Hi all,

Tried to search for a discussion on this very topic and couldn't find it, so figured I'd try to kick it off here.

Recently I've been dabbling a little more in live PLO, and my biggest takeaway is that it doesn't even feel like the same game as online PLO, where stacks are shorter, pots are often HU and pots are usually getting raised first in.

OTOH, live low to mid PLO seems like pure gamble. Average table VPIP besides me will often be around 80, and sometimes higher. People are just calling raises with hands as weak as like 9322r and as strong as AKJ9ds. The same people who will limp in with a hand will also cold call a 3 bet with the exact same hand, so it's hard to generate folds and dead $ from preflop action.

So it's pretty obvious how to play postflop in games like this: only continue postflop when you have a strong hand or a strong draw, and value bet heavy when you do continue. But I'm still trying to triangulate down to how to best exploit a game like this preflop. Last night I played a strategy of:

- Raise when I had high cards and suitedness, or high cards and connectedness. Preferably both (so like I'd raise IP with (AT)K5 or (KJ)A8 or (A8)QQ).
- Limp or limp along hands that need specific flops (like limping (65)AA from EP).

I'm also considering small raises in position, as opposed to pot sized raises, when I have decent hands like (K7)K6 so that it's easier to get the money in if I flop the dream.

How do you guys approach games like this?

i wouldnt want to tighten up too much in this kind of game there is too much equity in seeing flops and getting involved as much as possible but stay more balanced then opposition preflop, bomb post flop with nutted straight anf flush draws, two pairs, deny equity to as many players as possible on each street, bluff tons of rivers and be prepared to gamble more. Basically, playing only top 10% of hands has less equity multiway then expanding your range to top 25-30% of hands in ths kind of games that you are describing.

Yeah, like I was thinking that hands like (A4)K5 from EP, which normally would be a fold for me, becomes a limp because the value of flush over flushing someone, or hitting broadway against K9xy are both incredibly valuable.

Here's an example of when I'm not sure what to do.

I'm MP with 8765

One fold and 2 limps to me. Should we be raising or calling here? I elected to limp along because this hand won't have much flush value besides hitting some emergency ones if I continue post and its HU, so this hand is basically playing to flop a wrap. And obviously since no one is ever folding if they want to play their hand, it makes raising "for deception" pretty spewy.

At a table like this, I only play hands with strong nut potential and to try to keep my SPR as high as possible, unless I can get it in preflop. Since it is often easy to get stacks in post flop if someone has something, there is little reason to bloat the pot preflop.

I think a hand like 6622ds or (A4)32 is still garbage at tables like this and should maybe only be played as a limp OTB or the blinds.

Your range should be tighter in games where there is usually at least one raise preflop vs one where it is usually limped, even if players are playing the exact same range.

Simply having a fold button preflop will basically give you an astronomical winrate in those games, assuming you're not a complete buffoon post-flop

AK45 nut suit is fine from EP as limp and raise if double suited, but if Ax is not suited i think its a fold. as for 5678 double suited, i dont mind raise but leaning more towards call in late positions for the reasons you stated, i think staying underrepped has a lot of value in multiway pots like this, as you said raising with strong hands loses value multiway, whereas calling aganst their ranges gives us a lot of disguised equity postflop, at the same time a hand like AKT9 even without suits can be a 3bet from late position against their limping ranges, so in late positions we try to balance underrepped calls with capped range 3bets and in early positions we stay tight mostly, we balance raising and limping top heavy hands, AKT9 unsuited becomes a fold, 88T9 single suited is a limp, QQ77 is a raise...

Oh another strategy I was thinking about was smaller (less than pot) raises.

Example, if we have 800 in a 1/2 game and stacks are between 500-1500, we probably want to play with our effective stack. In order to get all the $ in post by just betting, we need an SPR of 13 or less. Realistically, 8-11 is probably ideal to get stacks in when we nail a flop.

So if we know in said 1/2 game that the hand will go off 8 ways, and there's 5 limps to us on the BTN (common scenario), full pot is 17. But why not raise to 10? You're still about as likely to get all the $ in the times you do hit, but you save $7 the times you miss. Dan Deppen discussed this as a viable strategy in his PLO8 book, and it sounds like it could be applicable in PLO high as well.

Example:

5 limps to you, you have A985. Decent hand but certainly no monster. Probably needs a 76Xr or flop to have big value. But it's worth getting extra $ in, in case we do nail the flop and get to cooler someone. If 10 does the same job as 17, then why not make it 10?

This. Tighten up your ranges from all positions, especially your iso and 3bet iso ranges cause no one is folding. Focus on hands that make the nuts multiple ways or otherwise play well multiway in position. Position is the most important thing in PLO and it's not close.

Once you gain a few hundred bbs you can start to open up your 3betting ranges if everyone is deep.

we don't isolate enough for when we don't hit and we are unable to bluff cbet, and we are more vulnerable to other callers equity when we do hit. We lose additional 7$ + our cbet when our cbet gets called on flop when we dont hit (assume we are giving up on flop) and we win more when we do hit as we are charging more on flop and turn, (river?), but getting less callers. Its a comination of if we lose more times 8$ (half pot bet) then 15$ pot bet + flop cbet when we dont hit, and do we win more with same when we do hit

Its very complicated question i can not do it now haha, but maybe someone else is not that brain lazy...it takes serious analisys with many scenarios..

Without any serious calculation just by experience, i think that full pot is a better strategy.

If no one is folding, your iso range should have zero hands.

Yes it's incredibly common in the games I am describing for someone to simply ask the dealer "how much is it?" and throw the $ in whether it's 1 bb or 30 bb. I call it the admission price because preflop isn't actually poker to them, it's just a price to pay to play "real poker" postflop. Deception is useless if they're just going to cold call anyway.

I'm even going to quote myself here to really drive it home: In a game where half the table is playing 70 VPIP, you have to be REALLY BAD post flop to not print money playing 25 VPIP. Your equity (both pre and post flop) will just be so much higher on average that it's going to be hard to not win

The key in games like these is to only draw to the nuts, and that includes preflop. You want to play very tight or you will end up bleeding off chips.

I tend to endorse no-limping strategies in these games. Hero can bet less than pot behind limpers, and open for min raise from ep. Omaha is about building pots, especially in more passive games.

All preflop raises after limpers are considered 'isolation raises' to some extent because there is always a nonzero chance you will get the pot heads up postflop. When I say 'no one is folding'
I'm saying it figuratively. Of course you will be raising hands with limpers in the pot, your range should just be tighter (relative) when you do it.

In live low stakes PLO, sometimes you can say "no one is folding" and mean it literally.

You generally shouldn't be making any preflop raises in these loose games where you will wish you could take it back if everyone calls. Your raises should be mainly for value and occasionally for deception.

Yeah like on that front I'm not even that thrilled to raise like (K9)K7 or something. if I don't flop a set, I'm just chasing some weak draws massively multiway and calling huge bets to do it.

K9K7ss plays great multiway. Just dont overplay your side cards imo

KKxx ds is the sort of hand that causes problems for inexperienced PLO players coming from hold em. They'll stack off with an overpair and the second-nut flush draw and end up getting crushed by someone competent.

When I play in these games, I almost never put in the first or second raise preflop. It's just so easy to build a pot post-flop.

Play the very lowest stakes online, it's not identical but you'll at least get experience with having flops go 5 way.

As Loctus said, everything else being even (you play just as bad/well post as everyone else, Eg. everybody stacks off with any set) if you have a 25% pre. range and they have a 60%+ range ... you'll just "be lucky" a bunch where you have top set on K73r and they give you their stack with J833.

The next most important thing I'd say is that people can be trained, and even the worst will realize that you fold a lot and have very good hands or the nuts when you bet ... so use that and go for a couple of bluffs, like I've literally heard people say "oh betting pot on a flush board means he has to have the nuts".
As a collaray to that realize that your opponents aren't bluffing but are instead betting a merged value range that is too big, so take lines that allow you to get to showdown a lot and believe 70% VPIP guy if he randomly raises you on the backdoor flush (he might not have the nuts, but he's way more likely to raise with the 6th nuts than with the nut blocker).

In a similar vein your pre. flop strategy shouldn't change a lot, don't start just limping along because nobody folds when you raise ... they are all independent people, you might get 6 callers the first time you raise pot from the BTN but after the 5th time the "least lucky" guy will start limp/folding and that makes it worse for everyone else so the next unlucky guy will start folding too and soon you'll be left with 1-2 degenerate calls for your raises.

I play in a game just like this. It runs every day during winter, lunchtime to dinnertime. In summer the game dies while several of the players run their businesses that cater to tourists.

The game is so loose, last year I deliberately tracked the players' VPIP during the whole of one session. We played 9 handed for 4 hours and in that time 5 of the players had 100% VPIP. They wouldn't always all see a flop, but it would take at least a 3bet to get them out. And a 3bet can be loads of BBs - Imagine, there is a straddle, an early position raise, five calls, then a repot.

It's a 1/1 euro game and everyone initially buys in for 100. Once people have started to reload the max buy in is 200. Players get pretty deep after a couple of hours.

I am the second biggest winner in the game. My style is tighter than any other player there except for one guy who plays about once a week. The biggest winner plays about 95% VPIP and reads everyone really well post flop.

My preferred style is to try to keep the SPR fairly big. I play far more hands IP than OOP. Whether I come in for a raise or a limp depends on where the aggressive players are on the table. If there is an aggressive player behind me I often try to use their wide 3 betting range to enable me to put in a big 4 bet. This is with the top of my range of course. But I don't mean any AAxx - only really good AAxx would be treated like this, and I would include a number of hands that have a lot of board coverage like high double suited rundowns.

A hand like 8765 I will put in a raise if I can expect to get no 3bet behind me. It's a great hand to see multi way. if a flop comes e.g. 543 I can expect to get lots of action from A2xx, 62xx, 76xx that I free roll against, plus the sets and two pair even down to 43xx.

One of the reasons I play a lot more hands IP is I can often choose whether to take a free card with my mediocre draws. For example, my hand is (Q7)J8 and the flop is KT4 rainbow. I don't want to get check raised off this so I check back for the free card.

It's different if I have (AT)(QJ) as I am happy to stack off against a check raise. I can be up against QJ(74) and take the pot with my pair of tens when the board blanks.

Agreed, except you have to be careful not to play too many hands OOP

100% agree. In fact these hands are worse in a game like this. A set of 6s or 2s is rarely ahead when there are 7 other live hands. I would rather take these hands heads up against a range that contains only high cards (but even then I ditch the hands).

Fully agree, this is an approach I take very often.