How to play this hand to get much value as possible?
[converted_hand][hand_history]iPoker - €0.20 PL Hi (6 max) - Omaha Hi - 5 players
Hand converted by Holdem Manager 3

BB: €8.22 (41.1 bb)
Hero (UTG): €22.62 (113.1 bb)
CO: €13.61 (68.1 bb)
BTN: €67.31 (336.6 bb)
SB: €35.57 (177.9 bb)

SB posts €0.10, BB posts €0.20

Pre Flop: (pot: €0.30) Hero has J K Q K
Hero raises to €0.70, CO calls €0.70, 2 folds, BB calls €0.50

Flop: (€2.20, 3 players) 2 7 K
BB checks, Hero bets €1.10, fold, BB calls €1.10

Turn: (€4.40, 2 players) 2
BB checks, Hero bets €1.40, BB calls €1.40

Line looks fine.

Personally would bet slightly bigger on the flop 3 way (~60-65%), other than that it looks fine and sets you up to shove river nicely vs shortstack.

+1

Surprised no one suggested flop check here. How we ever gonna be anywhere near balanced if we don't check combos like this? We have the board on absolute lockdown.

There is still plenty of hands that will call a flop bet.. To win money in poker you want to make people put more money into the pot when you have the best hand, so we bet (I don't mean this in a patronizing way, but it's easy to lose track of this objective when talking strat imo)..

I'd check if we had the nut flushdraw and topset here (so AKKx with nfd on K72hh). Also would check for example topset+midset blocker on a rainbow board. So if this was K72r and we had KKQ7.

But KKQJhh on K72hh? Bet imo. Put more money in. We have a superstrong hand but there are still a bunch of calling combos out there and our hand isn't immortal due to the possible precense of nfd

what's really easy to lose track of in poker (and which many beginning poker players literally never learn is)......what a range is and what range construction is/means

I sort of hear you on checking KK+nfd or KK7X and betting all others....at the same time I sort of don't...
My guess is population plays same strat as you and has insanely exploitable checking ranges in all spots...I'm talking 60+% XF stat on turns/rivers

BTW worth mentioning we are not last to act here...if it's HU IP I'm more inclined to cbet bc we need to stack 22/77 by river...but in this scenario CO can do the betting for us, further removing the reasoning for cbet

Please explain how checking the second best hand or as suggested best hand in our range helps balance? Do we not have strong hands in the middle of our range that we can use for c/c instead?

- Do we want to do it everytime? -> Doesn't that unbalance our betting range (and make it easier to float us)?
- Do we want to do it some of the time? Use a randomizer?
- Do we never cbet with the dry Ah or dry Kh here?
- If we check, do we check/raise or are we trying to "trap"?
- Is that an overall good strat for 20PLO?

I think balancing on plo20 is out of question. I'm far away from balancing. Back to the hand.
I c-bet to get the money from overpair or flush draw or lower set. The main question is how much c-bet to get called by this hands to be long term ev+ for us. Get the wrong odds to other player. On turn is the same question. Imagine you holding AAxx without flush draw. Are you gonna call both flop and turn?

Balance is always something to consider but at PLO20, 3 way w/ a likely fish in the pot worrying about balance is just making things more complicated than they need to be.

I wouldn't be counting on AAxx too much from villain, playing a 40bb stack I'd assume he would 3b pre to get most of his stack in. I'd be more focused on giving perceived bad player worse odds to continue to draw with hearts or get the money in vs lower sets/two pairs on the flop.

What you gonna do if river is A and BB check, you bet and get check raised here?

Balancing on PLO20 is just ******ed. Go fo maximum value and climb out of the rake hell.

Wow, shots fired. Loctus off for medical treatment.


I'd much rather check AhK7:hh than this hand.

Advice I've seen on balancing from much better players is you don't have to check your strongest hands, just do it with enough of your good medium strength hands that can get to showdown. They were mainly talking about NLH but that kind of advice seems like it should be more generic.

If I was first to act and both started with 100bb, I'd probably be checking this some of the time but with a 70bb and 40bb player I'm more likely to just bet.


Not sure I like betting 60-65% either, in a normal context, two tone K72 doesn't hit our UTG range in a lot of ways so we probably want to bet less. Stack sizes also suggest betting less, as we don't need big bets to get everything (Eg. villain who called has less than pot on river).
One difference is that both villains might be fish that can call bigger with any flush draw, but won't be calling rivers unless the flush hits.

Maybe, but my guess is if we are cbetting this we are also cbetting many of those medium strong hands as well. In other words if we are cbetting this we are not that likely to be effectively balancing elsewhere...

Anyway, it's more about blockers for me than absolute hand strength. We block calling ranges on flop so heavily here that it doesn't make sense to cbet. If we hold AKJT no heart (which I suppose is one of the medium strong hands you're referencing) it makes a lot more sense to cbet imo because we 1) don't block as many top pairs and 2) need protection against baby fds/backdoor combo draws or whatnot which may fold flop to a cbet. Why does it make sense to favor *medium strong hands which lack blockers to equity* in our checking range vs. *super strong hands which have blockers to equity*?

- Do we want to do it everytime? -> Doesn't that unbalance our betting range (and make it easier to float us)?
Personally I check this combo 100% unless there's a big fish in the pot. No it doesn't unbalance our range because we have all combos of KK whereas our opponents have far less of them as a % of overall range. Even after playing a XC with a bunch of our KK otf, we still have enough KK in our cbet range to be unexploitable.

- Do we never cbet with the dry Ah or dry Kh here?
Sorry I'm not sure what hand class you're referring to

- If we check, do we check/raise or are we trying to "trap"?
Mostly XC/XC/XR. I suppose on 9x or Tx turns which open up a lot of draws, we can put some KK into a XC/XR/? range

- Is that an overall good strat for 20PLO?[/QUOTE]
Not sure, people mentioned fish in a MW pot and rake considerations, which are valid. I merely started off by saying "I'm surprised no one suggested check here." Like I said, my personal approach would be to check this unless there was significant evidence suggesting an unbalanced approach would be higher EV (i.e. big fish in the pot)

I'm glad we are talking about this. I am genuinely curious about the thought process, here is what I think:

Betting our entire range is a mistake, which cannot be remedied by checking our top. The solution is to stop betting merged.
It's profitable and exploitative to bet top/middle and c/fold bottom due to population tendencies, but that's not what we are discussing.
If balance is our goal, then c/c middle of range is the default best play, because middling hands -very broadly speaking- get mostly called by better and totally hate to get raised. This is for a c/c plan. The situation changes obviously, if we want to establish a c/r range.

I understand where you are coming from. This is however an analysis for this individual hand, basing the decision on how to play it more or less based on its vulnerability, not on what this does to our overall range.
Fastplaying the top of your range is balanced by bluffing. Since it's kind of hard to have a big hand on this board and lots of outs against continuation ranges, the prime bluffing candidates are hands with Ah and Kh (but no flushdraw), at least I would think so.

I'm a little in over my head here, I trust you understand the combos better than I do. I would still think that removing flushdraws from our betting range, makes it easier to be floated or raised by flushdraws. For example, if we bet the AKJT no hearts (for protection), then we are obviously folding to a raise. V. could now do this with his flushdraws, because we check so many of ours.
We have more KK, V. has all the 22, most 77xx and most K7xx.

Bluffs. For example, we could have the AhQdJdTs. Are we gonna check/fold that hand OTF? (or folding pre?) What do we do with the AhAdJd9c?. How about QhQs7h9s?