Pot-Limit Omaha for Hold'em players

You get four cards instead of two, and you must use exactly two of them with exactly three from the board. That rule catches everyone at first. Four hearts on the board and one in your hand is not a flush. A board of A-A-A-K with a king in your hand is not a full house unless you hold two cards that make one. Read your hand as two cards from four, every time, until it is automatic.

You can bet at most the size of the pot, counted after your call. With $10 in the pot and a $10 bet in front of you, a pot-size raise is $10 to call plus $30, so $40 in total. The lobby button does the arithmetic. The practical effect is that stacks go in over two or three streets rather than one, and that the pot grows geometrically: a pot bet on each street turns a small pot into a stack by the river.

With four cards, every hand has six two-card combinations inside it, and the good hands are the ones where all six work together. A-A-K-K double-suited is the best hand, and it is still only about a two-to-one favourite against a random hand, where A-A in Hold'em is better than four-to-one. The hands to play are connected and suited: J-T-9-8 with two suits, A-K-Q-J with the ace suited, A-A-J-T double-suited. The hands to fold are the ones that look like two Hold'em hands stapled together: A-A-7-2 with no suits is weak, and K-K-3-8 is a fold from most seats.

• Good: four cards in a row or nearly, two suits, high cards.
• Good: a high pair with two connected cards and a suit to the pair.
• Bad: a pair with two unconnected cards, called a dangler.
• Bad: three of a kind in your hand, which wastes a card and kills your own outs.
• Bad: low suited cards. A small flush loses to a bigger flush far more often than in Hold'em.

Because every hand has six combinations, hands rarely dominate each other before the flop the way A-K dominates A-Q in Hold'em. A good hand against a bad hand is often 60-40, and all-in before the flop is close to a coin flip unless you hold aces. So PLO is played after the flop. Raising before the flop builds a pot with a hand that plays well; it does not win the pot there.

In Hold'em, top pair is often good. In Omaha, with four cards each, someone usually has two pair or better by the river, and the player with the second-best flush or straight is the one who loses a stack. The habit to build is to ask on every street: is my hand, or the hand I am drawing to, the best possible one? Draw to the nut flush, not to a flush. Draw to the top straight, not to the bottom end. Fold the second nuts when a solid player bets the river into you.

With four cards you can hold a straight draw with thirteen, seventeen or twenty outs, called a wrap, and a wrap with a flush draw can be a favourite against a made hand on the flop. That is why PLO players bet and raise their draws: a big draw is often the best hand in equity even when it has no pair. Count your outs honestly, and count only the ones that make the nuts.

With closer equities and pot-size bets, acting last is worth even more than in Hold'em. In position you can take a free card with a draw, bet when the board misses everyone, and control the size of a pot with a medium hand. Out of position you are guessing with stacks at risk. Play fewer hands from the early seats than you would in Hold'em, not more.

Swings are wider than in Hold'em because the stacks go in with closer equities. Keep 50 buy-ins for a PLO cash stake where you would keep 30 for Hold'em, and expect a losing stretch that would worry a Hold'em player. The variance calculator takes a standard deviation of 120 big blinds per 100 hands or more for PLO.

1. Playing a pair of aces with two junk cards as if it were a monster.
2. Drawing to a flush that is not the nut flush.
3. Treating top pair or an overpair as a hand worth a stack.
4. Misreading a hand by using one card or three from the hole.
5. Playing as many hands out of position as in Hold'em.