UTG1 limps (700) - tight reg, not involved post
MP3 limps (1000) - station, overvalues post, has made several poor calls in spots heads up on river where he simply cannot be good but has to see it. Hero has picked correctly based on body language whether he's drawing or getting stubborn.
CO limps (1500) - fun player, great guy, loves to play hands and is reading play well post, but not involved here.
Hero (2500) flats QhQd5h5d - tight image, PLO isn't my usual game but the 2/5NL cash had a long list. called AK2 flop and potted 3 turn earlier holding 3456, then faded set/flush draws running twice to chip up nicely. not committing post on any hand until we've improved to effective/near nuts, then dropping hammer - except in this hand for reasons below.

This is the first question. I'm new to PLO and unsure of when to raise pre in particular (I'll limp/pot AAxx AKQJ KQJT QJT9 from early position to iso, but otherwise generally limp or call behind and play for effective nuts post). Should I be raising this hand pre? What if it was KK55 double suited and the flush draws had more value?

SB (1000) completes - stacked him earlier for min BI 500 on a board I can't remember. seems solid but has been ul v MP3.
BB (700) completes - not involved post.
UTG (1000) checks option - not involved post.

So, the usual limp fest, PLbingO approach to life. otth...

Flop QJ9 rainbow. Checked around to Hero

Hero has top set, but in a hand with 6 runners, a straight is virtually guaranteed - as is an inevitable check/pot line. I don't take the bait and check behind.

Turn (60) 9 completing rainbow. Angels singing. I'll get stacks in, and the question is how best to achieve that.

Happily SB (solid) leads 45, UTG3 (station) calls. I fear that raising here will fold out the straight draws. The question is whether to raise turn or flat again with a virtually lock on the hand an no flush draws to factor in and wait for river. Interested in opinions, as this is the second key decision point in hand.

Hero flats 45

River (190). SB checks, UTG3 checks. Pity. SB is clearly worried about a straight. UTG likely had J8 or 9x that didn't improve to a boat.

This is now fairly standard. Hero bets 175. SB calls with KJ for flopped nuts. UTG3 folds.

Appreciate opinions from all the PLO cash regs out there.

You posted this in the wrong forum. I assume this should be in Small Stakes PLO.

Quick mods are asleep post PLO strat

I like a raise preflop, your hand plays well multiway for the set values and also well HU.
Edit: I think pre is pretty close actually since there were three limpers and live players like to call out of position. I don't mind a limp here. If it were two limps in front I like a raise but three is getting kind of dicey.

Flop check is good, it's hard to get value from worse.

Turn and river are fine. No reason to raise turn since whatever value u can get from a turn raise you'll be able to get from a river bet, and you keep in straights that the station might have. Even a station will find a fold with a straight, especially from a self admitted newbie in PLO.

heh, ty. I might post this again in PLO section (didn't know there was one).

Pre is pretty interesting, I think raising is ok but others might rightfully disagree. it's definitely fine to limp the button imo

after that the hand basically plays itself

sizing on the river is interesting. i usually size this smaller. hands are mainly transparent in PLO so i would likely size it less but i don't give ppl credit for being sticky but NH imo

To answer the general question: whether or not you should limp-reraise AAXX from early position (as opposed to just open raising) depends entirely on whether your stack sizes are sufficiently low such that you can manipulate the SPR to a reasonable level, so that you can play your hand face up and not suffer too many reverse implied odds.

Short stacks = limp-reraising AAXX from early position is better.
Deeper stacks = open raising AAXX from early position is better.

For the QQ55 hand. Well played preflop and on the flop.

I'd make a small raise on the turn to something like $120. You'd be surprised how many live fish will call with a straight or even just an OESD, despite the fact that the board is paired. Don't pot the turn though, or you'll fold out everything below a boat.

As played, river is a standard pot sized bet.

Disclaimer: Not a PLO expert.

Don't like raising pre. You're probably going to flop something that prefers a small pot. The actual flop is a good example because even though you hit your Q, which is a great flop for you all things considered, your hand isn't actually that amazing and you don't want to play for stacks.

Flop is good. I'd raise turn to try to get stacks in against JJ/J9/Q9, since our hand is well-disguised. If you flat, non-full hands are going to be pretty wary of putting money in on the river against two players. That's my opinion despite SB's (way too loose, imo) call.

Read the other replies. I feel like flatting turn has to be a mistake. The reality of letting the station draw is that they mostly won't hit. There are several reasons to raise turn:

- It's just sound poker strategy. We want to take a generally aggressive approach. If you feel like you're not going to get paid, bluff more.

- We're against a calling station. That's a reason to bet and raise, not a reason to go passive to let him improve his hand. That's for nits.

- If you flat, you can't get stacks in vs a river bet from SB, even if he pots it.

Havent studied PLO in a while but my thoughts

Pre- is pretty close, but I like potting it pre- as we are double suited and in good position (otherwise I would just overlimp) the benefits of this are getting the blinds out and maybe one of the limpers (while most llive players don't like folding bad Ax*x hands pre- you can get some bad Kx*x hands to fold cleaning up your FD a little, you also get the benefit of playing a bigger pot when you flop a Q for Top set)

flop: did you have any back door flush draws? normally I like a check here, but If I had two (one if feeling frisky) I'd bet 1-2 pot to put pressure on T8, get value from JJ,99,QJ9x, deny equity from ATxx and to keep my range uncapped, getting check/potted is not much fun but assuming your flatting all your KTXX here to bluff Vs off the chop on board changes so Im peeling here with Top-set... Ideally you have KQQx,QQTx when betting, on the come, but blockers are less important super-multi-way IMO (you pick up some chop equity though).

On the turn I like going for a pot sized raised (IMHO you should be trying to get max value when overnutting ppl). As played, on the river, I like 175 as some live players respond differently to Pot and 85-90% pot... especially when you can bet in 4 chips...against a reg you can just pot it)

Leading on the turn by V was pretty bad IMO...unless he had KT9X it was pretty unecessary into 6 players

The answer to every question is “it depends”. It really depends on villain tendencies. Sometimes you flat turn and sometimes you raise. Your image matters the most when deciding what line to take

As for preflop, position is the most valuable aspect when deciding what to do. Double suited high low pair is a decent hand to always raise from button

People get carried away way too much with SPR as a tool to decide how to proceed preflop in PLO. SPR was created as a basic guide for NL players to help them decide on committing post flop or not with big pairs. Equities in PLO are hugely different than in hold’em. AA is 80% favorite against another pair in hold’em. But hot cold equities in PLO preflop can be exaggerated by most NL players playing PLO for the first time. I would say if it’s heads up then it’s fine to use SPR as a guide but multi way it’s a mistake to pile in the money preflop IF you only do it with AAXX

Furthermore, pots grow exponentially larger in PLO than in hold’em on each street. You can see why it’s potentially a mistake to gauge your commitment level on the flop simply by calculating SPR.

I’d say limp/potting from early position with AAXX is a big mistake unless you have a range of other hands you do it with as well.


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Must raise pre

Yup.

And yup.

There are a few PLO players in the chat thread ITF, if you'd like to ask for their input, so I'll leave this open a bit, but most folks ITF know less about PLO than about ballet.

Pre-This is not a good hand at all. But you have the BTN so I'm ok limping behind. This hand plays pretty poorly on most flops so getting in cheap is fine. Raising here is bad(btw clean up your HH posts...little hard to follow the action)

Flop-If checked to me I'll bet occasionally but checking is fine too in a large field

Turn-Yeah let's raise something smallish. Make it 110 or something. You will get called by straights, 9x, and there could be a lot of J9xx in ranges that will Zeebo here and lord help him if he has JJxx. May get called by some JTxx type hands.

River-Obv bet. Don't need to bet pot particularly if you raise turn. Just get some value

Overall you played this too passively on turn and river. You played a bad hand and ginned it. Need to get a bit more value out of it IMO

Also nut-peddling is fine but if you want to crush PLO (especially this deep) you need to realize equities across multiple streets and that means betting and raising a lot more. But if your player pool is pretty poor post flop you may still be able to realize equities later in the hands.

hmmmmm....double paired double suited, if you correlate rarity with ev then this is not a bad hand by any stretch. the amount of times you hit a set on the flop is 3.75:1, add in 4% flushes and with the button this is definitely a very playable hand, whether we can raise pf is another matter, people love to do the limp reraise in PLO, i don't think we can call a re-raise

imo in PLO pre is much more important than in HE, there are 4 cards, more information, this hand is important only for the river bet, there isn't much ev difference anywhere, the check OTF and call on the turn are pretty standard, the river is important because we essentially have the nuts and want to get value but what hand do we have that is a bluff? What hands do we have that force KJ to call?

IMO this is a standard fold by villain here, he also needs to bet his hand early, made big mistakes in this hand, that's why PLO can be a good BR builder, but don't get sucked in

Queen high flushes and a set of fives/fives full are not actually good though, they're sucker hands that will be second best a lot. The hand is worth speculating with in position but you don't want to be in a raised pot relying on junk like that. Drawing to that stuff is like drawing to non-nut gutshots in holdem, you want to be very careful with it.

Yeah anyone that thinks this hand is anything but a set mining spot is crazy. This simply is not a good hand. DS KK is a far better hand FWIW.

I understand wanting to always have the nuts in live PLO but QQ55ds is objectively a top tier hand, probably on the order of top 10% of hands you are dealt.

15% to be exact. It's value obv goes up significantly on the button but it has playability post flop.

Interestingly KK55ds is an 8% hand thus showing how much stronger that hand actually is.

But I agree overall that players tend to play too nutted in live PLO. But when you are going 5,6,7 ways to the flop it's hard to argue that is necessarily a bad thing.

players play totally nutted in plo, that's kind of the only reason to raise the turn, if we had top 2 pair we could raise as a bluff, but it's hard to say, this hand might just be maximized by playing exactly this way, with maybe QJxx but a lot of those hands raise pre flop, so it's actually very hard to get value out of your hands unless they make a calling mistake on the river,

we don't have any bluffs here at all really, but i guess it may take some time for the population to realize that. All of our QJ hands that are playable raise somewhere before, nearly all of our 9x hands have boated up.

honestly, the pots in PLO tend to stay frozen in some spots, we actually got max value here by a wide margin...only thing i would do different is betting less on river to induce...to this sizing you should only be getting value from worse full houses

hand shows why you should really never fold a 15% OTB, the general player pool will make tons of mistakes post, definitely raisable but you get a lot of limp reraises in PLO if you get too button raisy

Thnx all

On balance the advice is limp pre, check flop and raise turn

I’m ok with that, but I might run into a problem with sizing

Not so sure on the amount to raise ott? I don’t understand when to make 1/2 or 3/4 pot raises at all in PLO, so I’m likely very unbalanced. It’s a very basic style I know, but I just pot any made (effective nut) hands from the turn onwards to charge draws, and balance that by also potting my best draws and dead money spots if I perceive any reasonable fold equity.

I wouldn't be super concerned about being super balanced in most low stake PLO lineups


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Rankings for QsQh5s5h
Ranking Description Average Best Worst
10H 10-handed iterative (default) 5.0 5.0 5.0
3H 3-handed iterative 4.0 4.0 4.0
6H 6-handed iterative 4.0 4.0 4.0
VR vs. random hand 3.0 3.0 3.0

it's not really possible to be balanced in PLO. I'm literally trying to think of bluffs you might have and i can't do it. this should have been a tiny pot but for villains mistakes in the hand

PLO is basically a solved game. I believe you need a prime number of starting cards to create an imbalance

short advice is: take advantage of the newbs in PLO until they figure it out because it's basically an easily solvable game. its fairly easy to figure out the hands

the money in PLO is in bluffs but you will encounter bluff spots so infrequently that you might as well go back to hold em when the whales and fish run out of money

this hand was perfectly played, just peel off whatever value you can get, raise with the nuts or nut draws and forget about balance, push your thin % edges hard and don't raise with the effective unbreakable nuts on the turn, you quite literally can't peel more value out of raising when people snap fold and you can't have a bluff