Top Tips for 888Poker's New Flopomania
888Poker recently announced the release of their latest hold'em variant, called Flopomania. Here we will discuss top tips for adjusting to and profiting from this exciting new format.
What is Flopomania?
So, what's the deal? Flopomania is exactly like no-limit hold'em aside from one key difference — there is no preflop betting round. All players pay an ante (there is no small or big blind) and proceed directly to the flop.
This naturally causes some noticeable changes in game play. With every person at the table automatically seeing a flop, we find ourselves in many more multi-way situations when compared to standard no-limit hold'em.
The exciting news is that there are no sharks (at least not yet) in these new Flopmania games. Seeing as this is a fresh new format, most of the players at the table will still be struggling to get a grasp of basic strategy. That means that even a little bit of strategic knowledge, Flopomania could turn out to be very profitable investment.
Here is what you need to know to get started.
Tip #1 — Stronger hands are required to win
Hands that might ordinarily be strong in no-limit hold'em may end up being relatively weak in Flopomania. There are at least two reasons for this.
1. Players already get to see if they have hit the flop before investing large amounts of money into the hand.
2. All pots are multi-way on the flop.
Regarding that latter point, since pots are already multi-way on the flop, the chance of at least one player hitting that flop really hard is significantly higher that is the case in standard NLHE.
Going broke postflop with top pair or even overpairs is potentially a recipe for disaster. Flopomania typically requires us to have sets or better to do well when most of the money goes in.
Tip #2 — Straight and flush draws are often better than pairs
We'll do very well in this format if we focus most of our attention on trying to make big five-card hands. This is because so many of the pots we play will end up being multi-way. Pairs have a tendency to do reasonably well in a heads-up pot, but not so well in a four- or five-way pot.
In this respect, Flopomania is similar to pot-limit Omaha. We are typically trying to make straights, flushes, or sets, rather than one- or two-pair hands. This emphasis should be reflected in the types of hands with which we choose to "open-raise" (so to speak — see below). We'll still be opening some top-pair hands, but we actually want to prioritize any nut draws, especially in early position.
Tip #3 — Open-raising happens on the flop!
Speaking of "open-raising"... is it still called "open-raising" when it occurs on the flop rather than preflop? Well, it is now!
Here are three key differences between open-raising in Flopomania and open-raising in regular NLHE.
1. UTG in Flopomania is worse than UTG in NLHE.
Under the gun in Flopomania is basically the equivalent to the small blind position in NLHE. There is one key difference, however.
In NLHE, UTG acts first preflop, but gets to act after the blinds postflop. In Flopomania, UTG has to act first on the flop, and then first on every subsequent street as well. Therefore, the player sitting UTG in Flopomania should usually be playing very conservatively — perhaps a range of sets and decent draws only. One-pair type holdings will nearly always be too weak to be opened profitably.
2. The button acts last on the first betting round.
Having the button is even more powerful in Flopomania than it is in NLHE. The button gets to see on every betting round (including the first) what everyone does before he needs to act.
3. All players have the option to check on the first betting round.
In NLHE players must either call, raise, or fold during the preflop betting round. In Flopomania, players have the option to check on the first betting round (the flop), since they already invested an ante during the preflop betting round.
Tip #4 — Open raise the size of the pot
Like in NLHE, our open-raises should be designed to pick up the pot immediately when possible. In order to achieve this in Flopomania, we should be typically be at least betting the size of the combined antes. In other words, if six players each place an ante of $0.10 in the middle, our open-raise sizing should generally be $0.60.
For those coming from a NLHE background, 6x might seem a somewhat large open-raise. But even those who play "NLHE ante" games understand that a larger sizing should be used when there are additional chips already in the middle.
Another way to look at it: if we open-raise for $0.20 into a pot of $0.60, we can't reasonably expect to pick up the entire pot with any real frequency.
Tip #5 — Be aware of position
Since position is potentially more important in Flopomania than it is in NLHE, our open-raising strategy needs to reflect this.
While our UTG (or SB) raise first-in range will typically be mainly sets or better and nut-draws, our button raising range will be significantly wider. No one has shown interest in the pot, and there are large number of antes in the middle which are up for grabs. We'll be making pot-sized raises with marginal holdings such as pairs and second pairs.
Flopped pairs are still relatively important in late position, partly due to the buy-in structure. The Flopomania default buy-in is essentially just 50 big blinds deep, meaning we can still stack off wider postflop than we might be able to in Omaha.
Although we still won't (usually) be able to go broke with any one-pair holdings postflop, these hands should be played aggressively on the flop in an attempt to steal the antes. With deeper stacks we might prefer to make steal attempts with hands that contain strong backdoor draws as opposed to pairs.
Happy Crushing!
Congratulations. You already know 10 times more than the average Flopomania player! The games are super juicy right now, and they should stay that way for a number of months. Now is a good time to print some cash before other players learn the basics.
So good luck at the tables, and happy crushing!
