You’re playing a low-stakes Pot Limit Omaha cash game and raise from the button. The big blind calls and you go to the flop. After your opponent checks their option, it’s on you to choose whether to bet or not.
Most inexperienced PLO players make a critical error when trying to decide what to do in this situation: they base their answer on their specific hand.
Although true to a lesser degree in NLH too, in PLO, deciding whether to continuation bet is far less about your hand than it is about the flop. With so many more preflop combinations available in Pot Limit Omaha (270,725 vs just 1,326 in Hold’em!), trying to assess whether to bet based on your exact holdings would be nearly impossible. Instead, a better approach is simply to ask: Who does this board favor?
Or in poker terms: who has the range advantage?
Take a board like 885 rainbow. Playing as the button against the big blind caller, you have to ask yourself: is this flop more likely to hit my range or theirs? Generally speaking, the big blind player will have more 8s in their range, more combinations of 85, more small rundowns and cards that interact with that board. This means that even though you hold more high pairs, you don’t get to bet this flop indiscriminately, especially not against an aggressive player who could make your life miserable, both on this and future streets.
This leads to the next question you ought to ask yourself when deciding on a flop action:
Does my hand want to play a big pot?
If the answer is no, you likely don’t want to inflate one. Just because you have an overpair or some backdoor equity doesn’t mean you have to start piling money in. Far more than in NLH, marginal hands play poorly in bloated pots in PLO.
Finally, one question that can be helpful in determining whether to stick some chips in the pot is: How easy is it for my hand to improve?
Take that same 885 board where you hold one of two similar double-suited hands A843 or A89T. In the first hand, with every card other than a 2 being an overcard to your side-cards (43), if you were to bet and get raised, you’d immediately be in an uncomfortable spot. Not only will your boat outs still leave you vulnerable to higher boats, but any backdoor straight equity you pick up on the turn will be vulnerable to higher straights. In contrast, when you hit your boat or straight with the 9T, your opponent will be the one at risk of getting coolered with lower ones. Note that this is also a great concept to keep in mind when deciding which combinations to check-raise versus which to just call when you’re the out of position player.
So, the next time you’re facing a flop decision in PLO, before you put a single chip into the pot, remember to ask yourself: Who does the board hit hardest? Does my hand want to play a big pot? And how easy is it for my hand to improve? Answering these three questions accurately will put you ahead of the majority of low-stakes Omaha players and set you up for success on turns and rivers.
