I just picked this book up tonight. In case people missed the wording on the back cover, the book actually covers more than pot-limit omaha. Of the 317 actual pages of text, 177 cover pot-limit omaha, 98 covers limit omaha hi-lo split, and 26 pages covers pot-limit omaha hi/lo split. The remaining pages are filled by a glossary and an index.

you guys dont understand how few read books

I have to agree with scorer... even if you have the books to read, it takes a real big concerted effort to study the book (reread at least 3 times) to gain a good understanding to apply the concepts.

I've seen many players in live games talk about pot odds and correct play but time and time again, I see them make major errors in over valuing their hands and losing their stack with top pair.

Wow, it's been a while. I came back just to see what others think of this book. I'm delighted it's being discussed.

Saw it Wed. night in local B&N; by Thurs. night had decided to buy it. I'm through about Ch. 3 and it looks EXCELLENT. Premise, which makes total sense from my NLHE experience, is that whereas OH hands run close in value, they don't run close in postflop stacking potential. (Think 33 vs. A5 if you need a HE analogy, with the caveat that 33xx is NOT a PLOH hand you want to play.) Therefore, let's learn what hands turn into big postflop hands with which we can stack our opponents -- mostly via freerolling, which I'm learning is the secret to deep-stack PLOH.

AFAICT it's only a deep stack book. I haven't read Slotboom's book but I really would like to have a PLO short-stack strategy which I'm told Slotboom gives. Nevertheless, after just a couple of chapters I'm closer to thinking about deep-stack PLO like a good player would.

The inclusion of a chapter on limit O8 is extremely odd. There are whole books on that game, and it has little to do with the PLOH version. However, the chapter on PLO8, which I haven't read, may be the best thing (only thing?) in print on that game. I would imagine PLO8 is also about developing huge freerolls and getting A2xx to pay to draw at a quater of the pot. It's mostly an online game, but not an uncommon one.

So far, this book looks like gold. I'll attempt a review when I'm done.

(Brief theoretical statement: I tend toward the poster saying that good books help the game, by bringing in fish. The ratio of people who properly apply a good poker book to those who only THINK they can apply it is usually much less than 1:1.)

QFT. The more I read, the more I feel like I'm learning three-card monte. Except that the cops won't shut me down.

The presence of the three different types of Omaha makes the book slightly schizophrenic it would seem to me. I would have done one of three things. I would have cut out the games other than PLO hi and left the page count whatever that would have made it; I would have cut out the other chapters and upped the page count of the PLO hi section; or, I would have eliminated the limit Omaha hi/lo split section and fleshed out the PLO hi/lo split section. Given this last section is only twenty-six pages or so, logic dictates that the author can only have barely scratched the surface.

Doc,

I agree. This seems to afflict Omaha books worse than most. Cappelletti's LO8 book, really just a pastiche of articles, includes an oddball chapter on OH. I guess his rationale is that you need to know how to play high-only hands, but really it's just filler.

But it sounds like we agree that the PLO8 is more useful than the limit O8. The LO8 part is treated in more depth in other books. The PLO8 probably isn't, although I agree it would be better to be its own book.

In any event, the PLOH material appears excellent, in spite of the lower-than-we-wish page count.

I wonder about the order of the sections, in addition. Does PLO hi, limit Omaha hi/lo split, and PLO hi/lo split seem to be the correct order? If a lot of what you need to know about the ground rules for PLO hi/lo split can be found in the PLO hi section, wouldn't it make sense to put those back to back instead of separating them? Or do you need to know something about limit Omaha hi/lo split first before tackling PLO hi/lo split?

One of the things I liked about this book is Hwang's reference to the importance of people thinking of PLO8 being more of a split-pot version of PLO, rather than a pot-limit version of O8. A slight distinction, but important nonetheless (and, of course, one that I hadn't made until I read it).

The O8 chapters are a little like the 6-max chapter in 'Kill Everyone', sort of a bonus that doesn't necessarily fit with the rest of book, given the title 'Pot Limit Omaha'. Before anyone jumps on that statement, I'm not making judgement as to the relative value of the additional chapters, just the structure of the book.

This sounds like a really good book. I am assuming this is great for those of us who are very HE players that struggle at Omaha.

Hey guys --

Just a couple of comments...

On the inclusion of limit Omaha Hi/Lo and PLO Hi/Lo...
Originally, I was contracted to do an approximately 150 page or so book on PLO Hi. I think about half-way through I decided I was ready to include both limit and pot-limit Hi/Lo, and really what it comes down to is that I wanted to put out the most complete product possible.

Technically speaking, the PLO Hi/Lo section is more than just 36 pages, unless you consider it to be an entirely separate game from PLO Hi or limit Hi/Lo. Personally, I prefer to think of PLO Hi/Lo as a game requiring all of the skills learned in PLO Hi, as well as an understanding of the split-pot dynamics of limit Omaha Hi/Lo. That said, while the 36 pages in the PLO Hi/Lo section probably stand up on their own without reading the rest of the book, I tend to think of everything that came before the final chapter to be part of a greater PLO Hi/Lo book, rather than being 100 or so pages on limit and 36 pages on PLO Hi/Lo, plus a separate PLO Hi book.

In other words, I think you do have to get the limit Hi/Lo game in order to play the PLO Hi/Lo as proficiently as possible. Some might disagree.


On fishies and stuff...
One of things that I really wanted to accomplish with this book was to help reach a critical mass where small stakes PLO games are widespread in the way that $1/$2 and $2/$5 NL games are spread today. I believe the demand for small-stakes PLO games is not limited to the number players who play it today, but rather how many people would play the game if they knew how. And though it is necessary that some of these games may get a bit tougher, I think it would also benefit good players to be able to walk into any cardroom in America (or abroad for that matter) and get a game at stakes he is comfortable with.

Now having said that, even if what I have written actually works and 100% of people who read it are convinced that that is true, few gamblers are disciplined enough not stray from proper playing strategy at times.

For example, let's say the game is $10/$20 limit Omaha Hi/Lo and you are dealt A-4-8-K double-suited on the button (a hand that would cause a great number of mistakes for most players), and three players limp in front of you. Let's also say I told you that a great player would have a positive expectation of $2 to play the hand, a good player would break even, an average player would lose $4, and a bad player would expect to lose $20 every time he plays the hand. Here's the thing: Even if 100% of limit Omaha Hi/Lo players in the world believed that to be true, 99% would play the hand anyway, because 75% think they are good at the game (most of them are wrong), and the other 24% can't help it.

I suspect that at least in the near-mid term -- that is, until we have small-stakes games populated entirely by sharks -- that these small-stakes games will be disproportionately juicy, much the same way that NL games were in the early going.

The first step is making these games a reality, which requires have a few solid players serving as anchors.

-- Jeff

A 156 page book that covers multiple Omaha games?

Sorry, I can't see this being a great book. PLO alone must require more than 150 pages.

Jeff said the PLO section was to be 150 pages. Then, the O8 and PLO8 sections were ADDED. It's 250 - 300 pages. They're densely packed pages.

As I posted elsewhere, the PLO section is 177 pages (actually 158 are strategies and hand quizzes with the remainder being miscellaneous topics including bankroll).

As way of comparison, Slotbottom's book is 240 pages (with 19 of those being a glossary and further reading/website suggestions). Reuben's book is 192 pages. I know how the details on Slotbottom's book because I have it, but I don't have Reuben's book so I don't know the details there.

In the final analysis, your complaint that this is a 156 page book covering multiple Omaha games is wrong. It does cover multiple Omaha games, but it is many, many more pages than 156.

To the author, if this book undergoes a 2nd printing or a revision, I would suggest a title more indicative of what the book covers.

Moreover, even if you just view it as a 150-page PLOH book, it's still a great value. It cost me about $15 in a local B&M store, whereas most of the 2+2 books are $30. I consider the 2+2s generally well worth their price, but you'd need a dense 300-page $30 book to have the same price-per-unit-of-content as Jeff's book, even if the LO8 and PLO8 are useless to you.

The book is slightly unfocused -- in addition to the O8 stuff, the investing quotes are interesting and poker-relevant but probably a bit off-topic. Also, the only bankroll stuff that interests me is comparisons between various forms of Omaha and HE. But the good content is really really good, and I'm very pleased I bought it.