PLO hand selection l Strategy with Barry

Barry shares a way of thinking about Pot Limit Omaha starting hands, for No Limit players new to the game.

I am taking my first steps into learning PLO MTT strategy. I have always been a winning PLO tournament player by virtue of just being a massive nit, but it seems like a great place to find softer games, so I am taking the study of the format seriously. 

The best advice I have had so far has been from the excellent mixed game tournament coach Daragh Davey, who explained that instead of thinking of it like you have four cards instead of two, consider it like you have six hold'em hands instead. 

Six hands, not four cards

You have to play two of the four cards exactly, so this makes sense. Look, for example, at these two examples. 

Lots of amateurs look at AK77 and think "wow, I have two good hands", but not when you think of all six possible combos. A7o and K7o are trash, and even worse, they repeat, you have A7o twice and K7o twice, so you only really have four hold'em hands.  

T9Q8, however, looks like six playable, defendable hands. You can flop a straight in so many ways, for example, and you have the potential for two flushes. While AK and 77 are the strongest hands, on aggregate, you'd be much happier with T9Q8.

Likewise, let's say you had bottom set, like below:

That's a dream spot in hold'em, you have a nutted hand, and you unblock the Q and J, meaning there are lots of hands which give you action. 

In PLO how well is bottom set performing against the six hold'em hands your opponent is holding? Or the 12 hold'em hands two opponents would be holding? And so on.

Suddenly bottom set looks like a bluff catcher at best.

When you use this framework for thinking of hand selection, the importance that all four cards work well together in PLO becomes very clear.