I am new to PLO

[Niman Kenkre]

I just started playing PLO a couple of weeks ago, so please forgive me if this is basic. The blinds are 5-10 (I know that is small stakes for most of you, but I am drinking milk and will get stronger!) and the stacks are over 300bb deep.

It folds to the button who opens for a raise. The villain is an average to above average player who seems to call just a little too much. I three bet pot from the small blind with JT97. He calls.

The flop is 984. I pot, he calls. The turn is the A. I pot again. Now he raises pot. There is still another pot and a half left behind. I was very confused here. With this massive draw, I was not sure if I should go ahead and reraise him or just call. (I assume folding is not an option but please correct me if I am wrong).

I think I have very minimal fold equity, but if I call and hit a flush (especially a heart), it will put me in a weird spot. I also don't know whether or not I will get paid if I hit a straight.

If I should just call here, what is my plan for a spade or heart river?

[Ryan Daut]

i suspect there is a lack of responses cause its not an easy hand.


board: As9h8s4h
Hand Pot equity Wins Ties
JsTh9s7h 55.33% 331,122 1,694
AA** 44.67% 267,184 1,694


This is your equity vs the average of all AA hands (so sometimes he has flush draws, straight draws, etc, sometimes hes just naked). i suspect vs almost any hand you have very good equity, so i think this makes it a repot. if you were to just call and frontshove when you hit and check fold when you dont improve then it seems like you are worse off than just shoving now but im not positive on that (should double check with rigorous math if you want, im too lazy).

not sure how bluffs really factor into this either as they will generally have outs and maybe not able to call a shove and will probably continue on most rivers to represent either a draw that gets there or AA, so maybe c/c on the river some percent of the time with the more concealed draws like a 6 hitting when you get there to balance out your c/f range, i dunno, its late and hard to think about


if you had one flush draw i would say consider calling and frontshoving for value every hand you improve that board doesnt pair and every non board pair flush that doesnt improve you (i.e. you have hearts, spade hits you shove it anyway)

i used this software for the plo hand simulator: http://www.propokertools.com/simulat...tionEditor.jsp

[Jimmy Fricke]

It depends how often you think he's going to pay you off on the river when you make any of your draws. If your read of 'calling too much' goes for the river too, then calling the turn is probably best because you can just ship it in on any of your outs (not a 9, your 9 is almost assuredly dead) and get paid off a reasonable amount of time. If you think he's good enough to fold to your shove a decent amount, then just shove now.

I would be very surprised if he didn't have top set here a lot, and he might even have the nut flush draw with it. Very few people would pot here without top set because there's something magical in their mind about specifically a set of aces. But I'm pretty sure you're still ahead of just a set of aces.

Personal preference, I tend to call here. You have no hope of fold equity and your hand either hits or it doesn't on the river.

[Bryan Devonshire]

^ this imo

[Niman Kenkre]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Fricke

It depends how often you think he's going to pay you off on the river when you make any of your draws. If your read of 'calling too much' goes for the river too, then calling the turn is probably best because you can just ship it in on any of your outs (not a 9, your 9 is almost assuredly dead) and get paid off a reasonable amount of time. If you think he's good enough to fold to your shove a decent amount, then just shove now.

I would be very surprised if he didn't have top set here a lot, and he might even have the nut flush draw with it. Very few people would pot here without top set because there's something magical in their mind about specifically a set of aces. But I'm pretty sure you're still ahead of just a set of aces.

Personal preference, I tend to call here. You have no hope of fold equity and your hand either hits or it doesn't on the river.

If he has a set of aces, there is a very reasonable possibility that he has my heart draw dominated (especially with the call on the flop). Therefore, if you advocate just calling, is it really reasonable to ship a (non straight flush) heart? Wouldn't the number of times that he has the better flush, coupled with the times that he folds his set (note that the heart draw is the more plausible flush draw in his eyes for me) make it at least worth discussing in more detail?

Again, I reiterate that I am new to PLO - so I might be way off here, but I thought that just calling would leave me in a weird position on a heart river. Any comments/advice on this specific facet of the hand?

[Isaac Haxton]

Originally Posted by Niman Kenkre

If he has a set of aces, there is a very reasonable possibility that he has my heart draw dominated (especially with the call on the flop).

Isn't he much more likely to raise than to call with AA and the nut flush draw on the flop? Given that you've 3bet 300BB deep OOP, there should be pretty minimal risk of you having flopped a set. Raising on the flop forces you to either fold or put more money in with the pair and straight draw type of hands you're likely to have, either of which is much better than letting another card come off for free.

[Niman Kenkre]

Originally Posted by Isaac Haxton

Isn't he much more likely to raise than to call with AA and the nut flush draw on the flop? Given that you've 3bet 300BB deep OOP, there should be pretty minimal risk of you having flopped a set. Raising on the flop forces you to either fold or put more money in with the pair and straight draw type of hands you're likely to have, either of which is much better than letting another card come off for free.

yeah that is a really good point that I had not considered. does this mean that the best decision for me when facing his turn raise is to flat call and pot any heart, spade, or straight that does not pair the board?

[Sampo Lopponen]

I think you don't have much fold equity here, also when you hit you hit good and when a blank comes you have absolutely nothing. So there is really no point of shoving.

When you hit the river you bet whichever amount you feel like, and he is has to do the quessing game of wether you hit your real out or a "bluff out".

A problem with the hand is that your opponent often has a bigger flushdraw and when that hits you are in trouble. When a flush comes you might bet just half pot and fold to a raise since very very very few players would bluff on that sort of spot

[Brian Hastings]

I think it's a pretty clear call and shove river when you hit a straight or flush, your opponent always has you beat right now (not equity-wise but your pair of 9s is never good) so there's no good in shoving then seeing a 2o river or a board pair. I also think you get paid off often when you hit because there are so many draws available that he's unlikely to fold to a river pot getting 2-1, since you could have easily missed (if river is Ts or something he might fold though)

[Ryan Daut]

I think the exact numbers matter a lot and the way you talked about the hand leaves me very confused.

Supposing we are playing 5/10 and we started "over 300bb deep" that means we started with 3500 say. Now, he raises to 30 on button, we make it 100 in sb, he calls. pot on flop = 200, we pot, he calls. pot on turn = 600, we pot, he repots to 2400. saying there is a pot and a half left means we can make it 7800 and theres still money left behind. if there is only 800 left as there would be if we started 350bb deep then its clear the best play is to call, frontbet when we hit and check fold when we miss cause he is never folding on the river getting 7:1 with top set, and even if there was only 1500 left this would still be the clear best play.

but if there really is a full potbet+ left then the answer could very much change because if we call and frontbet 5.5k on the river i think he could fold a very high % of the time unless he is beating us. i.e. river is any 7, i think he is folding to a potbet on river unless he has JT himself, and same goes for a lot of other cards. to be safe, i would say he folds 75% of the time to a full pot bet when a flush or obvious straight comes (7/Q) and he doesnt improve and gets curious/stubborn 25% and calls the 5.5 buyin bet.

so i dunno i think you need to come up with the exact numbers in the hand because they matter a great deal.

Working under the assumption that we start the hand 8100 deep, meaning there is exactly a full pot bet left lets work through the numbers to see whether shove now or call/frontshove or check fold is best.

Now, if we were to 3bet pot all in on the turn, then we are putting in 7200 to win 8400. pot would be 15600.


board: As9h8s4h
Hand Pot equity Wins Ties
JsTh9s7h 55.33% 331,122 1,694
AA** 44.67% 267,184 1,694

lets bump this up to 57% because he is almost certainly raising AAxx hh on the flop, but lets not raise it too much, so 57% seems ok.

.57*15600=8892, which means we book a 1692 winner by shoving now.


ok, so we improve on 28 cards (2 kings, 4 queen, 4 jack, 4 ten, 4 seven, 4 six, 2 fives, 2 threes, 2 deuces) and lets say there are 42 unknown cards (our 4cards, 4 board cards, him having 2 aces), so we improve 2 out of 3 times. 1/3 the time we lose 1800. thats -600.

the other 2/3 we frontshove when we hit. so we are shoving pot on 28 cards. suppose we draw 2 times, we lose 4 times, he folds 14 times, and he calls 8 times. i think this is fairly realistic as we are shoving pot and him folding on some flush cards/obvious straight cards seems reasonable. again we are assuming he doesnt improve, board gets scary and he folds less than 2/3 the time to a huge shove, seems ok to me.

so...2/42 we finish +600, splitting money in pot.
4/42 we finish -7200
14/42 we finish +3600
8/42 we finish +9000

we were already -600 from before.

-600+(600*2/42)-(7200*4/42)+(3600*14/42)+(9000*8/42)=1657

this would be less equity than just repotting the turn. so as i said i think we need to know more info about how much is really left.