Cappelletti's book pays off with a Final Table

Wow! I made my first real final table on Full Tilt Poker this weekend! It was the $5 buy-in Omaha 8ob double stack event. We started the tournament with 3000 chips instead of the normal 1500 which played right into my hands. I was able to sit back and play it like I do my cash games, very tight-aggressive. I folded most hands preflop but if I hit it I jammed the pot and got payed off on it. I managed to scoop some big pots and build my chip stack up pretty high.

I want to touch on one hand that sticks out in my mind. A player from early position raised and he was called by a player in middle position. I called from the button with Ace-Trey-Five-Six. The flop came down Seven-Eight-King and the EP raiser bets out half the pot and the MP player calls. I have an open-ended straight draw and the second nut low draw, which is good enough to see another card so I call as well. The turn is a nine, giving me the bottom end of the straight. If there is a big bet here I have to let the hand go, but both players check to me. I check behind them and take the free river card which is a four, giving me a good two way hand. When both players check to me I am fairly certain my Ace-Trey low is good. Anyone with the Ace-Deuce would have bet it by now. I fire out a pot size bet here because I think I am good for half and maybe I can make a better high hand fold or another Ace_Trey fold so I can take the entire pot. The EP raiser folds out, but the MP player thinks for a long time before he finally calls. I show my staight/Ace-Trey low and he mucks his cards as I rake in the large pot. I pull up the hand history and I see he had a Seven-Eight-Eight-Queen. He flopped a set with no hope of a low and he couldn't get away from it. This is a good example of why you don't play trash like that.

I am proud that I made the final table. I ended finishing eighth out of 187 people. I ended up getting all-in on a flop of Queen-Five-Six when I held Ace-Duece-Trey-Queen. My opponent had flopped a set of Queens and made a full house when the turn and river came Jack-Jack. I made about $40 on a $5 investment, but more than that I proved to myself that I can play this game well.

I would like to play this tournament more often, but it starts at 9 p.m. on Saturday nights. I did not get to bed until after 1:30 a.m., and was greeted with a "wake up daddy!" bright and early Sunday morning from Grant. Hopefully they can offer a double stack Omaha 8ob tourney a little earlier sometimes.

Book Review: Cappelletti on Omaha High Low

A couple of Saturdays ago my wife had to work a wedding in the St Louis area, which is about a two hour drive. This meant she had to leave around 9:00 a.m. and wouldn't get home until after 10:00 p.m. This meant I would have watch my three year old son all day. I love him more than anything else in the world, but he can be quite a handful, so after lunch it was time to pull out the secret weapon- pack up the van and head to Grandma and Grandpa's house!

Grandparents are always happy to see their grandkids. We went to my mom and dad's house and hung out for a while. After a couple of hours I slipped out the door and headed to Barnes and Noble to look for a new poker book while they babysat Grant.

I have been playing a lot of Omaha 8ob and I really enjoy 7 card stud 8ob as well. These are split pot games where the best high hand splits the pot with the best low hand. These games can generate huge pots. If your hand is good enough you can win both halves of the pot, also called a "scoop", and really add to your stack. I was looking for the book "High Low Split for Advanced Players" by Ray Zee, but they didn't have any on the shelves. I did find Mike Cappelletti's book on Omaha High Low, so I grabbed it instead.

While there are now hundreds of books on Texas Hold'em, there are only a few books on Omaha. I would say the top three are the two mentioned above, along with "Championship Omaha," a book by T.J. Cloutier and Tom McEvoy. All three of these have gotten mixed reviews, ranging from solid gold to solid crap. Most people love one of the books and hate the other two, so it might just come down to personal preference. Well, on to the book.

Cappelletti on Omaha High Low

This book is actually a collection of articles written by Mr. Cappelletti that originally appeared in CardPlayer magazine. Therefore, it is somewhat disorganized and it jumps around a lot. This has been a major part of the criticism this book has received. There where many ideas that where repeated throughout the book and somethings seemed out of order. It did get a little irritating at times and I can see why people would be annoyed. This book also focuses on limit play, not pot-limit, which is my usual game. It is also quite short, coming in at about 220 pages of actual content.

The information in the book, however, is quite good. I was already a winning player before I read this book, but there where situations where I wasn't quite sure what the right play was. One of the best things in this book is the "pulling vs. pushing" hands. Whether you want to "pull" people into the pot, or "push" them out depending on your hand.

I knew that you could play a hand with all high cards, that is all four pocket cards are a nine or higher, but I didn't really know what to do with them. I now know that you want to see a flop as cheaply as possible, preferably with a lot of people. Only one flop in three will be good enough for you to continue with a high only pocket cards, so you need a small initial investment with plenty of people to pay you off when you do hit your hand. This is a good example of a "pull" hand.

A good example of a "push" hand would be when you flop the nuts in one direction, and have a mediocre hand in the other direction that might win if you can push people out that have a better hand that is not the nuts. Let's say that you flop the nut low with a ten-high flush draw for a high. If you bet or raise aggressively with this hand you can get people with a better high draw to fold. If facing a bet and a raise, someone holding a jack-high or queen-high flush draw with a bad low draw would probably lay down their hand, giving you a chance to win the high pot as well as the low pot.

I would say that this book did improve my game. I have played quite a bit of Omaha high/low so I already had a good grasp of the basic concepts. It is geared for limit, but I was able to adapt the information for my pot-limit games that I play. In a world without a whole lot of options, this book does a pretty good job of giving you the information you need to win. I would rate this one at a three out of four stars, just because of the way the book was put together. The information in the book was very good and I would recommend it for anyone trying to improve their Omaha high/low game.