Omaha Eight-Or-Better: Defending The Big Blind With Weak Hands

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Since equities run close in Omaha Eight-or-Better (O8B) many players feel compelled to defend their big blind with very weak holdings, even against an early position raiser.
In a hand taken from a $400-$800 high-stakes training video from years ago, an early position player opened, and the action folded around to the hero who defended the big blind with K 7 5 3.

The commentator didn’t express any thoughts about possibly folding, and K 7 5 3 does have 39% equity against a top 20% opening range. However, poker is not just about “hot/cold” equities and we must also consider how often we will be able to realize our equity and the potential reverse implied odds inherent in playing a hand such as this. We cannot make a flush, the king is a valuable high card but still somewhat of a “dangler,” and our low draws will often be second best.

One metric worth taking a look at is how often the strong range is expected to scoop the weaker hand or range. Assuming both players go to showdown and one player scoops the other, a top 20% holding will scoop K 7 5 3 around 67% of the time. This is quite a large advantage and in many hands the K 7 5 3 will end up sticking around due to pot odds mostly hoping for a split.

With such a weak hand it’s hard to hit a flop we really like, and according to ProPokerTools K 7 5 3 has 50% equity or better on only 20% of the flops and is a 60%+ favorite on only approximately 10% of them. In addition, due to our opponent’s strong range, we are not the favorite on many flops where it seems like we hit decently well.

For example, we are a 46% equity underdog with bottom two pair on a rainbow board of J 7 5. We only have 44% equity when flopping a low draw and a 17-out straight draw wrap on a board of 6 4 Q. A top 20% opening range will contain a large concentration of premium low draws often accompanied by flush possibilities and/or big pairs, and against that our holding doesn’t fare that well.

We should probably check our entire range on any flop as the opener probably has close to a profitable 100% continuation bet on many flops available to him due to the overall strength of his range versus a wide big blind defense. Even if his strategy of betting 100% is not theoretically correct, we are not often going to have a hand that can punish him with a check-raise.

When our opponent bets the flop we are getting 5.5:1 odds on our call, but how often are we going to be able to profitably continue? Given these pot odds we should have more than enough overlay to play on if we have 30% equity or more, right? We would hope so, but when we have 30%-40% equity most of the situations are going to be quite marginal.

For example, on a board of A 8 3 we have around 39% equity which is quite high; however, we certainly don’t love our hand here. We have a pair and a made A-3-5-7-8 low, but on this particular board our opponent has almost a 4:1 scooping advantage assuming both players go to showdown. This is an extreme disadvantage and demonstrates the large reverse implied odds that we will often face.

Now let’s assume the flop comes down as J 10 5 where we have approximately 34% equity. While we have less equity than the previous board considered, it is probably more advantageous in that we have a much better chance to scoop and we can possibly bluff our opponent off a better hand later on with some frequency. That said, this also isn’t a great situation and in general we will still experience reverse implied odds and/or struggle to realize our equity.

Any board where we have less than 30% equity we are almost certainly going to have to check-fold, and with our particular holding of K 7 5 3 that means we are going to do so around 25% of the time. And around 35% of the time we are going to be in that 30%-40% equity range where we often have legitimate playability concerns.

In this example, we assumed villain was playing a top 20% range, however, the situation against a top 30% or even a top 40% range with K 7 5 3 and other weak holdings is not that dissimilar.

When our best low combination is 3-5 it really doesn’t matter that much if our opponent has A-4 instead of A-2. And if he does hold an A-4 or an A-5 he will often have flush draws, a big pair, and/or combinations of A-K/A-Q.

We are still only a 60% or greater equity favorite on a small number of flops (around 10%) and will be in that somewhat awkward zone of 30%-40% equity a large amount of the time.

Proponents of defending very wide even against tight ranges argue that we can do so because equities run very close and we may only under-realize relative to our opponent by around 10-20%. However, that seems somewhat optimistic and also doesn’t address the issue of reverse implied odds.

In any form of poker, the bottom 60%-90% of holdings are going to have a real tough go of it out of position against a much stronger range. In O8B, while the equities do run closer, your opponents will be more showdown bound than in other games and it’s difficult to scoop.

It’s somewhat dangerous to suggest that we can play such middling hands if we just learn to play better post-flop. In this particular case, considering elements other than just simply equities and making prudent folds pre-flop is how we can more effectively play better.

We can take a flop with relatively weak high holdings but should fold hands with middling low cards that are so thoroughly dominated by a strong range. Against a cutoff or button open, we should defend more hands but it’s important not to take it too far as having the second-best low draw is a bad place to be, especially when your holding has such limited potential on the high side.

Even if many seasoned players defend quite wide it doesn’t mean that we must follow suit. Poker is constantly evolving, and we should never be afraid to deviate from the herd if we believe in our analysis and the reasons to do so. ♠

Kevin Haney is a former actuary of MetLife but left the corporate job to focus on his passions for poker and fitness. He got his poker start way back in 2003 and particularly enjoys taking new players interested in mixed games under his wing and quickly making them proficient in all variants. If interested in learning more, playing mixed games online, or just saying hello he can be reached at [email protected].