When Should I Suspect I Am Getting Quartered?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

This is a typical situation I find myself in.

I check in the big blind with A389. Bad player limped in UTG with a bad hand containing 89 and a bad low. Button has a rainbow hand cointaining A2, no low backup, and lousy high prospects. maybe a couple other limpers who fold on the flop.

Flop is 567 rainbow. If the flop is capped, when should I consider slowing down? Is this just one of those situations where I get quartered in a huge pot if I know UTG will raise and reraise on multiple streets with just a bare nut low or a non-nut straight and I need to get as much money into the pot as possible because of the times when my opponent will not have the nut high and when a 2 will counterfeit the low hand who is calling all raises?

[Noor]

Can you elaberate a bit more, that is to say: who bet on the flop who raise, we need more information.
From your post I assume that you checked somebody bets and got raised and reraised. If that is the situation then you can safely assume that your low is no good and somebody else have 89. so you are getting quartered.
Having said that I've seen people raising and reraising with the nut low only especially at low limits.
I would check and call and see what the turn brings and re-evaluate as straights are very weak holdings at this game.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

It is more of a generalized situation, but I think it usually involves me betting out and the high capping the flop with the low just calling, although sometimes I throw in a checkraise. Then bet-raise-reraise before the other high slowed down and just called on the turn after a non-scary card.

More or less, I am trying to figure out if I should slow down at all if the raiser would bet the same way with just the nut low or a non-nut straight or possibly even a set or if the obvious low might be calling with a non-nut low. I play at low enough limits where I think I sometimes miss value bets by not raising or three-betting with a non-nut high at times.

How badly do my opponents have to play to justify not slowing down in this sort of spot? Because I've run into some pretty bad opponents.

[TGoldman]

I've read and re-read your post and I still don't understand what you're asking, so I'll just ramble and hope that it somewhere answers your questions...

I check in the big blind with A389. Bad player limped in UTG with a bad hand containing 89 and a bad low. Button has a rainbow hand cointaining A2, no low backup, and lousy high prospects. maybe a couple other limpers who fold on the flop. Flop is 567 rainbow. If the flop is capped, when should I consider slowing down?

In the above example, you're going to get quartered against three opponents (Unless a lovely deuce comes on the turn or river). So you should slow down because it costs you money when you're quartered in a three-way pot. In real life you don't know what your opponents are holding. So in the above example, I would happily cap the betting on all streets unless the board paired on the turn or river. My concern here wouldn't be so much that I would get quartered on the high side, but that someone else has the nut-low and the other person is holding top set. If you get quartered on the high side, so be it you'll lose a few big bets. Losing to a full-house costs you everthing. Overall though you're in a great spot here, and I think there's just too many good things that can happen while we're holding the nut high and second nut low not to ram and jam the pot.

More commonly, you'll find yourself in the situation where you have the nut low with no high against opponents who you fear may also have the nut low. This scenerio is common so it's worth it for you to spend some time thinking about different scenerios. I think a lot of it depends upon how many opponents you're up against:

1) Heads-up. Without any shot at the high, I usually want to get to a showdown as cheaply as possible. Generally it's best to check-call the entire way. HOWEVER, it's not so simple if you think you might have some folding equity here. If your opponent has no low hand, you are effectively drawing dead against each other. Neither one can win the other's side of the pot so it's now a game of chicken. Except the person with the high hand does not usually have the luxory of knowing that he has the nut high. So it may sometimes be worthwhile to play your nut-low aggressively here to see if you can intimidate your opponent to fold his weaker high hands when a scare card comes on the turn or river.

2) 3-handed. You probably want to just check and call bets here. If you raise, a strong high hand will re-raise to punish the lows. Sometimes this will gain you money when your opponent has the 2nd or 3rd nut low. Sometimes it will cost you money when you're quartered. It's generally safest just to call bets here if you have no chance at the high.

3) Multiway. You can be a little bit more creative here. You can often raise for value with a naked nut-low against a field of callers. You may get quartered, but there's enough callers in there to add to the pot that it's not going to hurt much if at all.

Overall, there's no reason to be too fearful of getting quartered. I think Steve Badger dispells "quarterphobia" on his website quite well:

In loose games you should hardly ever think about being quartered (when you have the same low hand as another player). It's almost never very costly to be quartered in limit Omaha. In loose games, one of the principal plays you should always have on your mind is how you can get three-quarters of a pot with hands like nut low and one pair. Too many weaker players obsessively fixate on being quartered with this sort of hand instead of focusing on getting three-quarters of the pot occasionally. The quickest way to get over a pathological fear of being quartered is to just do the math on various situations where you get one-quarter. It's hardly ever much of a loss. Now compare that to similar hands where you manage to get three-quarters of different size pots. You'll quickly see that many tiny losses getting quartered are more than compensated for by a few occasions where you can snatch three-quarters... Playing $10/20, if betting is capped on all streets three ways, a player will put $240 into a pot (playing with a bet and three raises). This will make a total pot of $720. One quarter of that is $180. So, the absolute worst case when getting quartered is to lose three big bets. Of course, more often the betting will not be capped on every single street, and there will be dead money in the pot from other players or from the blinds. You should be aware of situations where you are likely to get quartered, and bet accordingly, but the obsession most players have with being quartered is a very big hole in their game.

The most fun comes when you have the nut-low and a weak/medium high hand. Then you can get a lot more frisky, but that's for another time. I hope somewhere in my ramblings I helped.

[PokerProdigy]

I probably wouldn't slow down with the nut high until the turn if I'm still catching alot of heat from the others. But at least here you may already have the high locked up, and maybe you're free rolling for the whole pot (if that two comes). By default I would come out betting the turn, and then I'd slow down if it was raised or re-raised, but if you understand your opponents it would make the situation much different and in some cases you could cap the turn and river.