The cost of giving your hand away in Pot Limit Omaha (Feb 3/4)
Hand value, deception and preflop betting decisions
(I wrote these notes up a while ago with Theory of Poker, written by David Sklansky (DS), open and the idea of how to play aces preflop, so there's a good chance some of these things are plagiarized right out of TOP. I tried to put TOP stuff in quotes, but honestly I'm too lazy to go back and look it up and cite properly.)
But my goal is to apply TOP fundamentals for deciding how to play your best starting hands in PLO without giving away value.
Poker is essentially a game of maximizing gains while minimizing losses.
"When you play in a way that lets your opponents know what you have, you cost yourself.
The more that your play gives away what you have, the less likely opponents will make a mistake." Creating mistakes is the whole objective. When opponents don't know what you're holding, then the are more likely to make mistakes.
When to play straightforwardly and when to use deception
Most important criterion = ability of your opponents.
"The tougher they are, the more you need to throw them off"
"The weaker they are the more you can play optimally"
Cost involved in deception
However, there is an inherent cost involved in deception. If you are not playing optimally, then you are making a mistake*. So in using deception, the idea is to "slowplay" and disguise your hand with the expressed purpose of making more money on later streets.
Bet size. number of players, and deception
DS notes that as the pot size increases the need for deception decreases.
Therefore, in theory the best time to deceive is preflop. Considering that starting hand equity values are much similar in PLO than NLHE, I think preflop deception in PLO calls for further investigation.
Another issue to consider when applying TOP's deception ideas on PLO is that the more players in a hand, the less there is a need for deception. With a game like PLO there is also a need to control the size of the pot. If everyone limps preflop, then there won't be much to play for on the flop. So if you have a very good premium hand you will want to play for a bigger pot on the flop. However, since position is very important in PLO, some players (myself include) combine these two ideas and just raise when they have position and a premium hand.
Playing strong hands OOP
This then brings us to the issue of how to play strong hands when out of position (OOP). Weak players will do foolish things such as only raising with aces and even doing so from the blinds in unraised pots. (A situation like this occurred in a hand that led to this article: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue24/Albright1206.html)
However, if you have a strong hand and you do not play in a raised pot, then are you are giving away value of your hand if all cards were turned over. In PLO however as much or more than other games, the value of the cards you are dealt is dependent on position at the table.
Say a player plays 30% of his hands without considering position
20% limps, 10% raises, but will never limp with aces.
Since someone is dealt aces about 2.5% of the time, you know that 1 in 4 times he is raising, he is doing so with aces.
So if he raised and there is an ace, there's really less than a 25% chance that he has trip aces, which means that in part his aces are disguised.
But if this player never limps with aces, then if he limped into the pot and there is an ace on the flop, you can be 100% sure that he doesn't have trip aces/top set. With this approach of never limping with aces, there is no disguise to his limps.
But since aces are the most profitable category of starting hands, can it ever make sense to just limp with aces? Is it possible that a good mixed strategy would include something like raising with aces 75% of the time and limping with aces 25% of the time.
Considerations to this problem would probably include:
How the table/opponents play post flop
Whether or not the pot is raised already when it gets to you
Stack sizes
Average pot size at end of hand
Your position at the table
Playing all premium hands in the same manner
*This is Sklansky's "mistake" meaning that you are costing yourself money by not playing your hand optimally as per the Fundamental Theorem of Poker.
(I wrote these notes up a while ago with Theory of Poker, written by David Sklansky (DS), open and the idea of how to play aces preflop, so there's a good chance some of these things are plagiarized right out of TOP. I tried to put TOP stuff in quotes, but honestly I'm too lazy to go back and look it up and cite properly.)
But my goal is to apply TOP fundamentals for deciding how to play your best starting hands in PLO without giving away value.
Poker is essentially a game of maximizing gains while minimizing losses.
"When you play in a way that lets your opponents know what you have, you cost yourself.
The more that your play gives away what you have, the less likely opponents will make a mistake." Creating mistakes is the whole objective. When opponents don't know what you're holding, then the are more likely to make mistakes.
When to play straightforwardly and when to use deception
Most important criterion = ability of your opponents.
"The tougher they are, the more you need to throw them off"
"The weaker they are the more you can play optimally"
Cost involved in deception
However, there is an inherent cost involved in deception. If you are not playing optimally, then you are making a mistake*. So in using deception, the idea is to "slowplay" and disguise your hand with the expressed purpose of making more money on later streets.
Bet size. number of players, and deception
DS notes that as the pot size increases the need for deception decreases.
Therefore, in theory the best time to deceive is preflop. Considering that starting hand equity values are much similar in PLO than NLHE, I think preflop deception in PLO calls for further investigation.
Another issue to consider when applying TOP's deception ideas on PLO is that the more players in a hand, the less there is a need for deception. With a game like PLO there is also a need to control the size of the pot. If everyone limps preflop, then there won't be much to play for on the flop. So if you have a very good premium hand you will want to play for a bigger pot on the flop. However, since position is very important in PLO, some players (myself include) combine these two ideas and just raise when they have position and a premium hand.
Playing strong hands OOP
This then brings us to the issue of how to play strong hands when out of position (OOP). Weak players will do foolish things such as only raising with aces and even doing so from the blinds in unraised pots. (A situation like this occurred in a hand that led to this article: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue24/Albright1206.html)
However, if you have a strong hand and you do not play in a raised pot, then are you are giving away value of your hand if all cards were turned over. In PLO however as much or more than other games, the value of the cards you are dealt is dependent on position at the table.
Say a player plays 30% of his hands without considering position
20% limps, 10% raises, but will never limp with aces.
Since someone is dealt aces about 2.5% of the time, you know that 1 in 4 times he is raising, he is doing so with aces.
So if he raised and there is an ace, there's really less than a 25% chance that he has trip aces, which means that in part his aces are disguised.
But if this player never limps with aces, then if he limped into the pot and there is an ace on the flop, you can be 100% sure that he doesn't have trip aces/top set. With this approach of never limping with aces, there is no disguise to his limps.
But since aces are the most profitable category of starting hands, can it ever make sense to just limp with aces? Is it possible that a good mixed strategy would include something like raising with aces 75% of the time and limping with aces 25% of the time.
Considerations to this problem would probably include:
How the table/opponents play post flop
Whether or not the pot is raised already when it gets to you
Stack sizes
Average pot size at end of hand
Your position at the table
Playing all premium hands in the same manner
*This is Sklansky's "mistake" meaning that you are costing yourself money by not playing your hand optimally as per the Fundamental Theorem of Poker.
posted by Andrew at 8:22 AM
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