Live O8 Events, or lack there of.

I'm a big advocate of trying to get as many live O8 MTTs scheduled as possible, especially ones that I could possibly attend! Over in the States, PLO8 is spread pretty wide which is understandable given how many more card rooms and live players they have. However, over here in Europe the game is pretty much bound to the big festivals and recently, we haven't even being seeing those!

Around two/three years ago when the Fox Poker Club opened here in London, they a schedule that included a monthly £45 PLO8 event. Personally, I couldn't have been more thrilled and I tried to get down to as many of these tournaments as I could. Unfortunately, over the months numbers dwindled compared to their NLHE counterparts and it was changed to a bi-monthly event. Eventually it was dropped all together. In the UK, nothing has even come close to this since. 

I created a thread on the TwoPlusTwo O8 forum about the lack of O8 events at EPT Festivals and it caught the eye of NeilJ, the PokerStars representative for live events. He was actually quite keen to spread the game and at a few stops, most notably EPT Prague in seasons 9 and 10, an NLO8 event was added which proved to be a success. Prior to the recent EPT London, two O8 events were scheduled but unfortunately one of those was changed to a PLO event shortly before. The EPT Deauville schedule was released recently and zero O8 events would be taking place and, even more worringly, at the PCA currently ongoing in the Bahamas, which is supposedly the biggest poker festival outside of the WSOP, there is only one event which is a Big "O", a discipline the O8 community generally dislikes. I don't want to just single out PokerStars, they just happen to run the biggest festivals, the GUKPT, SPT, APAT etc all don't seem to want to give O8 events a chance. 

I know I come from a greatly biased standpoint but I can't see why O8 couldn't be a success in the live arena. If we take the example from online, the game is narrowly 3rd in popularity behind PLO and, of course, NLHE. There are three Red Label events per day, all of which garner huge numbers and three other Weekly Red Labels of differing stakes, which we very much thank PokerStars for. All online sites spread some form of O8 games and, in general, see good numbers. The game creates action, encourages a looser style preflop, which is good for the recreational player, and is very fun to play. 

Anyone reading this from the TwoPlusTwo Forum will know that I bring up the topic fairly often and probably am sounding like a broken record at the moment but I really want to see as much live O8 as a possibly can and will support the game whenever I can. Supposedly the Vic in London is running another Omaha Series as they did last year concluding with a £220 PLO8 event so if that is the case I will definitely be heading down to that. Aside from that I will keep campaigning for events at EPT festivals and other major tours and hopefully by the time EPT London comes around in October we could see multiple events, both PLO8 and NLO8. I urge the regs reading this to continue supporting the game, show the game to your friends and should there be a live event near you, to make your best efforts to play them. 

Thanks for reading my little rant guys, for those interested I will post the PCA and Deauville schedules below and should the Vic PLO8 event be going ahead I'll advertise it here. Til next time, good luck at the tables!

PCA

EPT Deauville