11/12 Results - O8

$154.65 (-$13.00)

O8

Wow, a bluff in O8, and I had everyone’s favorite starting O8 hand, AA2 suited (with a random K). Unfortunately, the bluff worked and was against me. Fortunately, he showed. I’ll always take the info. It was either brilliant or stupid, but since it was my third hand at the table, I have to go with stupid; he couldn’t know I was disciplined enough to fold a hand I obviously loved preflop. However, if he put me on A2 and knew the 2 was a scare card for me, it was genius. With a paired board and a counterfeited low draw, I couldn’t call.

(AcAh7s5s) This was a lazy PF raise. I didn’t have a suited ace, and my wheel card was a five. Wanted to make a slight raise, but hit pot instead. We can see from hellsbells play here that he is in fact stupid and a target (surely my KK is good on a JJ flop facing a pot-sized bet!), not a genius for raising me off AA2x earlier. Hope I can get some of his stack before he loses it.

OK, will have to do the math later to see if I was donking or not. I knew, knew, knew, hellsbells was betting out with AJ or J9 (turns out he had Jc9d9s3d), and that ConeMore was raising w/AJ (raise pf from good player says AA, and he’s not raising here w/o the nuts). I have nut flush and two pair. I feel confident my boat outs are good based on my read, so is it a call if I’m sure hellsbells will be coming along? I think I overcounted my outs at the time. Hard to do the math in the moment. I rebought as soon as I made the call, knowing I was a dog.

(Here is me doing the math on that hand later.) If I put hellsbells on one of the straights to be leading out, and ConeMore on AJ to be raising, and I know that hellsbells will call (based on action so far, he will), then I have 29.43% equity (3.4:1) in calling $4.25 to win $10.90. That’s about 3.5:1 pot odds, so I was there for the call, but just barely, and only assuming my read was correct.

$7 --> $0

$+6, try again.

Stupid quarterings! They may drive me away from this game…so so bad. By the time it got around to me to call, I knew I was quartering, but I think I was still +EV to call, especially with the hope for a high suckout. How to handle it when you smell a quarter is yet another place I need to study further.

How about the v-bet on the river? Made some back from the quartering. I couldn’t see a set out there with the lack of flop and turn betting, and I had two of the other deuces, so the random X2 boat also seemed unlikely. AXc was a worry, but worth a bet anyway, and indeed, a lower flush called me.

I’m so bad. Really, there’s no excuse for this, and I am truly embarrassed to post this hand. It’s exactly the kind of play I count on from others to make O8 a soft game. There had been a couple of hands previous where I flopped great or nutty, lost the nuts on the turn, and let it go. That had been very frustrating, so, I got stubborn here and made a, “Noooooo! I just had the nuts! No no no no!” call. But really, when the hell is my random two pair going to boat up on the turn?! Wait, never, because I’m still good enough at O8 not to call in Marvin8’s shoes with two pair there.

An extremely dangerous thought that ran through my head to help justify that call in my mind: “Maybe they both have A2 and are chopping the low, I’m still good!” That does happen, but it was not a reason to call, there. That is a very tough part of O8: holding the busted flop nuts on the turn, facing a pot bet with a possible low on board. Is villain just betting the low, or are you getting 0% of the pot, now? It’s particularly hard heads up. As usual with my current state of O8, I don’t know how to approach those situations very well.

OK, if I can avoid being a dumbass like I was tonight, O8 remains a good game at these stakes. That being said, I clearly have a ton to learn about it, and I’m going to read more at 2+2 on it before I head back in again. I need to plug leaks like the call above, and get a better grasp on the “correct” approach to potential quartering and all the other nuances I keep bringing up in these logs.

Crap, now I have such a NLHE grind ahead to make back my O8 donkage. But I’m ready to grind; I’m not going to play above 5% to try and make it back quick. Praise Jesus.

$13 --> $0

30 Hands