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#282 – Chris Ferguson Thinks About PLOEOB, Part II
PART II – USING OTHER OMAHA PRINCIPLES
I asked Chris about differences in the games, which would include ways to take an understanding of one game into another as well as strategies that can get you in trouble if you don’t adapt them to differences between PLOEOB and PLO or OEOB. He identified three.
GETTING QUARTERED IS WORSE
Chris Ferguson: Getting quartered is worse in Pot Limit Omaha Eight or Better than in Limit. In Limit, it’s not a good thing but it’s not horrible. If there are 4 people in the pot and you get quartered, you broke even. With 3 people, you lose but not a huge amount. You can lose a lot in Limit getting quartered only if there is a lot of raising and reraising on the river. But that’s not too likely because of the other player getting quartered.
In Pot Limit, you really can be forced to pay a lot. If you put in your whole stack and get quartered in a three-way pot, it costs you one-quarter of your entire stack.
What this means is that high hands go up in value in PLOEOB. Low hands are still important but A-2 isn’t as powerful in Pot Limit as Limit. It’s still good to have but you want to pay a bit more attention to the high hands. You play it a little more like Pot Limit Omaha. If you make the nuts on the high side, there’s a chance you can get your opponent to lay down his low. With the low nuts, there’s a chance you can get your opponent to lay down a better high hand, but there’s also the risk you’re chopping the low. On the high side when you make the nuts, it’s much less likely you will get quartered. You can put a lot more pressure on your opponents when you make the nuts on the high side.
THE VALUE OF THE NUTS GOES UP
Chris Ferguson: Any time you go from Limit to Pot Limit or No Limit, the nuts go up in value. Of course, in any form of poker, you want to make the nuts. But it’s more important in PLOEOB than OEOB because you can put a lot of pressure on your opponents with the nuts. You can get them to fold a non-nut hand that wins in one direction, or get a lot more chips out of them. In OEOB, they will probably call just all you get is an extra bet.
The corollary is that if you don’t have the nuts, it hurts you much more in PLOEOB than in OEOB. If you don’t have the nuts in OEOB, all your opponent can do is bet the limit, and you’ll probably call him. Because your opponent can bet the entire pot in PLOEOB, you can’t be pressured if you have the nuts. And if you have the nuts, you’ll be the one putting on the pressure.
MAKE OPPONENTS USE ALL 4 CARDS TO BEAT YOU
I asked Chris if he had any other general observations about PLOEOB. He described an idea that involved sticking with hands that require opponents to use all four cards to scoop you. It’s a concept that he obviously hasn’t tried applying a bunch in PLOEOB, since he hasn’t played the game much. But it was interesting to see how he THINKS about these things. This could be a great concept, which helps determine the kinds of starting hands you want to play, the kinds of hands to stick with, and the kind of situations where you can pressure opponents at the end of a hand without a necessarily super-strong hand:
Chris Ferguson: It’s really nice to have hands that work both ways. If you have a set and you have a low, that can be a hard hand to beat. You want to force your opponent to use more than two cards. If you can force them to use more than two cards to scoop you, it is very unlikely that you are scooped. A typical hand would be where you have some kind of a low and a decent high. Maybe you have a low like an A-2 and a set for high or even two-pair for high. Or you have a low and your high hand is a pair of aces and a king kicker, with no straights or flushes on the board. For your opponent to beat you both ways he has to beat your low and he has to have two-pair. That means he has to have all four cards working for him.
It will happen but that is the kind of hand where you can really put a lot of pressure on your opponent to get him to fold. He might have the best high and he might fold the best high because he doesn’t have a low. Or he might fold a better low because he doesn’t have the nut low and doesn’t have a high hand. Those are the kinds of hands you where can put a lot of pressure on your opponents, even though you really don’t have the nuts either way. Your hand is very vulnerable but if he has to use all four cards to beat you, that is going to be tough.
