It’s been a difficult last few days for all of us who love poker, especially those of us for whom the online game is our primary outlet. For me, the angst has been compounded by my family schedule. With out-of-town guests galore, my son’s school activities ramping up, and another birthday reminding me of my time left on this mortal coil, I have not had a lot of time to play.

In an attempt at normalcy, I wanted to write about a topic I’m happily seeing more and more of on the Poker Discussion and Hand Advice forums, the game of Omaha 8/b. It’s a great game that can teach us a lot of lessons that apply to any other form of poker. Today’s lesson is about patience, and the virtue of being disciplined for the long-term.

My hand example is from a $5/$10 limit session I played on PokerStars a few days ago, the last time I played. The player three to my left had been playing almost every pot, both on the table where this hand occurred, and the other table I was sitting at. He was up $150 or so on the “feature table”, down about that much on the other. He limped from early position, there was a raise from the button, and I had A23K in the small blind, with the ace being suited. I made it three bets, my “friend” the limper overcalled, and the raiser called. The flop was A7J with the J7 in my suit, giving me the nut flush draw, nut low draw, and top pair/top kicker. Good flop for me. I bet, my friend called, as did the button. Turn was an offsuit K, giving me top two pair to go along with my draws. I bet again, my friend called, and the button folded. River was an offsuit 9, missing my flush and low draws completely. However, I was quite sure I still had the best hand here with top two pair. If my friend had AAxx, he would have very likely raised pre-flop, and almost certainly raised one of my bets later on. If he somehow had lucked into a hand holding QT or T8, well, so be it. I bet, and he called, showing me A775 rainbow to scoop a substantial pot.

So, what’s the lesson here? Well, if I sit down at a $5/$10 limit Hold’em table at just about any site, I won’t find players calling 3-bets pre-flop with bad hands…every once in awhile, maybe, but not all the time. There is a badness threshold that just isn’t crossed. In Omaha 8/b, this isn’t the case. Every time you sit down to play in one of these games at just about any site (Full Tilt and UB have the toughest Omaha 8/b games by far, in my opinion, and can be exceptions to this rule), you will find someone playing every single hand, regardless of the action to them. It’s inherent in many gamblers’ nature to look for quantity of opportunities first, not quality…and Omaha 8/b is a game LOADED with quantity.

The problem in dealing with opponents like this is that our first instinct is to make the wrong adjustment. I made it on that night, and ended up down far more than I should have been. Most of us, when dealing with a looser-than-loose opponent who is getting lucky hand after hand, loosen up ourselves. We see “friends” catching sets and middle straights on boards that don’t help our good hands, and we think that we need to out-donk the donk in order to get our money back. It’s not hard to avoid that fallacy in Hold’em, because its tough to find a glimmer of hope in what we know are rags. You must be on the worst tilt imaginable to see something playable in 92 offsuit when there’s a raise and a re-raise to you.

With six 2-card combinations in Omaha, and high and low draws to consider, it is very easy to think you’ll find the diamond in any rough. In my quest to show my “friend” who could make the biggest donkey play imaginable and still scoop a pot, I limped in UTG a few rounds later with QQ84, solely because I was double-suited. Five of us saw a flop that was Q-high, all spades. Once I lucked into top set, I had to call flop and turn bets hoping that the board paired. It didn’t, and I was out another $20 when I folded on the river and not one, but two, players showed flopped flushes. These examples can add up in a hurry when you’re trying to chase down hands that should have hit the muck the moment you saw them.

The correct approach with the super-loose is to tighten up, and to make them pay more for their insolence by raising every opportunity where you know you have the best of it going in. This is a contrary approach to how I usually play limit Omaha 8/b, because often times the style and pace of the game dictates that you build pots by keeping players in, as insurance for the times that you’ll get quartered. All this does, however, is allow my “friend” what he considers even more attractive possibilities. If the rest of the table will let me isolate against my “friend”, I will attempt to do so whenever I can.

If you can keep your head on straight, remain patient in the face of extreme luck, and know how to deal with the worst players in the game, Omaha 8/b is easily the most profitable limit game available at just about all online poker sites. In addition, it’s spread in many casinos and card rooms as well, so if the worst possible scenarios do come to fruition (and I think we’re a good way away from that yet), those of us who can learn its lessons will still have a way to have that sherbet shipped, just in a bricks-and-mortar setting.