Odds and Ends

As I said yesterday, I am sincerely curious to see what happens today over in that Kentucky courtroom. I hope the Poker Grump is right that this all mostly amounts to a bluff (i.e., Gov. Beshear really doesn’t “have a hand”). That’s my gut feeling, too. That is, I also suspect the governor really is probably way behind here, perhaps even drawing dead.

Am still gonna watch, though.

Speaking of drawing (almost) dead, I played in a little 45-player NLHE sit-n-go (just $5.50) on Tuesday and ended up going out within about 20 hands.

I’d started okay, and had chipped up to 1,640. We were still in Level 1 (10/20). I then picked up K-K in middle position and raised to 80, and this very loose, gambler-type on my left reraised to 320 behind. I call him very loose because he’d shoved all in on the very first hand of the tournament to win the blinds, then had continued the aggro stuff off and on ever since. So I liked seeing his reraise, confident his range was fairly wide (and I was probably ahead of it).

Then the player on the button reraised all in for 1,560. It folded back to me and I called, as did my aggro neighbor (in a heartbeat). I still had 80 chips and the aggro guy had just 10. The flop came and we got his last 10 in the middle. The button had A-K and he had pocket nines. Ugh. I’ve only got one card -- the last king -- to save me here. In fact, I’m not really much better off than Big Slick, as we’re both only about 4% to be saved. Turn and river brought no help, and suddenly I’m down to 70 while my neighbor is the overwhelming chip leader.

Get K-J on the next hand and open-shove my 70. I get three callers. Flop comes and they all check. The turn is the and one of them bets 120 into the dry side pot, forcing the other two to fold. The bettor turns over . Okay -- I’m about 70-30 ahead. But the on the river ends my comeback bid prematurely.

Yesterday went better, as I managed to triple my buy-in at a loose pot-limit Omaha table in just under an hour of play. Was fortunate early in a hand in which I’d picked up A-A-10-2 single-suited (clubs), and got in a preflop raising war with my neighbor that resulted in the two of us getting it all in. He not-so-surprisingly showed A-A-J-10 double-suited (spades and hearts).

The flop brought two clubs and a spade. The turn was a spade. And the river a third club, giving me a flush and the $50 pot.

My opponent quickly typed “wow lucky,” and I responded “yep, coulda been a spade.” Then he says “preflop i dominated u more than 90 %.” Erm, I don’t think so. I ignored the obvious error, though, and facetiously typed “shoulda told me that before.”

Another player at the table couldn’t resist calling him on the claim, saying there was no such thing as a 90% edge preflop in PLO. (Indeed, according to TwoDimes, he actually only rates about a 57-43 edge on that one.) I pretend-defended him, though, saying something about his hand (A-A-J-T double-suited) being one of the best starters in PLO. The chat died down, but the sloppy play -- and, for all I know, poor calculations -- did not.

Got me wondering whether there were any combinations of hands in PLO in which one player might in fact have a 90-10 edge over the other preflop. I know in no-limit hold’em pocket aces is almost (but not quite) a 90% favorite over seven-deuce offsuit. But are there any such combos in PLO?

I plugged a few PLO hands over in the TwoDimes calculator to satisfy my curiosity. Without doing so yourself, can you think of one? Can’t? Okay, you can use the calculator, too.