A Look at Heads Up PLO, From NLHE Eyes

Pot Limit Omaha is a completely different animal from No Limit Hold’em (to state the obvious.) Just like nlhe it’s an incredibly complex game that will take years to master. Even though it deals with a lot of the same concepts.  

Over the past couple months I’ve been studying the game more and more. I wanted to start at heads up so I could get used to playing a lot of hands and seeing many different situations.  If you’re like me and come from a background of nlhe then I’m sure you’ll run into the same problems I’ve been encountering lately.

The first thing I notice is that you can’t value bet as light as you can in nlhe. Obviously you have to judge your relative hand strength vs board texture and opponents range in each given situation and determine if it’s a value bet. I’m talking in generalities. In plo two-pair doesn’t have the same strength as nlhe and isn’t frequently value bet on the river.

A lot of the time it’s hard to value bet anything less than a flush on boards where a flush is possible. That’s simply inconceivable in nlhe where you can get 3 streets of value from a single pair.

Having backdoor draws is significantly more important than it is in nlhe. You’re hand is much more playable on future streets if you have back door draws. An instance of how this affects game time decisions is that I’ll bet/fold AdKd4s5s on a Ac9c8h board because all of my turn options will be bad (and unprofitable) if I’m faced with a bet. Whereas if the flop changes to As6dJh I’ll be bet/calling.

Playing naked over-pairs oop in 3bet pots is hard. In hu nlhe you can just bet/call over-pairs in 3bet pots most of the time, in hu plo it’s a bet/fold most of the time. If you 3bet KsKhAsQh and the flop comes out 5c6c7d it’s a tough spot to play profitably. Most of the time the best option is to cbet/fold and evaluate the turn.

Another important consideration is that pocket aces in Omaha vary greatly in strength. A hand like AA59r is a lot worse than AhAsKhQs. That means when I’m playing deep I won’t 3bet the first but will always 3bet the second.

Bluffing in plo is different than nlhe. It’s hard to put into words but I’ll do the best I can. Peoples ranges for bet/calling should be tighter than nlhe in a lot of areas. When you get pot-raised on the river, its a really hard call with anything less than the nuts. You have to get a solid read on your opponents frequency’s and playing style to make light calls.

I haven’t quite figured out how to best exploit this yet. The obvious adjustment would be to bluff more but it’s more complicated than that. You need to figure out what hands on what boards in what situations to make a bluff profitable. If you’re trying to bluff all the time in this game you’ll just punt money yet there are definitely profitable bluff spots, and plenty of them. You have bluff at a reasonable frequency (not too much, not too little) that’ll fit into your overall style of play.

I’ll continue to do more plo blogs on specific concepts as I get better at this crazy game. Until then, good luck at the tables.

Ryan McDonald is a professional poker player from Edina, MN who multi-tables $2/4 and $3/6 no-limit online. He also plays heads-up cash games and Pot-Limit Omaha. For poker coaching inquiries, email Ryan at mcdonaldcoaching@gmail.com