PLO Cash Hand

Thoich

Decided to start playing a bit of micro PLO cash games to break up my usual grind. Very little experience or knowledge of PLO, apart from a couple of Phil Galfond youtube videos which were way over my head.

Was heads up at the time, no reads on villan, I don't think I would be able to detect calling station or maniac players in PLO yet even if the tells were slapping me in the face..

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Thoich	Small blind		£0.02	£0.02	£4.75
XX	Big blind		£0.04	£0.06	£1.91
	Your hole cards	6 8 5 3
Thoich	Call		£0.02	£0.08	£4.73
XX	Raise		£0.08	£0.16	£1.83
Thoich	Call		£0.08	£0.24	£4.65
Flop
		5 7 2
XX	Bet		£0.12	£0.36	£1.71
Thoich	Raise		£0.36	£0.72	£4.29
XX	Call		£0.24	£0.96	£1.47
Turn
		5
XX	Bet		£0.96	£1.92	£0.51
Thoich	Raise		£3.84	£5.76	£0.45
XX	All-in		£0.51	£6.27	£0.00
Thoich	Unmatched bet		£2.37	£3.90	£2.82
Thoich	Show	6 8 5 3
XX	Show	8 K Q K
River
		7
Thoich	Win	Three 5s	£3.60		£6.42

My thoughts...

Pre-Flop: I have 4 fairly nice looking cards of the same color, lets see a flop.

Flop: With him raising pre and betting flop I am guessing likely hands are broadway hands and overpairs. I raised to fold out broardway hands that have good equity against my hand, also thinking it might be possible for them to lay down 1010/JJ type hands??

Is it too ambitious to think some people would lay down QQ/KK/AA here?

Turn: Thankfully binked trips and guessing and I am assuming my play is pretty on turn.

Mostly wondering if I should be raising hands like this pre, or is limp calling hands like these okay to avoid getting 3bet?

Also not sure about my turn play, maybe a bit ambitious??

Any words of wisdom would be appreciated

Thoich

HH not come out too great. They had 1.71 left after flop bet, 0.51 left after turn bet

KAM99

Not an expert on PLO HU, but I don't see a problem limp calliing or raising the hand if you are looking for straights or other strong hands against his raise.

Flop, you have pair and OESD, and so I don't see a problem with reraise on a low board that likely hasn't hit him too well. Not sure why he calls though with no draw and two kings. Not a lot of outs to play for, but maybe he thinks kings are still good.

Turn. He pots it with KK still no draw. THis is suicide giiven flop action unless he is trying to convince you he has a 5.  Yes, he could have a set of 7's or 2's or bigger kicker 5, but given it's the only hands that beats us I shove too.

As I said, my PLO HU is non-existant, so this could be bad advice, but I'll see when others post.

Thoich

Didn't actually realise I had OESD on flop, just thought I was turning my pair of 5's into a bluff. whoops

Tikay10

Hi THoich,

Ideally, Omaha is a game of BIG cards, but rundowns are fine, as are gapped rundowns. You can really hit a flop hard with a gapped rundown, though ideally we want the gap at the lower end, say, 7-9-10-J.
 
Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything really.

So, this hand, & the guy could not fold his Kings.
 
FWIW, in Omaha, MOST money is lost with big pairs, players seem unable to fold them. (Guilty as charged, on occasion). 

The guy with Aces or Kings has to raise pre, & has to c-Bet on almost any flop, so if you hit your flop, you'll generally get 2 streets of value, minimum.
 
In this case, the flop was fairly dry (5-7-2 cc), so he is guaranteed to continue. Once the board pairs, & you continue to show interest, he really ought to let go. In many cases, they can't or wont. This is exactly where we earn our profit in PLO. 

Remember, though, when playing these low connectors, that unless you hit the flop hard, just give up. That's where we can lose our potential profit in PLO.    

KAM99

I agree with some of Tikay's post, but God forbid it I don't agree with all of it. Certainly full-ring or six-max you are going to be often looking at monster over monster hands in PLO, but not always in HU play. It isn't always a game of big cards, but a game of big hands. So even HU you have to be prepared to fold out quickly if your hand is fairly weak with only a pair. A pair isn't often the winning hand in PLO.

In other words to the OP. If you didn't see the OESD then your reraise with a pair of 5's was bad. Fairly high chance he has a better pair. Neither player showed in glory really, but PLO takes time to learn. I don't consider myself an expert at all. I enjoy it as a change from holdem, but that is my main game.

KAM99

Just a note. I hadn't played PLO in over a year or so, and this post gave me the urge to play some int he early hours of the morning. So played some $25nl (not here as none were playing really) and holy heck I'd forgotten how fishy PLO is, certainly at low limits. In 250 handsplaying 2 tables I was up 3 buyins on one and 4.5 on the other.

So thanks for giving met he urge to play some PLO, and no you don't get a fee. :P

F_Ivanovic

You have the BTN and position with an extremely playable hand HU.... this is a slam dunk raise pre-flop. In HU PLO when we have the BTN we should be looking to raise at least 75% of our hands, can possibly limp with 15% (although raising wouldn't do too badly vs most villains) and then fold the worst 10% of hands. This is definitely in the 75% of hands good enough to raise because it is semi-connected with only a 2 gapper and 1 gapper & double suited. We can't just wait for aces and super strong rundowns like JT97 because we'd be waiting far too long for a hand. Meanwhile, our blinds will get eaten up by any good opposition.

On the flop you can go 2 ways. His slightly weak sizing does indicate that he perhaps has a bare overpair at best. With a flush draw he is a 62.7% favourite but without we're a 57% favourite. Overall we might have around 55% equity vs his c-betting range, which is OK but not really good enough to raise and GII because we won't be in great shape vs a reasonable GII range. Because we have position I like just calling flop and seeing what he does OTT. We can make our hand, hit some more equity (maybe with a flush draw) or bluff him off his hand if he slows down and a club comes. If the 3 in our hand was a 4 we would have something called a wrap draw which is better than an OESD because it has even more outs (any 3 or 8 now making us a straight as well) - with this hand I'd be much more inclined to raise flop since we have a lot more outs and if we do get shoved on we at least have the correct equity most of the time to call it off.