What makes a PLO high hand?

Well, lots of people seem to be asking this question. There’s a large number of things to take into account preflop in this game, but perhaps the first thing to consider is… don’t worry. It isn’t possible in PLO high to have a massive leak in your game by making poor decisions preflop, unless you are literally limping every single hand. It is possible to consistently beat the online games with flop percentages anywhere between 20 and 50%, providing you can play reasonably well beyond the flop, and choose juicy games.

HOWEVER, understanding the power of PLO starting holdings is CRUCIAL to being successful in this game. Whilst you can get by using a very loose selection strategy preflop, being able to play the marginal and weaker starting holdings requires a good knowledge of their strengths, and how they play on the flop. Often, the looseness of poor or unsophisticated players preflop is symptomatic of a looseness on the flop, which is by far the most important street in this game. Loose preflop play is not a leak in itself, but if it leads you into marginal or tricky situations, after the flop, in scenarios where you find your holding difficult or damaging to play, then your preflop strategy has “fed” a big leak in your game. On the toughest tables it’s impossible to win much in this game, only playing the premium preflop holdings, whilst on a loose/weak table there is such massive implied odds to limping with even poor holdings, looking for massive flops or draws, that in both cases it’s not necessary to restrict yourself to the premium 15% or so of hands. There are, nonetheless, a number of VITAL rules regarding preflop play, for new PLO players.

1) WHEN UNSURE OF YOUR POSTFLOP GAME, PLAY TIGHT TIGHT TIGHT PREFLOP: there’s no need to go crazy and only see 10% of flops, but when you find marginal or difficult holdings harder to play postflop, or you’re not so great at picking situations where your hand may not be good (i.e. bottom set), then play defensively and pass hands which you are not sure of. As time goes on, it’s fine to become looser and looser preflop.

2) NO PLO HAND IS A MASSIVE FAVOURITE OVER ANOTHER PREFLOP, IN MOST CASES: even the very best heads up hand in the game, AAKK double suited, is only 60-65% favourite against a random 4 card hand. Thus, get out of the common holdem feeling that you’re making a massive mistake by taking action preflop when you figure your hand is an underdog. In many, many cases, apparently poor preflop holdings have sufficient implied odds to see a flop, IF you are reasonably confident of only playing beyond the flop in +_ve EV situations. The cost of playing preflop is orders of magnitude less than the cost of later streets, especially in non-max buy in games (not relevant to the internet), so if you’re going to make an EV mistake, make it preflop rather than on the flop or turn.

3) YOUR PREFLOP PLAY INFORMS YOUR FLOP PLAY: as I said before, if you’re a good enough player preflop, you can call/raise any old 4 cards and still be a winning player (I know one guy who raises EVERY unraised pot preflop, at 100PLO, and by my reckoning is a marginally winning player!). If you’re not so good, play tighter. Simple as that. If you can outplay your opponents and get away from –ve EV flops cheaply, you can call a lot of holdings. If you’re not so confident, allow your preflop choices to inform your flop play, by playing hands that can hit a wider range of playable flops. The typical “TROUBLE” features in a holding, for players who are slightly weaker at playing beyond the flop and reading other players are : LOW PAIRS (below TT), MULTIPLE GAPPERS (e.g. 4679) and NON-NUT BUT HIGH FLUSH HOLDINGS (Kxs, Qxs etc.). Thus you should DEVALUE or INCREASE IN VALUE these holdings in your hand, depending on your view of your postflop play. A K high flush draw can be a good holding if you can put both opponents on trips with no redraws; you need to be good enough to pick out these situations, though. Equally, gappy wrappy type hands (runs with some holes in) are more playable if you can rapidly assess what your opponent is betting, deduce the number of outs that your wrappy-type flop is giving you, deduce if any of them are likely to be tainted, and then make the right play, call or fold. *******AN OMAHA FEATURE IS ONLY A VALUABLE FEATURE IN YOUR STARTING HAND IF YOU KNOW HOW TO PLAY IT POSTFLOP!!!!!********

4) YOUR HAND IS NOT A RAISING HAND UNLESS IT CONTAINS FOUR CARDS THAT WORK TOGETHER. And that includes AAxx. If you have a “hanger” in your hand (e.g. QJT4ds, with the 4 a total brick) then your hand is never great. Worth a limp, perhaps, but not good for a raise, and rarely good to call one, if you have a 3-card hand. Omaha is a game of 4 card hands.

5) If you think your hand is a good one, there’s NOTHING WRONG with RAISING! Even if you’re not sure, making a raise preflop in PLO is never, ever a major mistake, since in a shorthanded game, it’s very rare for a hand to be in any real trouble preflop. Getting rid of opponents, and building a pot, with a raise, is fair enough, even if you think you’ve not necessarily got the best hand.

6) Unlike in holdem (usually) it’s VERY common in PLO to raise or even re-raise preflop and then drop your hand on the flop. Some hands are very strong but require specific flops to continues, in fact that’s true of most hands. You haven’t made a weak play, necessarily, by raising a hand then dropping when the flop doesn’t connect. Some of the biggest errors and biggest batterings taken by novice players in PLO is to raise what seems a premium hand preflop (AAKT or whatever), see a relatively uncoordinated flop, and then not be able to get away from a hand that’s suddenly not very good. There’s nothing wrong with raising, or calling a raise, then folding your tents when the flop misses. The MOST IMPORTANT DECISION in PLO, perhaps unlike holdem, is what you do ON the flop, not before it. The most important streets are the flop (by far), preflop, and then the turn and river (in a max buyin game) are well down the list.

7) The most important thing, often forgotten in PLO games….. POSITION IS KEY…. As much, if not more so, than any other poker game, no matter what anyone tells you, POSITION IS ENORMOUSLY IMPORTANT IN PLO, particularly if you’re playing a marginal hand that could pose some questions on the flop. IF you’re unsure what to do with a hand, the deciding factor, preflop, is POSITION. If you’re deciding whether to limp or to raise, or trying to deduce whether to limp, or fold, let your position make the decision for you. If you have position (and in PLO that means last to act preferably, or in the final 3 seats, in a limped pot, or acting after a raiser etc.), then take a more aggressive move, if you’re out of position, play more defensively and consider passing. The strength of your hand may vary from flop to turn to river, but the strength of your position will ALWAYS remain the same. IF YOU NEVER PLAY A HAND IN THE FIRST FEW SEATS IN A FULL TABLE, YOU’RE LOSING LITTLE VALUE, ON A REGULAR ONLINE TABLE. Omaha is a game of position, our first thought preflop is NOT what our hand is, but what our position is! I really can’t stress that enough, with any number of obnoxious capitalised sections…

THIS ISN’T HOLDEM. Although a lot of concepts apply to both games (position, table selection), the value of hands and hand features is often very different, and many concepts are NOT shared. The biggest traps fallen into by new players are the typical “holdem errors”, made by players erroneously applying holdem concepts to Omaha. These are:

a) Overvaluing overpairs, AAxx and two pair (often weak holdings in PLO, where monster draws, and sets, tend to be king).

b) Slow-playing winning, but vulnerable, hands. If there’s a way your hand can lose, chances are someone has a draw to it. Make them pay. Checking in turn with high sets on the flop, not betting the max when you have the nut straight against an opponents you think had trips off the flop, or trying to get check raises from hands where no-one is likely to pop it (nut flush being an example where you should NEARLY ALWAYS raise, in most online PLO games) – all massive errors. Free cards are death in PLO. When you have big hands, bet, bet, bet, till your mouse-clicking finger drops off.

c) Chasing draws when there’s likely a better on out, and calling or playing clearly beaten 5-card hands. This includes drawing to flushes or straights on a paired board (almost always foolish), calling down flushes and straights on a paired board at the river (often foolish, unless you think he’s bluffing). Too often it’s easy to bet a hand in PLO without thinking – often, if you REALLY think about what you have, rather than betting in a holdem-inspired autopilot state, you’ll see that the ONLY likely callers will have better hands. Quick example – board 5628K, with 2nd trips, there’s really no reason to bet the river, unless you are very sure you’re playing an idiot. Only callers likely have you beat with a straight of some sort, anyone with 2 pair, baby set etc isn’t likely to call you down. You might as well check and go for a showdown/induce a bluff.

d) Thinking of “made hands” and “draws”. This is a useful way of thinking about things in holdem. Not in Omaha. The difference is, that drawing hands are more powerful in a game with 4 cards! Thus the “made hand”, such as an overpair, two pair, or even trips, might be an underdog to a huge draw. INSTEAD – think of it like this (and this is a VERY big concept in the game)… “He likely has hand X. I have hand Y. My chance of winning, if this goes to showdown, is Z. Therefore I should semi-bluff/bet for value/try to draw cheaply”. Knowing how many outs you have, how many outs your opponent has, and how a hand is likely to play out, is more important than the facile and incorrect classification of “made hand” or “drawing hand”. There are no made hands in omaha, until the river. You should bet in situations when you have +ve EV to do so. Think not in terms of made hands, or autopilot moves, but in terms of what will bag you the best result in EV terms. Might be as simple as betting out on a big draw, knowing you have fold equity + the big eauity of hitting your hand maybe 40% of the time, or it might be even simpler – your top trips is fave against a flush draw, so keep betting it. Not because you have a “made hand”, but because the EV is maximised.

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OK, so that advice should help. Basically, PLO is quite a simple game, if you’re always thinking about it. There’s no easy answers, in many cases, and there’s no way to play on autopilot, but often PLO situations are less complex than you’ll find in holdem. If you can really THINK about the concepts of the game, and your holdings, do some reading, and most of all, analyse the way the cards in your hand play, and the very simple maths involved in putting your opponent on a hand and counting odds and outs, you will easily kill almost every game you’ll find online. The game might have a high variance, but there’s plenty of poor play at nearly all levels, and a player who can apply good Omaha analysis to the situations they come across, can beat just about any game, without even needing to become a top player.

So – the secret to any Omaha problem (isn’t this true of any poker form?) is to THINK, not to take everything at face value, and to really, really THINK about the elements of the problem, whether it’s deciding to call a possible river bluff, to chase a draw to a pot-sized raise, or to decide whether to play a certain holding preflop. All you need to do this, is a few basic groundrules that you can pick up from any decent Omaha book. Pick up Ciaffone, put your thinking hat on, play some games, and see how you get on.

Right then… so what actually makes a good preflop PLO holding? The groundrules…

1) Omaha hands contain 4 cards. The best hands use 4 cards that combine together in some way; it’s very unusual for a 3 or 2 card hand to be much good, other than for a late limp in some cases.

2) Omaha hands are made up of features. These can be 2-card, holdem-type holdings, or features comprising 3 or 4 cards. These 3 or 4 card features are “wraps” or runs, and are alien to holdem. They can be very strong (although they’re not to be overestimated!). An Omaha hand should therefore use all 4 cards (in some way) and be comprised of a number of strong “features”.

3) A good rule is to look for hands with 3 features of some sort, or 2 very strong features, before choosing to raise. Again, it’s not a hard and fast rule; some hands may contain only one true marquee feature but a couple of smaller ones, and still be good to raise and re-raise. 9TJQ double-suited is a 4-card no-gapped wrap (huge feature) with a couple of medium flush draws (both relatively small features). Overall, though, this is a mighty hand.

4) Everything needs to work together; A hand like QQKJ has some straight features with a high pair; it all works together. As6s7hKs has a decent flush draw, with a low connector (67) and a relatively worthless K that only makes one straight. Although it has one decent feature and a couple of other useful assets, it’s too uncoordinated to be any sort of decent hand.

5) THERE ARE NO RULES! Well, of course that’s nonsense, but no hard and fast rules, anyhow! Trying to learn hands by rote, or learning tables or hierarchies of PLO holdings, is a waste of time. You need to think about the hand in question, the features it includes, HOW IT WILL PLAY AFTER THE FLOP, and then deduce the strength of the holding on your own, using the rules you already know. There is no holy grail of Omaha starting hands, no AA or KK that is decimating the field, and often no simple answers!

So – what are the strong features???

WRAPS – 4 cards that run together is the daddy of all wraps. If it’s medium high (QJT9, JT98 etc) it can still make all the straights and if it’s suited, may make some medium flushes that could help out. Any time you get 4 cards that run together, it’s a very major feature. I would only raise the mid-high versions (6-K being the absolute limits for a raise), or the broadway ones with suited features. AKQJ can’t in actuality make a lot of straights, and is nowhere near as strong as it looks without some suited cards in there, preferably the ace.

Wraps at either end (high or low) are weaker as they make less straights. A wrap hand is stronger the more straights you can make; 789T makes about double as many straights as 2345 can, and more of them are to the nuts. Higher wraps are marginally better as they’ll make more nutty hands, be it 2 pair, boats or straights. 2-pair hit with KQJT could be a strong hand; 2-pair hit with 5678 is unlikely to be.

Gaps in your wrap holdings weaken them; single gaps are not a big problem, although it will mean you can make less straights. JT87 is still a nice hand. The hand is stronger with the gaps at the bottom (689T is better than 678T) because the hand can make more NUT straights, and boards that connect 2 pair may also give you a useful straight draw. This is a game of the nuts, after all.

Double gaps in your hand weaken it more so, though they may still be limpable in late position. If you’re not good at counting outs and odds on a flop, you’re advised to stay away from double gapped wrap hands. 578T is marginally limpable late on, but needs to hit a very specific flop. Generally, these sort of less well coordinated wrap hands are much much weaker and make fewer straights.

Two card gaps are usually hard to fill, although if you do fill them on the flop you can have a big straight draw. Again, these hands are weak and need to flop hard. KQ98 with a suited king is maybe OK; lower variants without any flush cards are probably best off in the muck. 4589 is great if the flop brings 67x, but such hard hits are rare indeed!

3-card wraps are much less powerful and not a playable feature on their own. However, they can play as a very nice major feature in a hand if you have a big feature on the side. A suited ace with a middling 3-card wrap is a decent enough hand, and worth entering most pots with, even to a small raise. As6s7d8c is an example. Medium-high pairs in a 3-card wrap can be playable too; JJT9 is a perfectly respectable Omaha holding.

2-card wraps, otherwise known as connectors, are much less use. Again this is a THINKING problem. If you’re facing a maximum raise on the flop, you just can’t make a draw that offers pot odds, with 2 connected cards. 67xx with 45x on the flop is not enough to chase. Thus, you need ADDITIONAL features to make your draw. So 2-card connectors can be useful with, say, a suited ace. If the flush draw comes, your connector could just give you that low gutshot you need to make a good draw. However, these features are rarely anything to get excited about. I would consider them barely a “minor” feature, and without another close card that can make a straight or a wrap they’re hardly worth anything.

Note that any straight holdings are not worth slowplaying or considering to be unbeatable monsters – there’s always a flush card or open pair around the next corner! DON’T COUNT STRAIGHT OUTS THAT WILL MAKE A FLUSH! On a board of Js Qs 4c, with a hand of Ac Kh Td x, has 13 cards that make a straight, but only 9 that make the nuts (four straight cards make a flush). Therefore, this hand should be counted as having 9 “nut” outs, rather than 13.

PAIRS – These are strong when high, weak when low, simple.

I will sometimes limp late on, or even in MP, with a poor hand containing a high pair. The implied odds on a POOR table of catching nut trips and firing in big pot-sized bets make this worth doing; if it’s likely to be raised, however, you can forget about this play.

Basically, the premium pairs (T-A) are nice features, the more likely they are to make top trips, the better!

This makes AA the nicest of this sort of feature, but AA IS NOT A HAND IN ITSELF.

Let me say that again for anyone who missed first time around – AA IS NOT A HAND IN ITSELF. It’s two cards. As Ad 2c 8h is not a great hand. Heck, out of position, I’d probably fold that to a lot of raisers.

Don’t go crazy with AA. It’s correct that AAxx is the favourite over any other non AA hand, so if you’re SURE you can get all the chips in preflop with AAxx (especially if one ace at least is suited), it’s worth doing. However, that usually only works with maniacs, AND if you can isolate. If two players are going nuts with AAxx, and the other guy has a hand like 789T, he can do very nicely (about 40%!) by getting into this 3-way pot. Also, most re-raises in this game, online, come from hands containing AAxx. This is therefore a good way to tip off 50% of your hand, against an opponent who knows this rule. Therefore, it’s a smart move to re-raise with hands other than AAxx (the big wraps, for instance), for deception, if you’re going to raise AAxx. Normally, I will raise most AAxx hands in good position, limp with them early. NOT ALL AAxx’s ARE BORN EQUAL!!!! AA87 double suited is a crushing hand, shovel chips in with it anytime your aces are both suited. With one suited ace, it’s pretty decent, and worth a raise in most spots. HOWEVER, you have to be able to get away from it, if the flop misses. AAxx should be raised to narrow down the number of callers in the pot (you could then SOMETIMES win without improvement on a ragged flop, which is MUCH EASIER IF YOU HAVE POSITION – hence, I am more likely to make big AA raises in position). AAxx should be raised and even re-raised for value reasons, even out of position, if it has powerful sidecards; these would include a suited ace and a second pair, or double-suited aces. 2 other cards that can make a straight are better than nothing. AAxx dry (with two total bricks as sidecards) is really only good for a limp and hope for the set. Remember though, don’t get too attached to this holding! AAxx is NOT AA in hold’em, and shouldn’t be played as if it cant lose. Even if you can get it heads up, it’s unlikely to be better than a 60% favourite. Because overpairs and two pair holdings are not that strong, AA is not a massively stronger feature than KK, or QQ.

The baby pairs are very tough to play, as catching a set can be troublesome if it’s not the top one. Consider u have 77xx, flop comes 7TK. You bet the pot, and someone raises! You should probably fold this, against most opponents. If you’re out of position it’s even harder. Thus, baby pairs are a minor feature, and hard to win a lot of money on. They’re better than nothing, especially on loose tables, but they can be VERY hard to play if you catch a set – remember the early rule about your preflop holdings informing your flop play, and vice versa? If you’re not comfortable playing a low set out of position (and few are! Me included!) then you should give low pairs virtually no value in early positions, or in the blinds. Pairs in the 88-TT range are generally slightly (but not really THAT much) better. They’re better holdings, as side cards for a big holding, than, say, 2 connected cards. They’re still not much of a feature though. AA is better with 55 than 56 as side cards, for instance.

I like premium pairs, as I’ve already described, because of the implied odds of catching that high set, and will play a wide range of high pair hands with only a little bit of help from the sidecards. You need a volume pot, however, or some major sidecard help! PREMIUM PAIRS, ESPECIALLY AA, PLAY BEST IN SHORT-HANDED POTS, WITH POSITION… Thus, raising to get heads up or to eliminate opponents with AAxx hands, when you’re able to open up in late position, is not a bad move. Be careful about giving away that AA by re-raising though, if it’s a move you rarely make!

FLUSH CARDS – The last type of holding; generally, Omaha involves drawing to hands after the flop, as I’ve already described. Flushes are one holding that often have a lot of draws (against someone with a set, you’ll have 7 outs that are clean to your flush; so you generally need extra outs to your flush, a flush draw alone is often not enough to call – you’ll maybe need some straight cards too!). Remember, any card that pairs the board can generally not be counted as a flush out, unless you are certain you’re facing one opponent with a straight. Thus, a typical flush draw has 7 rather 9 outs.

Flush features are not that strong, as it’s easy to lose to a higher flush, boat etc. The only flush feature that can be considered as a powerful feature is a suited ace. You should never draw to a non-nut flush in a volume pot, from the flop, as it’s too likely you’re drawing dead against a higher flush draw.

Flush draws have less implied odds than “hidden” straight draws (i.e. 35 with a 24x flop can make a relatively hard to spot straight, for a novice player, so you’re more likely to get bets later on; thus, the implied odds are better than for an ace-high flush draw on the flop…. When the 3rd of your suit comes, everyone will shut down). Flush draws have better chances of holding up when you make them than straight draws (straights are vulnerable to open pairs and flushes; flushes are just vulnerable to open pairs).

A suited ace can be considered a major feature but is NOT really playable without any additional side features. Generally, straight-making side features are preferable to low pairs; I’d rather have A678 with a suited ace, than A66K with a suited ace. This is because it’s more usual to find a big draw by hitting a nut flush draw with some cards that will make a straight. That’s not to say that AKKx is a weak feature, with a suited ace!

Other suited cards become stronger a) in shorthanded pots and b) when you make the flush by the backdoor, i.e. as a runner-runner, or when you know you’re up against a hand like trips, when you have a big straight draw with a non-nut flush draw. It takes some knowledge of how to play the flop and beyond, to ascribe a value to your non-nut flush holdings. It’ll suffice to know a couple of rules: 1) Aces are the only truly strong flush features 2) Higher flush features are stronger than lower ones, K and Q being useful features, 7 or 8 being less so 3) wrap hands, and hands with other features, that are marginal (either to play or to raise) are improved by being suited; thus, it’s not a huge feature but may push it past a threshold where it becomes more playable.

Thus, in a hand like 89TJ, being double suited makes it a monster holding – you can raise (thinning the field and increasing the chance that your flushes will be good) and you have a wrap hand with 2 medium-low flush shots. But, in a short-handed pot, the flush outs might just give you additional odds to call or raise. In a limped hand, like 788T, being double-suited, or single suited, is of less use, as the chances of a higher flush draw being able to chase are increased. I would say that a suited ace is handy in short and multi-way pots, although you’re more likely to have odds to chase in a big pot, so hands like As 8s 6d 5c are better when you can limp in with many opponents, looking to hit some sort of straight/flush draw, that might just wina big pot.

SO…. IN SUMMARY….

Build up your hand from these features. Know their strengths and weaknesses. Don’t be afraid to raise. Play smart, and think about your hand. Don’t overvalue AAxx. Know the odds and outs in various situations, do some reading. Know the sort of flops that are good for your hand. Consider implied odds and position as the most important aspects of deciding whether to play or pass, preflop. Start of tight, and get looser as you gain confidence and insight.

This post took me about 3 hours to write, so I hope it’s of use. I was going to give some examples of starting hands, and why they’re strong/weak, but I think perhaps that’s a post for another day, my fingers are getting tired! In any case, there’s plenty of books on Omaha and you’d be very much recommended to read them! Ciaffone, Reuben, Rolf Slotboom and Michael Cappellatti are my favourite authors on PLO.

Read. Learn. Enjoy. Think. Win. It’s as simple as that; now it’s over to you.

Monk
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Damn, good thing you only have to copy and paste that rather than typing it all over. You must really like to type but as long as you keep writing it down, i'll keep reading it. Thanks alot for the info, but I know you aren't in the clear as I will have many more questions in the future as I play more. I only got about 1200 hands under my belt so its still a long way to go.

I am not much of a PLO player, but the above is amazingly well written...Awesome stuff Monk!!!

B