I have a subscription to PLO mastermind by Jnandez and was looking at the results from their preflop bot on discord. It has 5533 double suited as a stunningly good hand at +.78 EV to open from UTG. A hand like AKQT single suited to the ace or QQJT ds by comparison came in at only +.48. It outperforms double suited rundowns as well. 6644 ds outperforms AKQT ds as an UTG open.

Sorry if this is a really dumb question, it just seems pretty counterintuitive so I was curious if this is consistent with the results other people have.

The only thing I can think of is it covers boards where GTO opponents might try to bluff as aggressively. It does have AKQTss as a higher EV open from BU than 5533 which would lend some credence to this explanation. So if we open UTG and it comes 245 our opponent might bluff us aggressively as we usually miss there. That’s all I got.

And I would also assume in live games then when it goes 4+ players to the flop every hand, the EV of 5533 ds would decrease relative to AKQTss as we won’t get attacked on low flops as it could hit the range of one of the other players. Also, multi-way, I assume it becomes more important to have a hand that draws to the nuts.

I guess they are quite small margins, and UTG is especially not as good for AKQTss because of how many players you have to fade in terms of having a hand that puts you in an unfavourable matchup. This is much less of a problem OTB because there is just two players and both are OOP.

I can see why 5533ds does well because the chance of flopping a set are just in raw numbers terms really good. Obviously there are problems with bottom set sometimes being crushed but the near double chances of flopping it make it slightly outweigh something like QQJTds (very slightly to make up for lower suits and lower rank).

Honestly I think this may be due to the solver expecting perfect play from everyone, which makes rare but strong hands like 3355ds make "disproportionally" more money than one would expect

I have a hard time wording my thoughts here properly, but basically I think it comes down to 3355ds being stronger than AKQTss or QQJTds when everyone plays perfectly in every spot, but not really in other settings

edit: And especially when it's UTG here because GTO opponents will be like "Lmao **** outta here you pretending to have something on this lowlowlow board" when the 3355 starts blasting, since 3355-connecting hands make up a miniscule fraction of UTG opening ranges while boards that connect with AKQT and QQJT will have the GTO opponent weary as hell vs the UTG player

edit2: Look up 3355ds vs QQJTds as plays from the btn and I bet that QQJT will massively outperform. If so, then the strength of 3355ds in OP example must be due to range interaction on low boards as utg pfr

3355ds will flop more straights to the ace especially on kinda dryish looking boards. QQjt ds eg can rarely continue on ace high board, only if it has a fd, meanwhile 5533 can continue on a62 a64 a27 a76 Im pretty sure in utg it performs better because of that reason and only in a 3b pot. Assuming gto 3b range QQjt will just have to fold more often on ace high boards and won't realize it's eq.

There is a very similar spot in holdem, where calling 55 vs a shove has much better ev then calling 77 due to the tiny fact that 55 can make wheel straights. It's very specific spot in icm calculations but it feels the Omaha spot is very similar to this one.

And ofc what others have Already written. But tbh in the real world iam still pretty sure that QQjt has better ev caus no one plays real gto.

its a good hand for board coverage and its deceptive value but in a multi way pot its really not that great especially if you are op. EVen if you flop a set you can easily be losing to higher set in multi way pot. and the flushes you can't get value with it just a bluff catcher. I think its ok to play if its a tight table but other then that id toss it utg in ring game. I only play high cards and middlish ss ds run downs utg and tend to stay away from the lower cards. They just don't perform well post flop. plo is all about position. I think its one of the biggest mistakes i see in plo is people playing to many small cards utg.

It’s been about ten years but small connected double suited pairs were huge winners for almost every player in my HEM database with large samples of hands in ring games.

The OP and the discussion that followed get to the heart of one of the main reasons I stopped playing poker altogether. Solvers are so powerful there is little reason to build out the game theories and trees behind decisions in every spot. It’s cognitively more efficient to basically memorize solutions (in batched forms of courses) and there will be a lot of times where the solver solution runs contrary to intuition and can’t be easily explained.

Then you’re left with a choice:
Memorize it as is
Spend a lot of time plotting out the why of the unintuitive result
Ignore the result as an oddity of the limitations of solvers (limited number of bet sizes and so on)

Ive done 3 for situations that that I determined to be extremely rare as to not bother memorizing.
I’ve done 2 a lot, but not always fruitfully
At the end, most of the time, to get through silver solutions, it was just easier and more efficient to do option 1.

The realization that option 1 is almost always the way to go took all the fun out of the game for me.

This is a really good post.

You just gotta play 400BB deep street PLO with degens and then you'll be back in

I can almost guarantee you 5533 double suited is not going to be a +EV hand when playing 400BB deep street PLO with degens

It was more to the point of him losing the joy of playing PLO

I disagree, feel we can quads-mine and sf-mine against bad opponents that deep

Def has to do with value when facing a 3 bet with so many people still having the opportunity to do so+hitting boards you don't usually hit.

Not surprising to me.

Equity realization when defending vs. 3bets (both in and out of position) combined with the their ability to flop quads and straight flushes.

Also, solvers are obviously perfect at extracting the maximum value in the rare situations in which they flop quads or straight flushes vs. multiple opponents. Whereas humans tend to be too shocked to think clearly and often win far less than they should.