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Like in No Limit Holdem, poker tools and software are essential, if not necessary, to become a better player. Since PLO is a more complex and harder-to-visualize game, designing utile software is much more demanding but clearly not impossible.
Today's article will examine the three most valuable poker tool types for players striving to improve at Pot Limit Omaha.
Equity calculators
There's no way around it - knowing your equity in PLO is one of the most crucial skills you can obtain and perfect.
The equity distribution in Pot Limit Omaha is nuanced and varies significantly in the different scenarios, and that's why learning how to estimate it is worthwhile.
For example, in NLH, the equity of Aces is relatively static and hovers around 80% in almost all cases. That's not true for Aces in PLO since the suits and side cards drastically change the playability and strength of your hand AA hand.
Considering all hands containing AA (including trip Aces and quads), they have ~65% equity versus a random hand. When we narrow it down to an AA72 rainbow combo, the equity drops to a little over 61%, but when we improve the hand to the beautiful AAJT double-suited combo, its equity increases to 70%!
As you can imagine, that's one of many potential scenarios, and equity calculators will help you to understand how certain hand classes perform against others. Of course, the preflop equity in PLO is less influential than in NLH due to the pot limit rule, but just like in Hold'em, you can use equity calculators with community cards added to the mix.
Taking into account the vast number of possible combinations of your hole cards, how they interact with different flops, and the ranges of other players can result in complex scenarios. Memorizing them is virtually impossible, and that's why training with equity calculators is essential; it will sharpen your estimations about the equity of your particular holding when in hand.
Pokerstrategy Omaha Equilab and Poker Pro Tools are popular poker equity calculators you can try out. As of writing these words, the latter is free right now, and it even allows you to calculate equities for other games (including Omaha Hi-Lo, Five Card PLO and Six Card PLO!)
Tracking software
Poker games mix math and psychology, and Pot Limit Omaha is no exception. When it comes to the psychology aspect, the apps won't offer much help (except the ones focused on improving your mindset), but in the case of math, there are plenty of tools to work with and analyze the various numbers. While poker equity calculators will help you evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of various hand classes under different circumstances, the tracking software allows you to draw far more complex assumptions, including assessing how your actual game looks.
How does the tracking software work? It stores all hands you've played in a database and presents the data you've collected as a heads-up display, translating the hands you (and other players) played into the statistics.
With the help of such poker tools, you can gather information to analyze your game. Are your open-raising frequencies close to the optimal? Do you 3-bet and defend against 3-bets enough? Are you over c-betting? The data provided by tracking software will help you find answers to these questions. That's not all, though; with time, your database will grow enough to allow you to analyze more complex things, like how often you bet river after a check-raising turn or how much money you make when calling river bets yourself.
Moreover, if you play a lot with the same people over time, you'll gather so much info about their game that you'll even be able to analyze your opponent's game, what they excel at and what might be their leaks!
There are many trackers on the market, but historically, the most popular and trusted ones are Holdem Manager, Poker Tracker and Hand2Note.
Poker solvers
The last and by far the most complex type of poker software is poker solvers. Solvers, including our PLO Genius, are designed to craft unexploitable strategies (meaning that if you follow such a strategy with 100% accuracy, the opponent would not be able to win any money from you in the long run).
Of course, no human can perfectly replicate complex poker solvers's guidelines. Luckily, that's not the point of using solvers. Time spent with software like PLO Genius allows you to improve in many areas, including two critical ones.
Firstly, studying preflop scenarios with a solver will improve your understanding of which classes of hands choose to raise, fold or 3-bet in certain preflop scenarios. Such knowledge should be a foundation for every Pot Limit Omaha strategy, and since there are thousands of different scenarios that can occur preflop, there's a lot to digest.
When working with PLO Genius, you can examine how to react to your opponent's actions. Even better, you can analyze spots with multiple active players preflop, and your questions are answered in close to real-time!
Secondly, we're constantly improving postflop modules. A preflop in PLO is complex, but the postflop is even more demanding; that's why we work relentlessly adding additional simulations every couple of days (and there are a lot of things to work on: PLO and PLO5 with different stack sizes in single raised, 3-bet and 4-bet pots!).
Using poker tools is a way to improve your poker skills in 2025
Nowadays, poker tools are one of the most time-efficient ways to study and improve your strategy. Using poker software is a great way to gain an edge over your competition, and there's no valid reason not to use it; the sooner you start, the more better the results will be.