Poker Articles

Some Thoughts On Pot Limit Omaha

I've been waiting for Omaha High to become a more popular game and it finally seems to be happening. For my money it creates far more interesting poker than Omaha 8-or-better, though that variation continues to outpace its high-only brother in popularity. I'm guessing that's because OH is more difiicult to play well than O8. Add the common variation of pot-limit to Omaha high (PLO) and you've got a game made for the gambler in all of us, even if few poker games will see the best players leave with all the money faster than PLO. Let's take a look at its many charms.

First I must state unequivocally that I would rather play PLO8 all day with weaker players, as not many games are easier to beat with less variance than a good PLO8 game (unless it's NLO8, but PL poker requires far more skill in the long run) . That's why you see so few of them! Limit O8 lets the sheeple play their predictable Asmallxx hands forever, and the observant player will slaughter these folks. It's seemingly easier to identify a good O8 starting hand than in OH, and that's what makes OH so much more appealing to a solid player. It looks like there's more luck involved, but there isn't; au contraire. The short-term variance is high, which makes it appealing to heavy gamblers, but in the long run few games are as consistently beatable (if you have the bankroll!).

I would love to see a limit OH boom start, but the game seems confined to very few casinos. It's a shame, as limit OH can get completely insane. Pre-Katrina New Orleans was famous for having some of the best 15-30 OH games on the planet. No one seems to be picking up the slack from those tables, perhaps because the game deals out too slow for the rake to justify its existence, just as PL games are rarely spread because the good players win fast and the money goes into their hands instead of the casino's. That hardly seems fair for all the struggling casinos around the globe. PLO is and has been Europe's favorite high-stakes poker game for years, however. What do they know that we don't...and why are their casinos so much more generous? (Hint: they're usually state-owned.)

Up until a few months ago, there were only three books on PLO out there. There are now a couple more, but compared to hold'em, its distant cousin, PLO is about a 100-1 dog in the literary department (and frankly, the OH books are nowhere near as fine as their best HE counterparts, perhaps due to the complexity of the game, or the reluctance of the best players to share their secrets). That's probably because this is a game that must be learned by applying some basic principles in play many times over until you get the feel of it. Starting hand values are easy to learn and remember in HE, and dogs are easy to dump, whereas PLO seems to offer so many seemingly un-canine possibilities. Once again things are not as they seem. Woof!

I've gone and dug up my notes from when I first started playing PLO a few years ago, and I will share some of my many mistakes with you and hopefully save you some cash. Maybe lots of cash. Just remember me next Christmas!

The most obvious PLO leak is playing too many hands (PLO will also apply to OH from here on; OH is much rarer than PLO, but not for long, I hope). This holds true for all poker games, but rarely more so than PLO, as so many four-card hands look so good! The most common mistake for noob PLO'ers is looking at their cards in HE terms. AKTT might look like two great hands, but it is in fact one rather mediocre hand, especially if unsuited. Here is by far and away the single most important PLO concept: ALL YOUR STARTING CARDS MUST WORK TOGETHER. NOT three of them...ALL of them. I learned this lesson over and over, to my expense, and every time you see someone show down a QT95 winner or some such, you may be convinced that three cards working together is enough. Sometimes it is. But while you're waiting for those times, you will go broke again and again in any sort of decent game...and most PLO games feature at least a few solid players (one of them usually starts the game in the first place!).

After playing a few hundred hands of PLO (online is a fabulous place to learn this game, as the volume of hands will show you many things that live games are slow to reveal), certain truths begin to emerge. After thousands of hands, these truths seem set in stone. Once you're truly experienced you can start messing around, but that will get mighty costly mighty quick if you do it early on, especially in the pot limit format. The simplest way to look at the work-together rule is this: NO DANGLERS!! Tattoo that on your betting hand and you're off to a great start.

A dangler is any card that doesn't mesh with the other three. The above-mentioned QT95 features an ugly little dangler. Where will that 5 fit in? It won't make you the nut straight, and that goes against another basic PLO tenet: DRAW TO THE NUTS. Period. The second nut will sometimes win, but most often someone will be showing you the nut while your runner-up hand (oft complete with dangler) will be looking you in the face and saying, "What did you expect, numbskull?" The dangling 5 above is justifiable in one way only, and that is if it's suited. But even then, what are you drawing to? The fourth nut flush!

When I am playing PLO and there are good players, which is usually, I remind myself that even though PLO looks like a gambler's paradise, I will in fact be playing less hands than in HE. Right there you've got the reason this game hasn't caught on yet, I think. Folks want to play! They want to get in there and bet and take chances. Doing that in OH will get you crushed fast, and in PLO you will be broke in an hour, easy. So right away the most basic of all poker skills is paying dividends for you: patience. PLO looks like a crazy shoot'em-up, but it's a game that favors the slow and the wise. It's so much fun to watch others mix it up and try to calculate all the odds in your head on the various wrap draws that it's hard to get bored, if you really love poker and not just gambling.

Now that we're only playing four cards which mesh, we can look for extra value. Nothing says value in PLO like double-suited. Looking over my notes, I see that by far and away most of my "luck" comes in the form of backdoor flushes. Time and again I've taken a hand like QT86 double suited (never more than one gap if you want to play tight and right; QT85 is a much worse hand), seen a rainbow flop like Q75, got all in against someone I'm putting on a set at best, hopefully just an open-ender like mine with no redraw, and then backdoored a flush to win a pot we might have split. The extra couple percent from that double-suited edge weighs heavily as the months go by, especially if it gives you a freeroll on the river. It's very good indeed when that three percent tips the scales for you instead of against you. Add the occasional freeroll and it's wavy gravy.

The only real dangler I will gladly play (unless up against easily readable opponents) is the suited ace. I try never to draw to any flush but the nut in PLO (except as a redraw, depending on the opponents), and if that dangler is a wheel card, all the better. For instance, with A-small suited, AQT6 is not as playable as AQT5, which offers the backdoor wheel that will add up over time. The 6 offers nothing other than the flush. Small difference, but those margins pay off.

Another easy mistake to avoid is playing small pairs. By small I mean anything under 88 or even 99. Small sets almost always have a higher set out against them; with everyone holding four cards, the odds are usually very good that you're looking at top or second set out there against you by the river, unless you're holding a set of paints. Even that is rarely good enough! Straights and flushes and boats usually win this game. Dump the small pairs. Second boat is an ugly thang. The worst PLO hands are two pairs. They look playable, but unless they're double suited with a QQ or higher, you're going to lose frequently with these hands.

Even top set in PLO is a very shaky hand, as there are always so many ways to lose to a straight or a flush. This brings up another basic rule that makes PLO a great game for patient, solid players (who aren't afraid to gamble; you've GOT to be willing to gamble to win at this game, and having those backdoor outs will let you gamble much more successfully over time): THE NUTS ON THE FLOP ARE MOST OFTEN USELESS WITHOUT A REDRAW.

Redraw! Redraw!! REDRAW!!! This game should really be called PLR!

And no one is more fun to play with than a guy who flopped a set of aces and got all in only to lose to a wheel on the river that someone backdoored with 8653 (not that I'd recommend that hand...unless you're against predictable big-card-only players). That guy is on tilt for a while now! Some hold'em players never really learn that Omaha is another beast entirely.

For instance: you're dealt AATJ double suited (some see this as the best possible OH hand), late position. Four limpers and then a small raise to you on the button. What do you do? I used to raise, until I got broke time and again. Now I will usually just call and hope for another raise so that I can clear the field to me and one other player if the chips are deep enough (the only way to make raising aces way up a good play pre-flop), or better yet I will just hope to flop an ace and go from there, secure with two wonderful backdoor flush (and maybe straight) opportunities. Wired aces are a real winner only heads up in PLO, and even then nowhere near as much as in HE.

A simple but tricky truth in PLO is that even the worst hand is rarely more than a 3-1 dog over the best hand pre-flop, a far cry from HE's many dominant matchups. Good players use this to their advantage. That's why, if you keep your starting hands meshed and play around with your pre-flop raises a bit, you can limp in with all sorts of weird combinations that you either hit dead-on with the flop (with a redraw, ALWAYS with a redraw!), or you bail right away.

This is just the tip of the PLO iceberg, but keep the above basic truths in mind and you will win money at this very enjoyable game. And if you also always think of the game as PLR, you will be a consistent winner. Next time we'll get a little more deeply into PLO, the game that's poised to redefine poker; I for one can't wait to see the tv announcers trying to explain a 19-card wrap with multiple backdoor flush outs that's still a dog!

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