PLO best starting hand.

KAM99

What do you think is your favourite starting hand in PLO? Do you prefer one to the other, or just don't care?

BigBluster

There have been lots of debates as to whether AAKK, AAJT, or AAT9 (all double suited) are the best starting hands.

Personally I think the debate is irrelevant: you play all of them. And unlike Hold 'Em, you're never more than 60% favourite against the worst starting hand (incidentally, this is why the game is played pot-limit. The correct strategy at no-limit Omaha is to shove every single hand when first to act. 2378 - move those chips in! You never see no-limit Omaha because of this discrepancy).

PLO is not a game of starting hands - it's a game of flops, pot-odds, changing pot-odds. In this respect, it is a much better game than HE which is overly dependent on starting hands.

PS: PLO8 is the best poker game going - unfortunately there is only the 8.30pm £5.50 buy-in game. Not enough interest on skypoker really, maybe because it's never covered on 861.

KAM99

Yeah I know all that, just posted it for the sake of interest to see which way people went.

I do agree though it is a great game, and to be honest far, far better to play than holdem these days due to teh fact getting and edge in holdem is getting harder to do. Still a lot of utter fish in Omaha that play to many hands and play them badly too.

Skypoker just doesn't have the player base I guess to support it. But then that will never change while they offer such limited game types and the software is in many areas still behind the big sites. Shame really as some of what sky has I love, but they seem to have very little drive to be bigger and better.

Talon

  Strange discrepancy in thinking here. When we talk about NLHE where the preflop hand rankings are very clearly defined we talk about favourite hands. But when we talk about PLO when preflop there is not the major differences between the good hands we talk about which is best.

  The simple answer to any question about which is the best preflop hand. It is the one that has the best chance of hitting the board and ending up with the nut hand. For this reason quantity becomes a bigger issue than quality within a starting hand. That is you want as many of your 6 starting hands to be nut drawing.

 The most overplayed hand in PLO is AAxxr. It is one pair and rarely hits but a lot of people will go broke with it no matter what the board texture.

 AAKKds is technically the best starting hand but against a good rundown hand like 89TJds it is only about 66% favourite preflop. So as you can see you can never really be that far in front.

 As for my personal preferences here. Always happy to get good aces but my favourite hand is TJQKds.

F_Ivanovic

I posted I really don't care, I'm fist pumping with either. Which is true! AATJ though is a better hand for getting it in multi-way (or playing multi-way) whereas AAKK is better in a HU pot.

The correct strategy at no-limit Omaha is to shove every single hand when first to act. 2378 - move those chips in! You never see no-limit Omaha because of this discrepancy).

OK firstly you do see no-limit Omaha - it's just PLO is still a more popular format. I assume you can only be talking about when we get to shallow stacked tournament play and not cash poker? Because shoving all in every hand is most definitely not the optimal way to play any hand in cash!

However, just because we are never that big of an underdog with most hands in PLO doesn't mean that the correct play would be to just shove any hand because our fold equity would become non-existent and we'd always be getting it in with bad shape. 

Phantom66

Ignorant question here...

Isn't PLO all about hand combinations?

So wouldn't AKJT be better than AAKK?

AAKK is drawing to 2 nut flushes and 1 nut straight

AKJT is drawing to 2 nut flushes but has much more combinations to make the nut straight AK AJ AT KJ KT JT all draw to the nut straight and have good 2 pair making hands too.

Obviously AAKK starts with 2 strong pairs and chances to make top set, but does that really compensate for only actually playing 4 hands AKsx2 AA and KK? Obviously AKo is irrelevant as it gives you no extra ways of winning as AKs.

FCHD

There's plenty of No_Limit Omaha on other sites

KAM99

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

Ignorant question here... Isn't PLO all about hand combinations? So wouldn't AKJT be better than AAKK? AAKK is drawing to 2 nut flushes and 1 nut straight AKJT is drawing to 2 nut flushes but has much more combinations to make the nut straight AK AJ AT KJ KT JT all draw to the nut straight and have good 2 pair making hands too. Obviously AAKK starts with 2 strong pairs and chances to make top set, but does that really compensate for only actually playing 4 hands AKsx2 AA and KK? Obviously AKo is irrelevant as it gives you no extra ways of winning as AKs.
Posted by Phantom66

And hence why there is always talk over which is the better of the two. You ask why some say AAKK is better. Well you have the draw to two nut flushes over the one nut flush from the 10J, still have straight chance, but also have the 4.5:1 chance of hitting a set, which puts you ahead of flush draws of course, and the potential for the FH as well. Even if you don't hit a set you can still occasionally make the FH from the board dealing out 3 same cards.

Both hands have their plus points, and why they really have pretty much equal billing I guess. Just a case of preferance I think as to what you prefer.

F_Ivanovic

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

Ignorant question here... Isn't PLO all about hand combinations? So wouldn't AKJT be better than AAKK? AAKK is drawing to 2 nut flushes and 1 nut straight AKJT is drawing to 2 nut flushes but has much more combinations to make the nut straight AK AJ AT KJ KT JT all draw to the nut straight and have good 2 pair making hands too. Obviously AAKK starts with 2 strong pairs and chances to make top set, but does that really compensate for only actually playing 4 hands AKsx2 AA and KK? Obviously AKo is irrelevant as it gives you no extra ways of winning as AKs.
Posted by Phantom66

Well if you were to get it all in pre with AKJTds against AAKKds (different suits) you would be a massive 30% underdog

BigBluster

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

I posted I really don't care, I'm fist pumping with either. Which is true! AATJ though is a better hand for getting it in multi-way (or playing multi-way) whereas AAKK is better in a HU pot. OK firstly you do see no-limit Omaha - it's just PLO is still a more popular format. I assume you can only be talking about when we get to shallow stacked tournament play and not cash poker? Because shoving all in every hand is most definitely not the optimal way to play any hand in cash! However, just because we are never that big of an underdog with most hands in PLO doesn't mean that the correct play would be to just shove any hand because our fold equity would become non-existent and we'd always be getting it in with bad shape. 
Posted by F_Ivanovic

Sorry for the duff info, you are correct. I should have qualified what I said. 

Shoving any NLO hand when deep stacked is not the correct strategy. In a typical NLO tournament when you are mostly < 30BB it is mathematically correct to shove every hand when first to act.

F_Ivanovic

I can see this being the case for 10bb's or less, possibly up to 15 (w/o doing any maths) but really don't think it can be true for 25bb's.

BigBluster

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

I can see this being the case for 10bb's or less, possibly up to 15 (w/o doing any maths) but really don't think it can be true for 25bb's.
Posted by F_Ivanovic

Shoving 30BBs into a 1.5Bb pot, you need to be on average 48.7% if called every time for the play to be break even.

I just checked with a poker calculator. That 2378 against the AAKKss is <40%. So a losing play. This is one of the worst hands possible against what is arguably the best. Change that 2378 to 5678ss and it's a Hold 'Em flip (54/46). So still a losing play but....

But as you know, you're very unlikely to run into AAKKss. Realistically assuming almost any element at all of fold equity and the play is clearly +EV.

As an aside: if you were sitting with 30BBs and absolutely knew for certain that you were the good end of a 54/46 scenario, would you still call? 

F_Ivanovic

You said "any 4 cards/100%" - obviously running into AAKK is very unlikely but it's reasonably likely we will run into a top 10% hand which has will have 61.68% equity vs our range when we shove 100%. So shoving 100% of hands at 30BBs is clearly a losing play. If we shove 10BB's into a 1.5bb pot how much equity do we need when called for that to be break even? 

BigBluster

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

a top 10% hand will have 61.68% equity vs our range when we shove 100%. 
Posted by F_Ivanovic

Don't want to bore everyone with a bilateral conversation, but I think your figures are optimistic. But even by these figures, a massive 90% of hands will not even have 60% equity and shouldn't call a shove.

KAM99

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand. : Don't want to bore everyone with a bilateral conversation, but I think your figures are optimistic. But even by these figures, a massive 90% of hands will not even have 60% equity and shouldn't call a shove.
Posted by BigBluster

It's these kind of figures is the reason why I saw a few times players like Tom Dwan doing like 10 or so all in shoves in a row at $100,000 a time in HU omaha. Pretty sure there is some footage of it on uTube as welll doing it with random players.

F_Ivanovic

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand.:

In Response to Re: PLO best starting hand. : Don't want to bore everyone with a bilateral conversation, but I think your figures are optimistic. But even by these figures, a massive 90% of hands will not even have 60% equity and shouldn't call a shove.
Posted by BigBluster

Optimistic? I didn't just make them up, I plugged them into ProPokerTools. 100% range vs 10% range. 10% of hands when playing 6 handed is still a fair amount. Obviously OTB it's likely to go through but shoving UTG and we are going to get looked up by a top 10% hand reasonably often.

Also, even if we look at 20% of hands vs 100% of hands, the 20% still has almost 59% equity and even 30% of hands have 57% equity. Which means if we are against someone we know is shoving every hand we can call it off with a top 30% hand and have on average 57% equity. Which pretty much proves that shoving any 4 cards cannot be +ev at almost any stack depth unless we are shallow and know someone is folding too much.