How not to suck at Omaha, Step Two

An aggressive regular opens from UTG and the action folds to us in the small blind. We look down at KQJ7ss and the cogs start turning… “The big blind is a nit, so he’ll probably fold 80% of the time here and never squeeze light. There are so many good hands I can flop: top two, pair plus flush draw, even a wrap on T9x. Oh, and this guy will C-bet flops I hit and I’m getting a discount… I call.” If this thought process seems familiar then this post, good sir, is for you.

We’ll examine the facts of the process above before I propose an alternate approach. We actually flop top two pair or better 14% of the time. Unfortunately for us, a 15% range has 40%+ equity against top two as much as 25% on a trichrome and 40% on a duochrome board. The most common “strong hand” for us does not guarantee the pot. Our “{Pair+Flush Draw} hands fare even worse, with {44%, 11%} of our opponent’s hands having over {40%, 60%} equity against us respectively

¹. The final error in this process is a lack of clarity in understanding how pot odds function pre-flop in the small blind. What is this discount we claim to be receiving? The pre-flop action of the big blind is conditional upon our action and when he calls we shall be in a terrible position post-flop. In my database² fully 40% of the time that a player calls a {UTG or MP} open from the small blind, the big blind completes the action. In this situation, few tight players are quite as ‘nitty’ as one likes to think. Yet so many hands in PLO are tempting calls on the basis of reasoning similar to that detailed in the opening paragraph. Should we just fold all of them, can we 3-bet them? How do we decide what is good enough to call anyway?

One of the first players to produce solid PLO coaching material was Brian Hastings. A particular comment from one of his videos that stuck with me (any fault in interpretation is of course my own) was that one should “3-bet or fold our range from the small blind against a late position raise”. Those of you who have applied that insight will no doubt have benefited, but not only for the reason(s) you think. A common justification would be that 3-betting our range makes us more aggressive, gives us the initiative post-flop and forces the big blind out of the pot. This line of reasoning is valid, and is a simple way of improving the profitability of a certain group of hands for many players (especially those who struggle post-flop at high SPRs). However, being forced to choose between 3-betting and folding means that a lot of mediocre hands end up in the muck pre-flop, rather than sucking further money from our stack post-flop. Your improved win-rate in the small blind comes as much from the hands you don’t play as from increasing the profitability of those which you do.

For this reason I believe that most regulars play the small blind better against a wide range than against a tight range. Once the opener’s range gets tighter, there are far more hands that we perceive as ‘not good enough to 3-bet but surely too good to fold’. As a consequence, it is all too common to create a small blind calling range of pretty hands that consistently leaks money. In most circumstances I encourage everyone to play 3-bet or fold from the small blind irrespective of the width of the opening range. At this juncture I must make a remark on Game Theory: I am close to certain that such a strategy is not optimal theoretically³. There are two arguments to recommend {3bet/fold} as a default strategy in the present games:

1) Omaha players at the moment are too blinded by ‘absolute position and close all-in equity’-thinking to make correct folds pre-flop in position⁴. Accordingly, our 3-bets are more profitable than they ‘should be’.

2) If you do create a calling range in the small blind you have to work hard on not having it be too well-defined. If your range at the moment is {Bad AA, mediocre KK, 4 broadway cards that don’t want to get 4-bet} then you aren’t hard to play against.

Bad Aces are frequently completed in the small blind, on the basis that “they are face up” if a player 3-bets them. This fear is ill-founded against a tight range, and arises from confusing difficulty playing our hand with difficulty playing our range. even AA72ss will have {overpair plus flush draw or a set} 40% of the time by the turn. Accordingly, our only concern with weaker Aces is against a player who doesn’t let us see a turn often by attacking the flop with a high frequency. So long as we construct the remainder of our 3-bet range with highly coordinated hands (many of which are double-suited), the relatively few weak AA hands won’t be a significant enough portion of our range to create a structural weakness in our strategy. Since we are 3-betting our entire continuing range, and don’t plan on playing even 10% of hands pre-flop, constructing this good a range is not a problem.

Fold them. Sure you can 3-bet the good ones, what do you think your opponent is going to do with his Aces? Now take a peek at how well you do against AA when you call pre-flop with KK and get to showdown. Is having to fold pre-flop after 3-betting really costing you that much more? If your plan was to set-mine then I hope your opponents fall into the one category where we make an exception…

Let’s all be honest here, some fish are meant to be eaten⁵. If you are fortunate enough to have a player sat in the big blind seat who is itching for any excuse to play a hand and won’t let any piece go post-flop then you should alter your strategy considerably. This means adding a wide calling range, comprised of hands which play well against the fish’s range and don’t worry about domination by the regular. In fact, in this situation we can remove some of the weaker AA from our 3-betting range since having the fish cold-flat and force us into a 3-way pot with a face-up naked pair is undesirable. Relax your calling criteria to any hand that can make {strong top two or better/nut combo draw}  >20% of the time on the flop.

Examples (All A-hands are suited to the Ace): {AT97ss, JT98r, AJT3ss , KK74ss, QQJ8ss}.

This change in pre-flop strategy obligates you to donk-pot the flop whenever you hit. Your range will of course be transparent to the regular, which can create an interesting dynamic when the fish folds and the PFR continues. I would caution against check-raise bluffing the flop against the regular on static textures in this situation; he knows you should be leading and that you don’t want to force the fish out of the pot with a made hand. If you want to balance your range here (especially if the fish can find folds against leads on monochrome and paired textures) just delay your check-raise bluff to the turn. This makes your line much more credible (and should be done with some show-down value against the fish’s continuing range).

This leak is one that takes some discipline and time to fix. I would encourage any reader losing a lot from the small blind to simply start with a 3-bet/fold approach for a few weeks before adding a calling range. There is a real temptation to label everyone in the big blind ‘plankton’ as an excuse to play more hands. I would like to extend a warm welcome to my new readers; if you are relatively new to PLO please comment below even if it is just to say “Hi!” I have a lot of professional players among my readers and am keen to gauge how much of an audience there is for intermediate material. Preparing my seminars (and visiting Amsterdam) has taken up much of my time this month and so regular readers can expect a new subscriber post in June.

Good luck at the tables,
Quad