Why is this so? I'd think 300bb PLO would be more complex than NLHE. More pivotal cards come out in PLO. How is it not more complex?

Also, you're forgetting that depth of a game should really be defined NOT based BBs in your stack, but rather the Stack-to-pot ratio on the flop. And the problem is deep-stack NL is that 3/4-betting become more common, and so does over betting. This makes the game play like a shorter stack game once the flop comes.

Dig up the old Samoleus interviews on Cash Plays with Bart Hansen. He talks about how the increased preflop aggression in "deep" live games have made them play more like short-stack games.

Thus, the central problem is that the deeper you get in NL, the more chips go in preflop, bloating the pot, and reducing the number of pot-sized bets that would have been available had the preflop action not increased.


Actually, I think most uncapped 5/10 games are pretty deep.

Online NL games among high stakes regulars can get pretty deep as well. And these are the same people who are (mostly) saying PLO is more complex.


I'm pretty sure this is a myth.

I think that, at least at micro/low stakes, the typical PLO player is a much better poker player than the equivalent NLHE player. Most donks HATE PLO because of the outdraws and the second-best hands that are hard to fold.

Furthermore, I think that, now, the profitability of the game comes from its complexity, NOT its novelty. If limit 5-card draw high because the "new" game, I still think PLO would still be more profitable because of the greater mistakes bad players make.

I think that, in the short run, hi/lo games would be massively profitable if they became fashionable. However, many players would eventually plug any massive leaks they have. Gabe Kaplan or Norman Chad talks about the importance of playing to scoop, the game would fall back to Earth. Whereas I think it would be difficult to give similarly concise advice regarding PLO that would have the same effect. Even if bad players learned that they should mostly only draw to the nuts, they would still have a bunch of other major leaks.

Don't know what he meant, but from a historical viewpoint, they way NLHE games were "supposed" to be played was to be 1000bb's deep and to set mine, and to get AA/KK against QQ preflop. (This was Binion's commentary on the pokercast).

I'm sure it's kinda an exaggeration, but it sounded kinda funny.

doyle talks about the old school super deep nlhe games in super/system. great book. read it lol.

i dont think ill ever venture into PLO.

are you kidding? donks love being able to draw out, they just hate being drawn out on. also, there is waaaaaaaaaaay more action in a good plo game(because hands are just never as far apart as they are in he), and in plo in general(and all pl games for that matter because the game degenerates to the point where autopot is the norm). donks love plo. pros love plo. everybody loves plo. other than that, i think you are completely correct sir. plo is way more complex until you get to the point that it becomes mechanical(you ONLY play the nuts/nut draws/near nuts, and STILL get action from the fish). i think about it like this......you can never ever bluff in plo, and still be highly profitable. this is just not the case in nlhe.

No sir, 9875 is indeed better than T876 by a substantial margin. For a single-gap hand, you want the gap as low as possible. 9875 has a much higher probability of hitting the nut straight - this is why it's the better starting hand.

No. 9976 is not as good as 9877, for the same reasons as the previous hand. It hardly matters whether you have 99 or 77 in your hand, the difference is negligible. What matters is that the second hand is much more likely to hit the nut straight, and much less likely to hit a dominated straight and consequently lose a big pot.

Lol. I'm glad the only thing stopping you playing higher stakes holdem is your bankroll size and not your skill level.

excuse me mister fish, but i must correct you. with good table selection you easily can play a higher limit than you used to in NLHE, the same thing isnt true in Omaha. You can easily have a huge edge over a fish you have position on in Omaha, but still could play -ev if the other 4 guys are really tough. In NLHE you will be often +ev with the same scenario.

The great thing about NLHE is its simplicity. It takes a couple minutes to learn and is very appealing to new players. Simple to learn but hard to master.


Both are great games for different reasons, I don't think a definitive answer of which is better can be made as its a matter of opinion.

you forgot to mention it is the cadillac of poker

If it is the Cadillac of poker, does that make Omaha the Bugatti Veyron of poker?

Yes, it is true that 6-max bum hunting is easier in NL. Furthermore, the lower variance itself allows you to play higher than in PLO.


This is why most donkeys, at least at micro/low stakes, prefer hold'em. They aren't intimidated by any complexity, and they can easily trick themselves into believing that they know how to play.

Donks can become convinced that they not only know how to play PLO, but have virtually mastered it after having a long heater...

^^^

Yes and no.

There are two types of donks to consider here:

1. The PLO newb, either from NLHE or from no poker background

and

2. The consistent PLO player, who has a ton of leaks, but who still avoids catastrophic newb mistakes


The first type usually stacks off immediately with a non-nut hand, like 2 pair on a wet board, weak flush, bottom set, underfull. They play so bad that they are unlikely to go on a heater.

The second type is the player two can still fold 2 pair when the straight/flush/FH come out, but is still too loose or maniacal. This second type can hit the heater very well. I've played online against a ton of 80/30 types who are positionally unaware and put in money bad a lot of the time-- they can still make the lay downs that a newb can't make. They are donks, but they can stick around for a while.

The problem is that most people don't stick around long enough to become the second type of player. PLO would be much more popular if that were the case. Sadly, it is not.

As it stands now, I've had a mixed HE/PLO game for several years now, and out of maybe 16-20 players new to PLO, only one of them really enjoyed the game at the beginning. Everyone else required some time to like it. Some still don't. I'm pretty sure this comes close to describing most players who are dragged into a PLO game for the first time.

dismal's right. Pure donkish play is selected against very quickly in PLO. In PLO as we all know, it's very common to see situations which are termed "coolers" in NLHE. Set over set, kings against aces, TPTK against a set, overflushes - these are infrequent in NLHE, and they have as much a chance of happening in favor of a donk than they do against him. A good player cannot avoid being stacked when he's overset. But in PLO, this is not the case. Not only are these situations far more common, but a good player is not "required" to go broke.

that is completely true. hand values definitely go way down in plo compared to he. also i feel that to play plo well one must develop the ability to evaluate hands based on their relative strength instead of their absolute strength.

also, what does everybody think about the idea that becoming even mildly proficient in plo will make one a better nlhe player?

^^^ I think this is true in a limited sense only.

If you restrict yourself to playing 2 tables at most of either game, then PLO can speed up some aspects of your NLHE game simply because you will be put into more key spots than you will in hold'em.

However, if you are playing fewer PLO tables than you are hold'em, this effect is cancelled out.


Overall, if your only goal is to get good at hold'em, you could probably just stick to that and play more hands.


I have to say, though, it's an interest question, and one I've never heard asked in an interview or addressed in an article, book or video.

Different games have different skill sets, some of which are shared between PLO and NLHE because of their obvious similarities.

You can definitely win more in PLO. Also, because people get it in so much more often on your table the rakeback is SICK.

Well my only contribution is rakeback and bonuses in PLO. Whatever game I've tried limit holdem, nl holdem and sng's over a 5 year period I have been a VERY small winner at each. However I've recently switched to PLO and my rakeback has jumped dramatically and hitting bonuses through points has become so much easier. Pots in 50PLO are 2 to 3 times the size of 50NL holdem so for a break even or very small winning player I think PLO is best. It's certainly the most exciting if you have the correct bankroll.

Postflop when you hit T876 you will rarely have the nuts but 9875 will hit the nuts more often making it easier to play. It is always preferable to have the gap at the bottom. We are not talking about those 2 hands HU but simply if you had the choice of either hand against random hands.

How bout some arguments the other way:


It is very difficult to massively multi-table PLO. I would submit we can play half to something under half at similar capacities or focus levels. If we measure our fun quotient even with diminishing marginal returns, we probably are having more fun at more tables.

Since no one ever has anything in holdem the guy with the big balls can win a lot of monies, in PLO we actually need to hit flops. Since bluffing and risk taking is fun on a sheer hand per hand basis we are far more likely to have a higher bluffing frequency in holdem and therefore having more fun.

The variance as measured by StdDev is half PLO's so we can be sure of our winrates faster, and therefore climb the levels faster on shorter bankrolls. Progressing in the game is FUN!

PLO is a "bad game" because so many cards are out. Sort like how some people hate pinnochle, after the meld everyone knows what everyone has... At a full table of PLO all the cards are out there so when we all see a flop of 854, someones got 76, and it doesnt take even morons long to piece that mystery together.

From a scientific point of view, "people's interest level" is something we can measure. Clearly NLHE is a far more popular game, one the general populace must simply find more fun.


4Card

Depending on the definition of "massive"....

At at dozen or under, I think it's more like 2/3rds Omaha to Hold'em, is the right equivalence.

At more than a dozen, the equivalence gap increases....


Not really.

The problem is the way in which the diminishing returns affects utility. Multitabling is not like eating pizza, where the value of the last slice is affected by the previous one. It's more like watching multiple TV shows simultaneously. In this case, the marginal utility of ALL shows (tables) diminish simultaneously.

Thus opening up the 10th table reduces my utility at the 1st-9th table as well, and not just at the 10th table.


I think we are having the most fun when we are being maximally engaged with interesting play and results. This can be achieved at fewer tables of PLO than at Hold'em. Similarly, this suggests someone can equally enjoy, say, 6 tabling PLO as they would 9 tabling NLHE.


Regardless of the analysis, I think the typical massive multitabler isn't having that much fun with the game itself. They must be unusually focused on the money and/or some crazy prop bet on how many tables they can perform on.



But you don't have big balls and you're not taking a big risk if the guy usually doesn't have anything! Cbets are a little more automatic, and therefore less ballsy and more robotic, imo.

Bluffing the scare card and value betting the second nuts in PLO is way more ballsy, imo.


Bluffing-utility inflation. See above.


This effect is tempered by the fact that your PLO winrate should be higher than NLHE.



In a short-stack full-ring live (loose passive) game, I agree.

But in an online full-ring game, the table is often filled with nits, so the hands often go to the flop/turn short handed. On top of that, since the board is more dynamic, you can either redraw or float a lot.

Regardless, online most PLO games are 6max, by far. So the nuts aren't out most of the time and there is a ton of position play, more than in hold'em.


It's pointless to use popularity as a measure of the "best" game. For a long time, 5-card draw was the most popular game. But I would argue hold'em was the better game at that time, as it is now.

Similarly, just because Phil Hellmuth is more famous than Phil Galfond, doesn't mean Galfond isn't clearly the better poker player.

If this is just about picking one game, then I think limit holdem is the best as it has action and one can make good reads. It's also the most systematic and needs less talent. The second best is PLO as it has action.

If there would be more limit games, I would still pick limit poker but as there are not, it's best to pick NLH as the first game even when it's more likely one will not become good enough. Additionally, it's argued that learning NLH as one's "mother tongue" will help in the long run, and it's also said that one might better play NLH before PLO, but I don't really see that point (I don't think that having 4 cards is the reason).

The only reason to pick PLO as the first is if one doesn't like NLH and figures to get enough action at PLO. But many sites are getting national and .com play can decrease. NLH has also all kinds of tournaments (big ones too) and live play.