Are you new at poker and want to learn how to play Pot Limit Omaha (PLO)? Or is Texas Holdem your typical game and you want to add to your repretoire? If you are among the latter folks, pay special attention to the tips below because Omaha players are on the lookout for common Texas mistakes.

Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) is known as a game of action. It has some similarities as Texas Hold’em but there are a few differences as well. The first one is that it is played with four cards instead of the traditional two in NLHE. From those four cards, you need to pick two which must be used to make a hand using the board. Everyday people are converting to PLO as their game of choice. It’s not hard to figure out why this is the case as PLO is an action game where all players get dealt four cards and possibilities abound. One caveat, however, is that you must use at least two of your hole cards in your final hand. Polo is played on a Polo field that is 300 yards long and 200 yards wide, although this may be just 160 yards wide if it is a boarded pitch. The goalposts have a width of 8 yards and are open at the top. Each Polo match shall consist of 4 chukkas (plays), each one lasting 7 minutes of actual play. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; Arabic: منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية ‎, Munaẓẓamat at-Taḥrīr al-Filasṭīniyyah (help info)) is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the 'liberation of Palestine' through armed struggle, with much of its violence aimed at Israeli civilians. In short, position is key in 6-max PLO strategy and you should look to be playing the majority of your reasonable starting hands from the button or cut-off seats.

Below we introduce PLO strategies for starting hand selection and assessment, bankroll management, equity, backdoor outs and kill cards, and hand reading.

Basic PLO Strategy & Tips

Many players give PLO a try as a refreshing change from Texas Holdem. With 4 hole cards and betting limits fixed by the size of the pot, there are new strategy considerations to keep your mind fresh. This article covers some of the key strategy tips you’ll need to keep in mind when your first move over. Remember that experienced PLO players are on the lookout for people making ‘Holdem Player Mistakes’ and are ready to take advantage.

There are 3 main areas covered in this article. First the setup of starting hands and the importance of betting with combinations of cards that work together. Next you’ll find tips covering the relative strengths of hands at showdown. After that some advice on how to avoid giving away the content of your Omaha hand too early.

Pot Limit Omaha Strategy Tips – Starting Hand Selection

In PLO poker, a showdown has very specific rules. You can use 2 and only 2 cards from you own 4 hole-cards, and 3 and only 3 cards from the 5 community cards. Reading the board comes easily with practice, though the effect on starting hand selection is more subtle.

The best Omaha hands are those which have the largest possible number of 2-card combinations which work together – in addition to some high card strength. The best hands are A-A-J-10 with 2 ace high suited pairs, and A-A-K-K also double-suited. Both of these can make top set, straights and nut flushes. Other super-strong hands in PLO are called ‘Rundowns’ and include hands like 9-10-J-Q double suited. Here you have 6 combinations of hands working for you and you can flop draws with up to 21 outs – making you a favorite over a set.

Even one unconnected card halves the number of combinations you have working for you. The really dangerous Omaha starting hands contain small to medium pairs. Sure, you can flop a set now and again, but when the betting gets extra heavy in this game – middle or bottom set is a trap hand. If you are not already beaten by a higher set then you could be facing one or more massive draws which are favorite to beat you.

Pot Limit Omaha Strategy Tips- Relative Hand Strength At Showdown

Hands shown down in PLO are much stronger than you will be used to in Texas Holdem. If you think that each player starts with up to 6 potential 2-card combinations, then it makes sense that hands shown down will be close to the nuts. Just imagine betting into 3 players in Texas Holdem holding 18 hands – one of them must have hit the flop.

If you can get your aces all-in pre-flop then you should do that, however unimproved over-pairs are very unlikely to win the pot when there has been significant action.

Coordinated flops mean you need to make a decision on whether to continue immediately. The betting gets exponentially bigger on each round with pot-limit rules and ‘just calling to see what happens’ can lead you to hit a low straight, non-nut flush or two pair – which will cost you money more often than they make you any.

A good rule of thumb for new players is to only draw to nut hands. The highest straights, nut flushes and the best full-house should all be included. Once you get used to how different opponents are betting in different situations you can add in some non-nut draws like the underfull or King-high flushes.

Pot-Limit Omaha Strategy Tips – Don’t Give Away That Hand Too Early

A common mistake new Omaha players make is to limp or call pre-flop with a wide range of speculative hands – and then suddenly raise with a pair of aces or kings. This is so well known among regular players that many specifically watch for these raises. What you will find is that you instantly end up with 5 callers, and are quickly checked to on the flop.

5 Card Plo Rules

If you did not improve on the flop you need to be wary, your opponents will know what you have (well, half of your hand at least) and will be ready to build a big pot if they have you beaten. Once you gain some PLO experience of your own you can join in the profitable pastime of watching for aces-only raisers.

Even players who raise a wider range of coordinated hands can fall into this trap sometimes. This happens when only aces are used to re-raise. If you are going to give away your hand in this way you need to make sure that you have no more than one pot-sized bet left after the flop – otherwise it is easily exploitable by observant opponents.

Omaha is a fantastic game and has developed a loyal following online. These tips should keep you from losing too many easy chips while you learn to beat the game.

Advanced PLO Strategy

Once you have learned the basics of starting hand selection, drawing to the nuts and pot-limit betting – you are ready to add some advanced strategies to your PLO armory. This article covers a range of tactics that will help you increase your win-rate in lower buy-in Omaha hi games online.

First you’ll find out how to spot situations where a combination of your current equity and ‘backdoor outs’ make it profitable to call when you are not favorite to win the hand. Next some notes on reading your opponent’s hands. After this I have covered how to distinguish hands which do better heads up from hands which perform well multi-way. Finally some notes on good bankroll management, which is a key skill in the high-variance game of pot-limit Omaha.

Equity, Backdoor Outs and Kill Cards

In Pot-Limit Omaha there are many situations where the pot has gotten so large that you have an easy call with a hand which is likely behind. This is not just for the mega-draws like wrap + flush draw hands, it can be for a simple flush with the pot offering you compelling odds.

What many new players miss is that there is often extra equity from backdoor draws. For example with a flush draw + top-pair hand, you will have chances of trips or even a runner-runner full-house, you may also have straight possibilities. These extras can often add the few percentage points to your equity, which make a fold into a call.

Conversely, there are often cards in the deck which are not clean outs. For example in a classic flush draw against set all-in on the flop, the set has outs to make a full house (7 on the turn and 10 on the river) which effectively kill your flush. Being outdrawn by a flush when you hold the nut straight has the additional risk of higher straight cards appearing as well as the board pairing.

You’ll need to spend some time with an Omaha poker calculator to get used to these kind of match-ups.

Plo Game Rules

Hand Reading in PLO

In my article on Basic PLO Strategy Tips, I outlined how people who raise (or 3-bet) only with hands containing aces will find themselves in trouble in PLO games. There are several more ways you can learn to read the hands of your opponents in Omaha.

Key here is to start with the shape and strength of your opponents hands. You can often find bet sizing tells will give you a clue starting before the flop. For example, some players will only ever re-raise premium hands and will be more likely to raise pair or high card hands and instead call with their rundown hands.

After the flop some players will bet out every time they have a draw, while others will check and call with non-nut (though still strong) draws. With careful observation you can easily pick up patterns. If you are not used to this I recommend you start by focusing on how different opponent play their Aces hands – followed by double suited run-downs. Once you figure whether someone is drawing or ‘protecting’ a made hand from the bet sizing, your decision making process becomes significantly easier.

Multi-Way and Heads-Up Hands

Some Omaha hands perform better in multi-way pots, while others are at their strongest when heads-up. Examples of multi-way hands include the higher rundown hands, preferably double suited. If you hold a high pair with little in the way of coordinated backup then you will ideally find yourself heads-up and with the initiative in the betting. If you miss the flop and face resistance, then high pair hands should usually be ditched.

Poker Plo Rules

Simply deciding whether your hand would prefer to be heads-up or multi-way can help you choose a good pre-flop betting strategy. Make sure that you mix things up sometimes though – or observant opponents will know what type of hand you are holding from your betting style.

PLO Bankroll Management

PLO is a high-variance game. You can play great and find yourself missing big draws, having your big sets cracked and find your bankroll going down fast. Of course, this will be balanced by times when you run great too!

In Texas Holdem, the agreed safe bankroll level is 20x your buy-in, so you only have 5% of your bankroll in any one game. In PLO I recommend that you play a little more conservatively with your bankroll, instead opting for 3% on any single table or 30 buy-ins minimum. This will mean you can ride the variance which is natural in this game without having to worry about your entire bankroll disappearing.

Rules of the Game

Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) is the second most popular poker game in the world. Ten years ago it was somewhat difficult to find a live game going outside of Europe but now many card rooms spread PLO regularly. While it will never surpass No Limit Hold’em (NLHE) in popularity it will only increase its market share as the years move forward. Everyday people are converting to PLO as their game of choice.

It’s not hard to figure out why this is the case as PLO is an action game where all players get dealt four cards and possibilities abound. One caveat, however, is that you must use at least two of your hole cards in your final hand. In other words if you have A♥ K♦ J♠ J♣ you don’t have an ace high flush when the board shows four hearts. Also you do not have a full house if the board is K♥ K♠ 5♣ 5♦ 2♥. So if you are new to the game make sure you have these fundamentals firmly in mind before heading out to the tables as the game is enough intimidating on its own for inexperienced players.

Basic Strategy

Starting hand selection is incredibly important; mediocre starting hands tend to build mediocre holdings and the second best hand can cost you a lot of money. There is no place ticket in PLO; the second best hand always loses the most money.

The premium hands have both nut potential and have all four cards working together such as A♥ K♥ Q♠ J♣, A♥ A♦ J♠ T♠, and K♦ Q♦ J♣ T♣. These hands play very well heads-up or multi-way but obviously hands like this do not grow on trees. Hands like A♥ 9♥ 8♠ 7♣, T♥ 9♥ 8♠ 6♣, and Q♦ Q♠ T♠ 9♣ are also quite good because you tend to either hit a favorable flop and when you don’t you are usually able to get out without committing too many of your troops.

This is not a split pot game so run downs with no gaps and at least one suit down to around 8♠ 7♠ 6♥ 5♣ has a lot of value in this game. It is important, however, to not overrate any rundowns lower this this because you are beginning to run into the danger of continually running into higher straights. Being suited at least once is important because when you share a nut straight with someone else it can give you the highly desired free-roll. If someone happens to hold a higher flush draw then you suits act as blocking defense.

Pot Limit Omaha is too complicated of a game to get too in depth here but here are some quick warnings that new players should heed so they can learn the game without paying too high of a tuition:

• In a multi-way pot you always want to be drawing to the nuts. For example, drawing to a jack high flush with five players in the pot is a recipe for disaster.
• Beware of medium and low pairs and the sets that they make. You will run into higher sets more often than you think and they are big time money losers. Starting hands with them should most often be folded, although there are exceptions such as A♥ A♦ 2♣ 2♠ and T♥ 9♥ 8♠ 8♣. If you happen to flop a set of deuces or eights with either of these hands you must be aware that you could be in peril. Certainly you do not have to automatically fold but recognize that your hand is not as strong as it is in NLHE.
• Straight draws even with those with many outs (i.e. wraps) are severely devalued when there are two suits on board. You can call a bet, but if you if raise that can allow a player with a set, two pair and a flush draw, or a flush draw that shares some of your straight outs to reopen the betting and your holding fares very badly against such hands.
• Do not overvalue dry aces (e.g A♥ A♠ 7♦ 3♣) and put too much money into the pot pre-flop especially when stacks are deep. If you give away the fact that you have aces you allow your opponents to more or less play perfectly against you. Of course if you have premium aces you should escalate the pot for value but make sure other hands without aces are in your range.
• Many new players are enamored with the “Bare Ace Bluff”. This is the play where you only have one ace of a suit when there are three more on board and play too aggressively every time in the hopes of getting everyone to fold because they can’t have the nuts. This play should be made on occasion but overdoing can be very costly as many players are on guard for such a play and hate to be bluffed out.
• Many beginning resources go out of their way to tell you that hands with big pairs and nothing much else such as K♥ K♠ 5♦ 4♣ are unplayable because your hand is not working together. While it is true that this holding is far from a premium holding you should definitely try and see a flop unless the pot is raised and re-raised and it costs too much as a relative portion of your stack to consider calling. Top set is a premium hand with which you typically have both the best hand and the best draw which is the best situation in poker. In raised pots you can sometimes stack an opponent who commits too much money with a lesser hand and can’t give it up.

Further Learning

Pot Limit Poker: The Big Play Strategy by Jeff Hwang, (Rating 10/10) – This book is an excellent resource on learning how to best approach live full ring PLO games. In addition, it also has excellent beginning material on Pot Limit and Limit Omaha Eight or Better.
Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha Volume I, Volume II, and Volume III by Jeff Hwang, (Rating 7/10) – These books are also highly valuable because they have some nuggets of very good information and have an immense amount of examples yet they appear to have a few shortcomings. In many examples Jeff advocates calling re-raises too much with dominated hands especially out of position. In other situations he is also putting in too much money with very marginal hands in an attempt to isolate or is calling too wide pre-flop in an attempt to play “small ball”. Often you will end up in a three way pot with a very marginal hand and while position does help it’s often the case you are up against two better hands.
Mastering Pot-Limit Omaha: The Modern Aggressive Approach by Herbert Okolowitz and Wladmir Taschner (Rating 8/10) – If online PLO is your game then this resource is for you. Great information and advice for those that play the more aggressive and advanced online games that tend to feature six-handed play.