Full disclosure: I am plagiarizing this post. To be fair, though, it is from myself. The below is a strategy entry I made about PLO8/NLO8 mtts about a year ago. I went through a period playing almost every big bet o8 tournament possible in one man’s daily lifespan and after tremendous results (including a silly 2nd place in the 2k nlo8 SCOOP event last year – I say silly b/c I should have won, ofc) decided to make a strat post. It’s for the same reason I am posting that here – I haven’t made a poker theory/strategy post yet, I am planning to get back into playing more MTTs, and, well, everyone sucks at this game* and can use the help.

*obviously an exaggeration. I am not even a top player at the game (nor do I claim to be) but that doesn’t make my advice any less true in online MTT settings.

It’s been a while since I’ve made a strategy post and at the risk of shooting myself in the foot and divulging some of the secrets that I feel very few others know (that help me have such a large edge over the fields), I’m going to talk a bit about big bet omaha hi/lo. Pot Limit Omaha hi/lo and No Limit Omaha hi/lo. My advice is tournament specific (PLO8 and NLO8 MTTs specifically) and does not translate over to cash games very well.

Forget everything you know about PLO8/NLO8. Forget everything you have read. Forget every piece of advice anyone has ever told you. You will do MUCH better in big bet O8 tournaments going into them with a blank slate mindset rather than trying to apply PLO8/NLO8/LO8 cash game theory to them. Sit & Go theory is slightly better but still not good enough. So forget it all. Everything. Done? OK now we have something to work with.

Tournament poker is about two things:

1) Survival

2) Decimation

Survival
Some of you might be surprised to see this as one of the two things, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those players who holds on to dear life trying to eek into the money. Having said that, the goal of any tournament is to survive the longest. You want to win and that means surviving longer than everyone else. There are times when you should be “hanging on” to try and make the money (I won’t go into that in this post — perhaps a future one) but for the most part you want to be constantly trying to accumulate chips, which brings me to…

Decimation
I say decimation because it feels that way sometimes considering how weak the general field of a big bet O8 MTT is. In reality “accumulation” would be a better word. You are trying to get all of the chips. You want all the chips from every shortstacker and deepstack alike. Easy to say, difficult to do, you say? Actually no. It’s pretty fucking easy to do. People are horrible at this game (that probably means you are too, no offense, but there are like 7 people I have encountered playing MTTs that I consider “good” and all but 1 or 2of them is “great” imo).
You want the chips. You do NOT get them by sitting around twiddling your thumbs and waiting for the nuts. You do NOT get them by playing to scoop. You do NOT get them by playing a hand that has a lock on one side of the board. You do NOT get them by playing tight. You do NOT get them by freerolling someone. You do NOT get them by trapping a 3rd player in the pot.

Well, I lie, those are some of the ways you can get some of the chips, but none of them can even come close to the best way to get all of the chips: Bluffing.

It’s so simple. The entirety of poker would be nonexistent if not for bluffing. There would be no skill in the game. If you only played the cards you were dealt and went to showdown every time pitting your hand against your opponents having the best hand win every time, nobody would be a winning player. We would all lose to the rake. However add the simple element of bluffing to the mix and you all of a sudden have a skill game. A way to win the pot without having the best hand, without having to rely on getting to showdown and winning and without having to rely on good hole cards.

How does bluffing fit into PLO8/NLO8 MTTs? Quite well, actually.

1) There are millions of opportunities to bluff, yet almost nobody takes them.

2) You can literally create your own perfect scenarios to bluff.

3) Semi-Bluffing is an amazing tool that, again, nobody seems to use.

4) Bluffing will win you all the chips. Play aggressive, win every chip that nobody contests for, then when you do get all-in in a pot and have 40-60% equity you don’t care if you win or lose because you’re freerolling with the chips you won from bluffing.

This is not a new ideology. This is actually probably the most basic and straightforward piece of real advice to ever be documented in the history of poker. Doyle wrote about it in Super System. Play aggressive. Pick up the small pots so you can freeroll the large ones. Everyone applies this theory to poker, except, it seems, the big bet o8 world. Why? I have no idea. Perhaps it’s been drilled into their brains over and over and over and over and over to wait for a good hand, to play only the nuts, to play to scoop, etc etc blah blah fucking blah. YES that style is +EV. Yes you will make it into the money frequently and occasionally win a tournament. But you’re going to come 9th a hellofalot more often, and you don’t even come close to maximising your EV against a field as soft as ANY PLO8/NLO8 MTT available online today. My advice is as applicable to a $4.40 freezeout as it is to a $11 rebuy as it is to a $215 freezeout.

Posting this is only going to hurt me in the long run. It’s been a long time since I made a strategy post though and I need to post something to keep people reading this thing other than boring updates of my progress or photos of delicious food or ramblings about mandarins and ninjas.

Cliffnotes in Magic the Gaterhing image form for those too lazy to read textual gold: