Why I think Big O is a Big Mistake

With internet poker no longer available to U.S. citizens, us PLO8 players are at a bit of a crossroads- Outside of rare occasions, our game has been played almost exclusively online in the past, so the ban on internet poker affects us as much as anyone. Big O(5 card PLO8) caught on at last year's WSOP thanks to a bunch of live players introducing it, the online PLO8 community embracing it, and the clever marketing("Big O" sounds cool, getting 5 cards seems crazy and fun so randoms are more likely to sit down, etc.). I'd like to suggest that our group of online PLO8 players has made a big mistake by embracing this game. I think we are being severely shortsighted in doing this, and we run the risk of making PLO8 extinct. It is readily apparent to me that the growth of Big O has come at the expense of PLO8. There are Big O tournaments popping up all over town now, including many casinos having a Big O event but no PLO8 event in their series. How long before they replace the PLO8 WSOP events with Big O? Its already happening in the cash games at the Rio- I have yet to see a PLO8 game over $5/5, yet there seems to be no problem getting high stakes Big O games. Considering that many high stakes online PLO8 guys are in town all summer long, this worries me. Don't take my word for it, heres the latest post in this forum's Big O thread:

I propose 3 changes that we should make, each of which may hurt our immediate profits(due to decreased player pool) but will be much better for us in the long run.

#1: The combination of shallow buy ins and button straddles ruins the game and one(or both) need to be eliminated

Note: I've only played $5/10 so I'm referencing those stakes here

The minimum buy in is $500 and I've seen multiple dealers at the Rio not even enforce that. With a $25 button straddle, that means that with just one limper a shortstacker can then raise to $120 preflop. If the limper calls him that leaves the shortstacker with just slightly more than one pot sized bet(he'd have $380 left and the pot would be $280).

"But Assani, weren't there shortstackers online? Why is it so different here?"

1. Online and live poker are different animals. Online we gladly accept small win rates because we know that we can play an obscene number of hands over short periods of time and, therefore, make good money nevertheless. When playing 30 hands/hour live(and thats a NLHE estimation, its probably more like 20-25 for Big O), you're looking to push major edges. Those bigger edges simply don't exist against shortstackers. As someone who has made a living for 8+ years from both live and online poker, I would caution online-only players to make sure you understand this vital distinction before trying to make a living off of live poker.

2. Online had 20-50BB tables, 40-100BB tables, and 100-250 BB tables. With a possible $40 in blinds every hand($5 + $10 + $25), this essentially makes Big O have a min buy in of ~20 BB and no max buy in. Thats just way too wide of a buy-in range, and it favors shortstackers too much because deep players must worry more about playing optimally against other deep players.

3. The game is advertised as "$5/10", so most people buy in for a $5/10 game with around $1000. But when you add in a $25 straddle and when the $5 rounds up to $10 when calculating PF raise limits then it creates an entire table full of shortstackers who may not have even intended to be a shortstacker when they first sat down.

#2: As a game of skill, Big O pales in comparison to PLO8 and we should immediately switch back to PLO8

Four factors to consider:

-5 cards means there are more playable hands preflop.

-Many people don't adjust and continue to play hands that would be profitable in PLO8 but are no longer in Big O due to the average starting hand now being better.

-With every player having 5 cards, each player has a much greater chance of having the nuts on any particular board.

-Most often these games are full ring until late at night before they break(and often times live players want to quit as soon as we get close to being shorthanded)

This leads to a ton of multiway pots where the nuts or big combo draws to the nuts are out there. This leads to less HU pots postflop, less automatic c-betting, less bluffing, less maneuverability, less iso raising, less having to make tough light call downs, less orphaned pots to steal, less having to get used to playing marginal hands, and less ability to exploit having position. This leads to more straight forward play, more coolers, more spots where you're forced to get it in as a coinflip and experience huge variance, more automatic spots where critical thinking isn't needed, and more overall variance since hand values now run even closer. Hand reading becomes a lot tougher with 5 cards, which may at first appear to be a good thing, but I actually think it minimizes the edge that good hand readers have because it simply becomes more of a guessing game.

It essentially leads to a game where your sole advantage over the average opponent is that you'll play tighter and better use positional advantages. Sure there are some reckless idiots who will play so poor that you'll have other edges, but those players are rare and will go broke quickly. Against the average player you're simply winning his money by out-nitting him, and to me thats boring as f*ck. In PLO8 I feel like you can really force your opponents to make mistakes by being aggressive, whereas in Big O you're just waiting to get cards and hoping that your opponents are so bad that they make mistakes on their own. I do admit that its a possibility I just haven't fully grasped the strategy, but there are other good PLO8 players who have agreed with me on this. Moreover, with only ~25 hands/hour and all of those spots where you're forced to get it in on a coinflip, variance will play way too big of a role in determining the winners...thats fine for casual players, but for people trying to make a living off of poker its a scary thing.

#3: We should play at the Wynn instead of the Rio

With the future of online poker uncertain, we should be worried about the long term growth of our game. The Rio is dead outside of WSOP time. I live here in Vegas and would be willing to keep a Wynn PLO8 game running all year long(especially now that I can no longer play online). The reason Big O got popular is because those live players who brought it to the WSOP aggressively promoted it and were willing to start the games off shorthanded before it caught on. Can we do that with a regular PLO8 game at the Wynn? I have no clue, but I think we owe it to ourselves and to the game we love to at least give it a try.

I've lived in Vegas for nearly 4 years and imo the Wynn is the best room in town. A comparison between the Wynn and the Rio:

-Rio charges $8 every half hour for drop at $5/10; Wynn charges $6 and will almost always drop it to $3 if theres 5 or less players. Assuming one plays 40 hours a week for the 6 weeks of the series, thats $480+ directly in your pocket. And thats not counting the fact that your opponents are all deeper now so theres more money in the pots you win from them.

-Wynn dealers are the best in town; Rio dealers are brought in just to deal the series and often times are not full time dealers. In a game like PLO8, this matters a ton. Adding one or two more hands per hour is huge for one's winrate. Moreover, theres more room for dealer errors in a game like PLO8.

-Wynn will put our game in the high limit section and give our game their full attention; At Rio, we are just another game that gets lost in the crowd. This manifests itself in a number of areas ranging from how long we have to wait to fill empty seats to

-Wynn is very generous with food comps, their deli and room service rock. They will make sure we feel appreciated, and they would gladly help us promote the PLO8 game if we held it there.

-Wynn would most likely be willing to have 6 max tables if it meant keeping PLO8 a regular game at the Wynn. It'd be awesome if we could have one full ring and one 6 max table of $5/10 running all day long during the rest of the WSOP.

Like many of you, I've been trying to figure out what to do now that online poker is no more. Well I've decided that I'm going to at least give this thing a shot. If nobody cares and it doesn't work, then so be it- I can make a living off of NLHE, so I'll just do that. But from now on whenever I go play NLHE at Wynn I'm going to start a $5/10 PLO8 list of interest. I'll start the game HU against anyone and will play for as long as I can. I'd play $10/25 as well if anyone is interested. My hope is that we can get a regular game during the rest of the series and that momentum can be used to keep the game running at least somewhat regularly throughout the rest of the year. I'm feeling a bit sick today, but I should be all better by tomorrow(Friday) night and should be there then. If anyone wants to, PM or facebook me your cell # and I'll start up a list. I'll then text everyone before I go to the Wynn everytime. If you're just here for the WSOP, then make sure to let me know when you leave town so I can take you off the list and you don't still get the texts all year long. To be honest I'm not very optimistic about this, but I don't think Big O is a better alternative; I think we should at the very least try to make PLO8 work first. Anyone with me?