Both are ‘community card’ games, with the same number of streets and same basic structure. What’s more, having four hole cards instead of two is an attraction for players who have grown tired of folding too many hold’ em hands. However, be wary! PLO is known as an action game for good reason, and the variance can be quite tough to deal with. Tournaments are often the best way to get into the game, because mistakes can only cost you your buy-in and busting can give you time to recuperate and learn.
Getting started
First things first: PLO is a flop game. Far more hands go to a flop than in no-limit hold’ em, and this affects tournament strategy from the first level to the last. The reason is down to the four hole cards. Imagine your cards are A-B-C-D. Arranging those into hold’ em hands, you can have A-B, A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D and C-D. So you have six ‘hold’em hands’. This has a profound effect on the strength of Omaha hands. With six hands, you are much more likely to have a strong hand come the showdown. Hence, the wisdom in Omaha is that you should be looking for potential nut holdings pre-flop, and betting or drawing to the nuts on the flop.
This also means that most Omaha hands are closer together in value. Most pre-flop match-ups are around the 60%/40% range. In fact, one hand is rarely more than a 70% favourite over another – especially two hands that get all-in pre-flop. Here are some typical preflop match-ups in PLO:
Ac-As-7c-5d 67% vs Ks-Kd-Qd-9h 33%
Ac-As-7c-5d 59% vs Jd-Td-9h-8s 41%
Ah-Kh-Qc-Ts 48% vs 7d-7c-6d-6h 52%
Kh-Kd-4s-2c 44% vs Ah-8h-7s-6s 56%
Some of these percentages are pretty surprising for hold’em players. See how the ‘bad’ Kings of the fourth example are actually behind to what in hold’em terms looks like a suited Ace.
Note also that the classic ‘nightmare’ match-up of Aces vs Kings is only 2-to-1 in this particular case. The margin can vary greatly with Aces vs Kings – anything from 75%/25% up to 60%/40% – depending on the supporting cards.
So at most stages of a PLO tournament, the game can be a bit more ‘wait and see’ than hold’em. With so much equity flying around it can make sense for more players to see a flop, which in turn invites more players to the flop, so expect chipstacks to be flying about even early in a tournament. Little wonder that PLO is called the action game!