Looking for some friendly advice on Limit Omaha Hi-Lo (online)

Hi everyone,

Since this is my first post here, I will start with an introduction. My name is Jim and I live just outside of Portland, OR. I've been playing VERY casual NLHE with friends for about 2 years, but never really caught the big poker bug like a lot of my friends.

About 4 months ago, I opened a PokerStars account, mainly to just get more HE experience via their play money rooms. After a while, I got bored with that and started looking into other games. After a while, I really started getting into Omaha Hi-Lo. After becoming somewhat succesful at it in play money rooms, I decided to try real money. Over the first 3 months or so, I really wasn't playing a lot. I was mainly playing Limit Omaha Hi-Lo at the .25/.50 level. I had some success, but ended up losing 3 $50 deposits over those 3 months. Looking back on it, I know why... I was playing WAY too many hands, including random crap like J-9-8-5 that should never see the light of day.

Still, I liked the game and wanted to see how I could get better. So, I proceded to do a lot of research online. Found some really good stuff about starting hands and betting strategy. I felt like I was grasping it all pretty well, so I made an $80 deposit and started again at the .25/.50 ring games (still Omaha). I was more successful, but ended up breaking even over about 2 weeks in December '07. I was a bit frustrated because I was also not racking up many FPP's and felt like I would never get to my $50 bonus (@ 500 FPP). So, I decided to jump up a level to the limit .50/$1.00 games. I basically started this on Dec 31st and good success for the first few days, and was able to build my bankroll up to nearly $170. The next day I broke even, then on Sunday, disaster struck. I lost half my bankroll (about $85) on that day. I proceded to lose about $30 each of the last 2 days, leaving me now with a pathetic $25.

From my perspective, I believe that I am still playing consistantly well for the most part. Sure, I've had a few lapses when I've dumped a few extra $$$ into the pot while chasing a fluch or something. But it seems like most of my losses are just bad luck (mabye my perspective is warped though). It seems like over the last 3 days, a higher than normal % of my good starting hands that include A-2 or A-3 or even A-2-3 are getting counterfeited or double counterfeited on the flop. When I do get a good hand... like nut low + nut high flush or a boat, somebody ends up hitting a boat or higher boat on the river, leaving me with a split or quarter when I expected I should be scooping.

I've tried to tighten my play... not chasing crazy stuff like I was previously... for instance, flopping 2 pair and then praying to hit a boat on 4th or the river.

So, I guess my ultimate question is... is it possible that I am just in a run of bad luck right now? Or maybe I am playing at the wrong level or in the wrong room. One thing I read recently regarding assessing the looseness of a Omaha hi-lo table is to track how many people on average see the flop. For a full table of 10, if you see 5+ to the flop on average, that would translate into a pretty loose room. Do you all think that is a decent way to assess this? Obviously there are other tells in regard to looseness... like seeing a guy raise almost every hand, only to reveal a crappy hand in the end. But that seems to be a bit more rare.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any tips you might be able to provide!

Welcome. Now on to brutal honesty.

1 - I think you need to be a little more honest with your assessment of your game (-$210 in less than 4 months is NOT good)

2 - Your playing WAYYY over your bankroll. You'll never get your bonus by going broke before reaching 500 FPP

3 - Get serious about your game and buy Poker Tracker - Omaha (It's $55 but it will be worth more to you than any deposit bonus ever would).

4 - I know nothing (less than nothing?) about Omaha strategy but there are plenty here who do, so post some HH in the hand analysis forum and listen to the feedback you receive.

Good luck.

i have played consistently on pokerstars at the lower levels the omaha hi low that you are trying to specialize in,i started with play money and made enough to sell it and work my way into real money,i went broke the first 2 times i sold my chips,because i had a small $5.00 only,so i waited until i could reach $15.00 selling chips,then i never qwent broke,

i am not bragging by any means,i think i know the game well but i have a problem with preflop raising,i just never hit on stars,no matter high or low cards,it gets very frustrating,anyways i used a couple odds calculators and i have bought about 5 books on hi low,after about a yerar in real money i can summarize to youby saying that the donkies out there are very frustrating,they draw you out so often with total garbage,in my opinion much higher than would be in a normal live game,but who can prove this statement,

the odds are that no matter how well youplay,you are bound to have losing nights and will frequently get rivered,there is nothing to prevent this ,I personally just purchased poker traker,but i have still yet to figure out how to use it to my advantage,i along with i am sure millions of people love to play omaha hi low,but it is a leearning curve there and also some luck we all need,my personal suggestion to you is stay there and keep trying to alter your play so that you can figure out what works best for you,there is no mathematical best choices for folding or raising because until that river card hits your straight flush is no good

After you last post it seems as thugh you may not be as open minded to learn as you think. Blaming the donkey all the time is an easy thing to do for anybody, that's where the tracker comes in and you'll have to face the cold hard facts. Lower limits often attracts lower skilled players but still there are a lot decent players that don't have the expendable income to play higher stakes.

Turning book smart into table smart will take some time at the tables.

My best advice is to listen well to the advice you can pickup here at CC from the gang. There are some very good players here that will give you great advice, all you need to do is apply it at the right time, in the right game level on the felt.

Best of luck!
AB

Edit: see below, double click by accident sorry

^^^^ this

Drop right down in stakes to 10c/20c or lower.

Install a stop loss for each day.

Get PT Omaha

Play substantial amount of hands.

Post statistics.

Get better feedback.

I'm not sure but it seems like you think I posted that thing about the donks ruining the game. I tend to agree that sometimes, having people who playing crap hands until the river will sometimes get lucky and beat you out. BUT... stats don't lie... if you keep playing the right starting hands correctly, you should still end up in the plus side over the long haul... mainly because those same donks can not statistically keep sucking out forever... right?

Anyway, looks like I need to invest in Omaha PT. Thanks for all the tips so far!

Oh, and I had a question about Poker Tracker for Omaha Hi-Lo. Will it be able to track all of the hands I am playing... say at 3 tables at one time? Or is it limited to just 1 table at a time. The reason I ask is that I have a Omaha Poker Coach but I find it impossble to play more than 2 tables at a time since you have to launch an additional session of it for each table you are at.

You seemed totally ignore the bankroll everyone was telling you.

If you want to play .25/.50, then deposit $500. Otherwise move down in levels to .50/.10 and build from there.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I purchased PTO a few days ago and let me tell you, that thing is possibly the most useful pieces of software I have ever invested in! I've only got about 1000 hands imported into it but I can already see the value of the data.

Using the preset player ratings, PT has rated me as a "Good Player". Interestingly enough, this rating came from 2 days of play in which I lost a net total of about $25. Of that, I stupidly lost $15 at a $1/$2 table (not going to try that again for a while). The last 2 days I'm up about $15 per day. The interesting thing again is that I'm playing pretty much the same hands all 4 days, the cards are just coming up more favorable the latter 2. During my 2 losing days, I think I was dealt A23x once or twice. On Sat, I must have hit A23x 8-10 times in a couple of hours. Anyway, I will post up some stats here either later tonight or tomorrow.

I do have a question about PT though. I have it installed on my main PC (desktop) but have played the last 2 days only on my laptop. In order to get my laptop hand history files over to my registered copy of PT, can I just copy the hand history tables over to the Poker Stars hand history file on my desktop, then open PT and use the auto-import feature? It seems to me that PT is reading everything in that folder, so it seems like that should work.

Finally, what stats should I post here for analysis? I know that my VP$IP was very, very low the first 2 days... well under 20%. Even with my mild success the last 2 days, I was still seeing under 30% of the flops. This tells me that I'm not playing too many hands.

Yes, you can move your HH from one PC to another to import them into PT.

As for your stats, not an Omaha player so I have know idea what they should be.