Big stakes 8 handed PLO (Cash Game) - reconstructed
Villain has $100 000
Hero has $100 000

Blinds 5, 10K

Folds to villain who raises. Hero calls with 8d 9c Kd Qs. Everyone else folds.

Heads up.

Flop comes Jd 10c 3d.

Villain pots, Hero re-pots, villain pushes, Hero calls.

Is hero crazy pushing with only a draw here?

Discuss.

Hmm, I didn't know you were from Nigeria and Nigeria has online poker.

What's the current exchange rate there? Last time I've heard with $3,000,000 Nigerian Naira you can buy a baby sheep.

As far as your hand goes, I will sell my farms , my camels, and even my underwears to put everything on this flop.

If I go broke with this hand, I will go home naked and rape my 72 virgins.

Hero does not automatically mean OP. This is from a big cash game, with real players, with real money.

Ok, I was just trying to flame ya a bit and had some fun. But anyway what kind of sick big stake game is that? Both only got 10BBs? And how could those pot-pot-pot happen?

Villain has $100 000
Hero has $100 000

Blinds 5, 10K

let the record show that i was sitting on a $25 buy-in PLO table today with a guy named rocketwad on fcp. so im pretty sure he wasn't involved in the hand.

in regards to the hand, make the math a little more realistic and i think you'll get better discussion.

so your the guy...lol

the problem is that in those big stakes games you usually arent provided the exact amounts of money involved. That cards are correct, the action on the flop is correct (all of it when in on the flop), the other details I tried to put in there to make it work out (the stack sizes and the blinds).

Its a hand that Sammy Farha claims to have played, as the hero, and says it is one of the biggest he has ever played, so I figured it must involved at least $200K (hence the $100K stack sizes).

Sammy claims that he knew his opponent had top set, and still opted to gamble something like $100K out of his pocket with only a draw, which is hard to fathom (the gamble part), but it is probably correct to have done so odds wise.

http://www.allinmag.com/article.php?article=248

That’s why I play so aggressively—to punish my opponent. Here’s a hand I played in a cash game about nine months ago with one of the best players in the world: We were playing Omaha and he flopped top set. The flop was J-10-x. I had 8-9-K-Q. Nearly every card from the seven to the ace would give me a straight and I had a diamond flush draw, so I raised him big on the flop. We put a lot of money into the pot. That was one of the biggest hands I’ve ever played. The reason I pressed it was that I knew he had top set, but there’s more cards to come for me to win. If I only called the guy, then if I made my hand on the turn he might lay it down. So instead I decided to gamble on the flop. I knew I had more outs than him to win the hand. I decided to gamble because I wanted to punish him. I didn’t want to just call and then on the turn have him lay his hand down. I had too much money already in there. So I decided, with the odds, to play it all the way on the flop. I won the hand. I actually hit it twice: on the turn and on the river.


Actually I was wrong. Hero's hand wasn't that much a favorite against the top set.

Even villain's two side cards are complete junk, it's just a coin flip if all $$$ goes in the pot on the flop. Yeah, the drawing hand was only a little favorite over the made hand.

pokenum -o 8d 9c kd qs - jh js 2c 7d -- jd tc 3d
Omaha Hi: 820 enumerated boards containing Tc Jd 3d
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
Qs 9c Kd 8d 474 57.80 346 42.20 0 0.00 0.578
Js 2c 7d Jh 346 42.20 474 57.80 0 0.00 0.422


Lucky SOB,

Sammy Farha was almost gone in the 2003 WOSP ME, he just got lucky moved in several times and miracles happened.

I am not against him though, just saying.

The contrast draw vs. made hand is not useful here. All that matters is which hand has the best chance of winning at showdown. If you have a drawing hand that is 55% to make the nuts by the river, you have the best hand, and you should get all the money in no question.

Calling is a mistake for 2 reasons. 1.If you make your hand on the turn, you might not get paid off. 2.If you miss on the turn, you can be bet out of the hand. (Not terribly relevant in PLO, where you'll usually have the odds to call, but it sometimes comes up in NL Holdem).

I'll take the odds and push.

We don't have the nut-flush draw to go with our huge straight draw, so give our opponent the set AND the nut flush draw, and see where we sit...still going to push?

We have position on villain. If we hit on the turn we will get paid off a lot of the time. But it depends a lot on who you are up against, rock, maniac, gambler,... . Since we have position, use it. If we are oop, easy push of course.

Yeah, this is obviously an easy push. I'm pretty sure the blinds are way off though. When the pros play PLO, they like to play really deep-stacked. I'd guess that the blinds would probably be something like 100/200 or even 50/100 if they had 100K each.