by Felonius_Monk » Fri Jan 14, 2005 9:24 pm
First of all you should have a stack of more than $9! To buy in short on those small buy-in games is criminal online. You should NEVER have less than basically a full stack at your disposal. If you can only afford 9 bucks, play in a ten buck buy-in table, but NEVER buy in dramatically short at a PLO table because it actually makes it HARDER to play - all your implied odds etc are diminished and it makes it very hard to play ANYTHING without getting all in very quickly.
In this hand, once you lead out and are raised, there's nothing much you can do except get all in or fold; you're basically committed. With a larger stack you can try some plays in these spots (i.e. in a live game) although on this table there's basically not going to be enough chips even if you DO have a big stack. However, in this case you bet, there's a raise and then a THIRD player moves over the top; you'd have to say a set of tens looks very likely indeed and perhaps you should consider mucking (although in reality you had a great shot at winning the pot!).
Middle set is not all that strong in PLO and should be played cautiously. I like to bet or raise with it on the flop, but as soon as someone starts playing back at you you should fold in most situations. It's a classic trap hand in that IF you're up against the top set, you have no way to win (well, except for one out, obviously!), so its a real dominating situation. Put in other terms, when you face a raise after betting out in PLO from a solid player it's usually a top set hand or a massive draw (providing no draw is already made on board); so you're either going to be about evens to win, or totally destroyed. At the lower level games, you may find people raising with less quite often (such as two pair in this case) but you have to give credit for top set i think UNLESS you have some prior knowledge of the player (i.e. bluff-raises a lot, clueless holdem player who'll raise any 2-pair etc).
In this hand with two players giving action after you bet I think the top set is out far more often than not, barring any knowledge of the players being very loose, so I think you have to consider folding as being the best course of action.
Monk
xxxxx
The Monkman J[c]
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