OOP in Pot-Limit Omaha: Mathematics and Tactics

These shoves only require us to fold 54% of our range in order to show a profit. Alternatively, if we call our opponent’s flop raise and he shoves the turn he risks 67BB to win 60.5BB with 19% equity with the naked flush draw. He would rquire us to fold only 1/3 of our turn range to show a profit by the turn.

Putting all this together we must stack off at least 22% of our flop C-betting range against an aggressive opponent.

With these numbers in mind let us look at the high-equity portion of our range on this flop:

Our Range (High-equity)

6.5% Nut Straight
2.5% Sucker Straight
4.5% Set
1% Top two + Flush Draw
1% Top two + OESD
2% Naked Top Two
11.5% Overpair + Flush Draw (5% NFD, 4% 2NFD)
1% OESD + Flush Draw
2% Wrap No Flush Draw
2% Top Pair + Flush Draw
1.5% Second Pair + Flush Draw
1% Third Pair + Flush Draw
3.5% Naked Flush Draw
TOTAL 38%

These hands are all fine candidates for C-betting if we plan on bet/calling the flop against an aggressive opponent. Clearly if our opponent is tighter and only raising 15-20% of the time here we can bet/fold the weaker parts of this range.

This permits us another 30% or so low-equity “bluffs”. Before we detail my proposed range we shall identify how to select good candidates for running a bluff here. The turn can bring 18 “Pure Bricks” {A,2,3,4,5,6} and 31 “Nut-changing cards” {Flushing (10), {KQJ} (9), {T97} (9), 8 (3)}. Holding bricks in our hand makes it a poorer candidate for certain types of multi-street bluff since we will be able to represent a made nut hand on fewer turn-river combinations. K♣Q♥T♣8♥ is perfect for bluffing since we block many board-changing cards as well s holding a nut-shot and a back-door flush draw. On a pure brick turn we have 17/44 river cards which don’t change the nuts (and thus can be triple-barreled) and 3 of the remaining 27 hit our nutshot². A♦A♠ is much stronger than A♥A♠ since we can represent the nut flush on flushing turns. A hand such as A♦K♣J♠7♣ is perfect for C-betting since we have the back-door flush draw, a nutshot and the nut flush draw blocker available for later bluffs. With these in mind, let’s examine a possible bluffing range:

Our Range (Low-equity)

8% Top Pair/Over pair + OESD No FD
3% 2nd/3rd pair + OESD No FD
8% Nut Flush Draw Blocker
7.5% Second Nut Flush Draw Blocker
4% Nutshot + Back door NFD/2NFD*
TOTAL 30.5%

*such as AcKsKhQc

Adjusting to our opponents

1. Tight players often flat all of their KK and many weaker AA pre, especially against a UTG raise. We can C-bet them with a high frequency since they won’t turn these hands into bluffs and they comprise  3.5% of starting hands.Tighter players also won’t raise all of their nut straights here, so we should consider our equity against hands with redraws when we have a stack-off decision.
2. Opponents who flat their Nut flush draws should have a lower raising frequency (otherwise it is full of trash). Against these opponents, the K-flush blocker play will be much worse depending on how many marginal made hands they also float with. Against aggressive players who will shove almost all of their nut flush draws the K-high blocker play becomes extremely powerful since they now have at best the third nut flush when the flush card appears.
3. When we have the Nut flush draw blocker we are less likely to get shoved on, and our opponent shoving range will be weighted more towards made hands.
4. If our opponent 3-bets rundowns often his range is somewhat weakened. This weights his raising range towards draws or hands which weaker OP+FD may have solid equity against.
5. The less people slow-play their nut straight two streets the more profitable triple-barreling will be. If a player is only willing to call down three streets with the nuts but will shove the made nuts before the river with some frequency he is a mandatory triple-barrel target.

Closing Thoughts

The above strategy provides a sound framework from which to continue OOP as the pre-flop raiser. One area I haven’t discussed at all is integrating a check-calling range. Since this would involve balancing two ranges in one spot I will have to save that discussion for a future article. If you have any questions about this article or playing OOP in general please comment below. Feel free to suggest topics for future articles also. To receive fresh updates on Pot Limit Omaha strategy please subscribe in the sidebar.