If you decide to take the plunge into Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO), you may, like many people, opt to start at the lowest stakes. I mean, if you’re going to make some tuition payments on your education; you might as well keep them as low as possible.

But there’s another way to reduce the cost of your education: watch the other students and don’t emulate their mistakes. So I thought it would be instructive to play a couple of PLO sessions at elementary school stakes ($.02 and $.05 blinds) to see what errors of commission (and omission) I could point out. Maybe it will save you a few bucks.

HAND #1

In which the hero manages to make a mistake on all four streets – kind of an über-hat-trick that one tries to avoid.

Preflop: In a six-max game, he open-limps in the cutoff with 7633s (a single suit). By far the safest play here is folding. This hand looks marginal and isn’t even that good. If our hero has a good read on the button and expects him to fold frequently and he believes he can outplay the blinds post-flop, then he might consider raising. But that’s a significant stretch. Whatever, his actual choice (to call) was the worst possible option.

Flop: The flop comes Kc-9d-8s rainbow, with one of his “suit” (and I use the term liberally here). The big-blind bets the full pot and he calls. In Omaha, when you have an eight-out draw, only half of which are to the nuts, you have missed the flop. Calling a bet here is just asking for trouble on later streets.

Turn: Our hero catches a miracle in the form of the 3d, giving him bottom set to go along with his marginal straight draw. Neither of these is particularly good on its own, but the combination, with position, is surely worth a raise. Furthermore, a diamond flush draw (which he doesn’t have) has developed – he should be protecting his vulnerable hand. Instead, he simply calls.

River: One hand, two miracles. The 5h hits, giving our hero the absolute nuts: a nine-high straight. Let’s just hope that he misread the board and/or his hand – he flat called the bet that the big-blind put out. This shows the importance of looking at your hand carefully when you’re playing a four-card game. It’s a rare and joyous event when somebody bets into you on the river and you’re looking at the pure nuts. Not putting a raise in there is an expensive mistake.

HAND #2

This hand is a poster child for what happens when Texas Hold’em players first play Omaha. Holding Ad-Kh-5h-9s under-the-gun, our hero calls. This hand is basically unplayable in any PLO game, unless you’re on a pure steal from the button. Limping in with it UTG is a recipe for disaster.

As if the universe wanted to teach him a lesson, the flop comes Kc-Qd-Td, giving him top-pair, top-kicker. Of course, even in hold’em, this is a scary flop for Top Pair, Top Kicker (TPTK). In Omaha, it’s a great flop in that you can get away from it immediately. Unfortunately, nobody has told our hero that. He bets out, gets raised by a set of kings, and promptly shoves his full stack in.

Ironically, it was the first raiser, with the set of kings, who probably feared the worst when our hero shoved. The set probably thought he was about to be shown AJ** for the nut Broadway straight. Normally, he would get shown that hand. In this case, he only had to fade four outs.

You must play any one pair hand, even “top-top,” with extreme discretion in PLO (i.e. fold at the first sign of trouble). When our hero shoves to a raise on that board with that hand he is basically setting fire to his money.

HAND #3

Here’s a hand where we have two heroes make the same mistake, and we don’t even know what their cards are. In a six-max game, the hijack opens for a full pot-size raise and is then three-bet by the button. Our two heroes, Thing1 and Thing2, both cold-call the three-bet.

As the hand played out, I never got to see either hand, but I claim that I don’t have to see the cards to know they made a mistake. In fact, there’s a very interesting thread in one of the poker forums about a virtually identical situation. They’re discussing a hand in which the hero is in the big blind and wakes up with KK63d, that is double-suited kings. But a tight UTG player raises and the cutoff three-bets. The discussion is basically, “Can our hero and his kings continue here, or must he fold?”

Note that they’re discussing a hand that, under better circumstances, is a premium holding. But the discussion correctly focuses on the very real fear that the original raiser is sitting on aces. Recall that you get aces 2.5% of the time in Omaha, and a moderately careful early position raiser may have aces as much as 15-20% of the time. In this case, the original raiser is UTG+1. If he does, indeed, have aces, he’s going to drop a four-bet bomb on the pot, enhanced by the cold calls that Thing1 and Thing2 have put in.

In general, I saw far too much blind defense with marginal hands during my session. Of course, this is nothing new; weak players are notorious for playing too many hands out of position. But consider the severity of this particular error:

– The pot has already been over-inflated by two raises.
– The original raiser has yet to act.
– Thing1 and Thing2 will both have to act in front of both pre-flop raisers.

There is simply little good our heroes can accrue by playing this pot. If either of them has aces, then it’s no time to be coy – put in a huge four-bet and end the suspense. Otherwise, with the possible exception of a super-premium rundown such as KQJTd, this is a great time to fold.

I hope I’ve saved you a blind or two (or a buy-in or two) with this litany of mistakes. Of course, like all poker players (your author included), you will still make your share. But to the degree that we can learn these lessons without paying dearly for them, we’re well ahead.

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Lee Joneshas been an online poker executive since 2003 and is the author of Winning Low Limit Hold’em, which is still in print over 15 years after its initial publication.