Thanks so much to everyone who contributed to the Bay Area Urban Debate League during our year-end fundraising campaign! I’ll announce prize winners shortly, but want to be sure I’ve got a complete list of contributors first, as some people chose to mail checks. So I’m sorting out the list with BAUDL and will let you know who won ASAP.
In the meantime, please enjoy the next PLO8 strategy video from Nate and myself:
As someone who has played a ton of PLO8 and has made a decent part of a living playing this game the last few years, I’d like to say a few things about this video and the first ( I haven’t watched the second yet).
As far as the basics go, this video will help all players. Even though this game has become more popular over the last few years, so many people lack basic fundamentals in this game, even in an event like this or in the WSOP PLO8 events. In that regard, it will help many people and that makes this series very useful.
When you try to do things that are out of the norm, e.g. the A722 hand, your justifications for the plays seem very weak, especially in that instance. Your plays in these situations work well against weaker players who aren’t thinking but against people with experience in the game (it doesn’t seem like Villian did, to be fair, but you didn’t really make that clear), that hand in particular is a pretty big disaster being that deep. The question that I have for you in that hand is if you get shoved on on the river, would you call it off? The problem with playing as you did, against an experienced player, they are going to flat you on the turn with almost their entire range (including AAxx, A9xx, possible A42x if the x doesn’t make two pair) which will certainly shove on your river bet. If the player is any good, they will also do with A42x and possinly a hand like A45x for value because you always have a low hand as played. A lot of the time you may have the nut low there but you almost never have a high hand with the river being a 9. Unless you had miracled a 9 on the end, which is possible, you can get called really thin in the spot if the player is thinking at all and you’re virtually at the bottom of your range in this spot except for having 2 2’s in your hand. I applaud you thinking out of the box here but against somebody competent, I find it hard to believe that it’s a +ev play in the long run. I feel like you will profit the majority of the time but not enough to compensate for the times where you lose a massive pot with the 2k you risked and, like I said, against a thinking player, potentially 4609 if you plan on calling a river shove.
In the hand where you have AQ52 on the 24568ddd board with the nut flush blocker, it was a fold that you made it which was correct but it was extremely trivial. Your opponent has A3 there almost every single time with you having the nut flush blocker. Just thought that would have been something worth mentioning as having the Ad in your hand takes out almost his entire value range besides A3. The other trivial mistakes you recognized in talking through the action so no worries there.
Nate also said something wrong in the K985 blind defend hand on the 76224 board. He said that “you get the pot more often than you expect in that spot” and mentions QQ32 as a hand that fits that criteria. QQ32 would get half of the pot there as a live 3 beats your low (76432 vs 86542). It was mentioned in passing but I thought it was a big mistake to make for a beginner’s video where people are learning the game. It was a rare instance where one live card beat a two live card low hand and he seemingly mentioned the hand in passing but when it was said, it made me shake my head a bit. I could see someone who is trying to learn the game watch this and be confused as to how that would be the case, or worse, just expecting it and making a big mistake when he first plays the game.
I want to be clear that I think the first two videos (at least, I assume 3 will be as well when I watch it tomorrow) are very good for people trying to learn the basics of PLO8. Aggression is a major factor and creating proper ranges to balance your aggression and catching your opponent’s aggression are key. You don’t claim to be an expert at the game and that’s fine; some of your leaks were pretty clear to you just watching it on the replay and others you may not have noticed yet. I just wanted to point out there are some little nuances that seem to be going past you at this point.
I appreciate everything that you guys do; this website has helped me plenty in my NLH game and your podcasts are outstanding. I lurk more than I’ve posted but keep up the great work. Cheers.