I have had 2 very interesting O8 hands in the last 30 days with 2 very difficult decisions. With ROtty thinking, I made the correct decision in one case and may have made the correct decision in both cases. You decide.
Should you ever fold the nuts on the river? Here was my dilemna. PLO8 $2/$4. The board read 4,5,7,9 J no flush possibilities and it is 4 handed at the river with the following stack sizes preflop. Small blind good player about $900. Early position player about $150, me, mid position about $575, button about $225. The button was the original raiser and early position player has been leading the betting. Pot has about $240 in it after the turn, river is the Jack. Small blind checks early position player bets $75, I have A27,x for the nut low and a pair of sevens for the high. I call thinking I am likely quartered by the button who was the original raiser. Button has been raising a good percentage of pots preflop though mainly from position. Button moves in for about $150 more, small blind check raises all in for his whole stack, early position player moves in for insignificant dollars. What do you do? There is about $1200 in the pot and it is I think $465 for me to call. You know small blind has the nuts just don't know which one or possibly both. Besides the small blind player who you can tell from the chat is a very good player everyone else is unknown. What do you do?
The other interesting hand was a $1/$2 table 6 handed PLO8 and you are heads up with the original raiser. Board has 2 high cards, 2 low cards, no pairs and you have J,2,3,4 with 3 clubs and a made jack high flush on the turn. No Ace, King or Queen of clubs, on the board you have the 4th nut flush. You are not counterfeighted at this point so an Ace on the river would give you the nut low. I bet the pot on the turn about $65, and I am check raised on the turn all in about $170 to call. The player I am playing with is Ecoholic, a known aggressive player who is also comfortable playing much higher stakes than this table. What should I do?
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For the record, the hands I was up against. 4 handed all in small blind big stack had 8,10 for nut high no low, a logical push. 2nd position player had 2,3 low and a counterfeighted straight I believe. Button was the big surprise. She had TT88, a crummy starting hand and she was just making a button raise. I folded and would have had 1/2 the pot.
On the Ecoholic hand, Ecoholic had a AA2x hand with a dry Ace of clubs. Logical play from an aggressive player, and he also probably knows I am good enough to fold. I figured though with 3 clubs in my hand and a possible live low, I might be up against a "play" and might have the only flush. Plus, I think a real A2 of clubs hand would have lead out or check min raised here. So I called, the river blanked and I scooped.
Hand 1: Bad fold if you would have won 1/2 the pot. How's that for ROT! ;)
Actually it would be handy to have the full hand history there to suss out the action. I think the most telling thing is that the action didn't speed up until the end. Wouldn't A2xx want to chase out a high hand? Sure maybe slow play the Flop to get more money in for a big bet on the Turn but waiting for the River? Dunno. Also, wouldn't A2-high-high is going to want to try to take down the pot before getting counterfeited? I guess A23X wouldn't mind seeing more cheap cards to try to build a wheel while having insurance against being counterfeited but at the possible risk of getting chopped by someone else with two of the A,2,3 cards.
So the question is what are you up against? I think it is reasonable to think at least someone has the nut high. Also very reasonable to think that someone (else) has the nut low.
Again, it would be helpful to have the HH but if anyone had A28T you would figure they would be jamming the crap out of the pot with the nut low and an open ender to the nut high Straight. So depending on the action you might be able to rule out that hand as well beside it being an unlikely holding to begin with in PLO/8. So if you assume that everyone only has claim to one side of the pot then the question is how many are on your side and how many are on the other side. If you are the only low then easy call. If there are two lows then you are putting in $465 to get back a shade less than that. What are the odds that there are three nut lows? Statistically low, and does the action up to the River indicate three flopped nut low? Doesn't sound like it if it is 2/4 with only $240 in after the turn and a pre-flop raise. I think we can reasonably rule out all four hands having A2.
So assuming a) no one has double nuts and b) there are no more than two nut lows, then I think it is an EV+ call since you are either taking the whole bottom half or getting your money back. But that is doing to depend on your read of the situation that *both* of those conditions are true. But even if your read is off I think it is a reasonable crying call. I think worst case scenario is that you have one scoop hand, another low, and another high to go along with your nut low. Again I don't think the action would dictate that but if you end up getting 1/6th'ed you still pull $275 back out of the pot as *worst* case. It's not like you are throwing $465 in and not expect to see any of it again.
Bottom line: Call off $465 and maybe lose $200 of it, get almost all of it back, or rake the whole bottom half worth $830. Having the luxury of the time to do a full analysis I think it's a call.
Very good analysis. The real tricky part though is that there are too big stacks, myself and the river check raiser all in who seems to be a good player. Now you have to decide for the side pot if he has A2xx, is your pair of 7's good. Often it is in a side pot against an A2xx hand. The other misread I made was that the button was raising lots of pots from the button. So it is very likely that button is just raising with AFC, which was the case. I made the mistake of putting button on a good hand.
The final way to play it is to be the first one to push on the river. Then if other A2xx hands are calling so be it. My problem here is that is really rare that anyone will fold the nuts of any kind.
So I think you were right I should have made the crying call. I just needed a bit more time than 15 seconds, but that's internet poker for you.
Yeah, with an online clock on me I'm prolly dumping the hand. I did not throw in side pot calculations. Without the HH I ignored the stack sizes and just based all analysis on the total in the pot by the River.
I agree that playing the hand more aggressively would likely have changed things. I doubt that 8T would have withstood two streets of potting to play for the high only.
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