Bomb Pots - what’s the best strategy

This is a great guide. Was it written for NLH or PLO, because you mentioned “PLO” at the end of your write up, but OP was referring to NLH.

What makes you think bomb pots are not skill advantage games?

They are definitely high variance, but there is also a huge skill advantage in them. Most players (even good players) do not know how to play them correctly.

Why do you consider making money an exercise in futility?

As long as you are making them pay more than the odds they are getting then it is most certainly not an exercise in futility.

+100
saying there is no skill involved is def. one of the most incorrect things i've heard in a long time

Wearing sunglasses helps prevent players from seeing which board you are looking at.

I've noticed some players have a tendency to gaze at the board they're dominating.

I'm surprised nobody's brought up the classic 2p2 line yet: If you're tired of people calling everything, you should move up where they respect your raises.

this sounds like such an old-fashioned advice, but i'm sure it's actually happening a lot

It's my most reliable way to play a bomb pot. Seriously. I've posted about it. Just pay attention to their eyes and you know what board they favor -- at least the low-stakes recs I play with. It's amazing how accurate it is.

Personally, I glance at the board and basically don't look back or keep moving my eyes between the two if I have to glance for long. Lucky for me, though, the guys I play against aren't bright enough to figure this trick out 😉

As to the OP, your pre-flop hand doesn't matter in a bomb pot until you see the flop 😉

Don't continue unless you have the nuts on one board or can draw to the nuts, preferably on both boards, for the right price. Rarely chase non-nut draws.

Remember, they can have any two cards. Of course, as with all poker, stacks, opponents, etc., are going to factor in, but I see more idiots go broke in bomb pots than any other way (which is good for the rest of us!).

thx for the advice, will def. pay more attention to this

what hasn't been mentioned in this thread so far, but is really important imo:
Position!!!

In most places i play in Europe we have a separate button for the bomb pot. as soon as the bp is played, this button goes to the next player, so that everybody is on the button for the bp once per orbit of BPs, which is very fair, bc position in bp is very valuable.

since in the US it's not being done this way, when you play a long session you can often observe that the button tends to be with the same player, bc one orbit often matches with the dealer rotation, hence bp button for the same player.

what i do in these cases: when it's a fast game, i play super fast as well, sometimes sit out for a while (if someone else also sits out), which makes the orbit go faster, and the position of the BP button also move. When its a slow game i slow down a little, which makes it also move (just other direction).

In my games, the BP button (we have one) moves and a BP is played each round with the BP button moving to the next player -- like you describe. Never seen it any other way?

What are you referring to in the U.S.? How do you think we do it? (Seriously, I've never seen it any other way. Maybe you are thinking of a rock game?)

FWIW, position does matter in a BP, but not nearly as much as in a regular orbit -- not even close. Also, it's very difficult (and usually stupid) to bluff in a bomb pot.

In one of my local rooms the BP is on the dealer change, wherever the button happens to be at the time. I don't know that I agree that:

But that is what he is describing.

@Java:
well, i was referring to the vegas games (aria, wynn, wsop during summer), they don't have a BP button. good to know that other places in the US do.

But i don't agree with your take on importance of the button in BP compared to regular games ... imo it's at least the same or actually even a bit higher.

@Dinesh: yeah, thats what i meant

Ah, yes, that's true. I forgot about those dealer change games. Now that I think about it, they do that at Aria. I'm so used to my underground games I forgot about that!

Agree that even in those games it's not always on the same person, but it definitely happens.

I seriously thought you played in more places. While I like the idea of a BP button, I have never seen one used in US. Most US rooms, the BP happens at dealer change. The button is wherever it is. The BP is played with button in that position. Then the next hand, a normal non BP hand, is played wo advancing the button.

So no BP button is needed. Over a long time, the BO button will be random. But if the dealer and table is averaging 19+BP hands per down with a range of 17 to 21, the BP button will remain in a few seats over a short period of time until perturbed. I have seen the BP button position land on the same 2 or 3 seats for hours.

Problem is that if BPs are an outsized % of the EV in the game and if position is important in playing BPs, those few seats are benefitting disproportionately. If you happen to be in one of those seats, great. I’m you get stuck being 1st or 2nd to act consistently it can suck.

I have more than once seen the BP button position get “stuck” on the same 2 or 3 seats for hours. This might be recency or confirmation bias based but it happens.

If the dealers and table are averaging 18 (or whatever even multiple of players) total hands per down, thus can happen. What more typically happens I think is a slow but inconsistent progression around the table. It is easy on a particular down, you get skipped and over an 8 hr session you never get the button on a BP hand.

Must disagree on position value. In a no4mal hand weak hands but ones that can play well post flop fold pre. But in a BP they get a free look at the flop. A hand like 7-4 off that flops the nuts. Or say a 5-2 off in early position with a rainbow flop of A,3,4 while button holds A-A. It’s going to be a big hand that would seldom happen in a regular pot.

And the other difference is that most casino bomb pots are single board. In that case, position has a little more to do with it, but still not as much as a regular hand where the BTN can raise pre-flop and bluff post-flop based on action and players tendencies -- and then use position to control the hand. You just can't do that in a bomb pot -- especially double-board.

guys, i really don't wanna be rude or anything, but i'm convinced you're dead wrong on the position thing ... there's so many situations (especially in BP), where the fact that you are last to act is so big ... be it to be able to easier extract value, or, when you have a lock on one side and are not sure about the other ... when you are OOP, in the same situation, that sucks. In position you clearly know (bc the guy OOP would have bet with a lock on one side, he'd never check) ... and so on and so on. so many examples

I find the opposite. People check bomb pots all the time w/ the nuts or bet w/ worse than the nuts. Having position is better than not, but nowhere near as important as in a regular hand. It just plain isn't -- single board and especially double board.

Having position just doesn't give you a big advantage compared to having position in a regular hand -- and not to be rude, but if you don't understand that, then you haven't played enough bomb pots 😉

FWIW, I usually play two to four nights a week w/ double-board PLO bomb pots every round, and I play on Pokerrrr2 w/ double-board PLO bomb pots every 20 hands almost every day, all day 😉

ok ok ... i suggest to just "agree to disagree" then. peace.

I might be wrong, but approaching from the other side of the table (dealing speed), I think this is very much recency or confirmation bias.

A little over a year ago I found out that the casino I work at will (very) occasionally track number of hands per hour the dealers deal. Since then, I have been constantly querying about it. For better or worse, I have paid far too much attention to this measurement.

As would be expected, it is mostly a bell curve. Most dealers clustered around a middle with wide outliers. However it isn't a true bell curve with normal deviations. It is much more flat. There is a much bigger difference between faster dealers and slower dealers.

This is with huge variance. There are many factors that are more important than dealer speed, but dealer speed does matter.

Don't get me wrong, the players mostly drive game speed. The second most important factor is game level (lower limit games generally move faster than higher limit, pot size means longer decisions), game type matters as well (no limit moves faster than PLO, and tournaments generally move faster than cash), but dealer speed still matters. The faster dealers can still get out twice as many hands as the slowest. Furthermore, the curve can be tilted.

The whole point of this ramble is that there should be enough variance in dealer speed that the button should effectively be considered "random" on dealer changes.

Obviously this papers over a whole bunch of technicalities ("What is random....."), but should be more than enough for something like bomb pots on dealer changes.

All of that said, I have noticed a slow, but subtling gaining trend of certain people playing bomb pots when they are in position, but declining when they are not. Especially at non-time collection games (i.e. raked games). That said, I think that there are so many mistakes made in bomb pot games that even a reasonably decent player has a huge edge.