Folding the nuts
Marcus Bateman
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Marcus Bateman /
09 September 2008 /
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Pot limit Omaha is basically the only game in poker where there is a good case to fold the nuts in certain spots. The clearest example of this is the nut straight in specific situations.
To try and illustrate this, I want to look at an example in a PLO tournament. Imagine you are deep in a PLO tournament and hold 7c8cJc10s on a 4h5h6s board. You are on the button with two other players left in the hand. The first player bets pot, and the second player re-raises pot. This is a classic situation where folding is actually a realistic option.
The principle reason for this is the huge number of extra hands possible in PLO. You could easily be up against people who not only hold the nut straight like you, but also a whole host of extra draws. It could well be the case that player one has a set and a flush draw, and that player two holds the nuts with extra outs to a better straight (a hand like 7x8x9x10x for example). In this example you have no chance to win the pot, and only around a 25% chance of splitting it with player two. In this example, player one has by far and away the best equity - around a 70% chance to win the whole pot depending on the exact cards in the hand.
This sort of situation has to be considered not only in the context of the hand equities (this is somewhat of a worse case scenario - often you will have significantly better equity than this), but also the context of the situation. Getting your money in with a 25% chance at a split pot is clearly not a good idea late in a tournament. You will be much better off waiting and trying to pick a better spot to get your money in.
Remember that passing up a small edge in a big pot is often the right choice to make in order to survive in a tournament. Also consider that short stacking in Omaha is much more effective than it is in hold'em, with double and triple ups frequently occurring if the right spots are picked.
To someone used to just playing hold'em, folding the nuts will always feel instinctively very wrong; yet to be successful in PLO requires the player to be able to make big lay downs in spots like this. Consider the action in front of you, think through the catalogue of possibilities that PLO brings, and really think if this is the right time to get it in with a relatively weak nut hand.
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