It was the dream of a lifetime -- to play in the WSOP. There was one big catch: I didn't know what the heck I was doing. 18 months ago, I got the bright idea to play Omaha Hi/Lo in the WSOP, but there was another catch: I only knew how to play Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo (PLO8). So how on earth was I going to re-teach myself to play O8 and ween myself from PLO8. This is the story of how I did it and the bumps along the way.
When I first got the idea to play Omaha Hi/Lo in the WSOP, my poker friends gave me some very sobering and bad news: "They don't play PLO8 in the WSOP." They went on to tell me that PLO8 was only played online, and that it doesn't exist outside of the online arena.
Whenever I tried to play Limit O8, I would get smoked by better players. I never gained any traction in my playing until I decided to forego NLHE along with PLO8 and concentrate exclusively on O8.
Early this year, I made my final decision to play in the WSOP $2000 O8 event. For some inexplicable reason, my wife didn't object to spending $2000 to do it. In March, 2006, I filled out the paperwork and sent in my registration along with the $2000 certified check. But earlier than that, I had started practicing.
I primarily played in the $20+2 nightly tournament at Poker Stars, and the nightly tournament at Party Poker (even though my heart lies at Full Tilt Poker). I found the $20+2 tough, but a good learning ground. I found the $5+1 all but impossible to crack.
By April, 2006, I figured out what worked and what didn't. I learned that it's not always good to chase draws because my luck isn't as good as the players who always seem to hit them. It's also not good to chase a low draw beyond the turn, unless there is a lot of money in the pot and a reasonable chance you won’t lose money if it hits. And finally, I learned it's not a good idea to play for the 2nd or 3rd nut draw of anything -- even though I see other players doing it all the time. It also happened in April that I cashed in my first O8 tournament.
In May, I continued to refine my game and cashed in three more tournaments (winning one of them). In June, I had similar results. But more importantly in June, I also cashed for the first time in that impossible Party Poker $5+1 tournament -- placing 2nd out of 251 players, and then cashing the following night (the night before leaving for the WSOP).
I arrived in Las Vegas a few days early, and primarily played $10/20 O8 at the Wynn. But after losing over $1000 in the cash games, I was done with that and wanted to do something else. I ventured over to the Rio to see the WSOP. While I was there, I decided to play in some of the O8 satellite tournaments. This turned out to be a great idea because it helped me map a strategy to carve my way through the field of 670 players.
I first noticed that the tables didn't use shuffle-master automatic shuffling machines. This meant they would be hand shuffling throughout the WSOP tournaments. So using the satellites as an experiment, I started timing the dealers to see how many O8 hands per hour they were dealing. Answer: 30. Even the slowest dealer was dealing 28 hands per hour, so I assumed the better dealers were capable of dealing at least 30.
With the blinds going up every hour at the WSOP and 30 hands being dealt an hour, it seemed like there was plenty of time to wait for hands to come to me, and no need to be hyper-aggressive to force the action. This turned out to be a brilliant strategy, and I largely attribute it to placing as high as I did.
While I was at the Rio that day, I picked up my tournament card and found my seat. My table was right along the aisle next to the TV table. I was going to have a great view of the action at the final table of whatever events were ending (or so I thought). Now all I need to do is show up tomorrow, scared as crap, and play to get slaughtered...but that's not exactly what happened.