two more perspectives that are imo worth considering:
- PLO has a lot more "non-decisions" than NLHE, even though you play more hands preflop, you will still a ton of very trivial, pure bets or checks
- PLO seems to have far less mixed decisions, in fact, I remember JNandez arguing that he believes that fully solved PLO would not have any mixed decisions (and that's extremely unlikely to be true for NLHE). Incorporating mixed decisions into a coherent strategy is veeery hard for human minds

so, yeah, given above 2 arguments I'd go with NLHE, but there are some good arguments on the side of PLO, with the simpliest one being the fact that its game tree is just larger

I think this question can be answered two different ways. Are we talking in theory or in practice? Theoretically, I think NL is a tougher game to master and become a top reg, but probably easier to execute a mediocre strategy in practice as a rec or weak reg. Plo is the opposite. FWIW, I've been playing almost exclusively PLO for about 5 years with about 10 years of NL experience prior.

NLHE is a game of understanding frequencies
PLO is a game of understanding equities.

Main difference is with how you execute mixed strategies. With NLHE you are just using a RNG to decide what to do in specific spots when playing a mixed strategy with the same hand category. With PLO you learn heuristics to identify how to use partial hand components to play a mixed stategy with hands in the same category in spots.

I will say I think playing uber deep in holdem is more complicated than in omaha.

Executive mixed strategies in PLO feels way more naturally intuitive which is why i prefer the game.

probably 95 percent of blackjack players don't even play basic strategy. similarly most 1/2 players still open limp most of their hands. someone absolutely can beat 1/2 nl live with a cookie cutter strategy. now they won't beat it for much, but they can beat it for a small rate as a profitable side hobby. same goes for low stakes plo.i've seen plenty of guys who can beat 1/2 with a 5 bring in plo for small win rates and will never play 5/5 because they would get picked apart. bc they're beating the equivalent of the 95 percent of people who wouldn't play basic strategy in bj.

if you've watch poker nomad vlogs he beats dirt stakes nl for somewhere b/w 10-15 bucks an hour. he clearly isn't good at poker, is a super nit, has swings so small they're utterly comical- but he can still win for that small rate with a cookie cutter strategy.

The "newer" bluff spots in holdem were found in PLO first. Bluffing with 3 pair on the river, bluffing with trips that block full houses. What I am noticing is that live PLO players are more face up the way they play which is why its so important to be playing a game where you can PSB it on the river. PLO players are also atrocious at heads up but its harder to find or create these spots at a 9 handed live table. You can remove some of the rng elements but of course that requires you to play less hands.

A long way from mastering either, but I always found Omaha way easier, at least in low-mid stakes ring games. I feel like it's easier to just follow a tight strategy and find some bluffing spots here and there. For me at least Hold'em requires a lot more less intuitive moves, but could be just a function of the average skill level of player pools. Also the possibility of overbetting adds a lot of complexity.

Played Heads Up or with deep stacks, they're probably about equal.

Totally agree with all of the above, and you put it far more eloquently than my, "PLO is a natural ability game, NLHE is a learning game.".

An elite player has a bigger edge in Holdem NL than in PLO - that's all there is to it.

I very much disagree with this. Im reasonably confident significantly higher winrates are possible in PLO compared to NLHE. The main downside would be less hands per hour.

I think what happens is in PLO your edge comes from people's willingness to play dominated draws. In holdem if you hit your set with 55 you're probably getting it allin no matter what and not even considering a better hand is out there, since the dynamic between 2 aggressive players is usually going to be big hand vs little hand. But in PLO getting it allin even HU with a middle set would be suicide, and yet live players will do this over and over again. 2 pair probably being the most common RIO spot they find themselves in. So while edges might be closer preflop due to raw hand value, postflop they are often drawing stone dead and dont even realize it.

When it comes to PLO i'd say the biggest turn on for me was simply being able to realize your equity. Most players are never bluffing, just outdrawing each other and I'm fine with that. I hate 3betting AKo and then someone donkbets a Q85 board and I'm just like "wtf do you have?" and feel I have to just give up equity, be dumb and try to bluff a station, or become the station and pay him off with a float. In PLO you cant really donkbet some bullshit bottom pair to "see where you're at". As mentioned you can kinda place faceup and thats ok, because faceup still entails a myriad of possible hands. Essentially it's very hard to pure bluff at PLO so you always stand a reasonable chance of having all 3 streets to make your hand.

I played both games a lot:

PLO is the game where every fish can win in live games as you will never play so much hands that variance does not matter anymore - > live PLO is bingo for the fishes
NLHE is the game where the best players win longtime

I am a PLO player for a life now but I am not sure which was the correct answer so I ve asked chatGPT. Here is the answer:

https://gyazo.com/ce09dfa384cf6612f0a90d90571842f1

Please reread this. Do you see how wrong it is? How can you think that if you get to play AA allin preflop against four others you are losing? Sure, let's pretend you are now down to 45% chance of winning (you are actually still over 50%). But, since you will win back 5x what you put into the pot, it is hugely +EV. This should be a dream scenario.

Even in your PLO scenario, where you win 25% of a five way pot, you are still hugely +EV. If you invest 1000 into this pot, and win 25%, your EV is 1250. If you can do that just four times per hour in this game, your win rate is $1000/hour. How is that not a great thing for you??

Your mathematical fact is just blatantly wrong. This is probably why you just don't get it. I suspect the real issue is emotional. You can't handle even short losing streaks, and your variance is lower in NLH, so you like it better. But to launch into a soliloquy about how right you are, even though you know everyone will disagree with you shows some real cognitive dissonance. You need to understand you are just plain wrong. Or, move on and never talk about PLO ever again.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I almost pointed out the same thing you did Greg but deleted it and said to myself “why bother”?

Highlighted above is forum culture in general and as time goes on its getting harder to have adult conversations online.

Whenever i read about what the average person thinks about PLO, I’m reminded of just how +EV it was to make the switch.

This applies to our culture in general. It’s increasingly difficult to have conversations, if said conservations require an update of previously held positions.

It is hard to have one of the worst takes in while on 2+2, but you certainly managed that lol. Your fundamental understanding of PLO is so poor, off base, and childish, that nothing else you post can be taken seriously. The players you list do play PLO as most of them played mixed games as well, but they don't play a significant amount of PLO in general because they don't have anywhere near the edge in PLO as they do in NLHE. They haven't put in the time needed in PLO. News flash skippy, if they thought they had more of an edge in PLO, they would all be playing PLO over NLHE for the most part. It is about what is most profitable for them in the long run, along with the enjoyment factor of course, not because they don't know and respect PLO.

As to the question, I wouldn't say one is harder then the other. They each have their own set of unique challenges, strategies, and skill sets needed to play as optimally as possible.

+1 to all of this
He knows less than nothing about PLO.

To top it off he uses Helmuth Chan Ivey and Doyle as reasons you shouldn't play PLO bc they don't play it.

That is comical logic.
Helmuth is an awful cash game player.
Ivey and Doyle also play almost no NL. They play huge mix games that may occasionally have a round of nl (or plo) with an extremely small cap.
Chan is a collasal nit who wouldn't beat any public NL games at decent stakes these days for anything worth playing for. Whether he plays NL or PLO has no effect on me. Oh and he also plays plo in houston.


Even if they all only played nl imagine picking which games to play based on what people playing way bigger than you chose to play. "well doyle plays nl where people win or loses houses in one day so I'll just go ahead and torture myself and play nl, where I'll be bored out of my mind and make way less money" Great logic there.

I think what BSumner forgot to do was look at his opponents equity in a 4 way allin vs AA. I'll take 45% to win vs everyone else at less than 10% all day every day.

He also acts like every plo game is just 4-5 way all ins preflop.

While you still have a small edge in games like that getting in good double suited aces pre for example, your edge is much bigger in deeper games where people make massive mistakes postflop.

Really he just shouldn't comment on a game strategically that he has no understand of.

To bring it back to the question at hand - seems the complaint about PLO from BSumner is that equities run too close together and you lose more often, since the best hands are not that much better than four (or five/six) random cards. That seems like an argument in favor of PLO being the more challenging variant because you are pushing smaller edges.

This is an interesting thread. To say something different, I think that in the mental aspect PLO is more challenging. And not just for beginners. It's hard to lose nuts on the flop often in a session, and I see a lot more people tilted in PLO than in HE. Frustration and despair run free at the PLO tables.

The mental aspect is different. In holdem you're less likely to lose to a cooler, but you're more likely to be card dead for an extended spell. For some people maintaining discipline to fold your ATo to a 3-bet when you haven't had a playable hand in half an hour is just as hard as keeping your cool after losing to set over set.

This is an excellent point. You can flop the nut straight in PLO, and be correct to fold, depending upon the action and the situation. Such a thought is essentially insane for NLH.

And to get allin and lose in such spots can massively tilt players. I lost a hand last night where I got it in with the nut straight and top set on the turn. My opponent had the same straight with a flush draw. He hit his redraw, I did not, I got felted. Many players would go off the rails if that happened to them.

Thanks, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I was able to intuitively figure out how to beat NLHE, but had to get coaching and watch a bunch of content to beat PLO at lower stakes on softer sites

So for me PLO is definitely harder. I think it mostly comes down to the mental aspects, but also there are some unintuitive standard floats and bluffs coming from NLHE