Quote:
Originally Posted by Kebabkungen
People only think PLO takes more skill because they have to think more for themselves without as much material out there as NL. So they feel that its harder to grasp. It isnt.
Once you play PLO full ring at a high level where the other players are also playing well you realize its just bingo. Your edges in big pots are always small even though the other players play bad, you all just sit waiting for that good preflop hand to hit that one flop and even when you do hit you get it in against a 40% EV and if you lose that pot your entire session is ****ed. Its funny watching nosebleed highlights of PLO online - the pots are literally the same as my low stakes home game. Everyone waiting for the fish to get to the flop with a mediocre hand and then get it in against them with a slightly dominating range.
So many spots in PLO play themselves once you have decent pre flop ranges. Its just math problems. NLHE has much more of the "play the player" aspect which adds another layer of skill.
HU PLO actually takes skill because your range is wide enough that you need to make actual decisions post flop. Full ring PLO is a joke.
I agree with you that you can auto-pilot many spots in PLO but you are massively underestimating a lot of other areas of the game.
Here are a few bullet pointed below and all of them require a specific set of skills that NLHE players can't immediately transition into and a that a lot of NLHE players don't have the aptitude
to transition to, because their ability is strong in learning methods, systems, rules, dos and don't, so like learning a new language, and a language that has lots of numbers
in it text and its text books, but one that is only partly a math based language.
Example in NLHE: "We have more 5x in our range having defended in the BB against a min raise from the button."
That is not a math based thing, it is a
learning based thing that the button's opening range of hands contains less 5x than the BB's defending range.
So here are some PLO specific skills you need to play it to a high level:
* The importance of blockers and reverse blockers in a lot of decision making, mainly OTF and OTR.
* Putting opponents on ranges.
* Balancing your own ranges.
* Dead money considerations pre.
* Protection considerations pre (sometimes leading to post flop protection too)
* How to controlled aggression spin up a small stack. (There are skilful best chance of succeeding ways of doing this)
* River value betting and sizing. Including thin value betting, which is a very difficult skill to master in PLO.
* How to most effectively steal opponents' equity.
* How to avoid having you own equity stolen by opponents.
* Buy in strategy (extremely important in PLO cash games)
* SPR OTF calculations and working this out in advance, e.g. pre flop. (this is even more important, in fact crucial in PLO MTTs when stacks get shallow.)
* Player profiling and tendencies. This is important because a) some players have very specific tendencies and b) some spots post flop can be played more than one correct way.
* Being able to calculate equities post flop. The majority of NLHE players in my experience are not naturally gifted at math, so will struggle with this.
* C betting the flop, picking up equity so barrelling the turn, following through on the river if hitting and knowing on which rivers to follow through when you miss.
This is the same barrelling concept as used in NLHE when raising or betting the flop with only BD equity, but is more mathematically complex in PLO.
* Hand selection. Yes there some charts/tools to help with this online, if within the rules. But what about live? Live, you have to know which hands play well
HU, which play well multi way, and in which position and against which stack sizes, and be aware of the remaining action pre flop. There can be a lot of calculations.
There are probably another 10 bullet points if I had more time to think of them.
Probably the answer is that NLHE and PLO are as hard as each other, but they are two completely different games and the amount of overlap between them is very small.