Say hello to PLO

Having been on holiday and divorced from playing Limit Holdem for a while, I found myself browsing PLO (Pot-limit Omaha) videos on DeucesCracked. Happened across a video series by Vanessa Selbst (2x6 - two times the cards, six times the fun) aimed at beginning players.

The first video includes some pre-flop hand range guidance so after watching it figured I'd have a quick go at micro stakes.

Hopped along to Titan Poker armed with $3 to try full-ring PLO $0.01/$.02. Main objective was to see how many hands arrived that met Vanessa's starting hand criteria. VPIP came out around 22%, playing some hands that Vanessa had not advised.

Played very much weak-tight. Didn't care too much about being exploitable since I knew I was a big fish. Main worry was unstable wireless internet connection.

Initially maintained a break-even stack winning some very small pots then overplayed top two pair and lost a third of my stack.

Luckily another fish stacked off with A555 single-suited and helped me repair the damage. However, in the cold light of day, I had again gone to war with a fragile top two pair hand and could have easily been left with nothing. Decided to quit after that as I was way out of my depth.

Some observations:

• some reads/knowledge from Limit poker translates well to this form e.g. aggression, vpip, stacking off, position.
• I should probably cut down the number of stats shown since I have no idea how to interpret anything beyond broad VPIP ranges
• You need a better understanding of the math than in limit as you have to put a lot more at stake with each play. pots can quickly grow to put you all in so calling down with the worst hand is a much bigger mistake in PLO than LHE.
  
• Hand-reading is a nightmare !?! I'm useless at this with two cards so four cards?!? ugh!

Watched second video . Didn't find it added much for me - she's coaching a high-stakes no-limit player to play PLO and he does allsorts of stuff I wouldn't even think of trying so most of it was over my head. I did get some useful into on bet sizing though and there are other tidbits in there for a careful naive listener like me.

Not entirely convinced Vanessa's series is of great benefit to me at this point but I've since found that a PLO book I bought months ago looks to be a good supplement to Vanessa's series.

Definitely would like to get into PLO a little. The additional risk of losing your stack does worry me and it's the reason I've avoided no-limit holdem. Also, bet sizing adds another variable into the mix and complicates the game a little more.

I don't want to sacrifice my limit game especially since I'm still effectively struggling at LHE short-handed micro-stakes. However, I think a certain amount of diversification will make for more robust poker playing.