Episode 37: The PLO8 Special

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In honor of Andrew’s deep run in the $1500 WSOP PLO8 episode, this show is dedicated to that beautiful game. Nate and Andrew discuss general strategy for the game, tournament-specific adaptations, and a number of hands from Andrew’s tournament.

Since recording this episode, we’ve released details for a meetup in Las Vegas this Saturday, 10AM – Noon at the Rio Convention Center Starbucks.

Timestamps

0:30 Hello and welcome; main event plans; playing at Venetian
7:00 General PLO8 tournament strategy
23:29 WSOP hands

Strategy

Blinds 300/600. Hero raises AKK3ss to 1600 in EP, player on immediate left calls, rest fold. Effective stacks 18K. Flop 866 with a backdoor nut flush draw for Hero.  Hero bets 2500, Villain raises pot.

Blinds 800/1600. Doc Sands raises to 3200 from CO, Hero calls As8c3d2c on BB. Villain has 32K behind, Hero has 50K. We’re in the (shallow) money. Flop Q74ss. Hero check-folds.

Blinds 1K/2K. Hero opens AJJ8 with nut clubs to 4K in CO, button calls, BB calls. Flop KK7cc, BB checks, Hero bets 7000, BTN raises to 15,500, BB folds. Hero started hand with 60K, Villain covers.

Blinds 1200/2400. Hero raises A269 in MP, called by CO. Flop T53r, Hero bet 7500, he pots it and has 41K total, Hero covers but not by much.

Blinds 3K/6K. Tight-passive SB opens to 18K, Hero call 2567ds. Flop KQJ with a flush draw for Hero. Check it down 3 on turn and J on river (Hero didn’t get there).

11 thoughts on “Episode 37: The PLO8 Special”

  1. The PLO8 was a great change of pace. Congrats on the deep run.

    A PLO high episode would be great.

    • Glad you liked this episode! We have plans to do more non-NLHE content. This will be easier after I go to Vegas, as I’ll probably jump in a mixed game or two while I’m out there.

      FWIW, PLO is probably somewhat less likely than other games to get a lot of coverage from us: neither of us has played a lot of it (in the last 4 years) and there’s lots of good PLO content elsewhere on the Internet.

      • I dont quite agree with you Nate. There is not enough PLO information out there. At least not with the Nate/Andrew precision and flair. I have joined TPE and there is virtually no one who plays PLO there. One simple theoretical video but nothing else. Also a member of PXF and their PLO stuff is waning to say the least.

        Big cash games of PLO at the Rio and Euros are taking to it like the consumption of red wine. We will be left behind. Playing it at the Caesers found many who could not understand the pot limit betting structure and made many strategical mistakes. A beginner like me chopped the final table.

        How bout a review of Jeff Hwangs book on PLO or Tri Nguyens Transition from NLHE to PLO book?

  2. great episode guys. couldn’t have come at a better time as i have been focusing on plo8 the last few months and there really isn’t much in the way of tournament plo8 discussion out there (at least that moves beyond basic o8 fundamentals). I would eagerly hope for more plo8 in the future, as well as other non-nlhe if the opportunity arises.

    great run in the wsop!

  3. There was very little narrative in your analysis if I compare to your NL holdem analysis.
    It looks that you were unable to construct exploitable models of your opponents(dissection of ranges,tendencies,etc).
    There was short story with Doc Sands.
    If you are unable to do that how you can pull the trigger?
    Your folds I perceive as analitycal and trivial decisions.The status-quo of what you can do.
    Your strategy was determined by your hand,board,BB stacks.
    I do not blame you I believe this is typical situation in PLO8 where your opponents know what they are doing.
    I think full ring PLO8 is not game where imagination and narrative are extensively used.
    I liked the show.

    • Thanks, Andy. I’m sure you’re right about a lot of that. I was a lot more focused on getting my own fundamentals right than on exploiting mistakes I saw opponents making. That said, I did do some of that, and I described some of it for an upcoming Cardplayer article. The hands I chose to discuss on the show were ones where I felt like I didn’t know what to do or could have played them better. So the ones where I felt like I did manage to do something exploitive and it worked, those didn’t necessarily fit the bill.

  4. I’ve always enjoyed your guests. Cannot think of any that I didn’t learn from. But I’d listen if you didn’t have any. The podcast works because you two have a great conversational dynamic. So this was another good episode even without any guest.

    The reversal in roles was interesting, and still made for good conversation.

    I cannot imagine a NLHE episode where you pick five hands in which Hero bet folds the flop. If so, it might last 10 minutes. But there was (or seemed to this novice) a lot to consider. I’ll have to listen again to understand a lot of this, but thanks for the change of pace and congratulations AB on a deep run.

  5. I really enjoyed the change of pace, although PLO8 mostly seemed like a game where you c/f…

    In general I’d be a fan of more non-NLHE content. I’m interested in trying to learn games other than NLHE, and yet never seem to do. Similar to Andrew’s comments, I’ve always played big bet games, and so i understand what’s going on – the pressure you can apply with your stack, playing speculative hands, the problems of ROI etc etc, but when i come to think about limit games I have no idea of the parameters – why does anyone ever fold anything? I guess perhaps there’s a bit of a tension between branching out into pastures new and keeping the high level of analysis – games which the listener base are less familiar with encourage more basic coverage than the podcast generally offers. Meh, maybe that’s not so much of a problem.

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