PLOnkaments – Omaha

At every major poker series, there’s at least one decent-sized pot-limit Omaha (PLO) side event. With so much money up for grabs — first prize in this year’s $10,000 world championship at the World Series of Poker was almost $800,000 — these events attract a wide range of good players and bad gamblers alike. It’s likely that a good pot-limit Omaha cash player will have a larger edge in these events than a good no-limit hold’em tournament player. Being good at both will put you in the top echelon of PLO tournament players, but to be the best, you’ll have to appreciate exactly how and why optimal strategy deviates significantly from a combination of the two strategies.
Stack Sizes
For the first few levels, stacks are generally deep. Weak, speculative hands are playable in the right spot: hand-reading, technical skills, and a good understanding of your opponents’ psychology will be especially valuable. Mistakes made this early don’t just cost you your stack, but also the chance to apply your edge later on. Knowing when to take gambles is a crucial skill in tournaments; turning down a big gamble early might cost you some expected profit, but means you’re still in the tournament with a chance to make more chips with lower variance.
In hold’em tournaments, there are very few situations where you should consider laying down the nuts. In pot-limit Omaha, it’s much more common to have the nuts and be an underdog — multiway, you can be down to 20 percent preflop with bad aces, and even worse heads up with a straight on the flop. Don’t just apply pot-control, consider folding these hands to action at the earliest opportunity if you have no other way of winning the pot. Often the best-case scenario is that you chop the pot, and the worst case is that you’re out of the tournament. Others will be making this mistake, so give yourself a chance to capitalise by waiting for a better spot.
As stack sizes get lower, different hands become more or less playable. Raggedy aces go up in value, as you’ll find it easier to get all in preflop, and even if you don’t, post-flop mistakes become less costly with a lower stack-pot ratio (SPR). Speculative hands that don’t flop well, like Q-Q-4-2 rainbow or J-9-8-5 single-suited, go down in value. Having the initiative against weak players becomes more important as they are generally less willing to make plays at lower SPRs, so you can steal more pots.
Early Stages Preflop Strategy
Correct strategy in cash games very rarely involves open-limping or even limping behind, but managing variance is an important factor in PLO tournaments. Getting more money into the pot with quality starting hands is good, but when pots go multi-way, you’ll often need a more nut-oriented made hand or draw to get stacks in. In the early stages, you’ll find a lot of bad opponents to stack off with weak hands whatever the size of the pot on the flop, so it makes sense to limit your preflop investment, especially in early position.
So, 100 big blinds deep, which hands should you be raising? Generally expect hands to go multiway even if you re-pot, so your preference should be hands that flop strong made hands or nut-chasing draws. Suited aces with good backup, like A-T-9-8 double-suited, and connected high pairs, are the order of the day. I will generally three-bet good rundowns, like J-T-8-7 double-suited, both for value and to clean up outs — a jack-high flush is worth a lot less multiway, so if you can get the button or blinds to fold a hand that would have beaten you, you win a pot you’d otherwise lose.
Facing a raise, never three-betting is the safest policy, and given how close preflop hand values generally run, you won’t lose that much value. However, as a better player than your opponent, with a good take on his thought process, three-betting can become profitable. Focus on value hands, but to prevent becoming easily readable, occasionally throw in worse hands like 8-7-6-5 single-suited, otherwise your opponents will be able to check-fold high boards when you hit.
The basis of profitable PLO tournament strategy is managing the high levels of variance. Early on, when stacks are deep, edges are large, but there’s not yet much to play for, survival is more of a priority than accumulating chips. Later, when stacks are shallow, edges are small, and pay jumps increase, you’ll need to accumulate chips, so you might need to gamble — indeed, you can theoretically call in negative expected value (-EV) spots, if the combination of the utility of a large stack and the image to go with it can more than make up for the times you lose your stack.
Example
£100 + £10 live PLO tournament
Blinds 25-50
10,000 effective stacks
Middle position raises to 175, you call from the cut-off with A♣ A♠ 9♣ 3♥, button three-bets to 775, blinds fold, middle position raises to 2,525.
In this example, both your opponents are good PLO cash game players but not great tournament players. Their hands in this spot are most likely another pair of aces, probably well connected, and a good rundown, and neither of them are likely to fold their hand preflop.
Despite being suited and having a wheel straight draw, your aces are not good enough to justify a five-bet, and calling is not an attractive option — your equity will be in the range of 25-30 percent, but you don’t flop well often enough. In this spot, I’d be happy to go with any aces double-suited or with two broadway cards as backup — like A-A-Q-T single-suited, as you can now be a favourite against their worse aces and actually dominate some of the hands they want to get all in with or call. ♠

Michael Piper has been playing pot-limit omaha online for a living for more than three years. He coaches at cardrunners.com and posts online under the screenname wazz.