hello. sorry about my broken english because english isnt my first language.

anyway I'm still beginner at PLO.

I have a question about preflop raise range. (all 6max and micro stakes PLO
0.01/0.02~0.05/0.10 )

(1) Hero in UTG dealt As8c8s6d (ace suited + pair ) do u raise it? or fold?
(2) Hero in MP dealt Td9s9c7h ( small pair 99 + 3 card connected with one gap ) do u raise it? or fold?
(3) Hero in MP dealt TdTsAd3c (ace suited + pair) do u raise it? or fold?

1) Trivial ,
2) fold
3) it makes a difference if you pair comflicts with your fd,, Ad3dTcTh is better. MP = UTG+1?

Table dynamics are important in opening, on passive tables I feel alot more comfortable opening these hands, but in aggro tables then I limp or fold more often.

thx u for advise. yes MP(middle position = UTG+1 in 6max)

so if 1) is trivial. Then if it is Ac8s8d4c (ace suited and pair are seperated) it's obvious raise hand?

3) so if pair and ace suited isnt seperate it's marginal hand to raise?
then how about JcJdAc3s ? still marginal?

1) Fold. Weak hand to play UTG, when you can expect to get action from players behind. You dominate few flops that you want to continue on with.

2) Fold. Limp if the players behind you never raise and you feel like playing a flop.

3) Fold. Same as hand 1.

All of these hands play poorly out of position. Unless you have very tight tables, I'm not willing to invest too much with them. Put these hands in the cutoff or button, I probably raise them. Position is key, when playing weak, gapped hands, that have to flop specific boards.

If you're a beginner, than stick to more of the premium hands and focus on position. Once you get better at playing out of position, interpreting boards and play in general, you can open your range a bit to include the occasional questionable hand, from a questionable position

then what about if change hand value little bit better?
(1) Hero in UTG dealt As8c8h6s (ace suited + pair is seperated )
(2) Hero in MP dealt Td9s9c7s ( small pair 99 + 3 card connected with one gap + one suited)
(3) Hero in MP dealt TdTsAc3c (ace suited + pair is seperated)

still (1),(2),(3) all fold do u think?

Suited aces are great, but once again your position is still bad, for hands that have to flop specific cards in order to be great.

As I stated, since you are a beginner, stick to the better hands to play from UTG and EP until you get comfortable with board textures and playing out of position.

Do some searching on the forum for starting hands and work off of those. Lots of good resources here on hand selection from various positions.

A886ss is better than A884ss

Ac3cJJ > AcJcJ3

I don't find my opening range affected to much by this difference, but I am more likely to complete with the A3ccJJ than AJccJ3. NFD+ set is more likely, set + BDFD mroe liekly. it all adds up int he long run.

The problem with T997 is that your cards intefere with each other and it's hard to get more than 1 piece of texture ownership. I avoid mid pairs that are in rundown, I'd rather have a rundown than a paired rundown. When you are pretty deep though then value starts increasing exponentially because although it's rare when you do flop more than 1 texture hit and are sharing the deck with someone you will have them super super crushed.

Suggest you read some PLO books.

Hey DingusEgg....great advice as usual. I have a question though. Since the poster is new to the game, won't the regs in the game catch on that he's only playing premiums and exploit that weakness? The reason why I asked was that when i raised with premium hands and the flop missed my perceived range, opponents knew they could call my c-bet or check raise me at will.

For the original poster, here's a link that's help me out a bunch. It's not set in stone that you play directly like this. It's only a foundation.

There are many capable players at the lower stakes, but I don't give too much credit to being exploited enough to make playing only better hands as -EV when you're just learning.

The point of playing premium hands when you start out, is to develop a fundamental understanding of what draws are the best, when you should push, when you should call and when you need to fold. Since there are so many nuances to playing Omaha proficiently, removing the uncertainty of less than premium holdings from your starting requirements, removes an element of difficulty for a beginner.

Playing Omaha as a LAG is a strategy that takes time to develop. If you don't take the time to gain a grasp of the core principles and fundamentals of the game, you're just spewing money for the sake of being loose.

Learn the basics, learn what good hands are, what good draws are, and then gradually modify your game to suit a style of play you are comfortable with.

Definitely not saying that playing only premium hands is -EV at those stakes especially if are just learning. If anything, it makes you play less hands.

How do you develop a LAG style in Omaha? How can you tell the difference between being a LAG and a maniac especially at those stakes where guys tend to gamble more? I guess the reason I'm asking if the poster is playing the prescribed style and is being 3bet constantly, how do they combat that problem?

That is an excellent question.

I don't think I am qualified to answer that question, as I am a self proclaimed passive aggressive player. I focus more on position and outplaying people post flop as opposed to 3 betting and PF aggression. Not for everyone, but works well for me.

And that's the thing I found out firsthand. It's hard to play an opponent post flop when they could be representing any 4 cards preflop. It's like you're damned if you do only play premiums in position and damned if you don't. Like yourself, I'm a bit passive aggressive. But depending on table dynamics, I have to be ultra aggressive too.

You do realize that passive and aggressive are pretty exclusive terms.

accepting or allowing what happens or what others do, without active response or resistance.

ready or likely to attack or confront

A good LAG widens his ranges as he can get positive gradient out of more hands (only implied however - he can bully correctly). It's a relative term though, and just one cosntructed through poker culture. LAG is what you become after you are TAG. Or TAG can be Helmuth style top ten hands in nlhe. Depends on the person, who the **** knows. Maniacs are either drunk russians or people experimenting/trying to progress. I see no reason why a maniac can't be good at poker, they just need another little disorder to balance it out - a bit of OCD.

So a good LAG is just a person who used to be a TAG, understood the power of position and learned to widen their ranges to suit the table dynamics? Sorry if the question sounds a bit lame...just trying to get a better understanding between the two.

It's a constructed and relative term. So it means something very different from person to person, as people have different averages.

Tight can mean tight in hand selection, but you can be tight in other selections than just hand rank. I'm probably pretty loose, but to me I'm tight. For simplicity sake, when talking about LAG and TAG I would say TAG is the cap at which your hot/cold equity is break even and not playing wider than... LAG is playing as the underdog because you can catch up through better optimizations , you are loose in your hand selection but tight in the other considerations - considerations that are more frequantly visible to you than your opponents (who all will play your spots themselves at some point). And only referring them to preflop. It kind of follows that all decisions are indeed preflop however.With certain stack depths you can ignore the first couple of bets, just jumping into 50:1 with a very wide range because you can beat this player at 50:1 SPR. But say you are only 12bbs then you have to be/play PURE Tag.

Using nlhe mtts as an eg of my first sentence,,,,

I am TAG at like 7.5bbs with antes,,,, whereas most other use 10bbs as their TAG boundary. I don't know which is TAG though, it depends on ICM/stack depth of blinds. Sometimes I go at 13bbs,,, much int he sam eway in PLO I will open T967 from UTG... but if i had a low roll then it's snap muck, or if I was just int hat kind of mood.

The fact that passive and aggressive followed each other in the sentence was just coincidence in my chosen sentence construction, not meant to define the same thing. Passive pre-flop, aggressive post flop. Unless I'm misinterpreting what you're implying.

Well that makes more sense.

What do you think about the statement that 'all decisions are preflop'.

I see the advantage of playing passive preflop but you are missing out on spots where your KK is good because the guys 4b range is 6x wider than AA.

I've never believed that all decisions are pre-flop, especially in omaha. There is just so much that can happen after the flop hits, that I like to keep the pots smaller and have more flexibility in my post flop play. You are correct, I might be missing out on some spots where KK or similar is good, but at the limits I play right now ($25 and $50 zoom) there aren't enough people mixing up their game with 3bets other than AAxx and KQJT type hands. The ones that do, seem to do it from the blinds in some sort of vain blind defense strategy, but more often than not they are easy to pick off post flop.

Generally my passive play is player and situation dependent. It is not to say that I don't 3bet PF, and its definitely not limited to AAxx hands. I would say that my approach leads itself towards a trapping and stealing type of game.

As I continue to move up in limits, my goal is to develop my game so that I can adjust to whatever table dynamic I am presented with. At this time, I am quite please with my results, but am not naïve to think that I have cracked the code and found the ultimate winning strategy. I've simply found something that seems to work for me and my playing experience. I can only hope that others find the same.

Hand 1 is a trival fold, pairs under JJ really should be treated as liability.

1 fold
2 fold
3 inclined to raise, depends on the table(mainly btn and bb)

Warning FPS.

Depends how deep.

The more multi street fold equity we have + plus boards that have lots of action killing next street cards. The harder I play these nakked hands. Iamfishthough. Would do the same live and small stakes but less so in micros

1) raising everywhere
2) raising everywhere
3) raise TTA(2-5)

i fold all these in UTG/MP, weak hands OOP are gonna be hard to play unless your post flops skills are very solid which I doubt they are otherwise you'd be playing higher

I'd suggest playing very solid ranges from these positions and using CO/BTN to open up signifcantly