One of the first breakthroughs a player experiences as he develops his poker skills is the revelation that the game is about making correct decisions and not simply about winning pots. The stereotypical, whiskey-slugging, cigar-chomping poker monster in nearly all of us shakes his head at this. "If I put my money in the pot," he declaims, "I wanna win it. If I don't wanna win the pot, I stay at home," he continues, grimacing, shaking his head at the notion. (Add a Brooklyn accent for effect.) For some of us, this dangerous misconception disappears in a puff of smoke, normally whilst reading a Sklansky tome; for others, well, they're welcome in my game anytime.
Not all poker games are created equal. Some reward decision-making to a great extent. No-limit hold'em (NLH) is one of these games, and the reason why, before the advent of tourney madness and Internet driven limited buy-ins, NLH was so fatal to bad players. In this game, when you are right, you normally are very right and your opponent is in terrible shape. When you are wrong, however, the roles are reversed and you become the one chasing a handful of outs. This has a popular term, WAWB, for way ahead, or way behind, which nicely summarises the kind of dilemma a no-limit player so very often faces.
Pot-limit Omaha (PLO) is a very different game. It is more than common, especially against better players, for hands to become what could be termed crooked coin flips. That is, one side is in the region of a 55 percent to 60 percent favourite, but, tellingly, both sides would play each other's hand the same way. An example of this might be top set versus a multiway draw. The guy playing the top set, the current nuts, is happy to stack. This goes without saying. But with a strong multiway draw heads up, he also would be happy to stack, especially if the action makes it more and more clear that his opponent has a made hand like two pair or a set. Also, because the last bet can at most be a pot-sized one, this means that the potential caller is at worst getting 2-to-1 on his call. This means that for most reasonable draws on the flop, calling that last bet can become automatic. The caller convinces himself that he is just OK enough if the call would put him all in, and, paradoxically, can convince himself that he will win more money, called implied odds, if he calls with more money to play on later streets.
So, does this mean that decision-making matters less in PLO?
The short answer is yes. The math that underlies the game means that as long as you do not go insane on more hold'em-like draws, you are very rarely putting your money into the pot in a terrible spot. This is also one of the reasons why a short-stack approach works so well in this game - as hand values run so closely that even A-A hands are never monster favourites. The long answer is that it is all a question of perspective. Because of the 2-to-1 nature of PLO bets, players who have started looking at decisions as opposed to pots say something like this to themselves: "Well, it is only 2-to-1 to me, so I am getting the right price on this call, as I will be all in and there are no more bets to come. I'll call." Winning pots wrong, decisions right? Maybe not.
How did they get to this decision point? The question a good PLO player should be asking is, where does the key decision take place and how do I plan my hand from that point? If you were always going to stack yourself with your hand, it is not correct to say you were getting 2-to-1 on the final call, as you were always committed to being all in, so that is the start of the true decision point. An example will help clarify this.
A loose player calls a final pot-sized raise, say $400, which effectively takes him all in. He has the nut-flush draw and believes his opponent has top set. If we give our hero in this case a couple of backdoor draws, he is indeed getting the right price to make this final call. It's a decision-making job well done. Or is it? Let's look at this hand from another perspective. Let's say that there was only $4 in the pot before all of this started. Our hero, through madness or design, has decided to go to war with this hand. From this very different angle, he has made far from the right choice. He has effectively paid even money for a 2-to-1 shot. From this helicopter-like view, it's clear that repeated plays like this will soon lead to a very depleted bankroll. So, when a decision looks close, try to look at the panorama from a different perspective.
