Those are some monster hands. Nuts and a wrap, and nut boat and OESD. These type of hands come around so infrequently…

but playing the one-sided boards is more nuanced…

TTxx on T33 playing nothing on the other side is still a great hand since we have one board locked up, and we should be happy to commit stacks…however, we would prefer to encourage other people enter the pot to increase the likelihood we quarter someone (in split pot games like O8 they call it a “pull”), so we may choose to play the hand passively and commit $$ later in the hand.

Naked 73xx on 773 (playing nothing on the other side) is much tougher because our hand will almost never be the nuts on any runnout. That’s a hand I would play very passively and not look to put $$ in on any street unless I possibly pair one of my side cards to hit a nut or second nut boat on a later street.

The key to double board PLO is essentially to know which situations to pot control (and sometimes fold) and which situations to shovel money in.

Most of your profit will come from playing hands on both sides. Some one-sided hands that seem strong at first appearance but are actually quite weak
are:

(1) top set on a wet board, playing nothing on the other side — ex: JJxx on JT3r /Axx. This hand is in very bad shape versus something like AKQx. In EP, I would check/call this hand hoping to boat up on the turn. I might check/fold if there’s a bet and a raise. In LP, I might bet hoping to take the pot down (I am praying for folds).

(2) A hand like AJxx on KQTr is very vulnerable, since it will rarely be the nuts on the river. Even if it stays the nuts, there is a significant risk we get quartered. This is a hand we should check/fold on the flop to heavy action unless we are playing the other board with our side cards. We can consider betting if it checks to us in late position but again we are praying for opponents to fold. Naked AJxx on KQT with a flush draw is an awful hand I’d be looking to pitch it unless I have the flush draw or I flop super strong on the other board.

Unless you’re playing against a lot of players who know what they are doing, you really shouldn’t be playing single boards. Unless you have nut hand that won’t be quartered and likely to remain nuts. And you need a 3rd player to chop their stack to make any profit.

You can play some small pots that go at least 3 ways so you might chop up the 3rd’s money.

But playing single boards is losing strategy long term.

Hands that either scoop or have the potential to scoop come up quite often and we have a *huge* skill edge. No need to min/max your play.

At table now and this hand just happened:

755 and Q T 3


3 or 4 stacks went in and two guys had 75 without a second board hand.

Because one of the 75 players started potting when they should have been just calling. And if multiple large stacks start going in, you can even consider folding 75 here depending on the player. You are going to run into 77 sometimes and 75 mostly. So you’re not profiting long term.

That's a very good attitude to have!

@Yogurt, your posts are all really good and illustrate how to play (and how not to play) bomb pots.

Someone mentioned those hands are monsters that happen infrequently. True, but they are going to represent a huge amount of your winnings. Really we should be folding a ton of bomb pots on the flop. The fact that bomb pots are going super multiway to the turn, river, and showdown illustrate how terrible people are playing.

Another example would be when one board is ATT, and another board is something else you have nothing on. You have AT. Someone pots the flop, another person calls, you call. On the turn, the nuts don't change on either board, same player pots, another person calls, and stacks are still deep enough for another pot to go in. The other board has no A or T. This might be a spot to fold. There is a very, very good chance one of them has either AT or AA. Yeah, there are only two more As in the deck and one more T. But there are still tons of 4 card combinations that have either AA or AT in them. There are still 703 combos of AAXX and 1,332 combos of ATxx (not including AATX). And how many plausible hands could they have given the action? AAXX and ATXX are super likely.

It's good to work out these things away from the table. If you're used to only counting two card combos, it's hard to get a feel for just how many four card combinations of hands beat you.

The examples given were nuts + wrap and nuts + OESD/BDFD. Monsters of that caliber where you have such a significant equity portion are going to happen very very infrequently. Sure; you can wait around for those situations and turn a profit. Just like you can wait around for AA/KK in NLHE and still make money if your opponents are sufficiently clueless. But we are almost certainly passing up +EV spots if we only continue past the flop with like The Nuts & an 8+ out draw to the nuts. There are so many complicating factors such as position (I’m much happier to play a 1-sided hand on the BTN than in EP), opponent bet size (at the higher limit games I’ve noticed that players will use smaller bet sizings), and # of players, etc.


What makes 2x board PLO complicated/interesting are the more marginal spots where maybe you flop the nut straight on one side and the NFD on the other side and the nuts change on the side where you have a straight and the flush draw bricks out, and you get in a tricky situation on the river.

I find it hard to imagine a hypothetical scenario/ second board, where I would fold ATxx on ATT when the turn is a 3 say, with the action given as pot/call/call and pot/call/?. Like you said earlier, players in these games are clueless. Your typical opponents (absent reads) will be playing 1-sided hands on the opposite board often enough so that you MUST call turn. Getting 3:1 on the call, you just need 25% average equity. Even if you know one player has AT and the other has like top set or flush on the other board, you are getting good enough pot odds to call turn. The times when one player has AAxx (which is much less likely) is balanced out by the times you are quartering the other players who are both playing the opposite board (eg if the other board is K872 you’ll run into KKxx and 88xx often enough to justify a call on the turn). a guy in one of my games committed his stack on the flop with K7xx with second nut flush draw on K87 and playing absolutely nothing on the other side. People are just clueless in these games, at least where I play. Whenever there’s a decent chance you are doing the quartering, and you are very rarely getting scooped, you have to call a PSB due to pot odds.

Time to up the turn hand requirements. I have top set and nut flush draw on turn. Two A/I, so I make the call. 4.5/1 River pairs, I have nut FH on one board. My suit comes and I have nut flush on the other. I smile inside. I lose FH to Quads and nut FL to str FL.

I need mo help.

You got it all in on the turn with the nuts on one side and the nut draw on the other? Seems like you made a good play and you got unlucky. Which happens a lot in poker.

Yeah. It just drives home the point you guys have been making about not going with a just top set on one board or just the nut flush draw on one. After reading through this thread, I would never call a big bet with just one of those hands. So easy to miss flush or for a card higher than my top set card to hit.

I avoid this nonsense whenever I can. It's better when you sit out and have someone tilt by stacking off. When they switch back to NLHE they want to get back to where they were, and that's when they'll usually compound their bad luck with mistakes.