PLO Beginner Advice
Posted by jcoffmanky
Posted by
jcoffmanky
posted in
Low Stakes
PLO Beginner Advice
Hey everyone,
I'm a new PLO player looking to learn the game and grind the most micro cash stakes. Primarily a NLH MTT player and thought this would be a fun way to learn a new game and make a buy in or two here and there potentially. I've got the FTGU course and look forward to running through that.
I'm curious to hear anyone's best advice for preflop. Whether it be your raising/limping strategy or hand selection, I just feel that I'm some solid advice away from making a big leap from complete novice to bad amateur. As far as hand selection goes now, I definitely trend toward double suited semi-connectors, rundowns, big pairs with playable side stuff, etc. One simple thing I feel I'm missing is what hands are actually the best preflop equity wise? I suppose it's hard to beat a hand with AA in PREFLOP equity but obviously that's very vulnerable.
Anyway, just curious to hear what people think of The Great Game here. Excited to learn more about.
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If you are starting out at PLO micro stakes I think you should start off playing tighter preflop, from all positions. Because you are more than likely going to multiway so often.
I tend to play tighter than GTO from EP and MP, but from the BTN and CO I try to stay close to GTO.
It looks like have a decent understanding on hand selection, but I would watch the low rundowns. Stay away from rundowns with low wheel cards like 2345 single suited. Try to stick with the higher ones 7654 single suited, single suited one gap 7653. I would open the one gap rundowns mostly from the BTN and the perfect rundowns from the CO.
Several things in hand selection to remember is higher the cards the gappier the hand can be AKQT, AKQ9. Even some hand with two broadway cards AK with two connected side cards AKT9, AKT8 etc.
Also having an Ace high or high suit is plus, especially with doubles suited hands, both high cards should be suited, like AhKdQhTh.
I would stick with a 3 bet or fold from the SB.
Equity wise in PLO run pretty close. It's not like NLHE where Aces are a big favorite even against Kings it all depends on the connectivity and suitedness.
You can use Pro Poker Tools to run some sims to get a feel on hand equities.
Definitely going multiway often from what I can tell. Love the details on low rundowns as well. This is all sick, I can't wait to use this stuff next time I fire up a session. May try to post some beginner hands to get some thoughts where I'm unsure
Most important thing is Range-awareness and how to maneuvr against it / what hands to put in what ranges. Usually tight is right when it comes to avoid losing money. That goes not only for preflop but for any situation ingame. Be aware of opponents defending frequencies and what they consider value. How often they bluff and on which street. Don´t pay off the nit but relentlessly steal the blinds. Don´t chase against the odds versus unknown ranges. Against aggressives don´t "counter-play" by getting overly loose/aggressive yourself. Keep the P´s in mind: Playability, Position, Pot-ratio and Player-types.
Love those four P's to keep in mind. Appreciate it!
Galfond recently put up a short that I think is the best advice for a player with a NLH background:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/672IZZv8MPk
My advice for anyone new that is serious about getting good:
Pre flop: bite the bullet and get vision/MM trainer for a month and just put in the work. Focus on the most common spots first (ex: BB vs BTN RFI). Its boring, time consuming but also the foundation of any solid strategy. Take notes and review them.
Time Management: a surprising amount of people will start an online course and never finish them once the initial dopamine hit of their purchase dissipates. If you don't already schedule out your day, consider at least scheduling your study/play time with a specific topic in mind.
For example:
Week One
Mastering PF in trainer TIME: 90 mins daily.
Watch and comprehend FTGU opening range videos (take notes).
Play and review (insert target hands).
Keep posting and asking questions.
Enjoy the grind!
You bought a high level product, all you need to do is put in the work!
Incase you are interested, here is my newb to HU PLO to currently playing HU 500 in less than 12 months journal:
https://www.runitonce.com/chatter/this-is-my-plo-journal-a-serious-attempt/
GL on your journey!!!!
@ElSquancho.
What is MM trainer?
Amazing points and advice here. Thanks! Looking forward to going further with it
Shinobi1989
The PLO Mastermind Trainer.
Oh okay Jnandez's site.
The best piece of advice I ever got about PLO was to avoid the "pot odds fallacy."
The more people who enter a pot, the tighter you have to play, despite the fact that you are getting better pot odds. With a garbage hand, you should not even complete the small blind when people start limping.
To beat micro/small stakes PLO you should focus on playing hands that can make the nuts. This means suited aces, big pairs, high rundowns.
Also, NLHE players transitioning have to get used to the fact that a set is not nearly as powerful in PLO, and that there are spots where you will have to fold the current nuts.
Agreed across the board here! And while it has crossed my mind, I'm sure one area I can still improve on is folding the current nuts vulnerable to being outdrawn. What a wild game!
This fallacy is especially true for oop so we do not fill up the BB (or SB in limped pots) when 2 or more players are involved because the "realizability" of equity with our marginal hands is so low. We usually should fold most of single nut components like a suited Ace hands or pairs without decent sidevalue for example, a typical mistake is calling bad KK´s to set-mine, we kina need bad opponents overplaying hands to compensate all the flop folds oop where we cannot continue.
We actually never fold the nuts in common short-handed situations postflop though, an example would be 98xx vulnerable nutstraight no suit on a JT7 2-toned flop. Against a range that has no nutstraight but hit the flop hard in multiple ways like set+fd, fd+pair+oesd, wrap+2pair+fd etc we are about a 40:60 underdog so coming over the top is not pushing any equity. We can bet-call in order to fold our non-nutted hand on a bad turn card or stick it in with improved equity on a turn blank or even check-back occasionally to balance our turn range if we have to. So there are situations where we should not overplay some of our strongest hands also to stay balanced on several texture shifts which there are a lot in PLO. This also means for example if we decide to check-call the nutstraight and there comes a turn-card brining the flush we often have to check-fold our formerly best hand without gotten any value. Pretty frustrating. But this texture shifts just requires other parts of our range (flushes, sets) to continue. Positional awareness combined with range awareness is key, in PLO defense is way more difficult, we have to compare check-calling ranges with check-raising range mix around a lot, distinguish range-interactions, texture shifts, estimate the differing value of blockers etc. whereas in NLHE we just check-call three times with hands that can do so. :-D
Balancing often gets misunderstood when transitioning. In NLHE it means laying the focus on finding the right hands to fill in the ranges up to an amount that correspond GTO-frequencies (so we do not too much bet- & check-folding) whereas in PLO it means we have to put in enough (strong/nutted) hands into frequent lines so our range is protected on several texture shifts on later streets and capable of shutting down overextensive opposing aggression. Sometimes our continuation frequencies still might be wrecked on certain textures like being oop on a low straight flop as the preflop 3-bettor with a high-rank-heavy range but there is nothing we can do about it.
The goal of finding lines at the end of the betting-tree so we can shove a polarized range also preventing opponent doing the same by finding enough hands to call in all those spots makes both theoretical approaches pretty loose-aggressive for average regulars´ taste and all those texture shifts, bad beats and set-ups where it is hard to evaluate if it is a cooler or if it was us uncarefully running into a stronger range can be quite nerve-consuming and difficult. So for beginners I highly recommend playing less tables, focusing on player-styles and take note of any showdown or unusual play and develop a gameplan that simplifies GTO-play into something we can actually apply on the tables, that will help a lot. In NLHE we can profile our opponents/leaks more quickly because ranges are more clear and deviations more straightforward. In PLO any trash hand can make the nuts and also mostly fair decent in equity but this does not mean that it was okay to play those.
Situations when you should fold the current nuts are fairly rare. What you really have to watch out for is getting free-rolled. So you have the same straight as your opponent, for example, but he has a flush draw or a set (and you have no redraw). In these cases you often just have to call a bet, rather than raising, even though you have the nuts.
However, if you play tight enough preflop, then you will most often be the one freerolling your opponent.
gl
The best preflop trainer is Omaha Pro. Only 45€ mon.
Omaha Pro has no postflop simulations
There's Upswing Pokers, PLO Matrix.
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