I'm not a pro but when I play at casinos I'm comfortable at 10/20 stakes and I am a winning player at those stakes. I'm considering playing the 10k PLO at the wsop next month. I know most likely I'll lose but I've made around 200k this past year between private games and the casino so figure I can justify it. I also feel if I'm going to go through the trouble of going to Vegas I might as well play a bigger tournament.

My guess is the difference between PLO tournaments vs PLO cash is less severe than the difference between nlhe tournaments and cash due to the inability to go all in at any time. Do you agree? What are the main adjustments or pitfalls I should look out for?

Probably more profitable to grind cash.

I plan on grinding 25/50 once I bust. But can't hurt to prepare as much as I can for the tournament. Any players here with experience in both?

I am also a winning 10/20 PLO cash player (a serious rec but not a pro). The past couple years I have begun playing the bigger PLO events at the WSOP. I don't use solvers or run sims or anything like that, but I can tell you the biggest adjustment I've made for tournament play is this. NIT IT UP, especially early in the event. That does not mean I am not playing aggressively when I have a good hand, but I definitely have tightened up my opening ranges and do less 3 betting in position. I think tournaments are won preflop with proper hand selection. I have found you can often times go very deep in PLO tourneys playing very few hands. Once you're deep, then hopefully variance will be on your side when you are forced to flip. Obviously I'm still playing to win, but I think correct PLO tournament strategy should have less variance than correct PLO Cash Game strategy. Let everyone else flip with each other early on while you pick your spots better to make big hands and double up. You will have plenty of time in deep structured events to find good spots to play big pots while the degens are constantly flipping sets vs wraps for stacks. I don't have a bracelet yet, so take this for whatever its worth.

I am not sure about WSOP, but most PLO tournaments in other venues or online are anything but deep.

Would you still hold to the same arguments for tournaments where at level 2-3 you are already 40-50 BB ?

I think the general point I was trying to emphasize is that in tournament PLO, I believe it is correct to play substantially tighter than in cash games. I do understand that to win the tournament you will have to gamble in certain spots, but overall I think you can let the field gamble with each other while you are more patient and wait for the types of hands that flop lots of equity on a wider range of flops. The worst thing in tournament PLO is to have to fold your equity, as your tournament life is so valuable compared to a cash game where you can just rebuy. For example, in tournaments, hands like QJT8ss are relatively even more valuable than QT98ss, as compared to a cash game. My point wasn't to be a super nit as you will never win the tournament that way, but to definitely tighten up as compared to a cash game, especially early on. At 40 to 50 BB, you may have to pick a hand and go with it post flop, but just choose hands preflop that have a lot of flop equity coverage where you will be drawing to the nuts when you flop well. I think you have more time in PLO tournaments to do this as compared to NL Holdem tournaments where the nitty players have virtually no chance to win it.

I've played a few lower limit PLO tourneys (1.5k and 3k at WSOP, and small touring series like RunGood or MSPT), but the advice from IhateJJ is solid in those too: nit if up PF, and push your better hands post flop. While you aren't used to playing 20BB stacks as a cash grinder, you'd be surprised how long you can stick around by being selective at that low a stack level. And as I hateJJ stated: folding your equity is going to be bad in a tourney setting, so be prepared to battle for the hands you play post flop.

Good luck!

I’ve done WSOP 3 times playing the lower buy in tourneys as
Well as all the surrounding casino 4 card tourneys. I’ve never cashed WSOP but have at Venetian deep stack and a few others. I’m going to propose the exact opposite perspective. Namely, I think seeing many flops early can be very profitable to chip up especially given the large number of weak rec players.

My bigger struggle has been finding balance to protect my stack later on while being sufficiently aggressive.

Either way, I will reiterate an earlier comment to grind cash during the tournament schedule. The side action has been the loosest wildest I’ve ever seen. And that’s saying something.

I think this perspective is good advice to maximize going very deep sometimes (i.e. final table, first few places), while the advice from IhateJJ and Warrior optimizes being ITM more often, but potentially missing opportunity to double / triple up early on to be in a good spot to win or go very far.

For better or for worse, in cash games, I'm pretty happy tossing away middle-strength hands postflop. (e.g. middle-pair w/ backdoor flush headsup, or TPTK with a gutshot multiway). My thinking is staying in the pot is most likely going to have me facing even bigger bets without improvement on later streets, so I'm just wasting a big % of my money.

In these situations, in a tournament, should I be looking to find more calls with the medium-strength flops?

Some very good advice here .. At 'less than' 5k BI events there will be more gamblers early who have already committed to firing multiple bullets. If I remember correctly I basically just sat around for the first 5-6 levels at both WSOP and Venetian before I was really forced to enter pots with wider ranges.

If you have access to PokerGo .. watch any of the PLO events (WSOP, Masters, US Poker Open) .. DDudley, JArieh and BAusmus .. even PHell/DNegs will show you that position it huge since ranges are much tighter. The commentary is excellent in most cases. I realize that this is a FT, but the play is really not that much different in the early levels 'when deep'.

I do think you need to make sure you have at least a pot sized-bet left behind if you are in a spot where you think you need to 'go for it'

Another thing you will see is LOTS AND LOTS of less than pot sized bets OTF, Turn and River .. which is typically a vast change from cash. GL