Hi everyone,

This topic came up at my 5/T game a while ago and I've been thinking about it on and off - is hold 'em harder than PLO? You have more information in PLO since you have more cards, and less info in hold 'em, which makes me think hold 'em is harder. But then again there's more you can do with that information in PLO, thus making it more complex.

Probably many bluff opportunities in both games, being balanced is important in both, but with more cards, could ranges be wider in PLO, thus making it harder to put your opponents on a hand?

PLO is higher variance as equities run closer, so having a tough mental game is important to handle the swings. In hold 'em, you might go hours without playing a significant pot and if you lose that one, it can take a while to make it back. So patience and mental game seem important in hold 'em. These are just some preliminary thoughts, I am interested in what the community thinks as well. Is the best plo player more skilled than the best hold 'em player?

Thanks,
DT

This may sound odd to some, but NLHE allows more creative freedom than PLO does. PLO is a lot more mechanical in nature. If that makes it more or less complicated I really can't say.

Agree.

And that’s why I think play very good at nl is harder than plo.

I'm tempted to say NLHE for the simple reason that it's still the more popular game, meaning your competition at the table is more likely to have at least a decent understanding of how to play it well. Beyond that, your reasoning makes some sense. You have access to more information in PLO, which would seem to lower the skill cap a little bit. By that logic, maybe 2-7 is the hardest of the major big bet games because there are no community cards, although the draw provides some info.

I think equities generally run closer in PLO vs. NLHE, which is another indication that PLO is more luck-based with a narrower skill gap.

As I don't play much PLO, I can't offer any nuanced thoughts though.

Cash or Tournaments?

I almost exclusively play NLHE cash and I am inclined to think PLO cash is harder because it is more complicated preflop which makes things more difficult.

Personally I think NLHE tournaments are harder or more complicated than NLHE cash because of all that stack sizes you need to know. Though I have no idea how PLO MTTs work, since you can't shove when short, which is a big part of NLHE shortstacked MTT strategy.

Harder to do what? Play well, or make money? PLO is clearly harder to play well as you actually need to make tricky decisions more than once every 69 hands, whereas NLHE is harder to make money at because dickwads who don't understand the concept of shearing a sheep rather than taking a bolt gun to its face have killed the game as a source of profit

I was focusing on cash, but tourney is interesting to me as well. As are any other poker variants like mixed games or plo5.

PLO is bingo.
NLHE is a strategy and skill game.

Buy in to a PLO game and quickly notice how every other hand is multi-way all in
and if you play only the top 5% of hands and you have an unlimited bankroll,
your super tiny edge wont materialize until around 2034.

I've been told with my math background that I would crush PLO
I've played a few times and every table goes like this . . .
Those who get felted, whine about being sucked out on, never noticing their entire stack was built on suck-outs.
Then they magically return to the table minutes later reloading for $500 and are all in again within 3 hands.
One guy gets lucky two or three times in one orbit or so and has a chip stack you cant see over
You get in maybe 10 hands an hour due to 4 side pots being created by the dealer.
My local room near Chicago, started doing a PLO tourney on Wednesdays and it lasted less than a month.
No one wanted any part of it,
I joked that it would end in 3 orbits anyway.
The whole game is a joke.

And someone here will say, "you just dont get it"
Yep, me and the pros, who never play it,
despite it being such a "better, easier game" with "much bigger edges on the bad players"

Here's what PLO is if you've only played NLHE
Imagine getting dealt JJ UTG every hand and no matter how much you bet,
you get 7 others in the hand thru various calls and raises and when it gets back to you, you must go all in or fold
All preflop!

No thanks.
If you ever get to a flop with more action left, well, dont worry, you'll have to shove or fold there too.
There's almost never any action on the turn or river since everyone is all in long before

PLO should be called "push and pray"

I know, I know, I just dont get it, PLO is the future!
Its so much better than NL!
Been hearing that for 20 years.
At most 10% of the tables in the Chicago land area ever play a PLO game
We must all be so stupid.
I'd love to see the percent of tables in Vegas playing PLO in June
Bet it wont be more than 10% there either.

OK, one vote for variance and mental game aspect being harder in PLO.

I mean this with all seriousness, if you play PLO cash, you'll see that pre-flop is simple . . . you just shove.
That's what everyone else determined the best decision to be.
Heck, 3 or four people come to that conclusion literally almost every hand
So, it cant be that difficult.

Oh, you can wait for the best hands and when you get them, and there's 4 callers
you can be proud you got it in as a 25% favorite to the other four who all have 18.75% equity,
but overall you're 75% chance to lose . . . but hey, you played your "edge" perfectly! Amirite! Great game.
How long do you have to play to out run that variance?

Let the pros prove to you, it's not a game you can consistently win off of .
If it was, they'd play it.

PLO is the drug addict cousin of NLHE that no one really wants to hang out with other than for an hour or so to do something new and a little more exciting, to shake things up, but that cousin is not a long term or consistent hang, if you know what I mean

Only people that have never played PLO (or PL full stop, PLHE is much more strategic than NLHE) would ever say that

How do you shove preflop in PLO cash when it is pot limit?

I shoved pre with AKs once in a cash game and got called by another AK and 98...and 98 won! Friggin' bingo game.

PLO is more difficult for a number of reasons. One of them being I found NLHE easy to quickly build a basic winning strategy, but I'll be fkd if I know what I'm doing after a few thousand hands of PLO. Ditto PLO8. Stud and 2-7 triple draw seem straightforward.

As a PLO player I would say NLHE is much harder.

Been trying to study NLHE tournaments and it is just so god damn nuanced. Not sure about cash, but it just seems like a game that is easier to start playing and feel like a decent player while in reality sucking.
I mean everybody understands that AK is good hand and when you lose AA vs KK it is so obvious bad beat etc. Everything is seemingly much more straightfoward on the surface.

In PLO everything can seem like flipping on surface and the mistakes are kind of hidden or disguised if you do not know what you are doing.

That said, I believe that underneath the surface, NLHE is much harder/deeper game to be really good at.

I love guys who think plo is bingo so they stick to NL. I know what my hourly rate is over about 6500 hours of live plo and it's way higher than guys grinding nl and similar stakes or even the next stake up other than the truly elite players. And i assure you I'm far from great. I do handle the swings better than pretty much everyone and don't tilt.

If people wanna sit in nl games with mis regs all day on their tablets and headphones that's their prerogative.

Plo the game itself is way more fun and the people are way more fun and pleasant on average than nl players.

You're right wsop will probably be about 10 percent plo for cash games.

And even with just a 10 percent ratio,there will be more plo tables with people laughing talking drinking together than all of the NL tables combined.

I've spent so many nights in a poker room at 2 am where there is one plo game running everyone is having a great time and there are 5-10 np tables running and the rest of the room sounds like a morgue.
Even just watching the "action" at NL tables around me makes me want to drink a bottle of bleach.

You've commented on plo before several times and said similar things and frankly you just don't understand what most plo games are like nor do you have a remote clue about plo strategy.

Now are there some games where everyone is super short stacked,flops go 7 ways and it's basically bingo? Sure. But that isn't most games.


Imagine though if the game you described where you get JJ UTG every single handed existed,you always got tons of action with it and didn't want to play that table.

So, you're saying "I dont get it"

Toldja!

There's so much strategy that the best minds of all time in poker refuse to play it.
You're totally right.
Hellmuth, Doyle, Chan, Ivey, all big PLO guys, they play it all the time
Since their edge is just so massive in PLO

Spare me, it's a joke of a game.

JJ 8 handed has 18.67% equity vs 7 top quarter or so hands of PP, suited connectors and suited 1 gappers, 2 broadways etc. suited aces and suited kings, I think I'll pass on this amazing table you prefer to be at

(though you do make some great points about the PLO tables being more fun, but I mean, that's because youre sitting with a bunch of extreme degens! Of course it's more fun, but I'd rather be able to make some decisions besides "shove or fold pre" every hand.)

And in Chicago, at 1-2 PLO $500 max, they shove their entire $500 buy in constantly, there is absolutely no "play"
The list of names gets run thru so fast.
Im happy for you and your results though.

I dont root against anyone

troll is blocked

By the time it gets back to you, (and it always gets back to you) the pot has grown to the point in order to "call" you have to shove.

Go sit at a table and see for yourself.

You said vs 7 hands every time.
So now you're changing it to all 7 hands are top 25 percent hands.

I was in Chicago a few months ago and played there for a few days.
I wish that game was in the lobby of my building.those people are utterly atrocious.

You can't find a nl game in the country with a 500 dollar buy in that you can beat for even half of what a good plo player can beat that 1/2 plo game for.

Lower stakes games do go through bingo periods at times. But

1)most 5/5 games people are deep

2) those periods last a little while when people are shorter stacked. Then you're playing with monkeys sitting 2000 deep in a 1/2/5 game.

I do love when I see nl grinders trying to convert,not being able to deal with the swings and going back to 2 card dirt.

The reality is that PLO is bingo. Or if that is too harsh I'll compare it to a play chip game online. Shove, shove, shove and if one loses just buy in again. Yes, no limit can be boring. Often times those tables are quiet while at the same time the PLO tables are full of screaming and laughter. So what? At every level NL requires at least a little bit of thought. PLO simply requires a deep pocket.

Its not as black and white as hard vs easy and depends on the person more than anything. PLO it's more rare to bluff with nothing unless you are doing it on the river when holdem you can be bluffing pre and all 3 streets. If you aren't a big bluffer, and the vast majority of live NL players aren't, then holdem should be the harder game for that majority because most hands you are semi bluffing in PLO still easily have 30% or more equity and you get these kinds of draws like 20%~ of flops. If you are a good studied player its the reverse and holdem should be the easier game.

I am playing PLO and NLHE now and if you can find the right PLO game it can be 10x juicier than any holdem game you'll play all year. Deep stacked where people don't run away at 200bb's being the biggest factor. Deep stacked holdem I find a majority tighten up too much where you can't hide as easily in PLO.

Played probably 15,000 hours of NL live and like 2,000 PLO live

In general I think NL is "Harder" because there's more decision points, and you have to play turns and rivers. In my experience, live PLO is so shallow that you either get it in pre and do a showdown or you get it in on the flop.

I mean people play 1/2/5 PLO with mandatory $10 straddles with $100 or $200, and sure they'll be people with 3K stacks, but it's usually irrelevant.

It's limp limp limp limp, $70, call, call, shove $200, re-pot and we go 4 ways see who wins.

People with $700 stacks are putting in $50 pre 5 ways, someone flops middle set someone flops a wrap with backdoors all in...

I like playing both, and obviously it depends on the level you're playing. But like 1/2 or 1/3NL you can play with almost 0 variance if you're good. You almost have to try not to win

NLHE.