The authors Beasts of Poker include online crushers Joni Jouhkimainen and EEE27
Online poker crushers Beasts of Poker have written an exclusive poker strategy article on how to make optimal preflop decisions in Pot-Limit Omaha for us. Their team features high stakes legends such as Joni Jouhkimainen, EEE27 or Samuli Sipila and their community has made more than $25,000,000 from online poker!
How to Make Optimal Preflop Decisions in Pot-Limit Omaha?
It wasn’t too long ago when only the best players in Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) had a clear idea of how different hands should be played preflop.
Then came the age of solvers, starting from Texas Hold ’em and now software like MonkerSolver are being widely available for PLO players too.
However, the general player pool is not picking up solver-approved strategies instantly – the adoption is actually quite far from that.
Besides recreational players not being likely to optimize their preflop ranges anytime soon, many winning players like to put in a ton of volume on autopilot, multitabling many hours per day.
Preflop play is often neglected and hard to execute well
If you’re one of the players in the latter group, this article is specifically tailored for you. Preflop is the simplest street in PLO in terms of what factors go into your decision-making.
Nevertheless, preflop play is often neglected and hard to execute well, especially when playing multiple tables.
There is still room to improve
Even if you often play your A-game and only a few tables at once, there’s still room to improve your preflop game for every player.
The mistakes you make preflop often tend to compound on later streets, and that’s something you need to avoid in PLO, where equities of hands run really close and variance can be very high.
“Playing a perfect game preflop is hard and takes a lot of effort to master”
This is what Beasts of Poker Team Pro Samuli “TheJudas” Sipila had to say about the subject:
“Every player in 2020 should know their preflop ranges like the back of their hands. However, to my experience: They do not. And they’re not alone – much to my own shame, even I still do preflop mistakes nearly every session I play. And I am a man who played nearly 500,000 hands last year with a decent win-rate at the mid-stakes. The fact is that playing a perfect game preflop is hard and takes a lot of effort to master – something that not many are willing to do.”
“TheJudas” has won two SCOOP titles in PLO events and is a regular at mid & high stakes PLO.
Value your starting hands according to their strong hand components
Let’s talk more about the areas of PLO preflop strategy, where improved ranges can boost your win rate quickly. While this is a very basic concept in PLO, it can’t be highlighted too much.
Evaluating a starting hand according to its strong hand potential should be second nature, providing a good estimation how aggressively you should play it in your preflop position.
For the sake of clarity, the strong hand potential of a starting hand includes the following aspects:
- Overall nut components
- Flush components
- Straight components
Premium starting hands have great overall nut components, as when they make a strong hand like a full house it’s usually the biggest full house on the board.
They usually also have nut suits or big suits and make nut straights on connected boards, unless all the community cards are really low.
Flush components are best with double-suited hands, and components are best with rundowns.
While the equity differences of having either a single-suited or a double-suited hand are not so high, they add up quickly when you play a lot of hands.
With premium hands you have all three factors working in your favour
With preflop monsters and premium hands, you have all three or at least two of these factors working in your favour.
Certain hands with good overall nut components also have great blocker effects and representing the nut straight or the nut flush helps you balance your postflop ranges on runouts, where you would otherwise have many strong hands.
Having blockers like Ax or Kx makes it easier to steal the blinds as your villains are less likely to wake up with good broadway hands or big pairs.
Stealing the blinds is your main objective for raising preflop in an unopened pot
Stealing the blinds is your main objective for raising preflop in an unopened pot. The math dictates you would prefer everyone folding instead of getting a call even when opening a premium starting hand.
That’s due to the small preflop equity differences between different starting hands.
How aggressively you should play depends also on your skill edge, your position, tendencies of other players at the table and effective stack sizes.
Playing out of position with speculative hands is a way to quickly lose money fast in PLO even if your skill edge is significant.
“Preflop should be the bedrock on which to lay your foundation”
Here is some advice on starting hands from online legend EEE27:
“When I started PLO nearly a decade ago there was no such thing as solved play preflop. People went with their gut-feeling and if they were serious; possibly asked an opinion from another pro afterwards. For me this meant that every decision was learned through trial and error and through millions and millions of hands. This is one way to learn, but far from optimal. Nowadays, people can just easily buy a MonkerSolver or Preflop Matrix and jump start their journey on a leakless preflop game. Preflop may be just a small part of a complex game, but it should be the bedrock on which to lay your foundation. No matter how skilled you are post-flop, if you’re making drastic preflop mistakes one after another it will have a huge impact on your win rate.”
“Sometimes I do differ from solvers solutions (I don’t actually even rely on it that much to be honest). For example, if a player is playing way too loose from the cutoff, then I will be playing more buttons than any machine would ever allow. However, these adjustments should be done with care and implied overtime as you get more comfortable with PLO.”
“I would actually take anything any solver or chart tells me with a grain of salt, because every poker hand at the end of the day is a new one: Situations and players are always different, if not on a macro level then at least at a micro level. However, they’re a great way to form the base of your strategy and would recommend every starting PLO player to get at least somewhat familiar with them. Believe me, it’s a smart investment.”
“EEE27” recently made the final table of the SCOOP Main Event and has won five PLO titles within one week at partypoker’s Winter series.
Defend your Big Blind somewhat selectively
Playing out of position is neither fun nor profitable, but we do have to occasionally defend our BB against open raises.
Against a single raise from UTG or HJ in a 6-max game, you should be looking to defend around 23-25% of your starting hands.
You can drop a few points in VPIP against opens from these positions if there is a cold caller.
Against the button you can play around 40% of your hands and against the SB around 70%.
Since the early position opening ranges are quite tight, you need to 3-bet less against those opens from the big blind. You can start expanding your 3-betting range against late position opens.
If you notice any opponents that are not playing this way, it’s pretty simple to exploit them: Against very tight 3-bettors, who only re-pop you with Aces, you can just take flops with any 4 and outmaneuver them postflop as two of their cards are face-up.
Against crazy 3-bettors, you don’t have to open so many hands from the Cutoff/Button, instead you can just play the equity of your continuing hands in position against their wide 3-betting range and expect to profit postflop.
“Defending the big blind is one of the most crucial spots”
Some advice on big blind defense from EEE27:
“Defending the big blind correctly is varied by many factors: Openers position, stack size, opening size, defenders stack size and rake and that’s just to start with. It is one of the most crucial spots to get right. Money is already in the pot and because of that you’re getting a better price to call. From BB you’re not only looking to play hands that are clearly profitable, you’re also looking to play hands that can lose less than if they were just folded (< – 100bb/100). This will then again vary depending on many factors such as your capabilities postflop and on your opponents.”
“It can take a lot of hands to get any trustworthy data to analyze. I would start with either Monker or some preflop chart as a base of my strategy and build my game on top of that. Once you’ve gotten familiar with the defending ranges you can start to adjust better depending on any situation.”
Conclusion
Building a strong foundation in Pot-Limit Omaha is done through proper study of preflop ranges.
Valuing your hands correctly and learning how to defend your big blind are among the most important concepts to get you on track to playing winning PLO in modern online games.
Even the best players refine their preflop game from time to time and so should you!
- View more poker strategy articles here
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