The Playing Zone, PART 2
Lou Krieger
With an extended playing zone you can’t take too much for granted, and a hand like top-pair, topkicker can be very vulnerable simply because any card that doesn’t directly help you might help another player. The playing zone’s width goes directly to a hand selection and playing strategy.
In a loose, passive, an ace on the board frequently extends the playing zone dramatically. While it’s a lot more likely that a board with an ace and all big cards is likely to give another player two pair, even unseqenced lower cards can help someone when the majority of players who catch part of the flop are likely to stick around for the duration. In Omaha, the playing zone concept is equally important. Perhaps it’s even more so, because with six combinations that can be made from the four cards in your hand, a lot of probable hands become possible, and knowledge of the playing zone becomes vitally important. For example, if you’ve been dealt A-2-K-K in an Omaha/8 game and the flop is K-3-8 of mixed suits, two playing zones have been touched.
Two low cards mean that anyone with a live low draw will stick around to the river trying to capture half of the pot. You don’t have any worries at this juncture about a straight draw panning out, so your set of kings is currently in the lead, but sets are not the powerhouse in Omaha/8 that they are in Texas hold’em. Even when they hold up, you might wind up with only half the pot. Nevertheless, you are drawing to the nut low, so even if another player also holds an A-2, you’ll get half of the low end of the pot as long as a third low card doesn’t duplicate the ace or deuce in your hand. And your trip kings may hold up for the high end of the pot.
In Omaha/8 playing zones lie at the deck’s polar extremes. You’d like to jump into the fray with a hand full of big cards, a handful of babies, or some combination like A-2-3-K that gives you big and little coordinated combinations-and if your ace and king are suited to one or both of the babies, so much the better. The vast mid-range of the deck is not where the playing zone is located at all. While you could make a straight if you begin with hands like 9-8-7-6, someone else is likely to make a low hand, and another player could make a bigger straight and you’ll find yourself doomed in both directions.
But in an Omaha high-only game, a run of four mid-range cards like 9-8-7-6 is playable because the playing zone extends down to the middle of the deck. Although mid range cards are dogs in Omaha/8, they are part of the playing zone for Omaha high-only. Low cards, which are death in Omaha high-only, can be raising hands in Omaha/8.
When you’re playing poker, always look to the playing zone when attempting to determine what kind of hand other players might be holding, or when you’re trying to make an assessment about how safe or vulnerable your own hand might be. But the playing zone can change depending on the game and your opponents. Sane players play sane hands, but in loose games the playing zone is unbounded and might even extend across the entire deck. When you’re in a game like that, be careful. When it’s tough to put your opponent on a hand, it’s difficult to know how your hand stacks up against theirs.
It’s times like these when you are likely to find yourself losing pots you figured to win. But the silver lining in this cloud of increased fluctuations and variance is that all of those excess callers make for bigger pots when you win them. And winning money is what poker is all about.
Filed under: Poker News