A Guide To Playing Shorthanded Limit Omaha/8
This text has been prepared by The Eureka Kid, on behalf of TheOmahaSplit.com
I define a bankroll as money that you are willing to lose playing poker. If you aren't willing to lose money at poker then you shouldn't be putting it at risk by playing. One of the most common questions in cash game poker is what limits should I be playing at given that my bankroll is $xx amount of dollars. I have attempted to answer that question below, there are no hard and fast answers here. Personally, I have never paid any attention to bankroll requirement size and always just paid attention to what games to I play best in and feel comfortable with the swings in. Having said that, I have based the following advice on the level of variance you will experience playing Omaha/8 and hence what it would be reasonable to expect you never to go completely broke playing. Obviously, if you have a few losing sessions and your bankroll shrinks then you need to adjust the game size you are playing in, take your ego out of it and just follow the guidelines, you are only going to end up with a whole lot of self-loathing if you keep playing through it and go bust.
Things To Consider
Know More About Your Opponents
You are going to be involved in more pots with the same players than you are at full ring tabls. More pots will be picked up without showdown than before as well. Knowing your opponents tendencies insures that you are going to have a good idea where you are at in the hand and play accordingly. It is also going to give you the luxury of idenitifying the weak/tight players to push off their hands and win pots without showdown.
The Nuts Not Needed
Obviously with less players at the table you are going to need to showdown the nuts less often to win. You still play only relatively strong hands to showdown though as players still get four cards each which means they will often connect with the board.i
Loosen Up A Bit
If you play a winning tight/aggressive strategy at full ring tables, it probably isn't going to do the job in a shorthanded game. You need to broaden your starting hand range and be willing to raise up hands you wouldn't normally. If youm don't want to play in a looser more gambling fashion then don't play shorthanded LO8. A rule of thumb often touted for transitioning into shorthanded games is to adjsut your full ring starting hand requrements so that there is no early positions and all hands start from middle position, this is sound advice but will only get you so far. So what hands should you be expanding you game with? Well you should add A4 combinations to your list, KK & QQ combinations become more readily playable especially when they are teamed with any low cards and usually trashy baby card hands like 234 and 245 combinations are good to get involved with.
Fasten Your Seatbelt
Prepare yourself mentally for the swings, they are going to be much more dramatic than at full ring tables. Prepare yourself not to tilt, but also make sure you have considered that the bankroll requirements for shorthanded LO8 games are higher due to the increased variance.i
First-In Raise
In full ring games you can get away with open limping into pots, but in shorthanded games you need to be more aggressive and apply pressure to your opponents. By always raising when you are first into a pot you are taking the lead in the action and if you don't pick up the pot pre-flop you have the lead going into the flop and will often pick it up there. Always raising also makes you harder to read, if you always raise first in nobody will be able to pick the times you have AA23 double suited compared to A234 comapred to QQA5.
Heads-Up Pots
When you get involved in an agressive heads-up situation you really want to be drawing with a possibility to scoop. A lot of players make the error of chasing down one way draws or calling down with a one way hand. You need to be in with a chance to win the whole pot to make a serious profit from playing heads-up pots.i
Hand Values
I thought that I would write a little section on how the value of hands changes when it comes to shorthanded LO8. It is probably the most important concept to playing shorthanded and one that most players struggle with. Firstly, the less hands out there the more closesly hands run in value. What does that mean? Well no hand is a big favourite over another, so you are often playing a small edge when you have the lead and not that far behind when you have the second best hand. The classic example is small blind v.s big blind confrontation, when the small blind raises your big blind you should call around 60% of the time and with hands that are likely to run close in value to the small blinds holdings.
Secondly, hands with big pairs and a couple of low cards in them become more valuable pre-flop and hands that are very strong hands in full ring games such as A2s are less strong. You hit flops less with your A2s and when you do hit there isn't much in the pot or many players around to build a pot. In all, weaker hands become stronger shorthanded and stronger hands become weaker, it seems counter intuitive, but if you run the numbers you will see.
Hands that have a high focus increase in value because the likelyhood of someone have the nut low at the river are diminished and therefore you can push players off their lows and scoop with the high. Additionally, Trouble hands such as non-nut flushes, non-nut straights and small full houses become stronger when played shorthanded.
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