Is limping a decent move in PLO25?

I notice that many of the players at PLO25 limp a lot. Coming from NL, it seems ridiculous that someone would limp 25% of their hands, but I see "winners" doing it all the time. Of course, I don't know if they're winners over the long-run, but they seem to be over the short-run.

A lot of these players seem to just destroy others post-flop... so they just see as many hands as possible.

What do you think of this as a strategy for PLO25?

A lot of the weird behaviors you see among seemingly good PLO players are because lots of people learned to play PLO in really really good games.

There used to actually be games as high as 50/100 where the bad players would stack off for 100 BB with AAxx unimproved on a flop like 568.

When you're playing in a game like this almost any hand is profitable to see the flop for a reasonable price, because implied odds are inflated way beyond what they should be.

Similarly the conventional wisdom in this forum, from what I've seen, is derived from games where your opponents are bad at reading hands and bad at exploiting bluff opportunities.

Thus people in this forum seem to advocate mindlessly c-betting all your worst hands on like a 557 flop, because "it probably didn't hit your opponent".

The problem with this is a good opponent will realize that it even more likely didn't hit *you*.

But anyway I digress.

IMO optimal PLO should look fairly close to optimal NL, except it should be significantly more passive and pot-controlly postflop, and there should be more cold-calling and more blind defense (but not waaay more).

This is all goes for 6-max btw. I think in a ring game there has to be open-limping, or maybe something lame like min-rzing, because if you have 8 people left to act behind you the chances are too high that someone has AAxx for it to be profitable to raise all the hands you want to play.

Good question, I'd appreciate more comments on it too.

Personally I open limp UTG with hands like 89TT. If I see a raise or re-raise I'm done with it. But otherwise I don't mind playing it multi-way in any position. Because Omaha seems to be a flop game limping isn't that bad. I can imagine that at higher stakes people open limp less and less. The reason I do it more often in 25PLO is because I know that the games are on average pretty passive and I'm unlikely to get raised.

However in NLHE open limping is just a sin.

i generally dont open limo at PLO25. a great way to avoid getting raised is a min raise UTG because ppl are generally really scared to reraise preflop at PLO25 so theyll just call most of the time (or show u AA)

What do you think about raising UTG ? i never do it, only limp UTG even with AAxxs or AAxxss and pray that i can reraise. utg +1 i start raising. is this very stupid ?

I always limp if I play in early position. I'll limp or min-raise in middle position, and min-raise to pot-raise in late position.

Hand values run close, position important, initiative not important, all your base are belong to us

Don't fold. Limp/call ftw!

The reason for limping might be that in holdem a good unpaired hand like AK is probaly still good on most of the flops even if unimproved. But in omaha KQJT is never good on a 578 flop. I mean the raise --> cbet any flop strategy doesnt seem to be working that well in omaha as it is in holdem.

I meant raise AND a re-raise. Otherwise limp-call as usual

how serious was this response? cant tell really.

This seems like a really bizarre comment for a winning player at fairly high stakes. Aggression is way more important postflop in PLO than NLHE and pot control is less important and it's really not close. The fact that there are always more draws available and that the hand values run closer together is the reason. In NLHE, potentially giving a free card is a much smaller mistake since usually your opponent will only have 2 to 5 outs anyway whereas in PLO, you'll often see a weak flush draw or OESD or even two pair draw that will have to fold to a raise, but will have 8 to 10 outs if called. The only time that pot control really becomes more of an issue in PLO is on paired boards are super dry boards and when that happens, I tend to specifically think of it as playing "more like hold'em".

Serious

Maybe pot-control was not the right word? If that only refers to being passive when you're pretty confident you're ahead in order to maximize your payoff that's not what I mean.

It's true you're way more vulnerable to free cards if you're ahead in PLO than you would be in NL, so if you're confident you're ahead you should just get the money in and not play tricky.


I meant being passive where you're a significant favorite to be ahead but your opponent knows you are unlikely to have the nuts, and he has a reasonable chance of having the nuts himself. This happens all the time on boards that are paired, flushed, or straighted.

In NLHE based on preflop distributions there's often 0% chance your opponent has the nuts, so your biggest fear is usually a set.

But your opponent will have a set so infrequently that you can stack off fairly often with just an overpair (I'm talking typical online stacks) without being exploitable. In fact you have to stack off fairly often with an overpair, or you will be exploitable by people who semibluff too often.

In PLO you can't c-bet nearly as much on boards where a straight/flush/boat are possible even if you are a significant favorite over your opponents entire distribution.

The reason is that even though they probably don't have the nuts, they'll have them often enough that you can't afford to stack off against them with some non-nut hand that doesn't have loads of outs.


It's kind of like playing NL but if you are cold-called there's like a 20% chance your opponent has flopped a set instead of a 5% chance. (The ~5% is due to the non-pair starting hands he can have, and that pairs like JJ-AA tend to be severely discounted in a cold-callers range.)

People in this forum who advocate constantly c-betting on a flop like 557 or 678 or any monotone flop are banking on their opponents not bluff-raising enough to own them. If your opponents are tough and realize you constantly c-bet, they'll destroy you, especially on paired boards and low-straight boards.

My default bet on paired or super-dry boards is 1/2 pot

EDIT - Nevermind.

I don't always c-bet AA because that's a dumb thing to do though
You have to read their soul and see what they have, sometimes you just want to see a showdown

When I first read your post I thought you were saying you half-pot with air on those boards (and bet larger with good hands). Hence the edit.

Incidentally half-potting is actually more exploitable than full-potting given that you are betting too frequently in the first place, but that's another can of worms.

Could you explain this a bit? Let's say some guy raised pre-flop, and he always bets the flop if it's heads-up. Why would half-pot be more exploitable than full-pot?

My point was that if your opponent leads into you when you have a medium strength hand in NLHE (say AT on an A76 board), it's often fine to just call in position since your main worry is getting your opponent to put more money in when behind and less when ahead, not whether they outdraw you or not.

Meanwhile, in PLO, if you have a medium strength hand on that board, say top and bottom pair, and someone leads at you heads-up, it's much more important to raise right away and avoid giving a free card to Axxx rather than trying to milk villian if he has bottom two or something. You just have to go ahead and raise and decide later if you're going to dump the hand rather than playing for pot-control and trying to see a cheap showdown when behind or keep someone in when ahead.

I was referring to the fact that the smaller you bet, the better odds your opponent is getting on a bluff raise.

Although I'm not sure my statement is categorically true in a game theory sense, because if you bet smaller it's also cheaper for you to call the raise and make a decision on the turn.

Anyway I think in practice in all big bet games the weaker your overall betting distribution is going to be, the larger you would like to bet. People are a lot less likely to make moves on you when facing a full pot bet compared to a half pot bet.

Yeah I agree with that, I was probably misusing the term pot control. Likewise there aren't a lot of spots in PLO where you're comfortable letting your opponent 3-barrel into you when you know you're ahead, unless you have a boat or something... and even then if there's enough $ you'd still want to raise early because an overcard can kill your ability to raise later.

Aba posted about a live PLO hand once against Ziigmund where Aba had like top two pair on the flop or something and decided to let Ziigmund 3-barrel into him, even though he's inevitably vulnerable. (And Ziig actually did end up rivering him.)

But that was a case where the villain 3-barrels so frequently/lightly that it might be worth it.

Pretty sure this is wrong too although it's kind of hard to explain exactly why. If you're against a really smart opponent, then when you have a weaker hand distribution, he's going to come back at you more and you're going to win the pot less regardless of your bet size. Thus, when you're winning less, you need to a smaller risk to make your stab at the pot profitable. Since your opponent's going to be raising relative to the size of the whole pot and not just to the size of your bet, proportionally, his risk to bluff goes up more slowly than your risk to bet does.

Against a weak opponent, they won't see that much difference between the strong bet and the weak bet anyway as long as your playing your strong hands the same as your weak ones, so you again want to save some money on your initial bet when you can't stick with your hand.

In general, I find the competing forces in most big-bet games are the fact that when you're ahead, the optimal bet size to give draws the wrong price to call is full pot whereas the optimal bet size to steal on a C-bet is more like half pot. On reasonably drawy boards in PLO (non-straight, non-flush, non-paired), the drawing becomes such a strong concern that generally, you want to keep most of your bet sizes close to full pot. On flush and paired boards meanwhile, where draws are less of a concern where you're ahead, I tend to bring my bet size down to the 2/3 to 3/4 pot range as that's more optimal for stealing as long as you're charging the draws sufficiently when ahead. In hold'em, I usually bet between 1/2 pot and about 4/5 pot depending on how drawy the board is.

still not sure if you or not but but it sounds very bad. care to evolve? do you talk about 6-max?

in a very passive game with almost no raises preflop, do you limp UTG with AA97ds?

fwiw I mix it up myself and definitely raise pot first in from any position and often limp UTG etc.

I think it may actually have been proven by Bill Chen that, in theory, the weaker your betting distribution the larger your bet should be (given that you are betting at all). Not sure though.

Also I think unless stacks are small the main bet-sizing focus is betting an amount that lets you get your whole stack in in an orderly way. (For example if betting 80% pot gets your full stack in after 3 streets that would be optimal, but if it leaves you with only 50% pot on the river, you should have been betting a smaller %.)

I used to do exactly what you're describing for NL, incidentally, but then I noticed that a lot of the best players typically just bet a standard bet, around 80%, mostly regardless of board texture.

Well, of course that is only a general guideline, I'm going to be raising AA97ds UTG.

But let's take a representative hand like 9875ss. I'd limp in UTG, min-raise in MP, and probably 3x raise as I get to the button.

I am talking about full ring more than 6-max. In 6-max, I'd be raising most of the time first in, since UTG in 6-max is like MP in full ring.