Poker Video: Pot-Limit Omaha by DJ Sensei (Micro/Small Stakes)

Congrats on your first and premier episode, Kevin!

Congrats. I get off work in an hour and can't wait to give this a watch.

Good stuff, I've been looking forward to material from you Kevin; I'm always happy to see vids from Dan.

Really looking forward to this series!

Really looking forward to this series!

+++1

very nice breakdown

the same as PLO fundamentals by LFTV yet more simple/elegant in your expression of the concepts

5 stars

I guess I have to watch this episode about 5times to get all the information out of it!

thanks a lot for this fantastic video!

I'm kind of curious as to what your thoughts are on how the presence of antes should impact your ranges in the small blind in overlimping or stealing. Your argument seemed to be that we shouldn't be too concerned with the pot odds we're getting but are antes widening your small blind ranges in any real significant way?

I'm kind of curious as to what your thoughts are on how the presence of antes should impact your ranges in the small blind in overlimping or stealing. Your argument seemed to be that we shouldn't be too concerned with the pot odds we're getting but are antes widening your small blind ranges in any real significant way?

I am considering devoting some discussion to dealing with antes in a future episode since playing with antes almost certainly also means playing deep. In general though the presence of antes should make you more incentivized to steal the blinds but not necessarily change your OOP ranges until you notice your opponents are adjusting to the antes.

Honestly though I think people mostly over adjust, rather than under adjust, to the presence of antes.

Time Link to 00:00:37

Congrats on the new series! The only thing bad about it is the lack of "long and thought out responses" to posts in the forum -- you went dark while making this vid. Don't be a stranger.

I'm kind of curious as to what your thoughts are on how the presence of antes should impact your ranges in the small blind in overlimping or stealing. Your argument seemed to be that we shouldn't be too concerned with the pot odds we're getting but are antes widening your small blind ranges in any real significant way?

Agree with Kevin that we should be stealing more when it folds to our SB (one nice thing is that we can raise bigger to drive out the BB more often), but that otherwise our VPIP should remain low. Remember, implied odds are much more important than pot odds when we're oop in a small PLO pot, so we definitely need to have some nuttiness to get involved.

Great start to the series guys! I agree with the interest in more coverage of PLO with antes, I think I'm one of the ones who over adjust .

I will make an effort to address antes in a future video. Something else that I will try to address that should be relatively quick is calling 4bets preflop, as a lot of the hand histories I received were about whether or not a 4bet can be profitably called (assuming villain has AAxx). Feel free to make any further suggestions.

Agree with Kevin that we should be stealing more when it folds to our SB (one nice thing is that we can raise bigger to drive out the BB more often)

Are we assuming that opponents are somewhat stupid and think that a 4.5x pot raise with antes is somehow bigger than a 3x pot raise without antes even though he's receiving the same pot odds in both situations and we aren't technically raising bigger?

I'm kind of curious as to what your thoughts are on how the presence of antes should impact your ranges in the small blind in overlimping or stealing. Your argument seemed to be that we shouldn't be too concerned with the pot odds we're getting but are antes widening your small blind ranges in any real significant way?

The thing about ante games is that people adjust to the fact there are antes but don't adjust to the fact that effective stacks are deeper, the latter being the far more important factor in how you should play because it vastly changes how post-flop play runs out.

Here's an interesting thing to note about ante games and depth. Some say the inclusion of antes don't really differ in depth from a regular 100BB game despite being deeper in BBs because of the larger size of the pot to start. To counter that, let's take a 50c/$1 200BB effective stack game with antes vs a 1/2 100BB game (note I am only taking two different stakes to use similar stack sizes, but there is no reason why we can't compare antes vs non antes at the same stake and only talk about SPRs). In the first, assuming 6-max, pot to start is $2.70, while in the latter pot to start is $3, both with $200 starting stacks. At first glance, you might think this is only a 30c difference so the games must be fairly similar right? After all, they have the same buyin and one is 74 SPR and the other is 67 SPR.

Wrong. Here's why. The way a pot sized raise is calculated makes a massive difference on future street SPRs. Because pot is calculated by calling first, the pot raise will be much larger when you are calling a $2 bb instead of a $1 bb before you raise. In the first, it's an open raise to $4.70, while in the second it's an open raise to $7. Assuming one caller from the BB, the pot is $11.10 in the first, but it's $15 in the second. Now suddenly we're dealing with ~17SPR vs ~13SPR and this gap only widens the more callers there are. Assuming an extreme example of all 6 players in the pot pre to one raise it's $29.40 vs $42, which is something like a 6.7 SPR vs a 4.8 SPR. To illustrate this even better, we could devise a game with no blinds and only a 50c ante and compare it to a $1/$2 game; both have the exact same $3 pot to start but you can see how the first has a limiting raise of $3 pre-flop that it changes true stack depth completely.

Now back to the idea of open stealing in SB in ante games vs non-ante games. Assuming our opponent in BB is slightly competent and realises that he is getting 2-1 in both scenarios against a pot raise when we steal from the SB, he should really be thinking about his SPR in this spot. In typical ante games, I believe SB can only pot to 4.2bbs, while in a non ante game SB can pot to 3bbs. If you are 200bb deep as you typically are in an ante game (on PS you can typically be 250bb deep so this is even more pronounced), this raise is a smaller % of your stack than the 3bb in the 100bb deep non-ante game. SPRs are higher in the ante games therefore position has more power postflop. This means in SB we should be stealing less in general (again assuming our opponent is competent.)

Apologies for the long post, but my point is stack depth should be the main concern in adjusting our ranges, not whether there are antes (unless our opponents are stupid and get confused by this easily and only think in terms of BBs.) I hope I also illustrated how the existence of antes messes with pot size raises that you should take this into account when thinking about stack depth.

very nice post, but yes I do think that this:

Are we assuming that opponents are somewhat stupid and think that a 4.5x pot raise with antes is somehow bigger than a 3x pot raise without antes even though he's receiving the same pot odds in both situations and we aren't technically raising bigger?

is probably true to a significant extent.

very nice post, but yes I do think that this:

is probably true to a significant extent.

Yeah I think it might be too to an extent.

However, although most players probably haven't thought about antes that much, they may automatically be playing looser as their standard adjustment (just because there are antes). This hurts them in a lot of situations like when they are peeling too light OOP vs button raises, but in this specific SB vs BB situation it happens that they are accidentally adjusting correctly by defending looser, especially if we are stealing too much, just because of how great position is.

Whatever happens, opening up more in the worst position is never going to be amazingly profitable for us anyway, that I wouldn't suggest it as a standard.

Nice post Schweig, thank you.

Time Link to 00:38:54

Great video, looking forward to the rest of the series!

BTW, the hands in the top right of that graph that are both floppable and nutty are called "flutty" or "the fluts", right?

Very solid first episode, look forward to rest of series.

I really enjoyed the detailed breakdown of the preflop scenarios in this episode. Thanks guys.

From a noob - great stuff, loved the "fundamentals" approach, looking forward to the rest of the series. I've heard all these ideas in other series here on DC, but this setup (goals of pf play, position/nuttiness/flopability, the "hand chart") really drove home some key ideas for me in a framework that I expect to really help me out.

I immediately recognized I have two very incorrect thought patterns after watching this - just in case you get some hh's that give you an opportunity to bring up these points.

One (simpler) is calling/overlimping with a wide range in position - I'm so used to this being spew in NLHE that I've been folding the button way too often, this (floppability/nuttiness/position) gives me a way to re-evaluate what I'm doing in position.

The second is that I'm getting smoked when facing 3bets, and hadn't really understood why. I knew enough to fold hands that are high nuttiness/low flopability oop, but wasn't paying enough attention to position and evaluating nuttiness+flopability relative to position.

Congrats delcrossb on your first series, you and DJ make a great team here. Careful, you've set a very high standard for the rest of the series.

I think this is going to be a good series... I really respect both these guy's opinions when it comes to poker.

I needed the refresh for sure - might actually get back into playing some more PLO now hehe.

delcrossb, you recommend to fold 5678ds UTG and at
http://www.deucescracked.com/videos/5601-Episode-One?seek=3047
you recommend opening 30-40% OTB.

Well, I am one of the tighter regulars (like 24/18), still I'd open 5678ds UTG 100% of the time and roughly open 50% OTB.
So your recommendations seem to result into a very nitty preflop style, right?

BTW very promissing start of the series...

delcrossb, you recommend to fold 5678ds UTG and at
http://www.deucescracked.com/videos/5601-Episode-One?seek=3047
you recommend opening 30-40% OTB.

Well, I am one of the tighter regulars (like 24/18), still I'd open 5678ds UTG 100% of the time and roughly open 50% OTB.
So your recommendations seem to result into a very nitty preflop style, right?

1) I think its probably too tight to fold 8765ds in any position.
2) We probably will advise generally tight play at first, at least until you build up a solid framework and gain more experience.

These small rundowns like 5678ds are overrated in general and I don't think it's too tight a fold at all UTG.

If the players behind you are quite loose then I think it's a definite fold; it just plays poorly multiway OOP. I think people overestimate the amount of nut flops it has and vastly underestimate the amount of trouble ones.

If they are tight sure it's fine because you'll probably get it HU and the low double suitedness has more value HU, but in general you should be lagging it up more if you had that table.

I think if we were to construct a loose range and a tight range for UTG, shifting between the two depending on table dynamics and opponent tendencies, a hand like 8765ds would be one of the first to drop out of our range when we tighten up.

IIRC in Nowhereman and KasinoKrime's video series, Hellomaha, they share a similar view of only suggest playing T high rundowns and above UTG as default.

I think low nut type hands are difficult to play, especially OOP - the type of board we want is difficult to come by and difficult to get paid off on.

Id like to have your guy's thoughts - maybe in a later part of the series about how to deal with absolute maniacs. Like the 89/70 kinda guys, I think I start cold calling a few more marginal hands in position, but rarely hit and have problems playing back against it.

Id like to have your guy's thoughts - maybe in a later part of the series about how to deal with absolute maniacs. Like the 89/70 kinda guys, I think I start cold calling a few more marginal hands in position, but rarely hit and have problems playing back against it.

I find these guys flat 3bets oop a ton, so I've been just 3b'ing the heck out of them when I'm in position (is this the right adjustment?). A lot of times they just call down with a ton of non nut draws and ironically, when you bet two streets they often try c/r'ing the river and allow you to check back when the draws come in.

Hey DJ Sensei and Delcrossb

I enjoyed your 1st episode of this series. I thought you had some really good discussion of concepts and theory.

One thing I would like to hear about it a future episode is common mistakes people make. I think this would be useful for correcting our own leaks and finding tendencies of opponents which we can exploit.

Thanks.

I liked this video very much but I'm not quite sure of the terminology:

run-down: four cards of adjacent value (5678) - can they also have a gap (4678)?
wrap: what is a wrap?

I liked this video very much but I'm not quite sure of the terminology:

run-down: four cards of adjacent value (5678) - can they also have a gap (4678)?
wrap: what is a wrap?

A run-down refers to a starting hand which is very connected. Obviously 5678 is a rundown but I'd consider connected hands with a gap (like JT87) to be rundowns too.

A wrap refers to a postflop connection with the board, where at least 3 of our holecards work together to create a large straight draw. QT98 is a wrap on a 762 flop or a J92 flop. 9764 is a super wrap on an 853 board.

At 58:00 You are talking about 3 bet folding as an option, but if someone opens for full pot and we 3 bet for full pot, than it seems to me that it is almost always a call cause we are getting 2 to 1 and we have always at least 30% equity.
On the left table a lose opener opens for fullpot and you suggest to 3 bet Jc3cTh7h. I guess 3 betting this hand is very marginal when we shouldn't have some considerable fold equity which I don't think we have vs this opponent.
Nice Vid and thank you for your effort.

Nice vid. The nuttiness/flopability chart that you guys referred to many times helped to vision what type of hands you were discussing vs where people many times just quickly rattle off some random hands.

At 58:00 You are talking about 3 bet folding as an option, but if someone opens for full pot and we 3 bet for full pot, than it seems to me that it is almost always a call cause we are getting 2 to 1 and we have always at least 30% equity.
On the left table a lose opener opens for fullpot and you suggest to 3 bet Jc3cTh7h. I guess 3 betting this hand is very marginal when we shouldn't have some considerable fold equity which I don't think we have vs this opponent.
Nice Vid and thank you for your effort.

I think you might have posted in the wrong video thread.

However, I also think you need to give more consideration to future streets of action when considering preflop plays. While its true that we usually have at least 30% equity preflop, that only matters if we're calling off our stack. When there are several more streets to play and plenty more $ in the stack, preflop equity is less and less relevant and its more important to consider our implied odds and postflop playability. Some hands just don't have either of those against a tight 3betting range, and we should fold them.

I think you might have posted in the wrong video thread.

However, I also think you need to give more consideration to future streets of action when considering preflop plays. While its true that we usually have at least 30% equity preflop, that only matters if we're calling off our stack. When there are several more streets to play and plenty more $ in the stack, preflop equity is less and less relevant and its more important to consider our implied odds and postflop playability. Some hands just don't have either of those against a tight 3betting range, and we should fold them.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I did mean Bustacap 1. Can someone remove this? Either way, when playing cap, there will not be any future street. If someone opens fullpot and we 3bet fullpot than his 4 bet means full cap.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I did mean Bustacap 1. Can someone remove this? Either way, when playing cap, there will not be any future street. If someone opens fullpot and we 3bet fullpot than his 4 bet means full cap.

Yes, even in a cap game I'll 3betfold sometimes! ProPokerTools Omaha Hi Simulation
600,000 trials (Randomized)
AKK* 28.55% (167,813 wins, 6,967 ties)
AA** 71.45% (425,220 wins, 6,967 ties)

I hear a lot about playing hands that make the nuts and avoid situations where we get freerolled. But how do we go about doing that? is it in the preflop hand selection? I mean, if we have the nuts on a flop but there are redraws, what do we do?

example if we have AK89 on JQTtt and we have no flush draw, and get lead into. do we just call then get it in on the turn when flush misses or do we get it in knowing there are possibility we are getting freerolled.

I guess I understand the concept of not getting freerolled, but how does one avoid that?

You'll never avoid it completely, but you can usually do so by playing better hands. Instead of AK98, play AKQJ, or AKQTds, so now you're free rolling the other guy with bare AK whenever you do flop the nuts. You can't avoid it because even if you play AAKKds and flop QJT you might not flop a flush draw and the other guy might with the bare AK, sometimes it's just running bad. But yea, you can minimize it by playing strongly connected suited hands that usually flop nuts + redraws.

By the way, I wouldn't worry too much with AK on QJT since at least you know there's not bigger straight redraws. Having 78 on 69T is much much worse.

I hear a lot about playing hands that make the nuts and avoid situations where we get freerolled. But how do we go about doing that? is it in the preflop hand selection? I mean, if we have the nuts on a flop but there are redraws, what do we do?

example if we have AK89 on JQTtt and we have no flush draw, and get lead into. do we just call then get it in on the turn when flush misses or do we get it in knowing there are possibility we are getting freerolled.

I guess I understand the concept of not getting freerolled, but how does one avoid that?

With "naked nuts" on the flop and a high SPR, we should almost never be raising. We want to avoid getting stacks in while being freerolled, and we also want to keep worse hands in so we can get some value. So, check-call oop is often a good play, at least in a multiway situation. You should certainly bet when checked to in position, but facing a bet you should probably just call.

Time Link to 00:23:20

why AAA2 ? and not AAAK. and why do you want to have 3 Aces. It will reduce de probability that you hit one A . Can't have quads. Less FH's.

why AAA2 ? and not AAAK. and why do you want to have 3 Aces. It will reduce de probability that you hit one A . Can't have quads. Less FH's.

Well, we don't want to have 3 aces, but its still an equity favorite over most hands if we get all the $ in preflop. The point here is that it plays very poorly postflop with money behind because it has extremely low floppability. Thats not to say its unplayable with deep SPRs (for instance, naked ace bluffs, which we'll have available fairly often, work better with high SPR), but you have to be cautious and not overcommit yourself.

Thanks for a great first EP. Really liked the presentation style.

Peace out

Great stuff, The nuttiness/floppabilty differences and the concept of treating preflop mostly to set up good postflop situations really clicked for me. Downloading the rest of the series now.

Wow this episode has a lot of info to take in! Good stuff.

So am I right in assuming PLO with non-nut floppable hands is all about fold equity?, especially involving small pots with wide ranges because getting it in postflop is most of the time a coinflip or worse and if you hit it's most of the time not about vbetting, more about "having outs" as in calling an openender with a FD ip vs a set if you know what I mean

btw: If we had ratings here, I'd give it 6 out of 5 at least, a really good preflop primer imo

So am I right in assuming PLO with non-nut floppable hands is all about fold equity?, especially involving small pots with wide ranges because getting it in postflop is most of the time a coinflip or worse and if you hit it's most of the time not about vbetting, more about "having outs" as in calling an openender with a FD ip vs a set if you know what I mean

btw: If we had ratings here, I'd give it 6 out of 5 at least, a really good preflop primer imo

Your non-nutty hands are going to have to tend to be the ones with smoother equity distributions that play well on a variety of boards. Consider for example, 6789ds. This hand is not particularly nutting in any direction but can flop equity on a lot of boards. One must consider the SPR in play as well as hands with wider equity distributions that are less nutty preflop play better when stack off ranges are wider, as stack off ranges tend to be in low SPR situations. In high SPR situations playing non-nutty hands OOP is generally ill advised, and playing non-nutty hands IP typically means exercising pot control and yes, taking advantage of fold equity. Remember that getting someone to fold a weak hand with 35% equity is still a pretty big win for you.

Hope that makes sense, my response is a little rushed.

Time Link to 01:11:29

Makes much sense, thanks!
Here you say that you can "generate fold equity"
Do you mean by that you can take advantage of it because of your added pot equity that you hit on average? For example a situation where it's profitable to bet with an oesd + FD but not with a 2outer.
But I'm guessing this is just a definitions thing because wouldnt "creating fold equity" mean you make him more likely to fold (like having blockers to his calling range)?



Another thing:
With hands that are crap nut-wise like 2245s (well maybe not that crappy (because then you might not want to 3bet them) but you get what I mean) could it be that facing one raiser you'd 3bet it to iso him / flop non-dominated equity and such but vs one coldcaller and a very low chance to isolate you'd fold to not get it multiway and facing 5 overcallers (exaggerated) you'd call again just because of the odds and sometimes you do hit the nuts and sometimes you will be good at SD with your 4high flush?

Makes much sense, thanks!
Here you say that you can "generate fold equity"
Do you mean by that you can take advantage of it because of your added pot equity that you hit on average? For example a situation where it's profitable to bet with an oesd + FD but not with a 2outer.
But I'm guessing this is just a definitions thing because wouldnt "creating fold equity" mean you make him more likely to fold (like having blockers to his calling range)?

'Generating' fold equity typically involves taking an aggressive line so that he'll fold more of his non-nut hands, either now or on later streets. Having blockers can help, but only in the sense that he'll be less likely to have a nutty hand.

Another thing:
With hands that are crap nut-wise like 2245s (well maybe not that crappy (because then you might not want to 3bet them) but you get what I mean) could it be that facing one raiser you'd 3bet it to iso him / flop non-dominated equity and such but vs one coldcaller and a very low chance to isolate you'd fold to not get it multiway and facing 5 overcallers (exaggerated) you'd call again just because of the odds and sometimes you do hit the nuts and sometimes you will be good at SD with your 4high flush?

We shouldn't ever 3bet to isolate with a straight-up awful hand in PLO, because nobody* folds to 3bets. Instead we 3bet with hands that have good floppability and the ability to make a strong hand. So, a hand like 4567ds is much better than 2245ds, and certainly benefits from isolation and the FE that initiative earns us if we can get those things. But if there's a raise and several callers in front of us, there's not much sense in squeezing since we'll usually wind up in a multiway pot with lots of chips in it. Better to call and see if we can hit the flop strong, instead of 3betting and hoping to just get a piece of it.

So yes, if we are facing just a raiser, then those type of hands are great to 3bet. If we're facing a raise and calls, then we need to have a hand that can make the nuts one way or another. The difference between 4567r and 4567ds is smaller in a multiway pot since we are mostly hoping to make nut straights or boats, but in a HU pot the flushes that the suited hand can make are significantly stronger.