Tuesday night’s $200 O/8 event was the best I’ve done in this year’s FTOPS, which just means I got to play for five hours and leave empty-handed. The play was atrocious, but it’s tough to do much in O/8 if you aren’t hitting flops. Once we got shallow, the willingness of awful players to take flops for two bets with awful hands made stealing impossible. The only thing to do was hunker down and wait for good cards. I managed to stay afloat with a 1/4 to 1/2 average stack, just blinding down down down and then doubling back up. I attempted one bluff that I thought was pretty sweet and really should have worked:
Full Tilt Poker
Limit Omaha Hi/Lo Ring game
Limit: $60/$120
9 players
Converter
Pre-flop: (9 players) Foucault is SB with :ac :8d :3d :8h
3 folds, MP2 calls, 3 folds, Foucault calls, BB checks.
Flop: :2c :6c :jh (3SB, 3 players)
Foucault checks, BB bets, MP2 calls, Foucault calls.
Turn: :qs (3BB, 3 players)
Foucault checks, BB bets, MP2 calls, Foucault calls.
River: :qc (6BB, 3 players)
Foucault bets, BB calls, MP2 folds.
Results:
Final pot: 8BB
Foucault showed Ac 8d 3d 8h
Sometimes I lead out here with a pair and the nut low draw, but since I had the Ac, I decided I’d check-call the flop and then lead out at a low card or a club on the turn. That seemed like the best way to fold out some better high hands while keeping in worse lows.
Unfortunately, the club didn’t come until the river. However, I still felt it was a good spot to lead out. It’s possible the limper had a club draw, but he really shouldn’t be chasing a non-nut flush draw, and I thought it much more likely he had A3 or some similar busted low. The BB most likely had two pair that got counterfeited on the river. Unless he flopped a set, he’s not likely to have a boat, since the pair came running on the turn and river. It’s rare to go for a pure bluff in O/8 (as opposed to a ‘demi-bluff’ designed to knock someone off of half the pot when you have the other half locked up), especially into two people, but I felt this was a good spot, and it only needs to work one time in six.
The fact that the BB snap-called me with the worst possible flush suggests, however, that it might not work even that often.