River bluff spot

Flop is a great spot to check and take the free card. You have a piece of the flop but not enough to bet. If a spade hits you could well get paid off by worse hands as they wouldn't expect you to take a free card with a strong flush draw.

The problem with betting this flop is exactly what happened on the turn, you don't improve, nobody likely holds the nuts but you don't know if you can afford to bet.

The half pot bet is just terrible. There is no way you would ever bet half pot here with a straight so nobody is going to fold to your bet and you're just isolating yourself against better hands.

On the river you could well be against someone with a 9 high straight now and the problem is you know they dont have the nuts, but they also know you dont have the nuts given your super weak bet on the flop and turn.

You probably have to give up at this point as I don't see a bluff working, but this was all brought about by the horrible flop bet that just bloated the pot while you held just 1 out to the nuts.

My advice for PLO2 is that bluffs usually go wrong, unless the spot is great. Ribbo is right that half a pot bet doesn't represent nuts, but as this is PLO2 no one cares about betsizing. Against one player I would fire pretty often. But against 2 players, the odds for both folding is signifantly less.

And if you bet turn bigger, the situation on river is that villains have half a dollar left in a big pot. They can't foresee on flop or turn, but they will wake up on river. They think "oh, I have only half a dollar left and the pot is big. And I have 2 pairs. He might be bluffing, I call". And someone might have hand like oesd which improves to small straight.

You make money in PLO2 by valuebetting a **** out of villains, not by bluffing.