Guide to Pot Limit Omaha poker (part 2 of 5): Pre-flop considerations

As I mentioned in part 1 of this series; PLO starting hands tend to run very close in value. Because of this it’s unwise to commit a good chunk of your stack with anything but an AAxx hand, since things can change drastically when the flop hits.

Most of your strong hands you will want to raise, but you don’t want to put more than 10% of your stack into the pot pre-flop. The exception to this is when you have the aforementioned AAxx, or a really strong KK/QQ hand (such as double suited or with two Broadway cards). These hands you want to either commit less than 10% of your chips, or if it’s possible you want to commit over 50% of your stack in the pot.

Why less than 10%?

By committing less than 10% of your chips to the pot you are giving yourself an out if the flop is unkind to you. For example, suppose you are in a $100 buy-in PLO game, and you hold AsKsJdQc (a fairly strong hand). If you find yourself seeing a flop of -AJQ with 2 suited cards you don’t have– for $7 you can let the hand go for a $7 loss if there is a raising war between players.

On the other hand if the pot is opened to $7 with two callers, and you re-pop it to $38; you would almost have to call with your 3-pair and gut-shot to split the pot. The pot would be offering you almost $200 for your $68 call.

In PLO committing 20%-40% of your stack pre-flop is a bad idea.

Why more than 50%?

When you have a strong heads-up hand AAxx, and certain KK/QQ hands, you want the pot heads-up (which is why you raise-it-up) and you want to have enough for a ½ pot flop bet which will fold out a lot of hands your lone opponent may hold. You are going to bet every flop in this scenario, because you basically pot-committed yourself pre-flop, and with AA or KK you have some type of high no matter what the flop is.