Hangers
One of the best things about playing poker for a living is that I have time to do a lot of volunteering. This week, I am in Iowa volunteering for a presidential campaign, so I haven’t had much time to play cards. A friend of mine is meeting me at a small casino in Riverside, IA tonight to celebrate New Years, so that should be fun. Many of the locals here in the tiny town where I’m staying say it’s a nice little casino. I can’t wait.
I have managed to play a few hours online though. I mostly play pot-limit Omaha cash games online for very low stakes…usually .50/1 or 1/2. I make a living playing live, but I haven’t had the success online, so I play small. It seems dumb to throw money down the drain until I can get some momentum or at least figure out why I don’t do as well.
I have had a couple recent hands online that made me think about the value of hangers in Omaha. I typically follow the advice given in most books on Omaha regarding hangers. They seem to universally advocate steering clear of playing hands with one or two cards that don’t relate to the best cards in your hand. The funny thing is, the hanger is usually the card that wins me a lot of money.
In one hand on stars, I had KK82 rainbow in late position. There were several limpers before it got to me. I decided to semi-bluff with position in order to take the pot down right there. I put in a pot sized raise and disappointingly got two callers.
When people raise in Omaha, especially online for low stakes, you can almost always put them on aces or kings unless they are maniacs raising every hand. This makes it hard to get paid off when the aces or kings make a set, and also ensures there will be at least one other player who will stay in the pot, just to take advantage of the fact that he knows more about your hand than you do about his. I usually don’t raise with my aces or kings for this reason, unless I am also raising a lot of other hands, but this time, since there was a chunk of change already in the pot and because I had position, I thought it was worth a shot. The flop came 882. Bingo. I jammed the pot. The remaining players probably put me on an over-pair, so they stayed in all the way, assuming I missed, and I got paid off big time. I probably wouldn’t have made near ass much if I hadn’t raised preflop.
A similar thing happened less than an hour later when I played KQJ6, and made queens full of sixes against a player who stayed in with the case queen.
At my home game just outside of Chicago, we play a mixed game of $5/$5 pot limit Omaha and no limit hold’em. At the last game, I raked a huge pot when I made quad fives with my AA5Q. Clearly, I wasn’t counting on the five being my saving grace, but she was.
I can’t count the number of Omaha hands I have won with tiny hangers. In fact, it feels like more often than not, the cards that get me into a hand are not the ones that help me win it. I realize that I remember the hands that I win with hangers more than the hands I lose, but this has happened to me so many times that I wonder if the hangers should be more apart of my Omaha strategy. Maybe I should loosen up and ignore a bad hanger a little more often. I seem to always get paid off big when I hit those cards, so the surprise factor might make it worth a little loss here or there.
Anyway, it’s something to think about while I’m out in the cold knocking on doors today. If you live in one of the states that selects a presidential nominee early, like Nevada, which goes to the polls on January 19, I encourage you to get out and caucus or vote!
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Know exactly what yr describin’. Even though I have “don’t play hands w/danglers” as a rule (of sorts), I’ll allow myself to do so — for better or worse — though try to ensure I’ve got decent position when I do. Of course, if yr at an overly passive table you can usually take extra flops as well (as long as you can get away when nec.).
Am down at .10/.25 & .25/.50 currently — and content at the moment. Am interested to read more of yr adventures a couple of levels above.