Another PLO Tourney

[Karabiner]

So here we are again obviously on a bit of a heater and on the final of Omania $30+3.

We sit 3/5 with 205k and blinds are 8k/16k.

There is a short-stack on my left with 50k and another opposite me betweem the two big stacks(350k/500k) with 85k

Big stack(500k) on my immediate right who is min-raising every hand makes it 32k UTG as per usual and I have 9975ds. I make it 64k.

Good, bad, indifferent?

[rfgqqabc]

Bad unless he folds which can be unlikely depending on the player and your image. Laddering is worth a bunch.

[Pinchop73]

I have 9975ds. I make it 64k.

Please can you explain your reasoning for wanting to do this? Don't mean to sound patronising or whatever, just curious.

[Karabiner]

I have 9975ds. I make it 64k.

Please can you explain your reasoning for wanting to do this?

1) I'm trying to accumulate all of the chips and I have a nice hand.

2) He's playing his big stack well raising every hand and I'm ahead of the majority of his range and I look stronger than his perception of mine, I have position on him and I'm sure he doesn't want to double me up.

3) Two of the three players behind me will probably be more concerned with laddering than getting involved with any marginal hands and the other big stack will now need AA or possibly good KK to tangle with us.

[Pinchop73]

I have a nice hand.

I'm ahead of the majority of his range

Going to have to disagree with both these comments. Even if he is opening 100% 9975ds is doing nowhere near well enough vs that range to have enough equity to consider pulling this move with. It's ICM suicide. When we're 3 out of five in a pretty big equity comp 9975ds is not a hand i would consider 3b'ing an utg open from the CL with. My reasons for this is that you are putting pretty much zero pressure on him, he's going to peel literally everything he's opened, because, he can put you in so many horrible decisions post flop on a huge amount of runouts. Remember your going to be the guy busting in 5th with two massively short stacks sat behind if you loose the hand, not him. It's a shame man, you've burned $$$$ in equity here. ul

So yeah, just don't get it really. Did you think he might fold?

If he comes back over the top then you've literally just handed a 1/3rd of your stack to him as you can never call it off?
Would want to preserve this stack size with two mega shorties behind like my life depended on it, not 3b'ing a 1/3rd of it off attempting to rep extreme strength when we have very little to gain and huge amount of $$$$'s to lose.

[GreekStein]

I have 9975ds. I make it 64k.

Please can you explain your reasoning for wanting to do this?

1) I'm trying to accumulate all of the chips and I have a nice hand.

2) He's playing his big stack well raising every hand and I'm ahead of the majority of his range and I look stronger than his perception of mine, I have position on him and I'm sure he doesn't want to double me up.

3) Two of the three players behind me will probably be more concerned with laddering than getting involved with any marginal hands and the other big stack will now need AA or possibly good KK to tangle with us.

Hey Ralph,

I really beg to differ also. 9975 isn't going to flop too well and I expect the guy to fold like never if he's playing well as you say. He's getting a good price to see the flop and he knows he can make the situation horrible for you on a lot of flops.. So we are now going to be seeing a flop with a pair of semi connected 9's with a pot sized bet left. He flops any semi decent equity and he's going to go with it and we've risked our tournament with an extremely marginal hand when there are two shorties behind us. Flop comes J83 and he checks to you, what do you do? Same applies on A84, monotone flops etc...

Here it's just a case of letting him run the table and we just 3bet him when we've got a premium hand AA/KK suited connected QQ etc

[Pinchop73]

Just read my post again and don't want you to think I'm being a pompous cock!

It's just I have and still do make mistakes like this and want to try and help you to prevent it happening again, hope you understand.

Would way prefer to hear that you laddered to 3rd waining to 8bb or whatever it takes to get there. Take off as much as you can then!

The old addage of 'I'm playing to win' is all well and fine, but your not going to win until your heads up.

[WotRTheChances]

So here we are again obviously on a bit of a heater and on the final of Omania $30+3.

We sit 3/5 with 205k and blinds are 8k/16k.

There is a short-stack on my left with 50k and another opposite me betweem the two big stacks(350k/500k) with 85k

Big stack(500k) on my immediate right who is min-raising every hand makes it 32k UTG as per usual and I have 9975ds. I make it 64k.

Good, bad, indifferent?

I don't play PLO much at all, but seems pretty horrific to me. I mean 3-betting to 1/3 of your stack with a hand like 9975ds, which isn't a particularly good hand... and seems like probably a very bad hand when stacks are shallow as it doesnt flop very well, has 0 blockers to big rundown/AAxx hands or anything the bigstack could put it in with. Also just seems like villain is very rarely going to fold given sizings and how much ICM pressure you're in... and for this reason will be putting it in your eye a decent amount too. Given stack sizes i'd be folding everything I wasn't going to be going with here... and if i was going with something I wouldnt be clicking it to 64k given ICM, there's not really any hands i'm desperate to get action with here.

[SuuPRlim]

Your thinking, r.e he's opening all the time I should fight back at some point  is defo correct imo, however this is defo not the hand to do it with. As stacks get shallower in PLO the hand selection dynamic changes a fair bit and the main things that happen is that BIG cards (speshly big pairs) become much more powerful, run-downs and mid-hands (like this one) lose their value very quickly with decreasing stack sizes. People's ranges for being all-in/committed pre-flop widen up and the first hands that come in are the AK[Q/J/T]* hands and those are hands that can vry easily dominate this hand you have. AKJ9 with a suit of yours and you have 25% etc.

In a cash game you could 3bet a hand lile 9975ds IP comfortably as you get 4bet by a MUCH tighter range and your hand has postflop playability (blockers/flush draws/straight possiblilties/set outs etc) you can call or fold to a 4bet depending on the stacks etc and not be making mistakes.

So hands I'd look to attack his extremely wide opens with are strong JJ hands (QJJT with a suit etc) Most QQ hands (all DS and all AQQ* and KQQ*) pretty much every combo of KK that isn't horrible, all AA ofc, all ds AK** hands, and all hands with A[broadway][braodway] single suited and better - these hands are strong because they block a lot of the premium hands we could run into. Hands with small pairs (TT and below) are useless here, and the same goes for the vast majority of run-downs, 5678single I'd fold for e.g, obviously premium dbl suited rundowns like 89TJ ds you'd just get all-in although actually these are no where near as good as you think they are here.

Hands like 9975ds really play so much better with deeper stacks. Short-stack PLO is ALL ABOUT BIG CARDS

Also here, I'd POT it, not make it 65k - no way to make it 65k/fold and really what we want here is FOLDS so if I was to play this hand I'd shut my eyes and pot it I think.

[Karabiner]

Appreciate the replies and in the cold light of day accept that my play was not good at all in that spot.

He peels and the flop came A,K,T with 2x one of my suits.

Pretty horrible and probably what I deserved. I checked the flop back and he took a very nice pot down on the turn.

Several hands later after the blinds have passed through I find KKQ9 hh in the same position and the same man opens to 32k.

I'm sitting with ~120k at this stage but the shortie on my direct left is down to 27k and the other shortie has 85k. Big stacks are 350k and raiser has 550k.

As on the previous round I 3-bet to 64k but this time I only have 55k behind which should to my way of thinking infer that I am not going to be folding now.

Should I have just potted here?

[WotRTheChances]

I'm going to say yes, because going back to what I said about the previous hand, you want to maximise the number of folds you are going to get as you really dont want to letting your opponent realise his equity in the hand given your ICM  position. Could even consider folding? But i'm not sure how narrow you should be getting it in here given ICM and that it's PLO.

[Karabiner]

Just to clarify the ICM position, we have $700 locked and the next two jumps are both ~$300 with $2600 up top.

[SuuPRlim]

with the KK** potting and making it 64k are pretty much the same, as you said yourself it does infer you are not going to be folding so same result achieved. Because of this I'd just pot as it's simpler.

In the 9975 hand when you flop a FD I think you are completely obligated to just pot/go with it on the flop given your range and the money out there, but you're right this is a very good example of why we should pre-flop. Think though you got an alrite amount of fold equity in this flop + you have a FD that's unlucky not to be live, I think not seeing all 5 cards is a pretty big mistake given you put 35% of your stack in pre-flop.

[tikay]

Hi Ralph,

Love these, keep them coming.

I know your PLO experience, & you, very well, you've been playing the game profitably since decades before blonde was even thought of.

I think the 9-9-7-5 hand has been done to death by better players than me, but I fancy you just got a bit frustrated with Mr Raise-A-Lot. At that stage, I'm happy to wait a while, those shorties will be feeling the pinch very soon. Patience is out of fashion, maybe correctly, but there's much to be said for patience, & gear-changes in these spots imo.

The other spot is a different case entirely. With our stack, it is THE dream spot for us. I'm insta-potting it. We can rarely be in terrible shape here, & even if we are behind - extremely unlikely - we are rarely worse than 40/60 in these situations. We may even be 60/40 jolly.  It's a great spot for us to make our move, with a view to winning this thing, & if we perish, so be it. He may well fold, too, in fact x% of the time he does, & we've scooped a chunky lump of dead money, and sent him a message.

Anyway, you know all that, but I hope you keep posting these, they are a refreshing change to what is (to me) the humdrum NLH stuff.

[George2Loose]

What about a hand like 4567 6789 etc where we are perhaps connected or suited same situation? Can we peel or is that bad at this stage?