In this post, we have played some sessions of low stakes Pot Limit Omaha(PLO) on the Euro Pokerstars and we have collated some key hands in order to bring you some winning tips that will hopefully give you more of an edge at the table.

Flat Calling with Weak Kings

I’m not claiming that I’m going to always just smooth call with all my pocket Kings from the blinds in heads up pots like this, but it can help to not overplay them post-flop.

With holdings like KKQJ, KKAT, KKAQ etc I would for sure just look to 3-Bet and get this in against this stack depth, but the problem is that weak Kings as we have in this pot don’t play too well in 4-Bet pots, so if our opponent does pull the trigger we are hopefully flipping but sometimes in terrible shape.
So in this pot we just smooth call, this will help us to get the money in on favourable boards for us but avoid 3-Betting and bloating the pot and then seeing an Ace high board or a dynamic flop that our hand doesn’t interact with well at all.

We end up getting a great board for our hand, flopping the second nut flush draw and an overpair to the Jack high board.

This works out perfectly as our opponent flops an apparently great board for their holding with top pair, top kicker and a third nut flush draw. However they are in bad shape against us as we have a better pair and better draw, that being said this is Omaha and equities always run pretty close so they do still have 25% here.

Avoid Borderline Hands

We stressed this point whilst playing our No-Limit Zoom session and Pot-Limit Omaha is no different, we are playing a format where we can just click one button and get a new hand, we don’t want to play inferior ranges against early position opens when we will be out of position for the whole hand post-flop especially.

These hands that look pretty playable are going to be the downfall in most losing players games, we don’t want to be doing a lot of calling in PLO, we want to be the aggressors with stronger hands than this.

Checking Back with Aces

PLO is a very flop dependant game, unlike No-Limit Hold’em where we might bet a board like this with an overpair because we can get value from a tonne of worse pairs and draws, we just have a terrible hand for this board and are pretty much drawing dead against certain holdings that are pretty likely in our opponents range.

So playing small ball and checking back flops like this is key to not losing a tonne of money needlessly on bad boards for our hands.

That’s not to say that we might call a small bet on the turn, we can sometimes still have the best hand here by the River, but rarely! So try and just call maybe one small bet on boards like this, chances are if two bets go in we are behind with one pair here.

Gamble Time with Wraps

Here we are risking €22.90 to win a possible €68.71, which means we will need over 33% equity in this pot in order to make this a winning proposition for us.

Let’s look at our outs, we can hit any 6, 8, 9, J to give us a straight immediately we also have some runner, runner straights or cards that can give us more outs, for instance, if the Turn brings a Queen or King we can then win with even more cards!
All of this means we have a whopping 40.5% equity here even when one of our opponents has a hand as strong as a set making our play +EV as we said we only need 33% equity to make this play.

It’s not too complex a thing in Omaha when you flop a huge draw like this though, especially with some backdoor flush draws added too, we just never press fold! We are here to find spots to gamble for big stacks and we have half the deck that will give us the best hand here so it’s time to flick in the money and get there.

Gamble Pays Off

We end up not regretting our decision to saddle up for the ride as we scoop a massive pot making the nut straight on the River.

Now, this is only going to happen 40% of the time, so we will get scooped here in this spot some of the time, but that’s the difference between playing this game and a game like Hold’em, in this game you just have to take +EV spots in some situations and run them.

We know that we don’t have the best hand, but as long as we are getting a good price on the pot, that is all that matters in the long run because this is going to be a winning play picking up that extra 7.5% equity.

You have to go into a game of PLO with a different mindset to that of other card games, this is an action game where stacks will be in the middle a lot more often, so be sure you are comfortable with the stakes you are playing.

Be Aware of Your Hand Value

I’ve seen it a tonne of times with new PLO players, they bloat the pot with a hand that would be really strong in a game of Hold’em like the third nut flush and end up getting stacked by the nut flush.

We have to know how many bets we are likely to get with our middling hands, in a pot like this, for example, we have already taken a pretty conservative route to the flop in the way of flat calling a raise with our single suited Queens.

When we see this flop we don’t go too nuts and just play it as check-call, no one puts a bet in so we all see the Turn card for free, which brings a flush…

Great, we have a pretty strong hand with the third nuts here, so should we start betting?

We could do definitely, but we want to tread carefully in spots like this, we don’t want to build a big pot against a hand like the King high flush, so we can look to check one more time here and look to get a value bet in on the River.
We end up with a good River for our hand that doesn’t pair the board, so no full houses are possible and we still have the third nuts.

So we go for around a half pot sizing here hoping to get looked up by some smaller flushes that will never be able to get away from this sizing and possibly some two pairs like Aces up.

Sadly we don’t even get one caller from five players, but we still gave ourselves the best chance to get some value from our flush here without over-playing it.

Sum Up

So here are our key tips for beating Zoom PLO this year:

• Play tight ranges out of position
• Tread lightly with flushes that aren’t the nuts
• Be aware of bad board textures for your big pairs
• Don’t be scared to gamble with big draws

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