Genius and Fools

One of the strange and unusual aspects of pot-limit Omaha play is what I call the "Genius and Fool" factor; that is, some moves and strategies that are the product of an Omahaian beautiful mind, or simply donk randomness with no more forethought than mental dice rolling. But to the opponent, they look the same. No play highlights this more than the playing of a nut-flush draw. The key differential will be what hand ranges you put your opponent on, a valuable skill for pot-limit Omaha (PLO) that we will explore in the following example.

One of the first things a neophyte "PLOer" learns is that you can play your nut-flush draws fast, just like in no-limit hold'em. In time, some doubts start to surface; after all, the average hand that a nut-flush draw will be up against will be so much stronger than in no-limit hold'em. Smashing it all in on the flop starts to look less enticing, and finally, with echoes of Genius and Fool here, more experienced players realise that the nut-flush draw completely dominates other drawing hands. Therefore, if a drawing hand is a big part of the foe's range, it can never be wrong to stack … except it can.

Let's say we are playing some shorthanded PLO online. You limp in from the cutoff with A-K-7-4, with the ace, king, and 7 being hearts - OK, you're a loose player, it seems - and a tight-aggressive player raises on the button. A limper calls, and so do you - OK, you're more than loose, but the flop is what counts in this example.

The flop comes J-8-4, with two hearts. The early limper checks and you decide to bet into the raiser. You've both got more than 120 big blinds. The button raises you the full pot, clearly committing himself. For most players, good or clueless, this seems an easy stack. But is it?

The bad will stack off here - because, hey, they have a draw to the nut flush. The good will take a more reasoned approach. They will say that in PLO, you are always getting two for one on your last call. And although they may be approaching infamous DIYDDIYD (damned if you do, damned if you don't) territory, they are surely getting the pot odds to call. This thinking contains two significant errors. The first is that quite often, you are getting worse than 2-1 odds. In this case, you are going to have to raise again to go all in, making your odds considerably worse. Theoreticians would argue that if you intended to go all in before your bet, you shouldn't consider that bet as dead money for pot-calculation purposes at all - as the decision was made before the bet, not after it.

All of these factors mean that the hero in this example probably needs 40 percent or so equity, not 33 percent, a small but significant difference, turning many break-even hands into long-term losers. However, the most significant factor is hand ranges, and in this case, the hero's own hand makes narrowing the range of the villain much easier. As our opponent is tight and competent, and raised preflop, his range for stacking on that flop is along the lines of the following: A-A and K-K with a flush draw; overpairs with J-8 as side cards; a set of jacks or eights; pair/two pair/straight and flush combos. But because the hero has both the A and the K, the first options become very unlikely. Also, because the villain is competent, he isn't going to be stacking with straight draws without flush-draw backup, as he will be well aware of the hero's potential flush draw turning his wrap into a big equity dog. This leaves our unfortunate hero facing only the very strongest part of his opponent's range. If you run these through a poker simulator, you find the villain murdering the hand, with an equity of about 70 percent. This is surprisingly clear pass, showing again the power of not only understanding the math, but also marrying this to being able to put someone on a range of hands and acting accordingly.

David has played poker all over the UK for the better part of a decade. Originally a tournament player, now focused on cash play and almost entirely on the Internet for the last three years, he makes a healthy second income playing a wide range of games.