My new Favourite poker game...
When I first started playing I loved Hold'em couldn't get enough of it. Then I discovered Omaha 8 and liked that one even more. Now I find myself loving the Stud8 tournaments.
In the past week I have played in 8 of them and cashed 4 times (bubbled out in 2 of them on with rolled up 6's with a Quad 5s on 7th street oh well).
The swings in Stud8 are a ride unto themselves since you will often have to go to the last card on any reasonable draw. The nice thing about stud I find is that as long as you have a reasonable amount of chips to call at least 4-5 bets, you are never really out of the game because the antes are so small compared to blinds in hold'em. You can really wait for good starting cards in Stud8 and get paid off when you make your hand about 70% of the time. Plus you can quite often scoop a pot when someone fails to make his low.
Any other Stud8 players out there?
In the past week I have played in 8 of them and cashed 4 times (bubbled out in 2 of them on with rolled up 6's with a Quad 5s on 7th street oh well).
The swings in Stud8 are a ride unto themselves since you will often have to go to the last card on any reasonable draw. The nice thing about stud I find is that as long as you have a reasonable amount of chips to call at least 4-5 bets, you are never really out of the game because the antes are so small compared to blinds in hold'em. You can really wait for good starting cards in Stud8 and get paid off when you make your hand about 70% of the time. Plus you can quite often scoop a pot when someone fails to make his low.
Any other Stud8 players out there?
Comments
The game can be *very* frustrating at times. I can't tell you how many times I've started with 4 to a good low against players who have (at best) 3 to a worse low and I go brick-brick-brick. And high hands are difficult to play aggressively since you'll often get low hands (usually correctly, not as a "bad beat") backing into 7-high straights and such.
Yes, I know the idea of high-low is to try to *scoop* pots. However, I find it's more realistic that the times I'm scooping are mostly backing into straights and flushes when drawing to (or having made) a decent low. A big difference in Omaha8 and Stud8 is that there are many more 2-way starting hands in the former.
I'd describe the style I've been using as tight-passive, which is certainly *not* the conventional wisdom when it comes to playing style for high-only games. And you obviously can't be too passive when you do make a strong hand, but slowing down to chop up a 3rd player seems to be an underrated (by my opponents) concept in low-limit Stud8. For example, many players with (what appears to be) a one-way lock will often raise when a call might have actually won them an additional half-bet (or half-bets). It's as if they want to drive out one of two high opponents when they have a board-lock (or close to it) for low.
I also like *very* much that Stud8 is a complicated game that you have to play close attention to. I can gain a significant advantage if my opponents are not using all of the information out there (e.g. if they're not paying close enough attention to the game) and I am. It would be very hard (it would be for me anyway) to play another table of anything while you're playing Stud8.
ScottyZ
Yes that does happen, the backing into a straight on the low draw, though not as often as I would like
It's an interesting point, I will usually only bet the low when the high hands do not bet, after all no sense in not playing a made hand. However I will passively call a low since after all there is always a change of backing into a straight and getting accused of chasing until the river by someone playing a rolled up set.
Its interesting that you brought up this point.. In his Stud8/Omaha8 book, Ray Zee makes the suggestion that the LL HiLo Split games favour a tight-passive (passive as compared to what we mean by holdem's agression) playing style over ruthless agression. I wish I had the book on me so I could tell you his reasoning
Anyway, I agree with Zee.. I see a lot of players attempt to bring the holdem style over to Omaha8 and get killed.. They do dumb things like raise from EP with dry A3's and continue betting straights when flushes and boats hit the turn/river..
Now thats funny. Zee considers LL split games robotic and unimaginative. So much so that the book consists of 25ish rules to follow under 'basic strategy' and the 'advanced topics' are only applicable to high limit games..
If you've got a made hand in either direction, you have to bet to charge the players on draws to split your pot. I assume the scoops occur far less in S8 than O8, so getting those extra bets out of the 3rd player is key..
Glad to see someone else moving to the dark side of stud.