i know PLO isnt as popular as it was back in the day. but is PLO growing or dying these days? does anyone here have any info or anecdote that might give some insight?

when i open up stars and use the search function for every stake, every table type, etc. I find myself disappointed by how little action there is overall...but thats just one site. The entire ecosystem is a different story. That said, the MS zoom pools often run with the same amount of players as NL (for example in 500z, 200z i often see about the same number in the pool.

I dont know the answer. If i had to guess id say joe ingram, Jnandez, and Phil galfond have definitely helped PLO...but there arent any clear metrics that i can find which show us where PLO's popularity is at. Chinas poker scene is definitely alive and well, but its hard to say how many people favor PLO with action being scattered across so many apps/sites

I think growing. No hard evidence, just locally in FLA. Seems it SHOULD be a wider trend.

It's growing a little bit more, but reaching equilibrium.

Looking on stars is not very useful because the various sites' volume shifts.

The problem with PLO in a live setting is people don't understand the huge swings they're going to endure. You can play pretty much perfectly and still end the night down multiple buy-ins. And once people get a taste for the action the max buy-in goes up, the blinds go up and there's a huge frenzy for a few months and next thing you know the games are filled with tight pro's and all that loose action is either back to hold'em or not in the card room at all.

yup I'll second that ... been happening since the early 80's

you would think NL pools would burn out the same way, but i guess the variance plays a large role

i wish some celebrity would start gushing about how much they love omaha poker

Game of the future is crazy Pineapple

FYP

fixed

The PLO boom ended a couple of years ago and as so reached an equilibrium. There has been some spread of popularity since then but it doesn't have a big enough player pool to support mid-limits at most sites.

Even at Stars.es the players moved to play NLH as there are not enough PLO tables going at ANY limit. The popularity of PLO there is nowhere as much as it should be considering how many players the site has. NLH runs strongly there.

Many sites would need players that keep the PLO games going, as when that is not done, the games die. But poker players don't do that. The zoom and so pools don't help if there are not enough players keeping them going strong enough to attract more players. Every limit needs to be built.

PLO getting more popular, I don't think so, as it is a fuzzy game. Most recreationals play NLH cash and tourneys. PLO gets some action players and some experienced NLH players play some PLO also. The new players play NLH.

If I take a look, I can easily find a couple of NLH fish anywhere. I am not as optimistic when it comes to PLO.

PLO is many times more time-taking to get good at and playing PLO is like moving mountains compared to the stones of NLH that's snappy to play; instead of all the card observations in PLO. PLO is more a card game than a poker game.

I don't see PLO is going to grow. But as it hasn't already declined, it is, for now, going to stay as it is now. NLH cash isn't top-attractive these days. If it would be, players would go back to NLH.

If something better is offered, PLO declines. Some more segregations and PLO will die.

Anecdotal evidence..

Parx casino in PA is booming with PLO getting 2 to 4 2-2 games 2 to 3 5-5 games and a 10-10 or 10-20 some days

Also PP poker app most clubs have more PLO and PLO5 running than holdem.

Not sure how people are claiming it’s declining in popularity when Parx used to have a hard time starting a single PLO game 4 years ago.

Foxwoods also getting multiple plo games and at least 1-2 per day.

Partypoker has a big playerpool at Smallstakes in the evening (European time). So it is alot of action there and the fish come to the game because in PLO fish belive you can play every hand and win...So it is more a gambling game for the fish...

its def growing, live and online

You guys are nuts its dead just like holdem. THe problem is not that the players are getting to good its the fact the traffic across the board is way down on all sites. We need the traffic to grow and it has always been through nl holdem. Even if Chris Moneymaker lost the wsop main event poker was already booming through holdem. Then it was on tv and then along came Tom Dwan destroying everyone on almost every show showing his superior talent. Thats what made poker boom.

But when all these online pros and tv pros quit holdem and went to plo and mixed games it ruined everything. They should of kept playing nlh even if they wanted to play other games have at least 1 holdem table up for holdem fans online. THey just quit complaining the other games have more action. Its like Michael Jordan quitting basketball that everyone loved to watch him play and go to baseball. Poker is dying because all the players everyone loved to watch play holdem quit playing it and people lost interest in poker. Isildur hu challenge, dwan, jungle, ivey, antonius etc playing holdem all the time made poker boom. Then from all the people online we had all kinds of action in plo too. PLO will never be mainstream game cause its to many cards and people that don't understand the game to them its like watching golf. They need to promote holdem again to bring poker back not the other games. Then when traffic grows people will migrate to plo. It sounds odd but we need nlh to boom again for us to get plo games to grow.

Correlation

I feel that if more people who love NL would give PLO a generous chance (like 500 hands) they would see what is so special about it. It’s up to all of us to push PLO like it’s gking out of style.

I’ve been asking every live player I know how they feel the player pools are doing, very mixed answers.

What we really need is high profile people to talk about poker and get the ball rolling a little bit. I’m sure Dan bilzerian is responsible for like 500k new players around the world, for example

poker is not dead, but the popularity has certainly declined since by now pretty much everyone realized it's a skill game

not many people enjoy losing money while playing worse than competition and there's a ****ton of free to play games nowadays that compete with poker for the players pool

imagine if in order to play Apex Legends you had to enter with $1-$100 buyin - people like Shroud will win all the money while fish is going to quit one-by-one until there's no one left

no amount of blitzforce pounding his chest will fix that

Typical 1/2 NLHE player won't be rolled for even 1/2 PLO.

PLO won't generally surpass PLO, NLHE is a way more beginner/recreation friendly game than PLO, but PLO will always has a bit of niche; of course they complete somewhat for traffic, but diversity of games are good for health.

PLO can spread a bit more to some places, but overall it's reaching equilibrium. I think the point about how if a new format gets introduced it can hurt PLO is true, but these things don't come along easily, and NLHE and PLO are very hard to beat.

Typical live player isn't rolled for the games they play in anyway, so it's moot. You can never be "rolled" for a game if you are a losing player.

Sure you can, by having way more income than the game can cost you. At least that's what the games used to be built around. All pros makes a very bad game.

That's not really "rolled" though, is it, in the common sense of "having a self sustaining bankroll that lets you survive usual swings with almost no RoR without having to replenish it".

The problem is that a 5/5 PLO game plays at least as big as a 5/T NL and player who wouldn't think of jumping into that 5/T are willing to play that 5/5 and go broke faster.

It's bad for live poker rooms when a player who would occupy a seat and pay rake for five hours in hold em blows that money in less than an hour at PLO.

Poker rooms would probably be better off trying to limit the size of PLO games by not allowing button straddles and not allowing re-straddles unless they have the player pool to support regular PLO games at multiple stakes. And maybe if they can run 1/2(/5) and 5/T PLO in the same room, they should discourage the existence of a 5/5 game in between.

If I wanted to analyze the growth in PLO's popularity, I would probably look at the growth of PLO tournaments. I have noticed that the daily deep stacks at the WSOP this summer will include a weekly PLO tournament. The ability for such a tournament to exist suggests that PLO is growing.

where i live they are running PLO and NLO tourneys pretty regularly, which is a beautiful thing

PLO just has a much larger skill barrier than NL. That said, bridge used to be super popular (still is in some places) and as far as i know bridge is very complex

speaking of players being under rolled, IMO it would be so genius for a casino to do .25c/.50c tables or .50/1 and just crank up the rake

that would probably get so many new players involved. even time i walk through the slot machines (the arcade of sorrow) i think about this.

im sure there are many reasons why they dont do this but its interesting