Hero 2/2 PLO live ~$5100
Half the table is fairly deep. Hero and MP are the deepest with MP covering hero. The table is fairly loose.

KJssQ9o no clubs in LP

Btn straddle $5

Few limps, hero raise $30, 3 calls

Flop ($120) KT9cch
Checks to hero, hero bets $120, EP and MP call

Turn ($480) 6s
Checks to hero, hero bets $400, MP calls

River ($1280) 8h
MP checks, hero?

I know without potting the turn I am technically leaving money on the table. Not sure if that is the play or not. There are a few reasons why I didn't pot the turn (and this might sound stupid since it's anecdotal evidence).

Something I've noticed in live play is when a player pots the flop and turn when there's a possibility of them holding the current nuts (like QJ for example here), a lot of players will see that as extreme strength and are more inclined to fold. I will say as well it's very likely they have it, especially since they are usually potting it into multiple players. The general low stakes live population seems to just pot pot pot if they have it and it's super exploitable.

Also if they don't keep good track of the pot and you bet a little less than pot, it feels to me they are more inclined to call because they think if you're not potting it, there is a possibility you might not have it. They also might think they are getting much better odds to call with draws but in reality it's still a bad call. I'm also blocking some sets and boat outs and there's no backdoor flush draw.

Table dynamic and player history are huge when getting value in PLO. If your opponents actually pay attention to 'your' betting patterns then you can use them to your advantage.

I'm not a huge 'pot' fan and rarely even say the word .. I just put out chips since I typically know what it is anyway.

I would/can put out just 1.25-1.5 of the Turn bet in these bet-bet-bet spots. If V 'know' that there is a bluffing frequency then they must defend some of the time .. I'll even put out just 100 for some V knowing I have the rep to do this with weak 2-pr combos as bluff/blocker and they have to defend that sizing.

I've even got some V who think that because I don't ever say Pot that it's gotta be a bluff when I do.

As in NL .. you just can't have betting patterns. GL

I'm a bit busy this week, but you have posted some awesome hands with a lot to think about so I thought I would address a part of this hand.

#1 A long time ago I use to never bet pot on the river if I had the nuts because I thought no one would call. I thought I had to bet less to incentive them to call. All I was actually doing was cutting my win rate. You have to win a lot when you win to make up for the large number of times you burn through chips on your non-winning hands. I suggest simply being consistent with your bet sizing. For example, have two river sizing choices of 33% pot and 100% pot. Or have three river sizing choices of 33% pot, 50% pot and 100% pot. The sizing are far enough apart that your instincts should help guide you. In this hand you are trying to convince yourself to bet a little bit less than pot to try and get a call (you might actually introduce a tell by doing that stuff). But, if you were forced to decide here between 50% pot or 100% pot that huge gap would probably tell you that you missing out of on a lot of money under betting. Your game might be different, but I suggest you have consistent bet sizing you always use that are far enough apart and you stick to them instead of constantly trying to convince yourself to slightly deviate from them. My win rate sky rocketed when I stopped being afraid to bet 100% pot on the river with the nuts, players still called.

# 2 Not all boards are created equal. A flop that has a pair or flush clears out a lot of player before you ever get to river. This isn't true for the flops that have a straight. A flop straight will have people staying with a set, two pair, flush draw, higher straight draw, etc. Huge difference in board responses by your opponents. If there was ever a board in live poker to bet pot, pot, pot then I think it would be the straight board where more than one straight is possible. The turn on this hand created more straight opportunities for your to decide to stay with their non-nut straight and the river created even more non-straight opportunities. I say bet pot on river board in which you have the straight and there are more than one straight possible. Also a funny thing is in your description of it might be exploitable in you game if you go pot, pot on flop and turn and therefore you went pot, less than pot. You might have actually done it in the wrong order. You could have bet 75% pot on the flop and 100% pot on the turn. Ta da. You are no longer betting pot, pot.

Geeez bro, I am enjoying your threads. A lot of stuff to think about on every one of these live hands you have posted and people replying are only scratching the surface. I am busy as **** this week and might not be able to post much. But I appreciate you.

Very difficult to go bet-bet-bet and get called when the nuts doesn't change in PLO. While I can relate to the points above in my Reg heavy world I have to tease my bets based on who I arrive to the River against.

Yes .. this forum has taken off as of late and I say thanks .. GL

I do pot or bet close to it each street at times but it depends on my holdings and the board. Like if my hand is more disguised and/or can get called by many other hands. This could be wrong though. For example..

For this hand the way I see it: Here I have no clubs. I block no fds. When the flush bricks out, there's more of a chance I'm against a bricked fd. So getting value I feel I need to bet less than pot if I can even get any at all. I pot the flop to charge draws the max, then bet turn a little smaller to incentivize them to call with bad odds and try to give off the image that I don't want to pot it even though it was still a large bet. This sets up the river for a bet when it bricks to look for a crying call.

Im also holding 2 pair so I'm blocking other holdings (sets, rundowns, gappers, etc) that might look me up and/or could have a lower straight and block the nuts (J987, JT97, KQ87, T987, 9987 etc). I can't think of much that will want to call me on the river besides one of the lower straights. Could they call a pot bet? Possibly. But betting basically pot all 3 streets into multiple players shows no fear of QJ. 87XX might not even want to call since J7XX/QJXX are possible.

So going back to the first part, if I bet 50% here. MP might be thinking "he pot the flop.. then didn't pot the turn.. now he's only betting 50% the pot? If he has QJ why isn't he trying to bet more? My 78XX might be good.. did he miss his flush and he's scared to pot as a bluff?" otherwise he's just folding every bricked fd or other hand he has to any size bet anyway.

I like half pot. I think it’s the best sizing to get a crying call from like bottom set with some straight blockers or some other hand that was high equity on earlier streets and bricked but created some emotional attachment for the player. Let him find a crying call with some hand that has a few blockers.

I'm sitting here trying to come up with hands that you have as bluffs in this spot and it's not easy. This board just hit everything in his range as well except the flush draw. I'm going to sort of ramble here because it's hard to create a range here.

So, let's say you have AQcc (Kxhh, 78hh), or AJcc K6hh, or basically a nut flush draw you pounded but missed. What are you betting here?

What about KK?

What about AJcc 78hh or some variation of non-nut straight?

Here is an interesting hand - AKQT... top two... we have so few bluffs in this spot top two might be a bluff candidate.

I am in the bet pot camp and I'd bet pot with missed flush draws with a Q blocker. Maybe I'm half pot with J7 hands as well as top set and maybe top two pair + Q blocker.

Would you say betting half pot is exploitative due to your reasoning here?

Preflop in limp heavy game i don't think that ISO is mandatory. I would overlimp without JT. As played river Every size has some merits, from 1/3, 1/2, 3/4 and pot. I choose POT.

The only real bluffs I can see are something with QQ or JJ in them that don't include the nut flush draw. We don't want to bluff if we have Ac. I want to fold out any nut flush draw hand that missed but could still have me beat.

I'm just giving up if I missed my flush with Ac. This board is too dynamic to bluff with that type of hand. If I have Ac and missed that leaves my opponent with more made hands that can call. I'm just accepting that I likely won't win this pot and I'm giving up.

Anything else like KK, 78, top 2, etc I'm just going to showdown. If I bet I'm probably only getting called by better or folding out missed flushes.

So I'll check my missed nfd, sets, lowest straight, 2 pairs, and bet my QJ, J7, and JJ or QQ that don't have much showdown value.

This is what I was thinking. Betting pot looks insanely strong since we would be triple barreling, but betting half pot seems exploitative. We probably aren't betting the only couple of bluffs we likely have (JJXX/QQXX) with a half pot sizing as well. We want to pot those for the most fold equity.

It's hard to get a call from weaker hands with this runout. It makes sense to want to bet smaller than pot for a crying call. I can only see us getting called by maybe J7 if we pot and there are so few holdings that made it to the river with that. Plus we block it. There's not even a lower straight with a J blocker that can call. Maybe something like 78 with a Q blocker I guess but they still lose to J7.

If we pot our bluffs and bet half pot with value, it's exploitable.

I suspect this is very imbalanced and villain can fold 100% of his hands (he doesn't have QJ). I'm not saying this isn't what I'd do as well, but I think it's wrong - it is hard to find bluff hands here. There likely are not many QQ / JJ combo's in your triple barrelling range here but I haven't checked that.

I'm not sure it is. J7, sets, top two all have tough decisions here when you bet. That's all that you are really targetting with a bet at this point. This is why I'm squarely in the bet pot camp.

I block 2 of the flopped sets, one being top set. Reducing set combos left from 9 to 5. KK is not in MP's range because I know he raises that. So let's reduce that to 4 sets. There should be no turned or rivered sets. I also block some top 2 and other 2 pairs. I block J7 and there shouldn't be many J7 hands that call flop and turn to make it to the river anyway.

If I pot the river, do you really see TT calling? They lose to KK, 78, J7, QJ which equates to a ton of combos with 2 of those hands being possible for me to have on the flop.. on top of the fact I bet the flop and turn big multiway. With the straddle, him calling a river pot bet is essentially calling 256bb with the 5th nuts. The last combo of 99 is the 6th nuts. Both of those calls are unlikely to happen and are only really bluff catchers at this point. So if you know a player that would call with KT here (which again we block a good bit of) then that's just madness. What would they put me on that they think 2 pair beats when I barrel 3 streets with 2 of them being multiway? A bricked AXcc is probably the only hand they can beat that they could see me possibly do this with. I don't even block the flush draw so it's more likely they have clubs. The odds of them having a calling hand in general are very low.. so a hand that calls pot is even lower.

The only nfd I can see barreling this river when it misses is AQQXcc or AJJXcc. Otherwise I'm not sure what he's calling with that will fold to a river pot bet. Without the blockers Ac is a bad card to have on this river. It also makes it possible he has QJ with no redraw and doesn't want to bloat the pot. Though he might raise the turn with that or just flat then lead river. Unless he thinks I'll triple barrel bluff since he doesn't have the clubs.

It's possible I may also bet/fold some other hands like KK or 78 since I'm IP but idk. I'm likely not potting them though and I don't think I'm potting 78 on the flop when a J just brings better straights. So that brings the issue of what hands do I pot besides bluffs.

In this specific hand I think blocking so many rundowns/gappers that could make a straight, hands with sets and unblocking the nfd/clubs is what makes getting a call with a pot bet difficult. With just QJ I could be more inclined to bet pot or close to it. We just block so many hands to get value from and unblock so many hands that missed.

That's not how combos work in Omaha. I disagree that all KK hands are raising, but c'est la vie.

I don't know what to say. You've reduced his holdings to what exactly? You have basically reduced his calling handas to zero, which is fine, but here's the math. The breakeven point between betting pot here and betting half pot is that you need him to call the half pot bet twice as often as the pot bet. Is he calling TT for half / full? I think it's very similar (close to zero). I think J7 is close for both (100% at half pot, 80-100% at full pot), 78 (dunno... but maybe it's twice as likely here).

I agree not many J7 combos, but that doesn't matter really. What matters is, with the range he has what is going to call a bet at all and how much does the size of our bet impact that decision. Busted flush draws fold to any bet so they don't matter here. The only hands that will call a bet are sets and straights and for the right size two pair. You could probably spend a bunch of time on this and figure out how often each of these are in his range on the river, make a judgement call about how often each will call a various bet, and then figure out the optimal bet size.

So, if you just want a call, any call, yeah, you can bet like 1/10th pot and get looked up by TT but I don't think that is the max EV play here.

Also, based on everything you said I suspect there is a strong argument to be made for us ripping KT here.

edit: I see I missed a reply, which is fine, but I wanted to be clear. I agree betting less than pot might be best here - it's tough to know without doing the combinatoric analysis, but I only have two sized on the river - 1/2 or full and with the absolute nuts I like to bet full and then try and ensure I have enough bluffs to make it tough on villain. That's how I think about these spots and above I've playing a bit of devils advocate.

I am 100% sure that this player raises KK pre whether its AKKQds or KK27r. Whether he 3bets all KK, idk. I don't understand what you mean that's not how combos work in Omaha? Unless you mean since he could have many different 99XX.

That's the point I was trying to make. I don't think many hands will call a pot sized bet, but there are more that might call a half pot bet. For a 2/2 game this pot is already pretty big. I'm trying to figure out the highest EV line based on what we hold and what he could be holding. If we pot and he only calls 1 out of 5 times, but he calls 4 out of 5 times to a half pot bet, the half pot bet is better. Problem is when it comes to value/bluff hands it's just unbalanced so it doesn't seem "right". So I see what you're saying about based on what I'm saying that there's an argument for ripping KT.

Well, it's an exercise in propokertools to do the work.

Figure out a hand class: QJ
Figure out the starting range: 15%-45%!AA!KK might work out ok and given the board there are 2922 hands

J7: 2548 (no QJ as we don't want to double count)
78: 2846 (no QJ or J7)

Need to do additional work to get a ratio of hands that might call the flop bet but get there like this... we can also look at KT combos
KT = 15%-45%!AA!KK:KT!(QJ, J7, 78, TT, 99) = 1593
TT = 1125 edit: (And this is what I mean about combos not working the way you said before - there are an absolute ***** ton of TT combos)

and continue on throughout all the hands making sure we don't double count then you can simply discount them with your intuition (he wouldn't play TT this way, maybe only 50% of the time... or whatever your read is)

then you can do the calculation after

I might do this later today but I'm going into a series of meetings for work so probably won't. It wouldn't take long - maybe 30 minutes or so.

Some examples if you aren't familiar with the tool

Ohh cool thank you I'll have to check that out when I get home. I knew it wasn't exactly 4 combos of set hands he's playing. Idk how to explain it or if the math is wrong but I meant him going from 9 possible sets to 4 possible sets takes away 55% or so of possible hands that he might continue with.

I'm guessing that tool is free?

This tool is free yes, and I think it's fantastic.

Wrt the sets, I understand your logic, but until you see the number of combos (side cards) it's hard to conceptualize how different countining combos in Omaha is than it is in Holdem.

For example, let's put KK back into his range... there are only 55 combos of KK (no straight) in that range I gave you whereas there are 1125 combos of TT (no straight).

Ok, I did the work:

Here is how I broke down J7, 78 and KT


edit: note on the KT... 797 is the number of combos for the range shown, 780 is the total combos of KT minus the 797 and the final value I gave to KT was all of hte 797 and 50% of the 780 to get 1187 combos, or 75% of the time he has KT he shows up to the river.

What this means is that I make sure I'm not double counting QJ with J7 or 78, etc and then I look at J7 and ask what would he need to have in his hand to get to the river and I say he needs: cc, 8, K, T, or a 9 - so if he has a pair or clubs to go with his J7 he gets to the turn and if he gets to the turn he gets to the river.

I do something similar to 78 and also KT. For TT and 99 I say he jsut gets to the river always. These are the weight columns in the next image. B100 and B50 are how often I said he would call that size bet with that holding. So for J7 I say he calls 70% of the time we bet 100 whereas he calls 100% if we bet 50 (half pot). You can tweak these numbers for sure.

Under the assumptions presented the final ev of B100 is 0.29 units of pot and B50 has an ev of 0.2389 units of pot and pot is $1280 so it's worth $372 to bet pot and $306 to bet half pot.

I'm not convinced this is the final answer as you can tweak these numbers, but I think this provides a framework to answer the question.

For the sake of completeness I did run it again with adjusted calling frequencies and got this result:


Which would indicate B50 is slightly higher EV.

The key to this though, I think, is what we need to adjust in our strategy to make him NEED to call higher with J7 and I think that means bluffing more and I think the obvious candidate is KT, but I welcome conversation on this point.

Wow this is great! Thank you so much this is super helpful and amazing work. I'm going to have to learn to use that tool and excel to study spots like this. This definitely puts some things into perspective.

My question now is, why KT as a bluff? If we know he won't likely call a river bet with it, isn't this a hand that we want him to have when we bluff? Wouldn't we prefer to do this with a different hand that contains a Q, J, or 7 and worse showdown value? I'm not sure I take this flop and turn line with KT unless it has other properties. If we are turning KT into a bluff, what hands do we check back on the river? He's going to show up to the river sometimes with a missed nfd that includes no pair up to 2 pair as well.

I only suggest it as I can’t see what else we have for the bottom of our range.

Yes exactly.

But even in theory if you were to go just half pot with your range on the river that’s not that bad. As we lack a lot of natural bluffs in the spot, we really are quite value heavy and the bluffs we do have are really unblocking folds.

It’s a function of the fact that this went four way to the flop and you cbet into four people. Because of the fishy dynamics of this game you’re just heavily weighted towards QJ (rarely check back) and you can only bet a few very good blocker/combo draws like AQQ/KQQ/AJJ mostly with clubs. So you really just are very value heavy here so even if you fed these ranges into a solver I wouldn’t be shocked if it sizes down a bit.

So in these kind of ranges it is important to differentiate this from a hu pot where the normal sizing would be to just pot all QJ otr. This situation is quite different because it’s 4way on the flop which really strengthens and condenses the ranges. I’m not sure pot is a bad size but I’m not convinced it would necessarily be the standard size in such a spot.