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Pot Limit Omaha8 (PLO8) is a different animal from its two closest relatives, Limit Omaha HiLo
and Pot Limit Omaha High. The key Limit Omaha8 concept is playing appropriate starting hands. The key Pot Limit Omaha
High concept is position, position, position. Of course, all games value many concepts, but the key PLO8 concept is
the betability of hands on the later streets, when the pots (and thus the bet sizes) are bigger.
One reason PLO8 isn't played much in casinos is because skill wins. Bad play and bad players are annihilated, and fast too.
PLO8 games peopled only with good players are hideously bad. The game becomes pointless and tedious. It comes down to
exploiting extremely rare flukes (like top full house losing to quads).
While there aren't that many available, some good PLO8 games are available at a few online cardrooms. One reason that PLO8 continues
to exist online is simply because online games have the whole world to draw on in terms of players. Another reason is that online
PLO8 games have a cap on the amount players can buy-in for. This leveling the playing field mitigates, a lot, against the standard
pot limit phenomenon of good players buying lots of chips and poor players buying tiny stacks. Money goes to money in big bet poker.
However, the most important reason PLO8 games exist as much as they do online is: a high percentage of online poker
players drastically overestimate their skill level. While this is true of all games online, this overestimation is
more concentrated in big bet games. Mediocre players suddenly think they are God's gift to poker, the second coming of
Bret Maverick, when confronted with the pseudo-complexities of PLO8 -- lots of cards, variable/progressive betting.
It's one thing to be a mediocre juggler. It's another thing indeed to be a mediocre juggler who insists on juggling
seven flaming machetes. (The other place online where mediocre players drastically overate themselves is at head-up games.)
So, the first thing to understand about online PLO8 games is many of your opponents have poor judgment in terms of true value. People with
poor value skills are good people to play against in big bet poker. That understanding should underlie everything you do in the game.
You should be playing more hands in most PLO8 games than you do in limit Omaha8 or PLO High (unless a game has an unusual
amount of pre-flop raising). Speculative hands that are garbage in Limit can be nicely profitable in PLO8. The most obvious
one is 23xx. In Limit this is the #1 sucker hand. In pot limit the hand can be played, if you play well, because of the
implied action you will get. Compare having A2xx on a flop of 873 to having 23xx on a flop of A87. You WILL get more
action from players holding aces and eights or aces and sevens than you will from players holding eights and sevens
or eights and threes. I've seen a player go for all his chips, putting in the fourth raise on a flop like this where
he had AAA. Suicide. He put in all his money just to get it back. Aces have the magical ability to make people play worse.
Most players greatly over-fixate on winning pots. If they put a nickel into a pot, you darn near need a crowbar to pry
them away from pouring millions in to chase that nickel. Proper PLO8 play is directly counter to this, which is why most
players are not suited for the game. You should easily fold most of the hands you play. PLO8 is mostly a game of homeruns.
Big pots. Big edges. Big betting. You aren't looking to hit many PLO8 doubles. You don't want to mix it up in a lot of pots.
You want to get out early, or be gladly shoving all your chips in by the end. The only way you want to hit singles in PLO8
is by making bets on the flop that nobody calls. This can occur two ways. The first is obvious, you bet a hand that should
be bet and nobody calls. You can't put a gun to people's heads and make them call, so just take the pot and wait for the
next time. The other small pot/singles to
look for are "orphan" pots -- pots nobody seems to want. These are pots you can make one bet at, and then you are done.
If you win the pot, great, if you get called you back off and very seldom continue to try to win the pot. A simple example,
the flops is QsJs9s. You have Ad2d5hKs. You have two opponents. The first opponent checks. You bet. You should win this pot
right here more than half the time. If you get called or raised, you just give up. You are bluffing these pots, but you are
bluffing when your opponents have very little. Their very little just happens to beat your very little.
Betting and taking orphans should keep you hovering around playing breakeven poker. The key pots are where you look to get your
profit. Also, you need to bet at orphan pots because you don't want to always and only be betting when you have an enormous hand.
While betability is the overriding concept at work in PLO8, there are two specific situations that you should look for:
the freeroll and the 3/4. Getting in situations where you can do one or the other of these is the reason to play the game.
The Freeroll. While 3/4ing is important, freerolling is much more so. Freerolls come in a variety of types, but the common
theme is you are getting a free shot at your opponent's money. (For practical purposes, the idea of a freeroll should also include
"near freerolls" like on a flop of QJT and you have AKQQ while your opponent has AK22. He can beat you by making four deuces,
but despite that ability to make a 1000-to-1 shot, we will still consider that near freeroll to be a "freeroll".)
Some freeroll examples:
Flop - QsJdTc; Opponent - AcKd2h3s; You - AsKsQcJc
Flop - 3s4d5c; Opponent - AcKd2hQs; You - As2s7c8c
Flop - As8h7h; Opponent - AhAdKhQs; You - 2s3s5d6c
In each of these examples, your opponent is drawing 100% dead. He cannot beat you no matter what cards come on the turn
and river. AND, you will get action from most opponents who hold these hands... especially from bad players who will often
intentionally go for all their chips, particularly with the first hand.
The Ace-high Broadway straight is similar to how 23xx is in Limit Omaha8. Weak players lose more money with this hand
than any other. Good players win their money when freerolling these hands. AK on a QJT flop, AQ on a KJT one, AJ on a
KQT one, AT on a KQJ one... these are the hands that separate the adults from the kiddies. Weak players not only commit
suicide on these hands, but also can't even comprehend that they should often be folding the current-nut-hands like they
were poison. All forms of Omaha are about making the best hand, not what is currently best. There is no leader money in
poker. The ability to fold the current nut hand is absolutely critical in PLO8... and fortunately, most players are simply
incapable of it. When you flop one of these Broadway straights, you should ask yourself "what am I trying to make?"
If the answer is "I want to make only the same straight as I have now", in other words, you are drawing to
a blank on the turn and a blank on the river, you don't have much of a hand.
Another type of freeroll is the "freeroll to a bluff":
Flop - 6s7s8d; Opponent - 9sTdJcJh; You - As2h3d4c
In this hand, neither one of you has any chance at all of making a hand that beats the other one. Big, fat zero. But
you have a freeroll to a river bet where you should be making significant money. No matter what the action is on the
flop and turn, if the river card comes a board pair, or a flush card (especially if it is a flush card that pairs the board),
a pot-size bet by you will force your opponent to fold -- and even if he calls, that is fine because that means he will call
you when you happen to have the flush or full house.
Notice in this example how important pot manipulation is. If you have intentionally bet yourself all-in before the river card, you are an
idiot. Your chance to win money here is by betting the
river (or turn) card and getting a fold. You can't get a fold if either you or he is all-in! On the other hand, you want the pot big enough
so that you can make a large enough bet to get him to fold. There is a definite science to getting pots the right size when you are on a
freeroll to a bluff. Also notice, it is much better to error on the side of not building the pot big enough, and thus not being able to
make a big enough bet to get a fold. That error is much less bad than the error of getting one or the other of you all-in. You can never
win when somebody is all-in. When you can make a river bet of any size, you will win sometimes. Even if a pot is $400 and you can only bet
$100 on the river, you will still win some percentage of the time greater than the 0% of the time you win when one of you is all-in.
A final freeroll example is the most obvious:
Flop - 6s7s8d; Opponent - 9cTdJsJd; You - As2s3d4c
Here, opposite of the freeroll to a bluff, you want to get all the money into the pot as soon as you can. Your opponent
can never beat you, but you will scoop him once in awhile. Notice in the above example I've contrived the hands to where
your opponent would make a backdoor flush if it came, which would make your ability to bluff a river card that didn't make
you a winner much tougher. Suppose he didn't have those diamonds. Now, by betting him all-in and winning when you make
your spade flush, you are GIVING UP your chance to win the pot via a freeroll bluff on the river if it comes a diamond
or board pair. What you have is TWO freeroll opportunities that work against each other! This game is starting to get
complicated... :) You have two betability issues here that you have to balance given your opponent, his betting habits,
how deep the stack sizes are, how poorly your opponent plays (a terrible opponent could easily go broke the very next hand,
so I would lean to putting him all-in and hope I make my flush and get all his chips, rather than look to make a smaller
amount of chips via occasional river bluffs when I miss but it comes a card he doesn't like), etc.
Of course, not all freerolls are this obvious. In the previous example you are vulnerable to being 3/4ed by hands like A238.
You can't see your opponent's cards, so you seldom get super-obvious freerolls. However, not only do fairly clear freerolls
present themselves, you need to be thinking how sometimes you ARE freerolling when you don't know it. The freeroll should
be the concept in the front of your mind... which also means: DON'T GET FREEROLLED! On a 678 flop, you should fold 9TJJ
to almost any bet. It may be the nuts, but you are probably drawing dead. You may have to put in many chips to split a puny
amount already in play. You may be freerolled and 3/4ed at the same time by A29T.
Folding the nuts is something you should do fairly often in PLO8, and it doesn't have to be high-type hands like the JJT9.
On a flop of 8s7s6s you should usually toss Ad2dKhQh into the muck when faced with any bet. Don't get freerolled.
3/4ing a pot. Though dwarfed in significance by freerolls, 3/4ing is more common. 3/4ing usually occurs when two people
both have the nut low, but it also happens sometimes when both players have the same high and one makes some kind of low.
A much longer discussion than we have space for here, clearly it is a huge skill in being able to correctly discern when
you are getting 3/4s as opposed to when you are getting 3/4ed. Some situations are obvious, like when you make the nut flush
to go with a nut low, but most of the time your hand won't be nearly so defined. When you have A238 and the board is 348QK,
are you getting 3/4s or getting 3/4ed? How about 348Q4? Do you bet the pot? Do you make a smaller bet? Check? Raise if an
opponent makes a small bet? There is a bottomless pit of situations and subtleties to be considered, but a player who makes
bets when 3/4ing and who checks when being 3/4ed will do a helluva lot better than a person who does it the other way around!
Just like when you have the nut Broadway straight you should ask yourself what you are drawing to, when you have the nut
low the first thing you should ask yourself is: what is my high hand? And then, what is the high hand I am trying to make?
The nut low aspect of the hand is relatively unimportant (even if most players fixate on low).
The key word in PLO8 is "and". When you show down you want to be saying, "I have low AND..." If there
is no "and", you usually don't have much. "And" is what to focus on when you have nut low. If you have
no "and", checking and even check/folding will often be your correct action. Don't get me wrong though, before
the showdown "and" can include the fact that you are drawing to a bluff. A naked nut low plays just fine against
people who don't have nut low!
Correctly value-betting hands like two pair, like when you hold A24Q and the board is 478KQ, or even one pair like when
you have A237 and a board is 457KQ, is a challenge you have to strive to accomplish. Reading opponents, especially when
you are out of hand, is a task you should always be working on when playing PLO8. "Better betting" when doing
the 3/4ing and when getting 3/4ed should be the result of a never-ending study of your PLO8 opponents. It is the ongoing
challenge that every player can do better and better.
One thing that should be clear from both the discussion of freerolling and 3/4ing is the dramatically more important role
suited cards play in PLO8 compared to Limit. You want "and". Flushes are just another way to make a bettable
"and". And flushes are never 3/4ed. They are either good or they aren't.
Besides their 3/4ing value, flushes can turn splits into scoops. Suppose you make the nut flush on the river against an
opponent who only has the nut low: Board - 4s5c8dKsQs; Opponent - Ac2c3dJh; You - As3s6d7c
In this case the river card changed things not at all, but you now can safely make a pot size bet. Say the pot is $1000,
and you bet that. The best your opponent can do is get half. If he calls, he gets $500. But he has to consider that if
he calls and gets 3/4ed, he gets back $750, so calling the $1000 bet costs him $250. You will get your opponents to fold
some amount of time over 0% in situations like this. Pure profit.
Similarly, suppose instead you hold As2s4dTc. In this case the river card again didn't change things. You had your opponent
3/4ed already with a pair of fours. But how often are you going to be able to value bet a pair of fours? How often should
you TRY to value bet a pair of fours? By making a much more bettable flush than your measly pair of fours you now can bet
the $1000 pot. When you do, if your opponent calls, you make that extra $250. And, if he doesn't call, making the flush
won you the $250 that was already in the pot (his 1/4 share of the pre-bet $1000 pot).
Suitedness makes hands more bettable, and it makes another way you can make an "and". As2s3d4d is a much more
profitable hand than As2c3d4h. If you could just wish it and have it be so, you would want your cards to always be suited
and your opponent's cards to never be suited. Don't fall into the trap some inexperienced players do when they see
"action-killing flops" of three of the same suit. They wrongly conclude suits won't bring you much. That is silly.
Pots on the flop are relatively small. We don't much care about on-the-flop pots. We care about being in a position to bet
hands on the river, when the pot and bets are biggest. Make-a-flush-on-the-river boards are where the clearest exchange of
money/value takes place in PLO8. You can't tie flushes, only one winner. And, betting/pseudo-bluffing opportunities present
themselves where pure low hands can blow high hands out of pots. It's an oversimplification, but it could be asserted that
when you aren't suited you want pots to be decided on the flop and turn; when you are suited, you want to be putting in
action on the river -- and again, the money in the game is in making river bets when the pots and possible bets are biggest.
If any game is NOT the game of the future, this is it. But when the game is played, and non-good players are involved, it presents
an excellent opportunity for solid, positive expectation poker by focusing on a few key concepts: betability, "and",
suitedness, 3/4ing, freerolling.
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