Poker Stars, $0.25/$0.50 Pot Limit Omaha Cash, 6 Players
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Hero (SB): $49.50 (99 bb)
BB: $306.69 (613.4 bb)
UTG: $164.35 (328.7 bb)
MP: $132.03 (264.1 bb)
CO: $51.87 (103.7 bb)
BTN: $192.97 (385.9 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Jd Qd Jh Kh
UTG raises to $1.75, 2 folds, BTN raises to $6,

If you also had 330bb, probably. Although the fact UTG can raise again isn't great (and position, obviously).

As is seems like an easy fold.

should we have a flatting range in this spot, and if so what sort of hands make the cut?

Sad fold. Calling double paired broadways though with at least one suit (KKQQ, QQJJ, etc.).

I'd assume it's better to cold 4bet or fold, esp. with both the original raiser and the three bettor being deep.

We call. The BB also decides to come along for the ride, and the original raiser makes it $30 all day. BU calls, and it is on me.

"No matter how far down the wrong road you've gone, turn back."


This is poker though, so eventually we would be too far down the road to turn back ... calling again would probably be that. We could just ship it and hope to suckout, I guess.

I'm never folding here for 1/10th my stack especially when it's very easy for UTG to flat. If UTG repops and Button calls/jams here, we can still call. If UTG repops and button folds, we can probably fold. We ideally want both players in and ship it on the flop if its favorable and fold if it's a total dud.

Don't get the 4-bet logic. Way to get it heads up and not gain much equity against hands that will call, something that's a disaster.

I'm shipping any heart or diamond board, any wrap, any two pair, and any set on the flop and probably will get called by worse.

The point is that given how deep they are BTN can be 3betting UTG wide, so if we 4bet it squeezes UTG (who probably has us beat) and screws over BTN who is less likely to. Yes, if UTG (and to a lesser extent BTN) calls or ships it we are behind.

I don't think it's the best option though, as I said: fold > 4bet > call.

If you were closing the action that would be one thing, but we aren't. UTG is gonna have a strong range. calling the 3bet caps our range.
Calling off 12% of our stack so we can hope to hit a jackpot flop is only ok if a villain always doubles us up, and even then we aren't always ahead or winning. This is kind of like 99 in this spot in nlhe, calling pre. is just bad even though it works out sometimes.

And after the 4bet that's not close to enough. The pot will be ~$90 and we'll have $20 behind. If we were HU we need to ship at least 60% of flops. Even 3way we can never fold on like 9h8s2d.

Screwing the button isn't the goal, winning the most money is. We are going to need to hit something to win this one. What % of hands do you think button is 3-betting against an UTG opener? Can't be that many I'd imagine. Why do this when we can outplay deep after the flop in position unless you are quite strong?


I have the exact opposite order here.



Closing the action is better than not, sure. But even if it starts raising again, playing this multiway is better than not given it adds more money and if we can get a hand to beat one of them we'll probably beat both. I'd only make this play if I planned to call if both players get all in. If I call, UTG 4-bets and button folds


This is far different than 99 in nlhe where when you are behind you are crushed. Here, one guy has AA other has KK, we have 30% equity!

Another big advantage we do have here is being short on the flop while both of them are deep. Being first to act when it's 1 pot sized bet left or less is great - we can ship it and the first guy has to fear a raise from the button if he didn't hit it well, AND he knows he can't bluff you to win that bet. Flop comes 982 rainbow as you mention, and you ship, the guy with KKxx UTG is in a tough spot. He can ship it and try to get that guy out, but if that guy has T987 he's in bad shape and now gets a lot of money in with one pair and not much of a draw.

4-betting is super annoying because now it gets the money in against the hands you don't want, and you have a high chance of getting called by one. I'm only making this move if I suspect one will fold, but I rarely count on a 3-better preflop to fold to an all in in PLO. They so rarely not getting the odds to realize equity, he only needs 33% and few 3-betting hands are lower equity than that even against absolute monsters. I don't see anything it accomplishes except driving out shittier hands that you want sticking around.


Running it against top 15% and 10% hands, we have 33% equity on almost half the flops, so I'm absolutely ready to ship it on anything favorable to us. You can can actually get hands better than yours to fold in those cases a surprising amount of the time, and if they call, so be it. Not even saying jackpot flops, but a lot of flops. Especially given he has to worry about the other player more than you.

Scenario 1: You call, UTG re-pots to $24. Button calls, you call, $72 in pot, you have $26 left. Ship it any time you have ~30% equity.

Scenario 2: You call, UTG repots to $24, Button folds. Pot is $36. Call or jam. Would have to debate what to do here, do we see enough flops to warrant folding away our equity vs. getting it in. HU vs. 5% of hands you see 80%+ equity on 20% of flops, and 40% equity on 50%+ of them. I probably check on the top 20% of flops and bottom 40%, and jam on the middle ones hoping for any fold equity.

Scenario 3: You call, UTG repots, Button repots. Stacks are going in, you call $44 to win $150. Need 29% equity. You probably have very close to that with their ranges. Not end of world to call.

Low variance play definitely is folding. But if I wanted low variance, I'd avoid PLO to begin with.

Don't understand the aversion to getting money in with as many players as possible here.

We are already getting 4:1 if one person calls (20%) and 5:1 if both call (16%). And if no one calls that is even better. So I would think we could ship considerably wider.

Yeah the equity chart I was looking at showed a pretty smooth decrease, we can probably safely get it in with a pretty substantial number of flops, probably as wide as overpair + 2 backdoor flush draws, any open-ended straight draw, obviously any 2 pair or better hands, and probably gutshots with backdoor flush draws. The only debate is if you are shipping or calling all-in.

If all 3 players had 100 BB it would probably be a different strategy than 2 big stacks where you can get a better hand to fold out of fear of the other player.

I just don't see how a 4-bet makes any sense here. I'd sooner fold than 4-bet.

5 betting might make sense, force both big stacks to commit an extra $20 and then hope that one bets the other out.

Just an easy fold to the 3b.

Yes, we have 29% but we're not going to realize it. Go to ppt and do some sims for hvh and see we're going to flop 40% equity ~28% of the time. Remember that 1) we need > 40% to stack off otf if there's no 4b behind us and 2) both of our fds aren't to the nuts and given the positions of the raises UTG and button, I suspect they'll often both have high suits of which one of ours is likely dominated so we're going to stack off very badly at times.

You are assuming no fold equity on the flop. For reasons mentioned above, there's a considerable amount since UTG will have to fold decent hands a lot in fear of button when you donk-shove the flop.

The equity discussion is more relevant of "oh no, what if they get stacks in". In that case, you are decent enough shape to call against 2 players with those odds, so it's not the end of the world. If you call the $6 and it's flat called, then you have $18 pot, and $44 behind, and can certainly evaluate then, and there are plenty of favorable flops. Yes, there is a chance you can have the worst flush draw here, but advantage of a smaller stack is you don't have to know if they are on a made hand or draw, and you have lots of connectedness to make straights, a set you can hit, big two pairs, and flush draws are backups. If we know it's going to be flatted by the UTG player, seems even better to call. Yes we are out of position but we have an SPR of 2.5 and that's pretty easy to play without positional worries and acting first can even be an advantage a lot of the time as they will be unable to bluff you once you put money in.

I'm curious what the odds are that given each player has at least one ace or king, what the odds they have zero, one, or both flush draws you have dominated. Even that's not the end of the world, you block flush outs from hitting in that case making it less likely they hit it.

Then again, some people play super nitty at PLO and nitty play is to fold, and more aggressive/loose play is going to be to call here. But 4-betting seems dreadful.

Let's try something different: Starting with something you agreed with:

Here is nlhe 99 vs. "UTG open range" vs. "BTN 3bet vs. UTG" ...

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
99	32.90%	195,449	4,494
55+, AxTx+, KxTx+, QxTx+, Jx9x+, Tx8x+, 9x7x+, 8x7x, 7x6x, AJ+, KxQy	28.62%	165,986	12,144
QQ+, AK, AxQy, AxJy, KxQy, 7x6x, Ax5x, Ax4x	38.48%	226,421	9,584

Hey, we have even more equity than you think we do with KQJJds!

But, let's pretend BTN isn't 3bet bluffing much at all ...

ProPokerTools Hold'em Simulation

600,000 trials (Randomized)

Hand	Pot equity	Wins	Ties
99	29.85%	177,450	3,981
55+, AxTx+, KxTx+, QxTx+, Jx9x+, Tx8x+, 9x7x+, 8x7x, 7x6x, AJ+, KxQy	25.91%	151,639	8,258
QQ+, AK, AxQy, Ax4x	44.24%	262,653	6,166

Hey, we still have basically 30%!

So by the same logic of this thread do you now want to argue that it's fine to cap our range by cold calling the 3bet, hope UTG just calls or folds, so we can see a flop? I mean if we hit a 9, or 678, it's good.

What hands call a 4-bet jam, and what is our equity? And what do we steal in NLHE when they don't have that range? You have interesting statistics but not the same situation. What about when they jam, is your equity this high when you call? Hell no.

Our equity on the flop is going to be very polar with 99 in NLHE but not even close with your hand in PLO. Furthermore, with 99, we won't have any idea where we stand on the flop, even if we have the equity. Opponent has overcards, but we don't know which, and when flop comes, we have no idea if we have 80% equity or 5%.

I'm actually not assuming that. The way I intentionally took the high side of the 40%/28% (instead of saying 30% of flops 35% of time) accounted for some fe because our actual odds are quite a bit worse than 40%. Of course we'll get folds sometimes. My overall point was that we don't flop well enough to call here and that the threat of a 4 bet hurts a lot.

Had I said we flop 30% 35% of the time, I'd have said we're going to need 42% to stack off profitably otf but ofc we have fe but nowhere near enough to make this profitable.

This should never be an assumption. The pot being 4 bet after us is part of the ev in the decision we're making.

You overestimate how good this hand is. Just gonna repeat what I said in my first post: you only flop 40%+ equity 28% of the time. So at least 72% of the time you're either x/f'ing, drawing slim, or being coolered. You need to make up a ton to overcome that and flopping 40% on 28% of flops doesn't do that.

If we know it's not being 4 bet, do we make the call with an SPR of 2.5 (for example if we were closing action somehow)? I would. Maybe that's a mistake, but at most a small one.

But if it's 4-bet and and called, we close action, we end up with an SPR of <1, and we need far less than 40% to get stacks in. We need much less than 40% to win then, closer to 15-20% depending on if we get called by one or both. Add in fold equity (not gonna be a huge amount, but it certainly exists, especially from some hands with plenty of equity on us) and it's not that hard to come out ahead in this situation.

If it's 4-bet and jammed, we have an easy call with that much money in the pot. Even if UTG folds to that 5-bet, it's a lot of dead money and we are surely better than 33% to win the pot HU.

So if your fear is we flat and no one raises and we don't have implied odds to win enough to justify the $6 we pot in, that's one thing, but that doesn't seem to be your argument. I'm fine with that situation, and would prefer that the most. We don't hit a pretty favorable flop (against 15% and 10% hands in this case), we can fold and move on. If it's a decent flop we can call a bet and see the turn, or decide to stack off, especially if two players are in. But it sounds like you are more fearful of the 4-bet or 5-bet scenarios, which are not that bad. 5-bet stack off, ok we give up a little EV. Assume they are 5-bet jamming and calling only with top 2% of hands this deep. If that's the case, we are 33.64%, and it's actually were in a barely favorable coin flipping spot. Maybe they are more wild and will do it with 5% of hands, and in that case we are down to 29%. If you 100% know this is what's happening you can fold, but the above scenarios will have some value.


Is this hand a great hand? Of course not. I'd not want to be going HU vs. a player willing to stack off with this. But the multiway odds and their deep stacks let you play small stack while they have to fear each other. It's a damn good spot to be in.

Results : We call and go 3 to the flop. On the flop we end up jamming after we flop a flush draw. Our opponents had surprisingly weak hands, the first guy just had raggedy queens and the other guy had some garbo hand as well. I end up making a back door flush and tripling up.