Omaha Hi – Made for Bad Beats

So I’ve been running pretty well.  I’m afraid that maybe somewhere in my deep subconscious I don’t like winning.  I think this because I’ve started playing HA (where they alternate between hold ‘em and omaha hi).  I’ve fallen in love with Omaha.  I’m not sure why.

Omaha is a terrible game for a number of reasons.  You get four cards and you must use two and only two of them.  Unfortunately, Omaha hands always look awesome.  If you have three of a suit in your hole cards and 2 come up on the board, it is hard to keep your head that you’ve still got nothing.  It isn’t that I’m betting these hands and surprised to lose, but there’s just something psychological about seeing all of those.  In reality your best to have only 2 of a suit in your hand (so that there’s more in the deck to hit the board).  Three of a kind in your hole cards is bad, not good for the same reason.  Omaha hands generate a lot of action, people want to see flops because any hand can connect.  With four hole cards, almost everyone is going to have some connection with the flop, so people bet.  Because of all this, I’ve taken some serious beats lately.

I still know that no one really cares to hear about other people’s bad beats, but it feels better to let it out.  So here goes.  I realize that some of these might not really count as bad beats, just bad luck, but oh well.

$.10/.25 Pot Limit Omaha Hi

Early position raiser makes it $.50, one caller and in the cutoff I call with two kings and a 9 in my hand.  The pot is now a little less than $2.  The flop comes A K 9 rainbow.  Early raiser bets about half the pot, middle position caller folds and I raise to the current size of the pot.  Raiser calls.  The pot is now close to $8.  The turn comes A and so I now have kings full of aces, a great hand even for Omaha.  Early raiser bets 1/3 the pot.  I’m surprised that this ace hasn’t scared him.  From my perspective that says he has one ace.  I’m concerned that maybe he has A9 for a better full house than me, but if he does, what’s with the small bet.  I hope I’m not being slowplayed and I go all in for the $8 I have left on the table.  My opponent calls and turns over AAxx.  I just paid off quad aces.

I don’t have the specifc play by play, but the Omaha river has screwed me so many times, I’m almost numb.  I’ve had times where:

• I’ve bet aggressively on the flop and turn with the nut flush only to have the river deliver my the full house to a player holding 2 pair.
• I’ve committed all of my chips to a pot with a king-high flush on the flop only to have another player who holds just the ace of the suit get a fourth card of the suit on the river.
• I’ve made the nuts on a rainbow flop with the smart end of a straight and bet very aggressively only to have my opponent hit the runner-runner of his suit to catch a flush (when he was really betting two pair).

Strangely, I’m used to it and it doesn’t even really phase me much these days, except the following:

FullTilt has introduced a new tournament format which is basically the same format as the NBC Heads Up Championship they call Shootouts.  The idea is that you play freeze outs at a table and the winner from that table advances up to the next table.  Most of these are heads up tournaments.  I’ve played 4 or 5 of these and I love the format.  I feel like I play better than average heads up and I’d like to be better.  I figure this is a good way to get better.  As a departure, I won’t be talking much about how I play heads up because I do think it is the one place where truly knowing your opponent is important.  I can say that I do what I can to establish “stories” with my betting and then eventually change the ending of the story to “and I take all your money”. 

Anyway, back to this beat.  This was 8 players and I played well in the first 2 rounds.  It may not have looked like I played that well because I had terrible cards throughout.  I had to outmaneuver my opponents so many times just to stay alive, executing super tricky plays like bluffing blocking bets on the river because they would call bigger bets.  When I had any kind of hand, I had to work hard to squeeze out any value from it.  It was tough.

But now at the final table I’m playing a very good player.  This time it wasn’t the cards.  He was outplaying me.  I had been down to under 1000 chips (with 12,000 on the table) at one point.  I battled back 4 times from 2000 chips to even with him.  I had only been ahead of him twice and never by much of a margin (which arguably makes his suckout justifiable karmicly).  At this point we’ve played probably 100 hands on this table and we know each other’s plays pretty well.

At this point, I’m just about even with him and I get dealt AA.  I double the big blind (like every other hand) and he raises to 5X the BB (which he has done a number of times with a variety of hand strengths).  I wait about 10 seconds and call.  The flop comes Q J J.  Of course I’m concerned he has QQ or KJ, but he could have anything.  He bets 1/3 the pot, his normal continuation bet.  I take this as a sign of weakness and I push all-in.  I cross my fingers that he’s holding KQ.  He thinks for a bit and then calls.  The cards flip and he has…

Q9s

I’m ecstatic.  He just called my all in with two pair.  He has 2 real outs (except runner-runner flush and straight draws).  The turn comes a blank, but the river brought one of his two outs, a queen and I lose what was an epic battle.

I’m embarrassed to say that I had a little Phil Hellmuth moment in my living room where the world didn’t make sense anymore and I felt the need to swear and really wanted to tell that guy how he was an idiot and fell right into my trap and deserved to lose.  I didn’t do either of those things.  Instead I gave the dog, who woke up abruptly thanks to my jumping to my feet from the couch suddenly, a few pats.

Speaking of Hellmuth, if you haven’t seen this video of him getting a little of his own treatment by Tom Dwan (durrrr) you should watch it (even though it’s 8 minutes+).   Phil is whiny baby and it is nice to see someone out-cocky him.