PLO8 - Hand Strength and How To Proceed

YoungUn

2 questions for the following hand:

1) How big a flop is this?
2) How would you advise I play it from paused point forward?

PokerStars Game #45228316528: Tournament #280116234, $3.00+$0.30 USD Omaha Hi/Lo Pot Limit - Level XI (125/250) - 2010/06/08 8:24:43 ET
Table '280116234 13' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: russd82 (1792 in chips) is sitting out
Seat 2: chainsaw24 (15401 in chips)
Seat 3: marcosjose3 (50977 in chips)
Seat 4: daniop1 (15164 in chips)
Seat 5: Sedovische (4402 in chips)
Seat 6: NillisLukins (5466 in chips)
Seat 7: aaarooneygal (2064 in chips)
Seat 8: psiholog1986 (2980 in chips)
Seat 9: Boeket (18434 in chips)
marcosjose3: posts small blind 125
daniop1: posts big blind 250

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to NillisLukins [2h Ah 8d Qs]

Sedovische: calls 250
NillisLukins: calls 250
aaarooneygal: folds
psiholog1986: folds
Boeket: folds
russd82: folds
chainsaw24: folds
marcosjose3: calls 125
daniop1: checks

*** FLOP *** [7c 9h 6h]
marcosjose3: checks
daniop1: checks
Sedovische: bets 500
NillisLukins: ???????

Talon

  To get things started off this is not a particularly good hand to be limping in preflop with. You only have 2 hi  drawing hands AQ and A2 suited, and only 1 Lo drawing A2.The 8 in your hand is as dead a card as you will ever see.So it is a very reasonable fold preflop and definately not a call to any raise.

  Now to the flop, it is basically as good a flop as you could reasonably expect to hit , giving you great draws to both the nut Hi and nut Lo. But on the downside you actually have no hand whatsoever and you know full well you are behind to virtually any other holding.

  You have 2 options at this point
1) flat call and try to see a cheap turn and re evaluate the hand then.
2) Pot raise it to kill the hand of there and then or to get all your chips in the middle

 There are plusses and minuses to both decisions.
if you flat call and hit, when you try to get your chips in you will telegraph your hand and not get paid fully.
also if you flat and miss you then have another decision to make on the next street.
But on the plus side if the board pairs or an A or 2 land then you can get away cheaply.


 By trying to get all your chips in the middle you stand a very good chance of doubling up or getting a split out of it but you are going in behind and there is always the possiblity of hitting your Lo draw and still only quartering the pot.


 With no reads available on the other players as to their expoerience or playing styles it isquite difficult to make a truly informed decision about possible holdings.


This is really quite a nasty decision to make with someone betting into you( easy if checked to you because you just pot it on that board). I could argue either course of action but most of the decision has to come from your reads on the players and combining it with how aggressive a player you are.


 Sorry i was unable to give you a definitive answer to the second part but as in most poker questions the answer is depends.

MereNovice

Talon, as always, makes many good points.

I'd favour a call here.
The reason for this is that there are still two other people to act (again) after you. By calling, you give them decent odds to call with fairly speculative hands and you may get them in the pot.
You can assume that they haven't flopped anything massive because they checked the flop and it would be interesting play by them to check that flop with the nuts.
I want as many opponents as possible in this hand so that I am more likely to get some action if I hit big on the turn or river (if I get that far). There is potential for you to "quarter" or better.

Obviously, you will need to re-evaluate after the turn.

Against a single opponent, I play this more aggressively.

YoungUn

Talon and Vince,

Thanks a lot for your responses. Definitely very insightful. I ended up cashing in this Tournament and would have cashed in another had I not misjudged what time I was going out (ended up trying to gamble to get a big stack so I can sit-out into the money). So by the end of the day I felt quite good about myself thinking I had grasped the game pretty well, but reading your thoughts give me a bit of a wake-up call, because I think I over-valued the hand a little bit, both pre and post flop.

I haven't got the HH with me as i'm in work, but I called the 500, then marcosjose (table Chip Leader, the only thing I really noticed was that he did play a lot of high-only hands) raised to something like 2000-2500, essentially leaving me with fold/all-in as my only options. The player who lead for 500 then went all-in for their ~4000, I went all-in for my ~5000 and the Chip Leader of course called.

Is my all-in super spewy? Should I only be expecting win 3/4 of the pot even if I make the flush? Or is it not optimistic to assume that I could scoop here?

MereNovice

I may not be in line with good PLO8 players but once there are two all-ins on that board I'm getting all my chips in quick.

I'm not sure about 3/4 of the pot (that sounds optimistic) but you have reasonable expectations of making 1/2 of a pot to which you have contributed less than a third so that's a result.

An ace or deuce on the turn or river is obviously a really bad card for you but you've got to gamble sometimes. It's also possible that you're the one getting quartered (or even "sixthed" in this case) even if you make the low draw.

Obviously there are 4 (or possibly 5) low heart cards that would mean Christmas has come early.