Agree with everything Ojingo just said and a couple of addons ...

A pre-flop check-raise with AAxx against a known LAG/Maniac who raises is a golden play. Whenever I'm dealt AAxx the first thing I'm looking at is the VPIP/PFR numbers of the table ... predicting what the action is going to be. If it looks like there's going to be a maniac raise I limp it first and then check-raise. This can be espectially effective if you have good position on the maniac... say it's a $20 table ... if everyone limps around for 20c and then maniac pots it for $1 ... you are now in a position to throw in a possible check-raise for $5 or $6 pre-flop ... maniac will call it and you might be able to isolate. You are now in a fantistic position to win anywhere from 30%-100%+ of a buyin here. Or get stacked which kinda happens sometimes too.

Also, even though it's not the monster it is in Holdem ... it's one of the few hands where you are always ahead of your opponent pre-flop ... even if it's a bad AA hand like AA72 ... you've still got a "house edge" on this hand so playing it this way over the long run yields a return.

Wait until you do this and get stacked 5 times in a row on the play ... that's fun. *lol*

Pok here's a good hand that came up tonight which I think illustrates it ... I didn't take the hand cause of the river (obv.) but I think it shows a good risk/reward ratio compared to the hands that wanted to take on the AAxx hand ... and gives a good illustration why getting in with AAxx preflop is tite.

I did the check-raise deal to a maniac ... which worked a little differently than I had hoped ... as it was a free for all after that point ... but I think I was still in pretty good shape even against these hands. Until the river. (Not bitter.)

** Game ID 1329143937 starting - 2007-04-16 21:55:36
** ݯkki [Omaha] (0.10|0.20 Pot Limit - Cash Game) Real Money

- jdtavern sitting in seat 1 with $4.80
- fastfitz1 sitting in seat 2 with $22.51
- grummmp sitting in seat 3 with $13.50
- GOLDEN1979 sitting in seat 4 with $2.30
- pokerzen sitting in seat 5 with $80.31
- erikzamboer sitting in seat 6 with $22.93 [Dealer]

jdtavern posted the small blind - $0.10
fastfitz1 posted the big blind - $0.20
** Dealing card to pokerzen:
grummmp called - $0.20
GOLDEN1979 folded
pokerzen called - $0.20
erikzamboer raised - $1.10 --> PFR = 50 ... I limped in for the purpose of check-raising
jdtavern folded
fastfitz1 called - $1.10
grummmp called - $1.10
pokerzen raised - $5.60 --> so I did
erikzamboer called - $5.60
fastfitz1 called - $5.60
grummmp went all-in - $12.40 --> this was unexpected .. but I didn't mind
pokerzen raised - $51.80 --> cause then I could do this
erikzamboer went all-in - $17.33
fastfitz1 went all-in - $17.11 --> okay that made it a little less comfortable

** Dealing the flop:
** Dealing the turn:
** Dealing the river:

pokerzen shows:

erikzamboer shows:

fastfitz1 mucks:

grummmp shows:

grummmp wins $26.90 from the main pot
erikzamboer wins $26.90 from the main pot
erikzamboer wins $54.53 from side pot 1
erikzamboer wins $54.97 from side pot 2

End of game 1329143937

Here's the twodimes numbers on this hand preflop. (This doesn't take into account that there was a main pot and a side pot ... but let's just pretend even that we were all in one main pot ... with there being a sidepot I'm even better off.) Against a field of 3 even still my equity was pretty good here. All told I lost just over one buyin for a good shot of gaining 3. IMO ... none of these hands had any business calling the first PFR check-raise ... but if they wanna play that way ... (shrug).

Omaha Hi: 376992 enumerated boards
cards win %win lose %lose tie %tie EV
As Qs Jd Ah 134897 35.78 242015 64.20 80 0.02 0.358
4s Tc 8d 7d 49575 13.15 306740 81.37 20677 5.48 0.159
Kc Kd 3d 2d 76211 20.22 300781 79.78 0 0.00 0.202
8s 9c 9h 7h 95632 25.37 260683 69.15 20677 5.48 0.281

Thanks Anders, there's a decent amount of material to digest there. I read through them and, at least as an inital read there seems to still be some mixed thoughts about it. One being since PLO is such a post flop game a large amount of your PF actions may or may not have a significant impact on your game. Another is there are some benefits from at least a positional standpoint and/or exploiting certain tendencies of the players at the table. At least this was my first read through impression, I'll go back over it later.

At the levels I'm currently playing (micro limits 6 max), I don't know if I need to be overly concerned about many of my opponents actually thinking. So doing much else other than just playing my cards I'm thinking, might do me more harm than good. My PLO experience so far is limited to a little over 2 weeks experience and about 2-3K hands of PLO played, so needless to say I still have A LOT of learning ahead of me. I still need to "think PLO" since the vast amount of my poker has been in LHE I'm still learning abot a lot of the aspects of big bet poker as well. Since hardly any if at all the concepts from LHE carry over into PLO. Also just so everyone here understands this is one of the reasons I don't reply much to posts, I don't want anyone thinking I'm not trying to contribute. I just don't have much to contribute ATM . I went through the same thing at another forum when I was learning LHE......I'll go from reading, to posting a ton of questions, to posting incorrect replys on threads, which will get corrected thinking I have a good grip on the game, to eventually hopefully becoming a competent contributing member .