PLO thoughts
Tuesday, October 7th, 2008For the last three months I have seriously been learning PLO. I haven’t played any NLHE cash games probably since June. I only play occasional Sunday major, but I rarely can find a free Sunday in my schedule anyway. However, back to PLO. So PLO is a crazy game with crazy players, crazy variance and crazy tilt. In the beginning I started playing 0.25/0.5 and had to go down to 0.1/0.25. From there, I climbed up with a 40/6/1 style that was perfectly OK for beating these levels. The style is see many flops, wait for the nuts, wait for the nuts and get payed when you still have it by the river.
There are many ways in which PLO is different than hold-em and here I will give a few of my ideas on the subject.
- Patience.
Yesterday, I played against a player, who for more than an hour sustained 100/80/3 stats. He actually ended up winning 7 buy-ins and tilting almost everyone at the table. I was immediately to his right. He was raising and re-raising me every time. I started by playing my 28/15 style, but then the first few hands got into some marginal spots against him and the loose players behind him that were calling everything and waiting for a hand against him. So I had to options: to leave or to tighten up significantly. I chose to tighten up and stick around for an orbit or two too evaluate how loose is he postflop. If he is too tight or too passive postflop, I was leaving immediately. I saw him stack a gutshot for 150bb on the flop and hit and I decided to stay. Every hand OOP I was very tight calling only my good speculative hand and folding most flops. However I had my moments when I have a good double suited hand OTB, I raise he re-raises and thus squeezes the other 4 players that limped the pot. The first time they called his 3bet(since we were all deep) and I pushed. Next two times they were just folding after his 3bet and I was playing deep pot against a random hand in position. However waiting for these good spots really required discipline, when you see the maniac splashing chips around and stacking bottom two on flush boards. - Folding the nuts, the second nuts etc.
Now this is something that happens all the time: a limped hand, I am BB w 7753s, 4 players to me, I check and the flop is 864s. I bet, one player raises,SB re-raises. Perfect spot to fold the nuts, you never have good odds here. Or I raise QQxx ds OTB, only BB(a passive nitty player) calls. Flop comes low cards giving me a flush draw, I cbet, he calls, the flush comes on the turn and he leads PSB into me. I call, the river is a brick he PSB into me again. I fold. I could also fold K high flush here. - Folding to chasers that lead when a draw gets there
This is related to the above point, when the only draw hits the river and your opponent who until now called two PSB bets OOP, leads for full pot maybe is time to fold your top set. - Know your numbers
PLO is a game of numbers. The numbers questions come all the time, like: I raise OTB KQJ9s, the SB who plays 30/5 3bets me from SB. I call. Flop comes K73suited, without my suit. He leads for PSB, do I stack or not? What is my equity against aces with or without flush draw. Another example, I raise OTB J975ds, 40bb short stack calls from the BB, flop comes T65suited with my suit, he leads for 7.5bb into me, is this a good flop or bad flop for me? Should I want to push the remaining 36.5bb into the middle? - Aces, Kings and Queens are mostly speculative hands. Every omaha hand is speculative hand.
In hold-em if you have AA, there are very few flops that will convince you it might not be good. In PLO, no matter what hand you have, at least half of the flops are terrible for it. However aces in omaha are special, aces are the hand which if you manage to get it in preflop, you are probably favorite or against other aces. - 3betting and 4betting
On the lower levels, every 3bet is aces. On the higher levels people start 3betting lighter IP. The problem is that many of the raising hands from early positions are aces, many people raise only aces and even loose players will have aces often when they raise. Hence, no player can sustain a loose 3betting and 4 betting style as in hold-em since he will be against aces too often. This keeps most of the game postflop. - Stabbing
To climb through the lower levels you need to see flops and wait for the nuts. Many of the players that go up the ranks and come to 1/2 or 2/4 keep this idea. They give up every hand that they don’t have at least 8 outs to the nuts. Hence there are a lot of pots to be picked up by stabs. When to stab? Stab on paired boards, stab when HU, stab when no one shows interest in dryish board, stab on connected non suited flops. And stab only if there are no noted calling stations in the hand, otherwise bet for value
- Variance
PLO is a game of variance. Most of the spots are 60/40, maximum 70/30. So it often happens that I play a 500 hands session, during which I play 4 pots for stacks and I lose all of them. One is AA against AA and I lose. Once I stack top set against flopped str8 and another time I stack top set against two other people on KT7s flop and they hit one of the draws. For desert, I am drawing to straight and flush against a top set and miss. And I finish my session, very disappointed with myself, thinking about my game, searching for mistakes, cursing my luck, checking pokerev and seeing that I had to be 2 buy-ins ahead and I am two behind.
PLO is a variance game, I have been struggling for 3 months to get used to the swings. You need a large sample to understand whether you are losing because you play bad or is it just a swing and you are playing OK, however when you are on a swing you start questioning your game, start looking for leeks in the solid ideas that build your bankroll until last month.
I have always played a tight, low-variance style in hold-em, results were coming regularly and I never had more than 2-3 losing session in a row. In PLO the style is looser, the variance is bigger and the swings are longer. At the end it is really a mind game with yourself.
OK, this would be the last generalization post for a while. I am going to focus on session review here more. Any comments are welcome
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