O8 Tournament Bubble Hand - Analysis Wanted

[mshalen]

Listen to Buzz. He hit that one out of the park.

[CMHPokerMike]

Buzz (and everyone else),

Thanks for your comments. I appreciate the various analyses and will be re-reading them. The biggest thing I got from this was that I need to read more about what constitutes a good Omaha (or Omaha/8) starting hand. I thought I had most of the general principles down but the RESOUNDING consensus here is that I must not. ;-)

Out of curiosity (and changing the topic a bit), if this had been Omaha Hi-Only, how would you rate AJ99 with Ax suited as part of the hand? My (quite possibly mistaken) belief was that this was a solid Hi-Only starting hand (assuming you're going to be playing 1 or at most 2 opponents). There are straight possibilities, a flush possibilty, two high cards and a medium-high pair. If that's not enough then what are the attributes which are most advantageous to a high-only hand?

[mshalen]

In PLO a hand with AJ99 with the A suited is a hand you can see a flop with. But it is not a powerhouse of a hand. Yes you have the nut flush as a possibility and decent cards towards a full house but the staight possibilities are just OK. I would not raise pre flop with this hand, just take a flop and see what you get.

[sy_or_bust]

In PLO, you want a fairly deep stack to be limping hands like AJ99. In O/Hi, it would be also need good implied odds to be played. When you're shortstacked in a tournament play, I wouldn't put too much hope in this hand.

The problem is that 99 needs to flop a set and doesn't work very well with AJ. Much better are hands like AKQQ and KQJJ, which have triple connection and set possibilities.

[CMHPokerMike]

Thanks for the tips! Like I said, I'm still working on learning Omaha (trying to branch out more) so this is really helpful stuff!

[Ribbo]

You made one mistake and one mistake only, you didn't fold preflop. Until you can clean up that hole in your game, it is pointless going on about other ways of playing poker better. In short stack, high ante games, you need to realise starting hands is the single most important factor. AJ99 is trash in any hi or hi/lo game. Always make sure when you bust, that the hand you go out on is a good one, this isn't one of them.

[HoldemPokerPlyr]

[ QUOTE ]
$10+$1 Limit O8 tournament. Blinds are 1200/600, down to 29 people with several short stacks. 27 people get beer money.

I'm still struggling with Omaha so I want to get some feedback on this hand and my thoughts on where it went wrong.

Here are my thoughts:

1) I probably should've just folded to begin with. I had a good but not great high hand with no low potential.

[/ QUOTE ]

You should have folded this hand. It's OMAHA H/L, you want to scoop the whole pot, not just half. This hand was only going to get you half of the pot.

Also, you were short stacked, so you should have waited for a hand that had a H/L potential. Not a hand that only can qualify for high.
[ QUOTE ]


1a) I think this may have been a good hand for a blind steal attempt if there hadn't been the one limper in front of me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't believe so. You're short stacked and if you call the preflop, you are basically commiting the rest of your chips.


-HoldemPokerPlyr

[mshalen]

Hey Ribbo is back. Always fun reading your posts.

[sy_or_bust]

[ QUOTE ]
You should have folded this hand. It's OMAHA H/L, you want to scoop the whole pot, not just half. This hand was only going to get you half of the pot.

Also, you were short stacked, so you should have waited for a hand that had a H/L potential. Not a hand that only can qualify for high.

[/ QUOTE ]
Careful. While he should have folded this hand, you don't need to make a low to scoop the pot. Premium high hands are played because they have great scooping potential when a low draw is not present.

AJc99 is not a premium high hand, and terrible in this spot, but the flop came high and Hero was playing for a scoop.

[Buzz]

[ QUOTE ]
There are straight possibilities, a flush possibilty, two high cards and a medium-high pair. If that's not enough then what are the attributes which are most advantageous to a high-only hand?

[/ QUOTE ]

Mike - Good question. Hard to answer exactly. There's a lot of overlapping between favorable attributes.

No high only starting hand compares very well to AA23d, AA24d, AA25d, A234d and various other quality high/low starting hands. The best high only hand, in my humble opinion, is AAKKd. (d means double suited).

When looking at various hands with all cards ten or better, it's hard to know where to draw an absolute line beteeen hands that are playable and hands that shouldn't be played. I think it depends upon the circumstances and your opponents.

I thought of simply posting my simulated values for all high only hands, but I think it would be confusing. If you consider all possible starting hands of ten and higher, there are many more of these with pairs than without pairs. Indeed, if one doesn't take suitedness into account, there are only five unique hands without pairs. Here they are:
ATJQ
ATJK
ATQK
AJQK
TJQK

So then I thought, how about taking these five hands, along with five hands having two pairs and also five hands having just one pair, and how about making three variations of each hand so as to consider suitedness:
• (1) rainbows,
• (2) single suited, and
• (3) double suited

There are a lot of varieties of single suited hands, so I decided to choose the most common, two cards in one suit and one card in each of two other suits. For this comparison, I also decided to make these hands with the highest card in the hand the same suit as the lowest card.

And I decided to choose the hands so that all the cards between ace and ten would be represented the same number of times. I made 10000 simulation runs for each of the resultant forty five hands against eight opponents with random cards.

I'll post the list below, arranged in order of winning percentages. It should be understood that if I did this again, the numbers would be slightly different.

Look at the results for yourself and see what you think.

AAKKd-19.80% two pairs, dbl std to aces
QQKKd-18.63% two pairs, dbl std to kings
JJQQd-18.58% two pairs, dbl std to queens
AATTd-18.19% two pairs, dbl std to aces
AAKKs-17.47% two pairs, sgl std to ace
AATKd-16.75% one pair, dbl std to aces
QQKKs-16.74% two pairs, sgl std to king
TTJJd-16.70% two pairs, dbl std to jacks
JJQQs-16.67% two pairs, sgl std to queen
AAJQd-16.36% one pair, dbl std to aces
TJKKd-16.13% one pair, dbl std to kings
AATTs-16.03% two pairs, sgl std to ace
ATJQd-15.58% no pairs, double suited
TTJJs-15.53% two pairs, sgl std to jack
ATJKd-15.41% no pairs, double suited
AJQKd-15.38% no pairs, double suited
QQKKn-15.32% two pairs, non-suited
ATQQd-15.29% one pair, double suited
TJQKd-15.28% no pairs, double suited
JJQKd-15.04% one pair, double suited
JJQQn-14.97% two pairs, non-suited
AAKKn-14.38% two pairs, non-suited
TJKKs-14.33% one pair, sgl std to king
ATQKd-14.28% no pairs, double suited
TTJJn-14.22% two pairs, non-suited
ATJQs-14.15% no pairs, sgl std to ace
JJQKs-13.98% one pair, sgl std to king
AAJQs-13.75% one pair, sgl std to ace
ATQQs-13.70% one pair, sgl std to ace
ATJKs-13.53% no pairs, sgl std to ace
ATQKs-13.38% no pairs, sgl std too ace
TJQKs-13.38% no pairs, sgl std too king
AATTn-13.33% two pairs, non-suited
AJQKs-13.31% no pairs, sgl std to ace
AATKs-13.23% one pair, sgl std to ace
TJKKn-12.39% one pair, non-suited
JJQKn-11.90% one pair, non-suited
ATQQn-11.77% one pair, non-suited
TJQKn-11.31% no pairs, non-suited
ATJQn-11.26% no pairs, non-suited
AAJQn-11.23% one pair, non-suited
AJQKn-10.97% no pairs, non-suited
ATQKn-10.74% no pairs, non-suited
AATKn-10.68% one pair, non-suited
ATJKn-10.05% no pairs, non-suited

[ QUOTE ]
then what are the attributes which are most advantageous to a high-only hand?

[/ QUOTE ]

Double suited two pair hands lead the list. Rainbow hands with no pairs bring up the bottom of the list.

Here are some averages for the all cards ten and above hands chosen:

double suited--16.49%
single suited--14.61%
non-suited-----12.30%

two pairs------16.43%
one pair-------13.77%
no pairs-------13.20%

For comparison, here are results for various other hands:
AA23d-31.83% one pair, dbl std to aces
AA23s-29.29% one pair, sgl std to ace
AA23n-26.24% one pair, non-suited
A234n-23.96% no pairs, non-suited
2499d-13.41% one pair, dbl std to nines

I used Wilson's software for the simulations. Can't get it to work well on my Mac, but someone loaned me an old Dell laptop which, although a bit slow (about four minutes per 10,000 run simulation), works.

Buzz