Why would anyone play holdem?

[flint]

I tilted

After writing that yesterday, I tilted so bad on Titan Poker that I lost almost 60 dollars of that hard earned money by spewing. I was tilting so bad, when I should have just been waiting patiently for good hands and making money. I guess its another expensive lesson that I learnt.

The funniest thing that I was just tilting on Titan Poker, (after it dealt me a series of bad beats and dry runs starting with a NLHE tournament, the result of which I was too attached to) while I was not tilting on full tilt poker (where I made a nice $20+ profit).

I haven't had tilt like this for many months. I think I will be resuming cash games in the weekend once I get my mind back to normal and I will try to watch out for any preliminary signs of tilting in the future.

I think the farther you go from the mainstream, the bigger disparity in player skill.

Everybody and his brother knows the basics of Hold'em. And although there are good players and bad players, I think the average HE player has a firm grasp of the game, and knows some basic strategy.

Shift to Omaha or Stud, and now you've got a lot of people who have a more vague understanding of the strategy. Head to a 2-7 triple-draw table, and you will find players who raise preflop, then discard 4 cards.

If you have any idea on how to play these games, you are likely to come off a winner and the most important thing is that you can lower your variance in many of these games by playing the most profitable way : tight.


I am just wondering why this forum seems to dwell so much on holdem? I still want those bad players to be coming in from the holdem world and thinking queens with a 89 are going to be the best hand after the flop in Omaha, but I don't see why a lot of the other forum members are not involved in these games.

 

[Monoxide]

Hold Em'... survival for climbing the pay ladder is my style. Omaha is too slow, very little action / fast eliminations since limits are involved. I also despise cash games... hate them soooo much because bad plays get rewarded.

So much wrong all shoved in 1 small paragraph lol.

I dont think tournament poker is about survival at all, its about accumulating as many chips as possible to reach the final table with a great advantage to take it down entirely. Not to miss just 1 more blind round to get 34th for $40 instead of $28.

Omaha is slow wtf?!? PLO is like holdem on crack, so much action and pretty fun and exciting. ohigh/lo is a slow game because its limit, ANY limit game is slow.

I find bad plays get rewarded way more in tournaments if anything, cash game players for the most part are more skilled and understand what they are doing. Its all about outplaying your opponents and nut peddling FR and less about blinds and pressure from time based obstacles like in tournaments and SNG.

 

[flint]

So much wrong all shoved in 1 small paragraph lol.


Omaha is slow wtf?!? PLO is like holdem on crack, so much action and pretty fun and exciting. ohigh/lo is a slow game because its limit, ANY limit game is slow.

There is pot limit and no limit of both Omaha variants in addition to limit games. I usually play PLO8 (hi/lo).

i like high low also but but holdem is still the game i think

Holdem Hi lo? that sounds interesting as you can only in certain situations make both hands (for a scoop). I guess its possible, but I wanna see it to believe it.

 

[Monoxide]

There is pot limit and no limit of both Omaha variants in addition to limit games. I usually play PLO8 (hi/lo).

Ah yes I see that there are (some) pl and nl games for omaha hi/lo....

I just scanned thru Stars fast and saw that the highest games were all fixed limit, but there is a quite diverse range down the lower limits.

 

[c9h13no3]

Because hold'em has a bigger edge?

 

[Makwa]

Because hold'em has a bigger edge?

Sry, wot does that mean?

 

[flint]

0.5 buy-ins = $25, $25/hour at 40 hours/week and 50 weeks/year = $50k/year. Not particularly great, plus no benefits, sick/vacation days, lunch breaks, down time, social time, etc. So even a regular job at $50k/year would be better.

fwiw I believe I could currently make more than that at NLHE (I mean hourly, not yearly, don't think I could put in 40 hours/week at any card game yet), plus get more in the form of fpps. So yeah, that's why I play NLHE.

I agree that it isn't really that good of a pay, but that is depending on the game based on one or two tables at once. If I was to play 10 tables (might have to play on many sites as there are rarely so many games going on one site), I could make 125-250 dollars an hour, not to count the huge amount of points or rakeback that I would get.

However, playing 10 tables for long hours would just drive me nuts, for now I will just be taking it easy as 3 or 4 tables really seems to pushing the max of what I can play fairly comfortably to build my BR.

 

[c9h13no3]

Sry, wot does that mean?

If you're a good hold'em player, its easy to get into situations where your opponent is drawing very slim, or close to dead. However, in other games, its much harder to get into these sorts of situations.

The reason other games might be more profitable now is because players are so horribly bad at them its unreal. But as you advance in stakes, players will at least be somewhat competant at Omaha 8 or whatever, so your massive skill advantage won't be nearly as massive anymore.

However, I do find other games more entertaining, so I play them too

 

[Makwa]

Txs, I get it now. Thanks for crediting me with a 'massive skill advantage,' some days I feel that way too. Others not so much. Mixing up games does give me an advantage I think, overall, to find soft spots at various sites/games.

Multi tabling HE aside, botland, I like to mix things up.

All the best.

 

[flint]

Sum it up

Just to sum up this thread so far (new posts are of course still welcome)

There are some big advantages in playing games like Omaha (hi or hi/lo), 5/7 stud(8), 2-7 triple draw, razz, etc. as opposed to holdem because:
-There are a lot of players that have little grasp of the basic concepts behind these games.
-Many of these games are played in pot limit format and tend to have a lower variance (meaning that you can build BR fairly safely from low amounts by picking your spots)
-Many of these games have huge average pot sizes due to the fact that noobs are throwing their money around
-Many of these games are slower pace (Omaha tends to have around 50-60 hands per hour) and many players play at the speed of holdem, ie. they play too many hands and don't wait for the right opportunities.

There are also some disadvantages:
-Very little written about the games
-You have to be more patient
-The lower levels might not prepare you enough to play at the higher stakes
-the edge you have against better opponents might not be big enough

 

[robwhufc]

In the last few weeks I have been getting back to my most profitable game: omaha hi/lo. I have so far made about $150, by playing a few hours a day at very low limits.

A few hours a day over a few weeks? Just how many hours has it taken you to win $150?

 

[flint]

A few hours a day over a few weeks? Just how many hours has it taken you to win $150?

I don't have all the details on my laptop (which I am working on right now), but I think it was around 10-15 hours or so to make $150. This inculdes playing 10PLO8, 20PLO8, 25PLO8, 10NLHE and 20NLHE. I played on Titan poker and Full tilt, playing mostly one or two tables at a time. Unfortunately because of the tilting I only have less than 100 dollars of that profit left.

On full tilt I recently started playing with $3 and have built that up to $85, while my Titan BR I started from $100 and grew to almost $200 before I started to tilt on that site (about 55 dollars lost).

My goals for this month are to build my BR on FT to $100 and build my titan BR to $200+.