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Learn the advanced poker strategy articles for various poker games, such as Omaha Holdem, Razz, Seven Card Stud. Improve your online poker skills with the best poker strategies. Daily Poker Strategies gives you free online poker articles to become a solid poker player. Read poker strategy!

LAG Play in PLO: Playing After the Flop

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Post-flop play is essentially identical regardless of preflop playing approach; the only real difference between post-flop play using a LAG-heavy pre-flop playing approach (opening fire on the blinds, attacking limpers in position, and 3-betting in position) vs. a small ball-heavy approach (flat-calling and limping more often in position and playing a pot-control game) is that you will be playing with the preflop initiative more often when you take a more LAG-heavy approach. This, in turn, means that you will probably be checking behind more often when taking a LAG-heavy approach than a small ball-heavy approach.

Here’s the basic situation: You open with a raise before the flop from the button, and only the big blind calls. The stack to pot ratio (SPR) > 8, so this is a deep-stack scenario where there are three legitimate bets left to play.

At this point, there are two basic possibilities on the flop: Your opponent will either (a) Check, or (b) Bet.

Playing the river in short-handed PLO

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Despite all these “representing more strength than you actually have” tactics, sometimes your flop or turn bets will get called, and you reach the river with a hand that is not as strong as you had portrayed it to be. Many weak players would bet big in this spot with their bad hands or missed draws to represent a monster, and to make the opponent lay down the better hand. With their mediocre made hands like two pair, they would tend to check to induce a bluff bet from an opponent who might have a busted draw.

With a busted draw or weak hand
Assuming I have been lead-betting all the way, and the possible draws don’t seem to have gotten there, I am not that fond of the “betting big” option that many players will use. “Why is that?” you may ask. Well, it’s because in this situation, these same players will often bet much less or try to sell their hand if they really have a big hand, while betting big if they are bluffing. For that reason, I like to turn this pattern around, especially against players who expect you to bluff big if you miss yet milk a little if you really have a hand. To them, a small, even-sized bet of about one-quarter or one-third of the pot will often look like a milking bet: many good players would fold their one-pair and even two-pair holdings in that spot, not wanting to reward your obvious value bet. So, against players like this, a relatively small bet may get almost as many folds as a big bet would - with this difference, that you now lose a lot less money if your bluff attempt fails. However, you don’t want to bet too small, as your opponent may be induced to start bluff-raising you, or just get curious to see what you have now that calling is so cheap.

Check-Raising in Pot Limit Omaha

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As a general rule, giving free cards is a big no-no in PLO. As such, you should tend to bet your own hands and employ the check-raise sparingly, particularly in multi-way pots. However, in short-handed pots - and especially in heads-up pots - there are more good opportunities to check-raise as a bluff or semi-bluff, simply because it is far more likely that your opponents will bet light in a short-handed pot than a multi-way pot. That said, check-raises tend to fall into one of two basic categories:

  1. Standard (planned)
  2. Non-Standard (improvised)

Standard (Planned)

A standard (planned) check-raise is when you check with the intention of raising. Because we are not in the practice of giving free cards, this means that you must have some reason to expect someone else to bet: that reason is usually because there was a raise before the flop.

In fact, raised pots account for the vast majority of check-raising opportunities in PLO.

When It's Time to Fold in Razz.

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Let's see some examples.

Don't draw weak against power on the board.
With a hand of (8-5) 4-2-J, and your opponent showing a powerful board like A-3-4, you will almost always want to fold your hand when he bets into you. The best hand that you could make on the next card would be an eight low, whereas your opponent may already have 5-4-3-2-A, a wheel! At minimum, you have to figure that he has a better low draw than you have. Folding your hand here is a pretty good idea.
Suppose you catch two bad cards in a row on fourth and fifth streets and your opponent catches two good ones. It doesn't matter that you have already put in three bets each; just bow out.

Don't try to hit two perfect cards in a row.
Suppose that you have (A-3) 4 to start, your opponent has a six to start, and you reraise him to start the hand. Now you catch a king, and he catches a deuce. He bets into you and you call. Now he catches an eight and you catch a queen. When he bets his 6-2-8 into you, it's time to fold your (A-3) 4-K-Q. Yes, it was a pretty starting hand, but don't call a big bet on fifth street and hope to hit a perfect card and thus pick up a draw that might or might not get there on the river! That's way too many ifs. It's time to give up and fold this hand.

Trouble and Eye Candy Hands in Pot Limit Omaha

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Trouble hands.
There are a lot of beautiful hands in PLO that don't play well and often get you in trouble because they are often dominated by other hands; a NLHE equivalent would be calling ATo and KJo against a solid player's UTG open.

Trouble hands are single and double-suited small rundowns such as 4556, 5567, and 6778. Although these hands have the potential of making straights and sets, they often get overset and their combo draws are often dominated. Even if they flop the nut straight and some flush draw blockers, they are usually coin-flipping against a flush draw with higher straight draw. We also have to account for situations where they are getting freerolled.

This doesn't mean these trouble hands don't have any value; they do. They are good in single-raised pots where Villain has a wider range of hands and doesn't have a bigger flush draw or a straight draw as often. Additionally, you should play them if you open the pot from middle position, the cutoff, and the button. Unless you have a good read on your opponent and are comfortable playing postflop, it is best to fold small single-suited rundowns to a raise. You should fold them from the blinds as well when there is a raiser and no caller.

Knowing how troublesome these hands can be prevents you from overvaluing these hands when first starting out in PLO. Your equity isn't too good against the range that gets it in on a drawy flop. It's easy to get in all the money on a flop of 459 holding 6778 for a straight and flush draw but if we stop and run the equity of that hand against a hand such as 9AJT, your equity is only 39.39%. 39.39% isn't bad but in PLO, it isn't good either. Against 99xx on the same board, 6778 has 46.06% equity.

RAZZ Tips

Here are some tips about the intricate aspects of Razz:

  1. Generally the higher an opponent's up-card, the more likely he is to be "perfect" in the hole. When players come in with an Eight up against a strong Board and then catch a Seven, you can be pretty sure it didn't pair them.
  2. If there's a lot of action on the three-card starting hands and your opponent catches a Seven on the Turn, that's bad news for you. He almost certainly doesn't have a Seven in the hole.
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