Turns out today’s WCOOP was regular 7-Stud, not Hi/Lo, so I sat it out. But tomorrow is PLO8, which is a game I enjoy a lot, so I’m probably going to play. In anticipation, I played a few tables of 1/2 and 2/4 PLO8 and NLO8, just to practice and warm up a little. In big bet Omaha games, there are occasionally situations where it can be correct to fold the nuts because you strongly suspect that your opponent holds the nuts plus a redraw, thus giving him a significant freeroll against you. I’m not 100% sure this was a good fold, but here’s one I made tonight:
One guy, a pretty reasonable player, open limped in middle position, and I called $2 more from the SB with Ac3dKs6s. The flop came As Ad 3s, I potted it for $12, the BB folded, and then the limper re-potted for $48. Effective stacks at this point were $400, and I elected to fold. Against a worse player or someone on a short stack, I’d be more inclined to get in here, since they could be overplaying trips, but I think this guy shows up with A3 plus a low draw quite often.
Since my hand has very little hope of improving, I could well get 100BB’s in praying for a chop. For instance, if I’m up against A238, I’ve got barely 40% equity even though I currently have the nuts. Even if he doesn’t have the nuts, something like A45K is still a small favorite against me, and that’s really the best case scenario if my read is correct that this guy is not an idiot.
This is mostly something that comes up with deep stacks, so it may not be as much of an issue in tomorrow’s tournament, though with the WCOOP structure I guess stacks will be deep for a while.
Nice. At first I was thinking you’re crazy here for folding this….but you’re explanation makes a lot of sense. Easy to miscalculate when you’re looking to win half the pot at best.