Just feel like sharing with all of you.

Articles from playwinningpoker.com
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/omaha/strategy/
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/omaha/pot-limit/plo8/ Must Read
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/rgp/01/oct01.html
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/omaha/omaha1.html
http://www.playwinningpoker.com/articles/02/21.html


[b]Cardplayer.com
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...4203&m_id=65543
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...d=13530&m_id=73
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...d=13558&m_id=75
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...d=13596&m_id=76
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...d=13625&m_id=77
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...d=12818&m_id=42
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...4420&m_id=65551
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/a...4621&m_id=65558


winningonlinepoker.com
http://www.winningonlinepoker.com/omaha8.htm
http://www.winningonlinepoker.com/plo8.htm
http://www.winningonlinepoker.com/plo8quiz1.htm
http://www.winningonlinepoker.com/plo8quiz2.htm


pokerlistings.com
http://www.pokerlistings.com/omaha-high-lo...-starting-hands
http://www.pokerlistings.com/omaha-high-lo...-basic-strategy
http://www.pokerlistings.com/limit-omaha-high-low
http://www.pokerlistings.com/playing-aces-...-omaha-high-low


Misc
http://www.bluffmagazine.com/content/2004_10_78.asp
http://www.pokermafia.com/index.php?action...gory_id=6&id=40
http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue9/...lansky0905.html

One thing I don't see mentioned about PLO8: when you are playing against bad players it's all about playing good hands and make them pay. When you are playing against players who know about the basics of PLO8, it's all about position and taking control the other players. When you are playing against a table that has many solid players who know about position and starting hand and play well, it's all about finding a fishier table.

Have fun.

preesh.

I'll be reading them all when I get home.

And I clicked through all the links that worked for Omaha hi.

Position also allows you to extract more from bad players.

This article seems to get a lot of worship, but I think it doesn't apply very well to the common online game. Quartering and freerolling are important, to be sure; but more important (due to frequency of occurrence) are appropriate value-betting, bluffing, and of course table-selection.

I truely believe that PLO8, though value-betting is a must, is more about pushing with bigger edges (and big edges happen more frequently in PLO8 than any other forms of poker) and much less about bluffing (unless you are playing short-handed).

I like to read your posts on taking approaches from different angles, but it has bigger variance and it takes a lot of discipline and control to handle the high fluctuations, bad beats and tilting.

If you can handle pushing for small edges with higher variance, NLH is a better selection.

Perhaps, but the barrier to entry (minimum threshold of understanding to be marginally successful) is higher for PLO8 IMO. There are many players who are literally giving money away in this game as it is currently being played online. Badger's approach seems to be based on giving your opponents rational thinkers, and the majority of online players simply are not.

Also, FWIW, I ****ing suck at NLHE. Last session I played online I blew through 40 buyins in the $25 NLHE 6-max in about an hour. Of course, I was playing 2k plO8 on the side and finished ahead, but still--NLHE: not my game.

If I can I will make the whole world of gamblers to play PLO8 only. lol. That's why I put a lot of posts here trying to improve my game as well as trying to promote the game.

Badger's approach seems to be based on giving your opponents rational thinkers

If the approach can beat the rational thinkers, then it can't beat the online suckers?

You may say that the approach will beat the online suckers less efficiently, but I will say it's as good as it gets.


Last session I played online I blew through 40 buyins in the $25 NLHE 6-max in about an hour

I think the problem is you have no respect at those tables and that lousy $25. Start at the $200 and just put one hour spare time on it.

(But sh!t I've posted in another thread before that I had lost interests in NLH too, PLO8 is just too juicy... )

Badger would have you fold way too often given the skill level online. By pushing more marginal situations (where you are ahead,m but narrowly so), and by bluffing with discretion, you are not only adding to your winrate directly through +EV in the given hand, but also encouraging more action on your nut hands since you are entering more pots/seeing more showdowns, etc.

Nut-peddling will surely reduce your variance, but being able to play in a higher buyin game (because of the reduced variance, and hence relaxed BR requirements) will not make up the lost ground to the more aggressive playing style. Also, once your BR is enough to handle variance at the $2k level, there is no logical reason to just nut peddle.

Actually, there's one exception to that rule: if you are *so* prone to tilt that you will play badly after just one bad beat, then you should probably nut-peddle to reduce the chances of tilt from occurring. But if that's the case, you're probably just not cut out for poker in general.

Nut-peddling will surely reduce your variance, but being able to play in a higher buyin game (because of the reduced variance, and hence relaxed BR requirements) will not make up the lost ground to the more aggressive playing style.


This is dead wrong.


Also, once your BR is enough to handle variance at the $2k level, there is no logical reason to just nut peddle.


This isn't.

good luck.

Perhaps I am wrong--I sort of tossed this comment out based strictly on belief. But there is a way to analyze it mathematically. Suppose we take two playing styles, one the tight nut peddler (TNP) and the other a relative loose-aggro w/ discretion (LAG).

I suppose the level you are "allowed" to play with a given bankroll should be inversely proportional to the standard deviation of your win rate. That is, if you have $1000 and feel safe playing the $50 level with a std dev of $50/100 hands, then if you could tighten up and find a playing style that yields a std dev of $25/100 hands, then you could reasonably double the stakes you play for and still feel safe playing (at the $100 level now).

Then, we just need to measure the winrates accomplished by each style--it sounds like we're in agreement that the winrates follow the rule LAG > TNP at a given level; however, we're also saying that TNP can play at a higher level than LAG given the reduced variance.

So, we just need to datamine typical winrates (BB/100) and levels of variance (standard dev in BB/100) for TNP and a typical winrate for LAG, and then do the quick math.

A TNP from my database that I have several thousand hands for is Rainaruby. Rainaruby is a good winning player, with VPIP 12 and PFR 2. Over 22k hands, I have this player winning at a rate of around 3 BB/100. His std dev is around 35 BB/100. Take a decent LAG (myself, VPIP/PFR = 35/15), the winrate is around 9 BB/100 over 150k hands and stdev around 65 BB/100. Using these numbers, we could argue that Rainaruby could play twice as high as me, given equal bankrolls. However, his winrate is not double mine; therefore, it stands to reason that he'd be better off playing lower, adjusting his style to more LAGgy, and would make more money.

Of course, his winrate may well be higher in reality than I've measured over those 22k hands. A 95% confidence interval for him would be [-2BB/100, 8 BB/100], which we calculate by taking two standard errors in either direction from the mean, where the std error is calculated by stdev / sqrt(220). (22000 hands is 220 samples of 100 hands, which is the unit of measurement of winrate.)

So, it's definitely possible--not even that unlikely--that Rainaruby's true winrate exceeds the ~4.5 BB/100 he'd need to make your claim true. But it's equally likely that his true winrate is less than 1.5 BB/100, making my claim even more true than it appears to be given the mean data.

There are a lot of other problems with this analysis... choosing two single players like this is very biased, but characterizing a style of play is tough to do also. I doubt Rainaruby has mastered the nut-peddler style optimally, but then I know for a fact I have not mastered the LAG style either.

In sum, I think it's an open question. It's not as clear cut as I made it sound initially, and it's definitely not as clear cut as you (Smasharoo) claim. But I think this little bit of analysis shows my intuition is not as far off as you claim.

In sum, I think it's an open question. It's not as clear cut as I made it sound initially, and it's definitely not as clear cut as you (Smasharoo) claim. But I think this little bit of analysis shows my intuition is not as far off as you claim


Also dead wrong. If points towards making a convincing argument were awarded for verbosity, though, you'd be in good shape.

While that's sometimes the case when presenting to a large uneducated mass of people, it just represents insecurity when presenting to the eudcated.

good luck.

What specifically about the argument do you find dead wrong?

Personally I find mathematically-rooted arguments to be a sign of confidence; on the other hand, vague insinuations and ridiculous claims are indications of insecurity.

Personally I find mathematically-rooted arguments to be a sign of confidence; on the other hand, vague insinuations and ridiculous claims are indications of insecurity.


Couldn't agree more.

Let me know when you feel like posting one based on mathematics.

Smash, you're a genuine fag. When you feel like having an honest argument, let me know. Until then, I'll be spending the 60k I won off you last month.

Good luck!

Smash, you're a genuine censored. When you feel like having an honest argument, let me know. Until then, I'll be spending the 60k I won off you last month.


Is this allways how you deal with being proven wrong?

Kind of reeks of insecuriy, don't you think?

Are you one of those people who can't admit to making mistakes or something?

Anyway, I've pretty much gone from having fun sparring with your posting wise to just feeling kind of guilty about it and pitying you.

Hire a better writer or something. No one wants to see a guy with a sledgehammer fighting a qudrapalegic midget. Well, I mean, I do, but it would be a lot more intresting for everyone else if youweren't so fucking boring.

We can skip you being rubber and me glue at least, right?

Right?

good luck.

I have to hand it to you, this made me laugh--I like sarcastic humor too.

However, all joking aside... reading an attempt on your part to offer a single shred of intelligent couterpoint to any of my arguments would probably be equally entertaining as drunk-posting in this forum.

However, all joking aside... reading an attempt on your part to offer a single shred of intelligent couterpoint to any of my arguments would probably be equally entertaining as drunk-posting in this forum


Ok, joking aside, your arguments is purely annecdotal and utterly useless.

As an amusing aside, Rainbury was in the 2k game last night playing dead opposite of your description of him over a couple of hundred hands which I thought was pretty funny as I've previously found him pretty predictable too.

Anyway, the contention of your argument is that playing more agressively in bad games yeilds a higher winrate than exploiting massive edges. I haven't found this to be the case..

It's close, of course, and honestly I don't think either of us have a statistically signifigant sample size of these games and various players to really come to scientific conclusion.

Let me say this though. Nutpeadling sure is a lot EASIER and vastly less varaince. If playing more agressively in bad games (by which of course I mean very good games full of bad players) yeilds a higher winrate than nut peadling (and I don't think it does) it's marginally higher at the cost of hugely increased variance. Not unlike defending a blind in LHE with 2Jo. Sure, it might be marginally +EV but it's so much harder it's just not worth the effort.

good luck.

Ok, joking aside, your arguments is purely annecdotal and utterly useless.

There are drastic weaknesses in that anecdotal analysis I ran, but the thinking (method) behind it is correct. I just wanted to show that the matter was not black and white.

It's close, of course, and honestly I don't think either of us have a statistically signifigant sample size of these games and various players to really come to scientific conclusion.

Agree. My goal was only to have useful discussion, not to discover the absolute truth.

Let me say this though. Nutpeadling sure is a lot EASIER and vastly less varaince. If playing more agressively in bad games (by which of course I mean very good games full of bad players) yeilds a higher winrate than nut peadling (and I don't think it does) it's marginally higher at the cost of hugely increased variance. Not unlike defending a blind in LHE with 2Jo. Sure, it might be marginally +EV but it's so much harder it's just not worth the effort.

I'm not so sure the nut-peddling is as easy for everyone as it is for you. For example, if a player has a natural disposition to play relatively aggressively, then he has to re-train himself to dump nut lows and flopped straights for fear of being quartered/freerolled. If that's the case, these players may be better off going with a strategy that feels more natural, even if it does have higher variance.

This is how I ended up playing PLO8. I had trouble winning significantly at limit HE, NLHE, PLHE, and limit O8. When I found PLO8, it became evident that my natural action-junkie tendencies and aggression "fit" the game as it's played online very, very well. An aggressive approach definitely isnt easy for everyone to adopt, but it is easiest for some to adopt. So what I'm getting at is that I think it's more valuable to everyone involved to take a less dogmatic stance on what playing style people should use.

FInally, I disagee with the idea that a style with +EV in exchange for higher variance isn't "worth the trouble". Making more money over time is definitely worth the trouble IMO.


Thanks for some interesting thoughts, though. (Finally.)

Looks like some good articles. Thanks a ton.

Didn't know you and Smash were still at it. Nice!

Is the debate here really whether it is better to be LAG at some undefined lower level than a NP at some undefined higer level????

This is SO vague and SO dependent on the table composition-- that you can't possibly be serious.

Clearly the real debate here is straight-up NP vs LAG, and it is fairly pointless, because we all know players who are very succesful with both styles, and players who are tragically bad with both as well.

The plain truth of this game is spoken by Jackingoff in his first post



I think style is FAR less important in this game than SKILL, be it LAG or NP, and exploiting FISH is far more important. Skill = Skill, and Style = Variance.

This is simply not true. Many instances stand out where a LAG style yields a higher win rate, better bottom line mean result, higher placing in a tournament, etc. than a NP style. And vice versa. It's foolish to declare that style impacts variance only.

Both styles are effective depending on circumstances. My point was greater skill against lesser opponents is a greater determining factor than Style. And as you have frequently pointed out, playing within your comfort level is HUGELY important. You will find that most great players can and do play with a full spectrum of styles. They are NP's at times and LAGS at other times depending on a whole host of factors.

You will also find that the general styles of some of the Poker greats also varies widely, from the Hellmuths to Hansons, Deebs to Negreanus, Harringtons to Brunsons. Which are the best 3 of these 6 players? What styles do you associate with them?

If Rainaruby makes $100k a year and Ribbo makes $75k, which style is better for Party poker?

I think you are really fooling yourself on the merits of respective styles. My goal is to be a SLAG when the cards are hot or the opponents are weak, and a NP when the cards are cold and the opponents are tough and I am playing at the highest end of my limits. I have enough skill to play SLAG up to a certain level and I think it would be foolish for me to try to play this way beyond where I am comfortable. And if I have to nut-peddle at a level for awhile to get comfortable there, that works too.