Every session playing PLO high – almost every session, anyway – I win. Often, it’s enough to reverse my NLHE downswings (more about that later). I’d like to think it’s because I know a bit about how to play but the fact is that the tables are full of bored NLHE fish. They get dealt something like AJ22 and make a set of deuces on the flop, think it’s the nuts because any time they hit any set in hold em they can’t wait to get the rest of their short stack in, then the shellshock sets in when they end up finding they’ve lost to a broadway straight, which in turn lost to Jacks full.
Omaha is like shotgun poker – a lot of the time you’ll hit something. Occasionally, you’ll hit so strongly the rest of the hand can play itself.
The two things I like to remind myself about PLO:
1) I read a post by Vanessa Selbst (who I greatly admire) where she channeled Scotty Nguyen – “bottom set, no good!” – and it’s worth bearing in mind every hand. The median hand in NLHE is two pair, and anyone with bottom two pair would be wise not to play it wildly. In PLO, two pair is only worth a punt if the pot odds are right to draw, which they often are if the other players are really bad (hence my uncanny win rate playing the microstakes tables). I only get the ‘flopped a set’ feeling I get with NLHE when I flop a full house in PLO.
2) Four cards preflop doesn’t mean two to throw away and two to keep, or even one to throw away and three to keep. You need to start with four cards working together. Preflop, I like to think of my hole cards as both a) one PLO hand and b) two Hold Em hands. The reasoning being – a) how precisely do I need to hit the flop? Ideally, I want to make a set, an open ended straight draw or the nut flush draw, so A952 all different suits isn’t going to cut it. b) I have to use two hole cards with three from the board. I think lots of the new PLO players forget this momentarily and think that one or two hole cards with three or four from the board is fine. It might be counterintuitive to think of my PLO hole cards in terms of two sets of NLHE hole cards but it makes sense after the flop. I can concentrate on the two hole cards that give me the best made hand or best outs to give me an idea of what my final hand is going to look like, as long as I don’t forget the outs that come from my ‘reserve’ cards.
About the NLHE downswings – I’ve come across a lot of shortstacks recently and have seen them described on forums as ‘short stack rat bastards’. I’m talking about the kind of player who folds every hand until they get JJ+ and then shoves all in with their 20bb stack. I haven’t done a great deal of research into the odds but it doesn’t seem like I’m getting the best of it if I 3bet with AKs and give my opponent free cards all the way to the river, so I usually wait until I have JJ+ in better position and raise enough that the rat bastard has to call more than half of his stack to see the flop (strangely, the microstakes rat bastards often just call in this spot and then fold to a continuation bet. Seriously).
Anyway – the NLHE progress is not good for May. I recently lost a big post against a nitty regular where I reraised with AA in position to have him shove all in and turn over KK. I would have rather seen, erm, AJ or something but knew I was in good shape. I’d just managed to type ‘classic!’ into the chat box, enjoying the match up, when we saw the flop and he made a set which improved to a full house on the river. That was especially upsetting – losing with an overpair to a full house – as although I made the right play, it really doesn’t look that way.
