Omaha/8 Drawdown

At typical loose low limit Omaha/8, there are times when you can go on long runs of winning nothing, even with good play (table selection, hand selection, playing to the nuts). I've gone through some long periods where every A2 sees a 2 on the flop, every double suited hand flops the wrong color etc. What should one expect in terms of worse case negative runs before they should start to worry about their play being the issue? I want to be able to remain calm during normal variance so it would help to have an idea of what Omaha/8 can be like during dry spells in terms of big blinds lost.

[Ironman]

Sorry Soma,

There really is no answer to this question.

Variance is nasty and it can take a long time to work it's way out of your game.

If you are playing scared, then you are probably playing at too high a limit.

Dave

[Beavis68]

I had a big 1000+ hand losing streak on party. Lost all the big pots, won only a few small ones.

Rembmber A2 is marginal, and you will be counterietted on the flop about 1/3 the time and by the turn an the river about 15% more - that is why we like back up.

What sucks is then you get A234 and the flop is 234 or JQT.

AA23 DS and the flop is KKQ with other suits.

Invented by a sadist and played by masochits.

You losing streaks shouldnt be as brutal $ wize as holdem though.

[kurto]

Do you multitable? I think it helps. I play 3 tables... there's always 1 table that gets NO hands. Getting no hands on 1 table for an hour can get boring... at least getting no hands on 3 tables takes more work.

Its quite possible to go weeks with horrendous luck.

To figure out if its you or not is to examine your play... if you're losing a lot of low only draws with just A2... then it might be you. If you constantly have a top boat and someone else always has quads... or you get all your money in on a flop with a straight, set and nut flush draw and someone gets runner runner flush in the suit you don't have... and this happens conistantly; you're playing right and having a bad streak.

[Buzz]

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What should one expect in terms of worse case negative runs

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Soma - Could be your whole lifetime. But it probably won't. It's a bit like flipping a coin. Should come up heads about half the time, but it might come up tails for while.

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I've gone through some long periods where every A2 sees a 2 on the flop,

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Actually getting immediately counterfeited on the flop does not seem so bad to me. What I really hate is getting counterfeited on the river!

But I know how you feel. When you hold A2KK, for example, you should expect to see a deuce on the flop 2025/17296, or only about one time out of eight or nine. So when it happens two or three times in a row, as it sometimes will, you can't feel very good about it.

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every double suited hand flops the wrong color

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When you have two clubs and two spades, there are 26 red cards and only 22 black cards from which to make the flop.

26choose3 = 2600 ways to get an all red flop.
22choose3 = 1540 ways to get an all black flop.
(They're both out of 17296 possible flops).

The grim reality when you hold four black cards is an all red flop is almost twice as likely as an all black flop (but the flop will be mixed black and red about three times out of four).

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.....even with good play (table selection, hand selection, playing to the nuts).....it would help to have an idea of what Omaha/8 can be like during dry spells in terms of big blinds lost.

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If you play very tightly, only playing premium hands, and not contesting possible blind steal attempts by opponents, even in a game with very little pre-flop raising, your blind will get raised almost every time you post. And you might wait hours before getting a reward. To make it worse, when you get past playing against mostly beginners, your opponents will be very wary when you do enter the action if you're playing tighter than the norm.

It's not bad advice for a beginner to play very tightly while watching the game and learning - but when you get past the beginner stage and when you graduate from playing other beginners, you have to loosen up a bit to do optimally well.

You obviously risk more when you loosen up - and if you have a run of bad luck, losing your entire stake won't take long. Loosening up takes good judgement.

Tight is good, but too tight is not. Especially once you get past playing against mostly begninners, the tightest player at the table is usually not the best player at the table.

To keep the game interesting you need an occasional reward.

Slot machine designers give you back a little bit once in a while. Doesn't really amount to much, but if the machine is properly designed, the small reward is enough to keep a slot machine player interested.

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I've gone through some long periods...

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If so, you're not exactly a beginner. The "be the tightest player at the table" advice for beginners may not apply any more. There's more to the game than mostly just playing hands with an ace plus a deuce. But that doesn't mean you should be seeing the flop with dogs like
2[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 2[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], J[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img], or 2[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 8[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], 9[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]! You still need to exercise good judgement!

Be fore-warned that every time you loosen up your game a bit, you'll probably undergo a losing period while you're adjusting to your new style.

Whatever.

"table selection" is probably the key to success. Find a group of opponents you can beat and then have at them.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

Thanks for the replies. I guess I can be a little more specific. I play only quality hands but I don't think I'm too tight. My V$IP on pokertracker is about 25% and my W$SD is about 66%. I only try to play at tables that have 50+% seeing the flop so that there is some profit in split pots. I always look for hands that are coordinated. I fall in love with aces. I play low only draws meekly unless I have protection until the turn and bet nut high hands hard. I slow down when I have only a low and the hand gets 3 way or heads up to avoid wasting money on a quartering. I will only call off non nut hands when I'm 2-way or last to act in big pot. As far as the stakes I only play at levels where I have 300x-500x the big blind in a bankroll and it's not scared money either.

Basically I'm on a run right now where I'm winning about 5 hands an hour and some with no profit. It seems that I'm on my way to losing my whole 500x bankroll because my straights keeping running up against suited boards or suited up against paired boards or high only up against low etc. forcing me to fold as all Omaha instruction tells you too. Every time I've tried to play loose and hope they don't have the nuts they do. SO I go back to playing nuts only and the wins never come. I'm really beginning to think it's the tables. I've done very well at all sites except this latest one. Perhaps they are not loose passive enough.

As a stat geek I'm always after good rules of thumb about variance. I still believe it's possible to quantify it to so degree if enough Omaha vets discuss their longest losing drawdown before reaching a new high. Is it somewhere around 100x, 500x, 1000x the blind? If you are familiar with statistics then I mean this within a certain level of confidence because I know that theoretically the loss could be unlimited.