Omaha High Pot Limit

PlayWinningPoker.com has this article on Omaha Pot Limit:

"Philadelphia fans would boo funerals, an Easter egg hunt,
a parade of armless war vets, and the Liberty Bell."
-- Bo Belinsky

Rec.gambling.poker once had a discussion about Pot Limit Omaha High worth repeating here. Peter Lizak started it by writing: "I would rather play AKQJ over AA24. AA kinda sucks alone. It needs back up. Think of it like chess. The queen is powerful, but you don't shove her into enemy territory without support."

My view is that if a player would rather play AKQJ for all his chips head-up, then he needs to hit the lottery quick. Pot Limit Omaha is not about cards very much. It is first and foremost position, position, position. If the chips are deep, position renders everything else trivial. If the chips are not deep, you want to get all-in or close to it before the flop with AAxx. You are a significant dog to nothing, besides a dominating other AA hand, and a good favorite over most.

Raising first under the gun with AAxx is suicide, not because AAxx is bad, but because raising under the gun in PLO is foolish with any hand. Limp and reraise if the chips are short. If the chips are deep you should be limp/fold almost everything. The main reason to play hands out of position in PLO is to encourage other people to play out of position. That is really and truly the main reason. You want to limp and fold, while they limp and call your raises when you are in position.

One thing to keep in mind though is that PLO is the game most different in casinos compared to online. The online cardrooms have buy-in limits that prevent you from playing the normally sensible way -- buying yourself a big stack of chips. They have capped buy-in amounts and thus require you to play small stack PLO (until you win your way to a big stack). In that way, AAxx is a much better hand online than in a casino, since any pot size reraise will often be over half your stack.

But again, PLO is position and betting. A solid player who understands the game and has deep chips, can play 3579 in position and eat up AAKK, while also play AAKK in position to eat up 3579.

Most any hand can eat up a better hand that is out of position.

If someone wants to make a pot raise under the gun with AAKK or AAJT, I'll play the big majority of hands against them if we have deep chips. This is especially true if I can put the player on AA with great confidence. The player in position will generally lose small pots and win much bigger ones. This is why you can't get good PLO games with only good players. They become utterly pointless. You need players playing out of position for the game to exist.

Another person then wrote that in a multiplayer pot you can get more out of the AKQJ, and that such multiplayer pots weaken AA42 quite a lot.

I replied that this was not saying much, unless we know specific hands, and the position of those hands. AKQJ offsuit is a very lame hand multiway when AA is also out, and more so when you have other big card players in the pot. The Broadway straight is the #1 sucker hand of PLO where people get freerolled for all their chips. Also, a hand like AdKdQJ is not great because you have the key payoff card that you want in an opponent's hand, the K of diamonds.

AAxx should be looking to play pots headup, via a pot raise in position or a pot reraise out of position. If it can't manage one of these scenarios it should commonly be limped before the flop, then folded when the flop misses. If you do see a flop out of position for a limp multiway, AAxx is vastly superior to AKQJ because the way AA will hit the flop is either an Ace, or a nut flush draw with a small pot. In either case you are in fine shape. AKQJ hits sucker flops, two pair against sets, straights against the same straights with flush outs. Only very rarely will you have the best freeroll with the nut straight and top two pair, and that is only four outs. A suited ace, flopping the Broadway straight and having the nut flush draw, there you have a hand, and it comes along pretty rarely!

Like No Limit Hold'em, even more so, Pot Limit Omaha is a card game that is only a little about cards. Personalities, chip stack size and table position dictate play much more than the spots on the pasteboards.