I've only just started reading strategy posts and replying to a few on this forum and immediately I get the impression that a lot of players and then the posters who reply are in favour of turning hands into bluffs on the turn or on the river.

I play PLO mainly live where more players play TAG although I have played PLO on line and recognise that 6 max is quite an aggro game and repping is therefore a bigger part of it.

Even so, I am finding a lot of posts on here where players should perhaps not have even got to the turn or the river because their hand was so weak but then having got to these streets they decide to turn their hand into a high risk bluff.

Of course certain hands and hand situations warrant turning your hand into a bluff and by doing so it also balances your behavioural range so that you can get paid off more when you have the nuts but I do wonder if the 2plus2 forum has an unhealthy obsession with bluffing in PLO.

My view is that bluffing in PLO should be used quite thoughtfully and selectively and not be a major part of one's game.

i like to turn my hand into a bluff anytime i think they are going to fold. what's your strategy?

By TAG do you mean players who will see a flop with any 4 for any price and then bet pot if they flop the nuts or a set?

Your statement is logical but players who are still in the pot on the turn or on the river are difficult to get to fold and will often make a puke call.

It is not so much the turning of a hand into a bluff that concerns me, it is when a player has got involved and put a lot of chips into a pot in the earlier stages and then as an act of desperation on the turn or the river decides that they can rescue the situation with a bluff.

I think that bluffs get looked up a lot in PLO and so need to be very well thought out and executed to be profitable.

i have a strong red line, so it works for me.

Hands were you want the stacks in mostly play themselves so there is no point in discussing. All you habe to do is potting or close to it, as most villians are to dumb to bet themselves.

So the hands we discuss here are marginal spots, wether to make a (semi)bluff or to make a call(down), sometimes its about making a huge fold.

Not sure how else I plan to win a 100bb pot when my aggro-played WSD+FD blanked off and I'm sitting IP with bottom pair.

You need to factor in other situations as well. Such as flopping a set, gettting turned by a straight, then repping a river'd flush when you don't pair up to try and win the hand NSD, as you are likely beat there if its check/check.

Bottom line is if you are not bluffing, your red line will be horrible, which will reduce your profits. You can't constantly be making hands on every table. This of course doesn't apply if you nut-peddle and play hyper-tag waiting for the nuts.

No, I mean players who play decent starting hands (preferably in position) and then bet them hard when they hit.

People are very scared of the nuts in PLO for a good reason.

I agree with all of the above but I am comparing having a sensible plan A in a hand and when it falls down changing to a sensible plan B, with a hand that is played awfully with no sensible plan and then turned into a desperation bluff near the end.

no sensible plan needed. assume we are HU. on most flops i bet against a passive player if i dont want to c/c. why is that? to fold out anything that missed which is a ton at smallstakes. if i get called i look at the turn and think: did this turn help his range? if the answer is no i will bet again regardless of what i have unless the baord is to drawy. Same gos for the river.

easy game.

Everyone agrees, bluffs should be credible and hands shouldn't be played awfully. End of discussion?

I think this post is ideal in describing the differences between live and online PLO. As OP said, online plays so much more aggressively that players can afford to see flops with less than premium holdings in position and get it in a lot lighter than most live players are do

in live plo i believe you are forced to one table and get 15-20 hands/hour.. so you need to pick off every bluff you can when you get impatient, online is very different, even the worst fishes realize they can play a tighter style by distracting themselves with multiple tables.

i guess live players have a huge edge. i would get so impatient watching those morons limping and checking and taking forever for every simple decision.

wtf? go to pocketfives if u wanna nitbox

obsession in winning obv
not bluffing

Live plo is so lol soft there is no need to bluff. You are going to get raped at 6max if you employ your live strategy online.

I think there is a difference between live and on line PLO cash but that it is not quite as wide as some my think. I still think there is too much bluffing done on line, so much so, that I when I occasionally play PLO cash on line I often check the nuts on the river and massive hands on the turn because I know that I am going to be bluffed at.

There are always going to be optimal strategies and also fashionable strategies that "the elite" players favour.

However, sometimes a fashionable strategy can be taken too far and it becomes exploitable in the opposite direction.

To give an analogy, I remember when horse race betting exploded on the betting exchange Betfair a few years back. People almost couldn't believe that they could lay an individual horse which is effectively betting on a horse to lose.

On the chat forum there were lists and lists of horses that punters were tipping to lose and reason after reason as to why the odds were too short and should be bet against.

What happened was that many horse's odds got higher and higher until eventually the odds were so high that the horses had become good odds value to bet on rather than to bet against.

I think in on line poker a similar thing may apply if the concensus answers on this thread and other strategy question threads accurately reflect how on line PLO cash is played.

I play mainly live and do okay out of it, much of my PLO is 5 and 6 card PLO, PLO8 and Triple Flop PLO, but I may at some point play some on line PLO and have an attempt to find a counter strategy that can exploit players who float, rep and bluff that little bit too much.

This isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff; all the players itt will use this move as part of a balanced strategy. My advice would be to sit down and start and grind some hands out so you can back up your theories with some hard figures.

bluff when you know you are beat

also bluff when you know you are tied

bluff the right people

fyp

what you are saying is the same as all the live pros. I will quote mike matusow here:

"Only one in a thousand internet stars make it in the live poker world. They don’t understand poker. They are adjusting now, but how many are really making it in the poker world? They don’t understand deep-stacked poker. They are so easy to trap. It used to be a trapping game years ago, then it became an aggressive game and then it became an ultra-aggressive game. It’s gone full circle. It’s a trapping game again."

Unfortunatly this is wrong. It can be mathematically proven that not having the betting lead, that means being the caller, is such a huge handicap you generally cant overcome, even if your range is slightly stronger than the bettor. So while trapping once in a while might be good, it cant be your basic strategy because any competent player will stomp on you if you try to play like this against him.

Say you flop the top full and decide to slowplay it. What hands do you think will pay off a huge river c/r? I even doubt you will be facing 3 barrels most of the time. With lesser hands you might even get outdrawn.

I played alot against people trying to beat me with the call button and most of the time they lose ^^.

that doesnt sound like a live game.