Pot Limit Omaha
Tuesday, August 28 2007Pot Limit Omaha poker tournaments are often run as rebuys. Because the game has such high variance, it is one of the ideal games for rebuy tournaments, generating lots of rebuys and pumping up the prize pools. Also, because so many close all-in situations come up in PLO, rebuys are an advantage for the good player because it allows them to have some control over overcoming the short term variance in the game.
In a no rebuy PLO tournament, a good poker player will often get their money in on one or the other side of a very close proposition, very strong drawing hands against made hands like full wraps with a flush draw against a set. These situations are very high variance and come up a lot and a good player will often be knocked out of a poker tournament by them. Good players tend to try to play lower variance styles of play, on the theory that they have a large advantage over the table so they would rather not get their money in the pot in high variance situations where the edge is less than their expected edge at the table in general. But in PLO these situations are often unavoidable.
In a ring game, good players will reduce their variance by running a hand out more than once. This is done after the all the players are all in in a pot. The players then might agree to deal out the five cards twice or three times if the money is in before the flop. If the money goes in after the flop they would agree to deal out the turn and river twice or three times. If the money goes in on the turn, they deal the river more than once. You then win the proportion of the pot equal to the proportion of the deals you won: If you win 50% of the deals you get half the pot,1/3 of the deals, 1/3 of the pot and so on. This kind of agreement is a variance reducing play. At the extreme, consider a situation where your opponent has only one out in the deck and he agrees to deal the turn and river more than once. If you deal the board more than once, you are guaranteed half the pot at a minimum even if that one out hits on one of the deals. It avoids the mathematical variance disaster. And good players like to create situations where they are more likely to realize their true mathematical expectation. The more iterations of a hand you deal, the closer to your mathematical expectation you will get.
Rebuys in poker tournaments work in a similar way. When the mathematical disaster strikes, and the player loses the hand, he can rebuy and have another shot at the tournament. For the first few hours of the tournament it prevents the player from being dealt that one knock blow from the mathematical gods. Rebuys act like dealing a hand more than one time.
So, rebuys are an advantage to the good player. But managing them is a big part of working them to your advantage. There are two main philosophies to rebuying. The first is to rebuy a lot, taking more chances during the rebuy period to try to gather a lot of chips going into the non rebuy period of the tournament. Since you can rebuy, the thought goes, you can gamble more because you are able to take those higher variance situations in stride since losing them does not deal you a knock out blow.
Also, even if you lose many of those situations and rebuy a lot, the chips are still at your table to be gathered back into your stack, assuming you think you are a poker player who is much better than the other players at your table. If you know those chips are sitting in your opponents' stacks at a disadvantage to them then rebuy away because even if you lose, you will eventually get those chips back into your stack. In a rebuy tournament, where there are lots of chips in play, using a strategy that may cause you to rebuy a lot will either end up with you having a huge stack going into the no rebuy period or there being a lot of chips at your table for you to win back after the rebuy period is over.
If you do choose this strategy, it can be a big winning strategy for a great poker player if two circumstances hold true. The first is that you are at a non breaking table. If you are going to apply the high variance strategy, you need to check the breaking order before the tournament starts to make sure that your table is not breaking anytime soon after the rebuy period. Simply put, if the chips are not going to be at your table for you to gather back in the case that you sail off for a ton of rebuys, then there is no point to the strategy and all you have accomplished is to waste your money. If you can't win your chips back, don't send them out to the other players at the table if they are going to disperse and lock those chips away from you.
The second circumstance is that even if you are planning to play a high variance style, you need to make sure that even so you do not go off for so many rebuys that you have no reasonable chance of making a profit. Many times in rebuy tournaments I see players going off for so many rebuys that they can only show a profit if they come in 3rd place or better. This, obviously, makes no sense and needs no more explanation.
The other strategy for rebuy tournaments is more conservative. Allow the crazy rebuy people to offer you an huge overlay in both the tournament and each hand they play. If you know your opponents are going to be doing some crazy gambling during the rebuy period, you can take advantage of the overlay they are offering you by playing conservatively and running the nuts into them.
In a cash game, you play looser in tight games because your bluffing equity goes way up and you are in need of advertising to get paid off in bigger confrontations. If no one is paying off, which happens in a tight game, you should be bluffing for two reasons: opponents are folding more causing your rate of bluffing successfully to go up and the bluff themselves have high equity even when you get caught since it might make those tight players pay you off more.
In a loose game, on the other hand, you should not be playing fast and loose yourself. First, your bluffing equity becomes almost non-existent. Opponents with an already very high frequency of calling are nearly impossible to bluff so the equity in the bluff itself is almost nonexistent. Combine this with the fact that there is almost no increased future equity in getting caught bluffing since your opponents are paying off regardless. The money you spend bluffing is money wasted against opponents who are were going to pay off whether or not they see you bluffing. Why spend money advertising to customers who are going to buy your product no matter what?
The rebuy period of a rebuy poker tournament often creates a situation like a very loose cash game. Players are playing fast and loose with their money so you can sit back, play tight and run the nuts into them. They are giving you an overlay on each hand, in general, and in the game itself. But they are also offering you an overlay in the overall tournament. The sit tight strategy reduces the number of rebuys you will make. So you will generally be in the tournament for a much smaller investment than the faster and looser players. While you will have gone off for much fewer rebuys than your opponents, you will be playing for the exact same prize pool as they are, offering you a better return on your total investment than they have.
Both the fast and loose strategy and the sit tight strategy have their advantages. If you are going to play the fast and loose strategy you need to make sure you are a better player than your opponents at the table and that your table is non-breaking. If your table is breaking quickly, it doesn't matter how good a player you are, you should play a tighter strategy. And if you feel that you are a weaker poker player, you should do whatever you can to reduce your variance and play a tighter during the rebuy period.
