PLO Hand Discussion #1
BIG FEE, Article 2
After a six month hiatus, I started playing poker again in mid-November. My favorite game is Pot Limit Omaha PLO due to the complexity of playing with four cards. To me, the combinatorial explosion of possible hand combinations makes playing PLO more fun and interesting than two-card Hold em. My current playing ability, after roughly 8,000 hands, is perhaps near the top of the bottom quartile of professional players. And when I say "professional" I mean "players who win more than they lose after fees," since I do not yet earn a large percentage of my income from the game. But I might in the future. The key is making a serious study of the mechanics and psychology of the game while avoiding a delusional mindset.
Understand that 8,000 hands is less than 1% of the amount played by better professionals, some of whom play more than 100 hands per hour live for years. I am currently only playing in person where 20 hands per hour seems normal. What I lack in experience, I can sometimes make up for in computational ability. I doubt I've sat at a table yet with players who can quickly determine their win percentage from 15 outs (minus re-outs) from 37 potential cards in a three-way pot. I often do so before making big decisions. I also learn from superior players as often as I can. My discussion circle now includes World Series of Poker bracelet winners and circuit ring champions.
Having taken time off the game, I am not yet back to the level of play I had at the end of my first 7,000 hours of play. It takes time to shake off the rust of a complex game when you haven't built up experience from hundreds of thousands of hands. As such, I make a few easily identifiable mistakes among a crowd that includes players who do not necessarily know me. This happened to me on Friday, November 22 during a session where I got down nearly $1000 playing 2-2 PLO on $200 buy-ins.
There are ways to take advantage of perception at the poker table. In this case, there were two players with two large stacks ($3,500 and $2,000, give or take) at the other end of the table getting friendly with one another. Sometimes you notice when people get cocky, sharing little jabs about other players at the table to make themselves feel good. I could tell that they felt that I was a good target as they were jumping into any pot I played, even if I raised preflop. I tightened up my range a bit so that I could meet them with the best hands. Eventually, I and two other players had our luck turn around, taking nearly all of the chips from those two players who had run well to build up their big stacks.
One key hand I played occurred when I had $280 in chips. I was on the button and one of the big stacks posted a $5 straddle. My hand was As9s99. I chose to call as only one player folded in front of me. When action got to the straddler, he potted to $45. Most players still called, so I called, and the pot was $280 going into the flop, while I had $235 behind. I think every other player at the table outstacked me, so I knew that I would likely put my whole stack in if I hit the flop well, or fold to a bet.
The flop came Js7d2s, which was pleasant for me. Big cards missed. Somebody might have flopped a set, but there were not going to be many possible straight draws that could compete. Fortunately for me, the table checked around. I went all in with the nut flush draw, and everyone folded. Since we were six-handed, some of them likely worried that I had a set of Jacks or 7s.
I decided to show my hand as I scooped in the win. I usually wouldn't give away free information like that, but I wanted to encourage the confused perception that the players with a lot of chips seemed to have about me. One player next to them moaned and I could tell that he and the two big stackers were talking shit about me. Mission accomplished. They saw me as having played a poor hand and would continue entering too many pots against me, and potentially calling my bets with underpowered hands.
Experienced players understand that A999 with a "nut" suit (Ace high) is a solid hand on the button (best position at the table) in a multi-way pot (five or six players was perfect for my stack size), and also understand why low level professionals might misunderstand my play. Since you always play exactly two cards in PLO (along with exactly three of the five on the board), the third 9 is a waste. It cuts in half the chance of hitting a set, and leaves one fewer card for potential straights. And a set of 9s is usually not the top potential set on a flop.
On the other hand, a suited Ace, no matter the other card, is one of the most powerful pairs of cards in any PLO hand.
A weak suited ace has the best equity on this flop.
In the board above, there are three players who would hit a flush if another spade hits the board. One or both of them could lose a lot of chips if another spade falls. Sometimes, there is only one player with a flush draw. In those cases, the Ace-high flush draw has even more equity in the pot.
While hand strengths at showdown depend on the players at the table, I estimate that around 20% of the hands at the table I play are won by better hands than flushes, and you can always tell when that's possible by simply reading the board. Around 20% of the hands at my table are won by flushes, and 60% by lower ranked hands. When there is no pair on the board, and the suited cards do not have straight flush potential (which is most of the time), you not only know that you have the highest hand with an Ace-high flush, but you sometimes get to scoop up a lot of additional chips from a player with a weaker flush.
On top of that, the button is by far the most important position in PLO. There are likely large numbers of professionals who have played hundreds of thousands of hands, but are at best marginally profitable from all other positions on the table combined. The button has the advantage of seeing everyone's reaction, including betting, to every card that hits the board from the flop onward. Better position is powerful because premium hands that do not improve are generally afraid to bet out of position, and they will often fold to one of the other five players who puts in a bet, even if they are ahead in the hand.
Such folds protect premium hands from the player who might have genuinely bulls-eyed the flop. Nobody wants to be on the bad side of this fight, and it is rational to give up some small wins to avoid the disaster loss like this:
Add that to my short stack, which was likely to be all in or all out after the flop, and I had an excellent hand. But it was the perception advantage that made the hand one of the best I've played in my three weeks back at the tables. I nearly doubled up while players targeting me maintained the overboard perception that I had no idea what was going on at the table. The result was that I went from being nearly $1,000 down at one point to having a strong session, cashing out $910 in chips ahead of all my buy-ins. Minus table time for nine hours, I profited $801 on the day, which is the best I've done over 11 sessions of 2-2 since I restarted.