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Pot Limit Omaha is primarily played in the cash game format, whether we talk online or live. Due to the nature of the game, players often get very deep (especially in live games), with stacks counted in hundreds of big blinds. Crazy dynamics, plenty of big pots, and loose players are signs that you are at the right table. Such PLO games are not rare and offer great opportunities, but they also require great discipline and an understanding of your game plan.
Deep stacked poker is often complicated and challenging, so to make the most of it, you have to adjust accordingly. One of the basic but most essential adjustments is making sure you are opening the proper ranges.
Many players fall into the common pitfall of loosening their opening ranges because other players also open loose. As a result, chips fly left and right.
A simple but accurate methodology for evaluating your hands preflop is to consider nuttiness, connectedness, and suitedness. You should also consider the rake impact to some extent, especially if you play mostly online.
Additionally, we've gathered a few essential tips for playing the Aces and the Kings, along with other high pairs, in another entry on our blog.
Poker (including Pot Limit Omaha) is all about position
By now, you should be perfectly aware of that. The more players in the hand have a positional advantage on you, the less information you have at your disposal, and the harder it will be to realize your hand's expected value. This is true at every point of every hand, and the importance of the position starts preflop, which you should always have in mind.
The most important consequence is that the earlier your position is, the tighter your opening range should be. What you should consider before opening a hand on each position
Early Position and Middle Positions
When creating game theory optimal ranges, solvers assume that other people will react correctly to your opens, so all ranges are prepared for equilibrium - in which pots with three, four or more players are very rare.
If you have experience with low and mid-stakes Pot Limit Omaha, you know that multiway pots happen very often. Multiway pots (especially when deep stacked) can be tricky to navigate, and they get even more complex when multiple players have positional advantage over you.
You should remember that whenever you're on EP or MP. Your opponent will almost certainly be cold-calling too much, which should affect your game plan (by too much, we mean significantly more than the GTO strategy assumes). Naturally, you can exploit this tendency, but first, you must adjust your preflop ranges.
If you take a look at GTO frequencies provided by PLO Genius, you'll find out that against an EP open, the GTO should more or less look like this (let's take a low stakes rake structure, 100 BB into consideration):
If you play against GTO-aware opponents, they will cold call rarely and 3-bet around 5% of the time. Also, notice that the Small Blind should almost never call your UTG open, and the Big Blind should defend by calling less than 14% of the time.
If you have a database gathered by tracking software, you can compare these values with what happens in your games. Even if you don't possess such data, you probably will agree that cold calling occurs much, much more often than it should, according to theory.
What's the takeaway? Whenever you're in the Early or Middle position, you should be very selective about the hands you open and skip opening the worst GTO-approved but the lowest EV hands. You won't be able to turn them into profit, and they will likely get you into very complicated yet avoidable situations.
Don't forget that the more players can enter the pot, the more significant role reversed implied odds may play postflop.
When you want to learn which hands should be and should not be in your range, dividing them into categories is an efficient study method. You'll be doing fine as long as you know the bottom of your range in a particular category. Remember what we've underlined earlier - to let go of the worst-performing combos. If low-to-mid stakes are your bread and butter, the fold is usually the way to go if you consider opening a hand while in EP or MP.
In other words, if your hand performs poorly out of position postflop - ditch it. An excellent tool to get some more understanding of how certain hands play EV-wise is ProPokerTools, which you can get here.
Here's how our solver would approach opening on EP and MP to give you a rough estimate.
From the Cutoff, the situation changes greatly
The Cutoff is the first position, which grants you more freedom when it comes to opening hands (and this remains true whether you play the classic online six-max or eight-max live games). Whenever you're on the Cutoff, only one player can have a positional advantage over you and whose tendencies you should be concerned about - the Button.
As a result, your strategy should rely heavily on the player who sits on your left. The happier they are to VPIP (whether by cold calling or 3-betting), the more cautious you should be.If they are on the tighter side, the more closely you can follow the GTO ranges; after all, even if the blinds are out of line, you'll have a position on them.
Under the same assumptions we’ve made earlier the GTO opening range for CO is around 29% and looks like this:
Additionally, it's worth noting that if you have a database available you can check in real-time how often:
- Button cold call/3-bet versus CO
- Small Blind and Big Blind fold versus a steal
These stats will help you adjust your opening ranges to your current opponents.
Being in the Button guarantees you position postflop
It's one of the most significant advantages you can imagine. It's even more critical if you find yourself in a very deep game. It is also reflected in the fact that on the Button, your win rate should be the highest among all positions.
The guaranteed position allows you to open first-in quite liberally since you only have two players who act behind you preflop, and you'll always have your advantage.
That's why the BU is where you can be closest to the GTO opening frequency, which, under the adopted circumstances, equals roughly 48%.
You can even go wider with open if you find yourself against overly tight preflop blinds (meaning they overfold against a raise) or postflop (they overfold to c-bets). Such opponents will be rare on low-to-mid stakes, but you're guaranteed to encounter them occasionally, and you better be prepared to spot them because…
Winning a pot preflop is worth more than you think
But at the same time, it happens much less frequently than in theory should.
According to the theory, whenever you open Under The Gun on a six-handed table, you should win the pot uncontested around 50% of the time. The exact percentage of how often this happens at your games will vary, but we're pretty sure it will be much lower (the lower the limit, the less often you'll win a pot preflop).
What's important is that whenever you take a pot down preflop, you win 1.5 BB. It seems like a small gain, but when converted to a standard win rate metric - Big Blinds per 100 hands - we get 150 BB/100, which is nearly impossible to achieve over any representative decent sample of hands.
For context, winning everything over 5 BB/100 on mid or high stakes is an excellent result.
So you should, on the one hand, open very tight when in earlier positions to avoid playing multiway OOP and, at the same time, identify spots where you are likely to win blinds easily when in late positions.
Appropriate opening ranges are the best foundation for a solid winrate
Perfecting your preflop ranges is well worth the time; it will save you a lot of headaches caused by unnecessary and troublesome spots and allow you to create many favourable situations against less experienced and impatient opponents.
That's why we strongly recommend studying with PLO Genius and testing what you learn with its GTO trainer functionality—you'll improve your PLO preflop skill in no time.
Also, in our next blog entry, we'll take a closer look at playing from a small blind position with a few crucial characteristics.