Hand Of The Day #75

Atlantis ~ $1/$2 PLO-8 ~ 05.21.11

We've been playing for a little over three hours, and were down to four players. One of them is leaving after this hand, so this is the final hand of the night.

UTG folds, but the Button bets POT to $7. He's an older Asian gentleman who's been playing like an old man. The SB calls. I'm the BB with 9h 8h 8d 5d. A really lousy hand for PLO-8, but it's the last hand, I already have $2 in the pot, and I have had a good night. What's the worst could happen?

Flop: 9d 5s 3s. Not bad for me. I have Top Two Pair but no Low Draw on a very draw heavy board. SB checks. I check. Button bets POT $20. SB folds, and I just call.

Turn : [9d 5s 3s] Qh. I check. He bets POT again for $60, and has $100 - $125 behind. Now I think for a bit. As I already said, he plays like an Old Man, which means he's been Tight & Passive. In the few hands that I've seen him put big money into the pot, he was trying to overbet the pot by around 1.5x (Pot is $50ish and he tried to bet $75, for example.) To me, this means that he thinks he has a good hand, and that he's inexperienced with PLO.

So what did he raise with that would have hit this Board? As an Old Man, he's probably not adjusting his preflop raising range even though we are four handed. So any hands that he would raise with just four players would be the same hands that he would raise at a full table. He also doesn't seem very experienced at this game, so I'm putting him on a hand like AA2X or AA4X. That was a decent Flop for his hand with an Overpair and a Wheel Draw. But the Turn was a complete whiff for him, which means my Two Pair is now comfortably ahead. I say, "All-In"

Not only does he not snap-call, he also gets that "What!?" look on his face. He thinks for a bit, looks at his cards a few times, and mumbles, "I should have checked."

He's right. He should have checked. This is a good lesson for noobies to Pot Limit games. "Pot Limit doesn't mean Pot Only." You don't have to always bet POT, because you can get into a situation like this by letting the size of the pot get out of control.

I'm not sure why, but I started talking to him. "Your Aces are behind," I said. "But if you have a Low Draw, it's good."

I don't know if that influenced him, but after about a minute, he pushed his stack forward. The River was [9d 5s 3s Qh] Kc. He just shook his head, and showed his hand. I'm not exactly sure what the four cards were because he was on the other side of the table. But I was right about what he had, something like AA2X. I showed my hand to collect the pot. He was not happy to see my cards, and walked away from the table. I gathered up my chips, took them up to the desk, and walked out of the poker room up $568 for the night.

As I'm typing this up, I decided to look up the percentages, since I'm not that fluent in Omaha-8 odds. I was 70% - 30% favorite for the High on the Turn, and he had a 35% chance of hitting the Low.