Today I will wrap up this series of articles and offer my final comments on the article written by Jennifer Harman. I will also offer some insight into the next series of articles. Jennifer defines a loose game as one where "six or seven players are seeing every flop". This is indeed a very loose game. She further states that "you should play most hands that have A-2." I fully agree. In a loose game like this people are playing every kind of low hand imaginable as well as many not so great high hands. One must be extremely mindful of getting quartered or worse.
You will most definitely be up against another A-2. The best strategy may be to avoid multiple raises by checking rather then betting as this will help minimize the effect of quartering. The other trap that occurs in this type of game is counterfeiting. Counterfeiting may cost you any shot at the pot. Suppose you are sitting there with your A-2 and the flop is 4-7-8. You're feeling pretty confident that you will at least have a piece of the pot. The turn brings a 2 and you just went from nut low to 6th best. A-3, A-5, A-6, 3-5, 3-6 all have better lows. Someone holding a 5-6 for low has just made a straight! There is really now way to protect against this and it will hurt even more if the deuce falls on the river. When you hold 3 or 4 low cards you may develop a false sense of security in that you feel you may not be counterfeited. It definitely helps protect your hand and the lower the rank the better. But the four best lowest cards A-2-3-4 will be frustrated with a flop of 2-3-4 as you do not hold a low. You may even falsely believe that if any low card falls you will make the nut low. If the turn brings an ace, all you will have is two pair while facing a possible wheel.
Jennifer then continues with "The pots will be large enough to justify playing for only the low" Aren't we always playing for the high before the flop? Even if you are holding 4 low cards aren't you hoping to flop quads, a straight and if you have an ace suited a flush?
I will sometimes play marginal high hands and high to middle pairs from late position when I see a large number of callers in front of me. I reason a good majority of low cards must already be out and I may scoop a pot if no low comes.
Jennifer concludes this paragraph with "there's no need to play every hand with A-2 aggressively." I couldn't agree more. The flop may destroy almost every starting hand in Omaha Hi/Lo. The best starting hand A2A3 can be reduced to a trap hand with a flop of JQK suited and not to your suit. With A2 and nothing much else I agree "you're better off seeing a flop cheaply." Not only may it save you money it also helps disguise your hand when the flop does hit you.
In tight games with few players seeing the flop Jennifer recommends only seeing the flop with better than average hands. Again I totally agree. In fact the higher the stakes the better the starting hand you will need. The best general rule I can offer here is that you want to get your money in with premium starting hands, those that offer the highest average net. After the flop if you don't have a "made hand" you want to be drawing to the nuts.
If you have a low drawing hand after the flop, even if it is to the nuts, you want to have a hand that has at least some high potential. On the other hand, if you hit the nut high, you want to make it real expensive for your opponents who have low draws.
If you have been following my articles you certainly know I base them on computer simulations. A simulation is not a mathematical calculation of the odds at each decision point.
A simulation attempts to simulate humane play and the decision process. In a real poker games involving real money, decisions are not purely based on mathematics. One must take into account the decisions our opponent have made and those they may make. In a computer simulation we cannot evaluate "tells". Or can we?
We certainly cannot evaluate things like blink rates or bulging veins or other visual signals our opponent may be sending. We can on the other hand evaluate betting patterns, starting hands, calling frequencies and so on much more accurately. If we were to design the best computer software in the world we would have to analyze every aspect of the game. We would then have to find a way to quantify our findings and assign them a probability. Since in poker we are always dealing with incomplete information we need to evaluate what our opponent may be holding. We further need to assign each possible holding a probability.
I am not going to teach you how to become a computer programmer or statistical genius. In the next series of articles I will develop a method of analyzing and breaking the game down to its individual components. I will then see if we may find a simple way to value and rank some of the decisions. Even if we developed the best artificial intelligence software and it required a computer it would be worthless for playing in live ring games. Let me conclude by stating that 30 years ago people felt there was no way to consistently beat Black Jack. I am sure the exercise I will run you through will awaken you to new concepts and cause you to think in a way you never though possible. The real challenge is not the identification of or quantifying of the variables. The real challenge is can we reduce Omaha Hi/ Lo to a simple count system as used by card counters for Black Jack.
