the flop and then over bet a lot on the turn and river.

plo8 i'm looking more to steal my way to winning.
nlo8 (so far) i'm actually managing to win by waiting for good hands and getting paid off

its a much different game then people give it credit for. the games also seem softer although obviously a good player has a bigger edge in pot limit.

Depends what you mean by a good player. At the micro stakes a player with disciplined hand selection has a much bigger edge in NLO8 than PLO8, at least based on my tiny NL sample so far. The ability to get it in more frequently in scoopable or three-quarter situations against players who overplay marginal hands is a huge advantage in NLO8. Stealing pots isn't as effective as these stakes because with the hands that people play and their calling station tendencies (especially on the flop), a flop that misses me is likely to have hit my opponents, but I think there is more than enough money to be made by focusing on solid hand selection and value-betting big hands and draws.

I'll probably grind the .01-.02 for a bit and see what happens.

i am actually thinking this is more or less the right strategy for nlo8 as opposed to plo8 where unless you have a table of extreme calling stations you will just slowly bleed money.

Well I just had a bizarre experience at a .01-.02 NLO8 table. About 5 minutes into my session on a second table, a guy sits down and literally starts pushing every hand preflop. I'm talking literally every hand. The first few times he did it he lost his $2 buyin, then split a couple of pots, then won, then lost again. I caught him once and doubled up but he just kept going. Eventually he caught a break and doubled through and it was soon after that I decided to leave the table.

The annoying thing about his strategy is that because preflop hand values run so close in O8, it's impossible to really catch a player like that in a preflop confrontation where you have a significant edge. You have no choice but to take your best shot and hope your 55% edge holds up, or don't get involved at all. I'm not really all that interested in flipping for stacks, so I didn't hang around to try to catch him again.

Anyway, how's your NLO8 experience going antistuff?

i played a bit in the .50/1 40 big blind cap game yesterday. had the pleasure of sucking out against gameover. i told him to go away and stop slumming and thats what he gets for playing so low. i estimate any edge in these games to be small since you're pretty much just waiting for a good hand and then playing a 55/45 with somebody who called your shove with 259Qds. unless i'm missing i think a winning player is gonna pull down like 3ptbb/100 max.

very fun though when you win like 4 hands in a row.

Why would you choose to play a cap game? The whole idea of NL with a cap seems ridiculous to me.

I do agree with your general point about the competition, though. I think a great deal of the edge one has over low stakes competition is related to hand selection (both in O8 and PLO). You lose that edge as you move up to a level of competition where people understand the hand selection component of the game.

just for fun and something different

What do you do here? Villain was an idiot LAG who has shown the ability to drive all streets with very marginal one-way hands, but pushing the flop like this was pretty unusual even for him.

Full Tilt No-Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, $0.02 BB (6 handed) - Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($3.61)
MP ($2.01)
CO ($1)
Hero (Button) ($2.53)
SB ($13.40)
BB ($3.09)

Preflop: Hero is Button with 3, 2, 7, 4
UTG calls $0.02, MP calls $0.02, CO calls $0.02, Hero calls $0.02, SB calls $0.01, BB checks

Flop: ($0.12) 7, 7, 8 (6 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, MP bets $1.99 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero ???

Learned a valuable NLO8 lesson tonight: when making a bet with a nutty hand in one direction on the river, don't bet more than is necessary. In one hand tonight I was too lazy to size my bet on the end so I just pushed (a huge overbet), villain called, we split a big pot, and we both got nailed by the rake. It actually happened a few times on a much smaller scale, splitting decent pots and getting nailed by the rake. Will have to keep an eye on that.

i learned a similar lesson with bottom set on an ak7 board. it was a deep table so everybody is like 200bb. i c/r shoved into a 70bbish stack from the bb. turns out the guy utg slowplayed aces. his not betting the flop is like just disgusting but what i should have done is raised a reasonable amount that i could fold to a shove from a 200bb stack.

i've also noticed that a good no limit holdem player who has an inkling of the rules of this game can do very well. there was a guy at a 6max table playing like 40/15/2. all he did was keep playing position and floating people off hands. he made a couple of o8 mistakes but for the most part the way he was playing i imagine he would be a winner in that game playing like that just knowing how to play deep no limit poker.

Do you mean that he would call raises in position and then call the flop light to take it away on the turn?

and even call the turn and then take it away on the river sometimes. it was obvious he was doing this with nothing but its hard to defend against in this game. i started c/ring him with a good mix of air and strong hands which is the right thing to do i think but nobody else caught on.

I can see how that would be an effective strategy when combined with a tight image as a way of periodically stealing pots when the cards aren't coming your way. Don't think it would work all that well at the micro stakes, though, since most players there tend to be pretty passive. They'll call much lighter than they should, but they don't typically drive marginal hands. It would have to be very player-specific.

So far my foray into NLO8 cash games has been smooth. I've recently moved up to the .02-.05 level and there is no difference in the quality of competition. I'm not winning huge, but I am consistently winning. I've put in about 20 hours and I've only had one losing session. I'm winning about 32 BB/HR. Taking my usual low variance approach, focusing on good hand selection, catching donks calling down with marginal hands, and stealing a few pots now and then. Also being more careful about the rake.

Why oh why do I tempt fate?

No .02-.05 NLO8 tables going so I decide to move up to .05-.10. Lost my entire stack on two hands, both when I flopped the nut high hand and got rivered, once with the nut flush (rivered by a boat) and once with a boat (rivered by a better boat). Just erased all my NLO8 profits in the span of two hands. ****ing poker gods.

if you feel that way after losing one stack you shouldn't have moved up. personally i like to have between 20-30 buyins to play comfortably. if i know i can beat the game i can play on as low as 10 but i don't like to. keep playing the low limit you were beating until you have enough where you can lose a few times at the next one, because you are going to, even with the best of it.

I know, I know, I just don't deal well with variance (as you know by now). I have just over 20 buyins but the only reason I moved up was because there was no action at the .02-.05 tables. I should have just multi-tabled some .01-.02 instead of jumping to .05-.10.