I play in a regular home game, set up with rapidly escalating blinds and relatively short stacks to start. Blinds are 20 mins (usually about 4 hands) and levels start at 25/50, with 2000. Unlimited rebuys for the first 90 minutes.

I tend to do well at this game, mostly because few others have much of an idea how to play. There are a few legitimate calling stations, but most of the table is more guilty of overvaluing their hands. They bet with draws (a four flush on the turn is guaranteed to push, even as a call), they bet with middle pair, and of course they bet on their bluffs (which most love to do). Recently, we are starting to see some bets that are bigger than the minimum pre-flop and on the flop, but that is rare. More often than not it is all but 2-3 players to every flop, and most of them make it to showdown.

If I get cards (esp at the begining, during the rebuy period), I'm usually in decent shape to take the table down. What I'm looking for are tips on how to win when I'm not getting cards. I have little FE on a push pre-flop because if the rebuy period is still on, they can rebuy, and if it isn't, the push is too small if I haven't been getting cards.

I'm open to suggestions.

TIA

My first thought is to show down the nuts for a couple of weeks. Even if you're not called, you should show people that you always have the nuts. Make some big bets when you have the nuts, and make it known that you had the nuts after they fold. It should give you some equity in future weeks to loosen up your play and make a few bluffs. I play in a regular home game here in Tallahassee. There is one older guy who always has the nuts when he raises. It's an Omaha H/L8 game. I've been talking to him in the past few weeks, and suggested that he start incorporating the occasional bluff into his game. Kind of time it, like every 20-30 hands or so. It's worked very well for him. He's now taking down an additional 5 or 6 hands a night, based on his reputation. It's kind of the "Action Dan" image you are looking for.

I also think you can bluff a few times and leave yourself room to get out of it. For example, let's say you bet 400 into a 10 high flop. You get one loose caller. Then a Jack falls on the turn. At this point you have nothing. You can make a small bet here (looking for a raise), or just check. If your opponent bets or raises, you can make a big deal about how that Jack killed you. I'm not the most vocal player at the table, but I will talk it up if I think I can use it to my advantage.

That's almost certainly bad advice unless it's a tight-aggressive game (rather rare for Omaha H/L). They are two very different games and bluffing is generally a bad idea if the opponents are weak (even moreso in weak omaha h/l than in weak hold'em).

Thanks for the suggestion. I don't show poor hands often at this table, so I don't know if your suggestion would help. The game is set up so that luck plays a major part (blinds raise quickly and starting stacks are low) and they like it that way; they're there to gamble it up. If I get cards, I can beat this table. I may be asking the impossible, but I am looking for ways to beat the game when I'm not getting cards.

Doyle mentions in SS that to beat bad players, you have to show them a hand. I'm looking for another way to beat bad players...

Like you've said, anything creative you do will go unnoticed by feebs, and therefore there's not much you can do except value bet against them. The best thing you can do is be ultra-conservative with your chips so you can maximize value when you do make a strong hand, and make sure your spec hands are played multi-way so you get paid off big if you connect with the flop. Not much you can do with a crappy structure.

These are essentially the same conclusions that I have come to. I've tried ultra-conservative, and I end up shortstacked too quickly if I never get cards. Speculative hands are always played multi-way, even premium hands usually are. I recently checkraised the hell out of a flop and got 6 callers.

Value bets are gold here. Position is gold. But nothing is better than having a hand, because you NEED to have a good one to win this crapshoot.

Have you read Harrington Volume 2?

Yeah, but I want to re-read it. My online tournament performance improved after reading it but my home game performance has tanked. I like to think that it is because of a combination of the table improving a bit (we actually see pre-flop raises without complaints from half the table now) and my cards going cold, but I need to re-evaluate. Hence the post...

Ok, so this is a game where not only is the structure really fast, you start with only 40 times the big blind, so everyone starts off relatively shortstacked. Postflop can't get too complex, and a raise preflop followed by a bet on the flop will likely commit you, especially given the number of callers you're saying that you're getting.

So, given this, I think there are 2 aspects of tournament play that you highlight in this game:

1) Take a chance and push anytime you think you might be in a coinflip situation
2) If you raised preflop and miss, liberal use of the stop-n-go play when against only 1 or 2 opponents who are capable of folding unpaired big cards or mid-pockets vs. an unfavorable flop.

You do #1 to try and build a stack early because you're shortstacked relative to the structure and because of the rapidly escalating blinds. You can't really afford to wait for "better spots".

You do #2 to try and pick up chips in situations where you had a nice preflop hand but have missed. Plus, while your opponents might be willing to call you down with an overvalued hand if you bet the flop, turn and river, they might be less willing to do so if you push and put their entire tournament life in danger. Find out if this is the case.

The commonality between these two

1) You typically don't bother too much with play beyond the flop until you've built up your stack a bit.

2) you are taking bigger risks than usual to pick up chunks of chips when you can. Now, getting more chips here is the goal, and there's an obvious reason for this that we don't need to get into. But the other reason is that if you think you are a better player, then you need a deeper stack to actually exert the skill advantage that you have. Also, since your skill edge is far more whittled down from the very beginning due to chipstacks and structure, you don't really care as much about risking your tourney life early and forfeiting some kind of edge that you could have exerted later - because there isn't one.

This means that while you do wait for cards to push your edge with, they don't necessarily need to be as good as you maybe think.

Once you double up or more, you can switch gears and play a more skilled game and begin to exert your edge.

You'll probably bust out early a lot, but this effectively is no different from busting out in the middle or on the bubble, which I suspect is happening to you often. But the times you don't, you'll be golden.

Just think about how your strategy changes when you are a bit shortstacked and in the middle to late stages of a normal tourney. Because that state of affairs is what this home game seems to actually start out with.