Bet sizing in Omaha

Pot Limit Omaha / Marcus Bateman / 19 April 2011 / Leave a Comment

The most you can bet in PLO is the pot, but that does not mean it should automatically be your first point of call.

Many weak Omaha players have one true love in their life - the pot button. This sits innocuously enough at the side of the betting button, but all too often becomes the instant go to place whenever a player wants to bet.

This is fine in some situations. Often in Pot Limit Omaha you want to build a big pot and make any weak draws pay the maximum price. However, this is frequently not the case, and making sure that you vary your bet sizes can both keep you safe in certain spots, as well as making your bluffs cheaper, and your value bets larger.

Take river bets for instance. A frequent situation in PLO is to get to the river and have the nuts or nothing with a missed draw. Here you have no real concerns other than the best way to win a nice pot or win the pot without showdown, and there are many better ways to do this other than simply firing out a pot size bet without thinking. As a relatively unknown player at the table, when you make a pot sized bet in Omaha you will often get folds. As your reputation builds and it becomes apparent that you are capable of bluffing rivers, you will get the odd call when your story makes little sense - a relatively disastrous outcome considering how much you lose making such a large bet.

However, if you start firing out bets of say, half the pot, you will get paid off much more often when you do have it, simply because the price goes down, and with it the frequency that they can fold. This gets your value bets paid off much more by weaker hands, and despite losing a little value in the size of bet when called, against most astute opponents you will win much more over time than you do just firing pot bets - the size of the pot versus the price of the call is just too appetising to thinking players.

Over time, this effect also makes your bluffing life much easier. As no one likes just getting habitually taken to value town, after a while even the great price on offer will start to induce folds, and this suddenly opens up a whole world of cheap bluffing possibilities. If you can win big pots with small bets, you can open up your bluffing ranges much more, simply because the risk reward ratio is so good. Very few players can adequately dissect lines to the river well every time, and can quickly become lost in a blizzard of value bets and bluffs.

The most you can bet in PLO is the pot, but that does not mean it should automatically be your first point of call. Numerous complex considerations need to go into bet sizing in the game, dependent on reputation, game flow, pot odds, opponent type and future hand considerations - all things which very quickly separate good players from weak.

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