Smashing the 8-game

It's been a while since my last post (didn't proofread this one so sorry about the typos). I've been on sort of an inpromptu vacation. Partly because I've been doing lots of fun stuff, but also because I was credited 100,000 VPPs for "winning" my WSOP main event seat through pokerstars and that counted towards the monthly 50,000 I need to keep my supernova elite status. This has been the first time in a year and half that I haven't been thinking about how many points I need to earn so I've been taking advantage.

Sorry that I left you hanging on the Omaha hand I mentioned in my last post. Thanks to those of you who posted comments. I have especially been keeping in mind the part of the comment left by the anonymous poster who said "no one ever folds in PLO." I repeat that in my head when I want to three barrel bluff like I'm used to doing in other games and instead look for situations where I can make value bets instead.

I'll try to briefly wrap up discussion on that hand before moving on (you might need to look back at the last post for the details of the hand - I know I did).

My friend Bombay Jack responded via phone call not e-mail so I'll have to paraphrase his comments. First of all he said he like reraising preflop, but preferred $90-$100 instead of $130. A double suited connected hand like the one I had is a premium hand and even though it's a "drawing" hand if you do the math it's a favorite over most of the hands in my opponents' range.

He also said that my opponents preflop calls were very thin at best, but once the flop came out the money was bound to go all in. After following Jack's recommendation that I use on odds calculator (like the one on cardplayer.com) to see where I stood in the hand at various points I saw that we were about 50/50 on the flop. Since we were both getting about 2 to 1 on our money given the dollars already in the pot we both did the right thing on the flop.

The good news is I have played a few thousand hands of 8-game since my last post and I have been totally killing my opponents. I've won $3,500 in the past two days playing a mix of $10/$20 and $20/$40 over the span of 1,000 hands and I had similar results over the preceding 1,000 hands which was a little more spread out.

Amazingly most of my profits seem to have come in the PLO! Whatever discomfort I have playing that game is nothing compared to the complete moronitude (who cares if it's not a real word - you know what I mean!) that my opponents have displayed at times.

Here is an example! Yesterday I was playing $20/$40 four handed and go dealt AA94 with the A4 of hearts. With about $1,300 in my stack I was first to act and made it $35 to go. The player to my left raised the pot and made it $120 to go. Since I had AA in my hand, which (with a few very specific exceptions) is a favorite over any hand the doesn't contain AA, I reraised the pot making it $370 to go.

My opponent instantly called and the flop came down 2 3 J with two clubs. All I had was my pair of aces which isn't exactly the nuts in PLO, but there wasn't much going on on that flop and I decided to go for it. I bet the pot which was about $750 and my opponent put in his whole stack which was about $650. ACK!

Now there was $2,000 in the pot and unlike a tournament where the cards get turned over when someone is all in I had no idea what my opponent had while I watched the turn and river come out. I was in a mild state of shock and since there wasn't much that could improve my hand and I couldn't compute all of the ways I could lose this hand I had no idea what I wanted to come on the turn or the river.

After the longest 2 seconds I can remember, the turn and river were out - the 6 and 8 of diamonds - which put three diamonds on board. In the second it took for my opponents hand to turn over I know I thought "If this guy has two diamonds in his hand I am going to fucking freak out!"

Guess what he had? T 9 7 5 with the T7 of clubs! WHAT! This hand is probably in the bottom 15% of PLO hands if not worse. Remember, he reraised me preflop, and then called a pot sized 4 bet! That is pure madness. I hope he thought "how the hell did I just blow off a grand with T 9 7 5?" when the hand was over.

The only downside with the 8-game mix is there is usually only one or two games going at $10/$20 and the $20/$40 is only going about half the time (amazingly the $400/$800 is almost always going sometimes with 3 games), but given my results I think I have to make it a priority.

In other good news pokerstars is running what they are calling "extreme" satellites to the WCOOP. Between August 4th and 16th they are running 28 satellites with buy ins ranging from $7.50 to $215 and are adding a total of $1,000,000 (that's not a typo) combined to the prize pools of these satellites. For example the first one is a $7.50 satellite that gives away $109 seats and pokerstars is adding 100 seats (or $10,900) to the normal prize pool. More significantly there are two where they are adding 50 $1,050 seats to $215 buy in satellites and one where they are adding an astounding 50 $5,200 main event seats (or $260,000) to the normal pool!
Here is a link to the schedule if you want to check out the specifics.

This is all going down in parallel to the FTOPS so since I expect to be working all of those days anyway, I plan on playing every single one of the 28 tournaments. In addition to the added value the fields are going to be packed with players of all skill levels (most of whom will be weak) taking advantage of the overlay. On top of that it means more weak players playing in the actuall WCOOP tournaments. I'm getting fired up!