Q&A #120: Pot-Limit Omaha Starting Hands

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Over the past year I’ve focused almost exclusively on no-limit hold’em questions and answers. There are two reasons: that’s mostly what I’ve been playing this year, and that’s also mostly what most people play.

But I have dabbled some in pot-limit Omaha this year, and I have to say I do really enjoy playing PLO. One thing I like about PLO, beyond the fact that it’s a complex and challenging game, is that there is relatively little conventional wisdom out there about how to play it. So I see many different opponent playing styles when I play, and I have to adapt my strategy more aggressively as a result.

Today I’ll answer a PLO question that spadebidder asked on the message board:

I’m just beginning to learn Omaha since it is a popular side game in the NLHE league I play in. The cash games usually alternate NL holdem and PL omaha each table round, with the button choosing hi-only or hi/lo. I’ve started studying the game after looking pretty ignorant trying to play Omaha the first couple of times.

I have a better understanding of the game strategy now, but my question is about starting hands. There seem to be two schools of thought, with one liking the Hutchinson point system, and the other favoring looking at starting hands as 6 possible holdem-type hands and wanting the most good combinations that can flop big hands like straights and nut flushes so that you hit the flop more often (putting more value on double-suited and multiple-connected sequences like A K 2 3 ). The Hutchinson system seems to be based entirely on showdown value against random hands, and I’m a little skeptical that this is the right way to value your hand, since post-flop play seems to be the critical part of Omaha, and you are rarely all-in preflop. It also seems to me that straights and flushes win a lot more often than full houses, devaluing paired hands.

What are your thoughts on this?

Basically, I think that neither of your two “schools of thought” fully capture the complexity of PLO preflop hand selection.

I’ll start by saying that I loathe the Hutchinson point count systems for both hold’em and Omaha. (Google it if you aren’t familiar.) It’s not that I think they are completely useless (just mostly useless). I dislike them because they aim to teach a general, fuzzy principle that has a lot of exceptions, but they use a system with a very precise veneer to do so.

What do I mean? Well, basically the Hutchinson systems are designed around one general principle:

“Pairs and high cards are good, suited and connected cards are good, and low cards, unsuited cards, and unconnected cards are bad.”

This principle is certainly true… to a point. But poker is extremely situational. I won’t hesitate to raise (or even sometimes reraise) 94s on the button, but I fold Q9s when I’m under the gun. And I also fold 94s on the button quite a bit as well.

Ok, we all know poker is situational, and the Hutchinson systems are clearly designed to get beginners off to a good start, not to capture all the nuance of poker. My problem with these point count systems as a teaching tool is that they seem very precise. Add 12 points for your pair, but deduct 4 for that seven. And then multiply by 1.4 because you have four cards, not two. Finally, subtract 25 points because you basically have no idea what in the hell you’re doing, now do you?

The instructions are quite detailed, and that fact alone leads the beginner to conclude that this is all something more than basically fuzzy hogwash. The more complicated something is, the more important it is that you NOT SCREW THIS THING UP!!!!!!!

Right?

So basically I think the point count systems are misleading to the beginners they’re targeted for, and they’re useless to anyone else. In all fairness, I’ve been guilty of constructing such monstrosities myself. So I don’t really blame Hutchinson for giving it an honest effort. But I’d say let’s forget about counting points.

Now to eviscerate the second “school of thought.” Well, maybe I won’t eviscerate this one. It is reasonable to view an Omaha hand as six different hold’em hands. After all, at the showdown (if you get to showdown), you’ll be playing two of your four cards, and you have six different two-card options in your hand.

But I think this school of thought also misses the point. PLO is an extremely complex game, probably more so than no-limit hold’em. It’s also a very positional game, again probably more so than no-limit hold’em. And, just as in no-limit hold’em, hand values can swing very wildly depending on the stack sizes, your opponents’ tendencies, your image, your overall strategy, and more.

If you can’t necessarily say “this is a good hold’em hand, and that is a bad hold’em hand,” then you very well can’t say, “these six hold’em hands make a good Omaha hand, and those six hold’em hands make a bad Omaha hand,” either.

So here’s my school of thought about Omaha starting hands. An Omaha hand is good if you can devise a profitable strategy for it in a given situation, and it’s bad if you can’t devise such a strategy, or if you try to shoehorn the hand into a strategy it’s not suited for.

What do I mean? Well, take a hand like 9 7 6 5 . This hand has strengths and weaknesses. A strength is that it’s got a suit and is quite connected. A weakness is that the cards are small, the gap is near the top of the run, and it can’t make a set.

If you can play this hand to its strengths, then it will be a good hand. If you’re stuck in a situation where the weaknesses will kill you, then it’s no good.

A weakness of a hand like this one is that it can flop a wrap, but be dominated by someone playing a bigger wrap. Say you are against a fairly tight player with 100BB or deeper stacks, and the flop comes

K 8 7

You’ve flopped a wrap. But many of your straight cards don’t make the nut straight. If your tight opponent wants to get it in with you, you won’t have the edge you might assume that you should have. For instance, say he has J J T 9 . You’re in pretty bad shape – your wrap has only 28.5% equity. Or your opponent could have A K K T and be roughly flipping with you.

But that’s just one scenario – deep stacked against a tight player who wants to get it in. You can get dealt 9 7 6 5 in many other situations. Sometimes you’ll be playing that hand against a total drooler who wants to get it in with you on that K-8-7 flop with 9-7-5-5 or worse. Sometimes you’ll have position on a tight player who gives up under pressure unless he’s flopped a total monster.

Sometimes the stacks will be deep and you’ll be able to put your opponent on aces because he 3-bet preflop (and he only 3-bets with aces). And that player will overplay aces and get it in willingly in bad situations. You’re almost a 70-30 favorite over A-A-J-2 on that same flop. As long as there’s plenty of money behind and your opponent is game, your connected hand is great, and that little gap doesn’t matter that much.

Which reminds me, stack size affects PLO starting hand valuations perhaps even more than it does hold’em hand valuations. Those big cards and big pairs are tough to beat when the stacks are short. But when the stacks are deep, deception and hand reading become much more important than just having big cards in your hand.

A final point. PLO hand reading can be tricky, and a little deception can go a very long way. Many players will interpret a 3-bet as meaning that you likely hold aces. You can take advantage of that fact and sometimes 3-bet such a player with a hand like 8 8 4 4 . This hand fails the “6 hold’em hands” test because 8-4 is pretty dubious, and it makes up four of your six hold’em hands. But this hand is still great for deception. About 1/4 of the time you’ll flop a set, and your opponent often will think he’s playing against aces. So, for instance, on a board like

K 8 5

you might find your opponent happy to get it in with you holding something like T 9 8 7 . A pair and a gutshot is plenty of hand against most aces hands, but against your set it’s a serious dog. (Hat tip goes to Sunny Mehta who clued me in on this upside to a double paired hand.)

For a beginner at Omaha, learning about runs, gaps, suits, pairs, danglers, and so forth is critical. But once you get past the surface, you have to evaluate starting hands not on any absolute scale, but rather on how appropriate the hand is for a given situation.

Tags: Hutchinson point count, omaha, Omaha hi-lo, PLO, PLO8, poker, pot-limit Omaha, prelfop hands, starting hands

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