Stack-to-pot Ratios - How can we utilise this for omaha?

[Dr_Chris]

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Chris; could you elaborate on how you drew those conclusions please?

Thanks Guys

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I’m not a great PLO player so please don’t think I’m trying to teach you anything, about the game, but SPR is a easy way to adjust to different stack sizes, setting up conditions for winning large pots, and avoiding sticky situations.

One such sticky situation is playing a AAxx type hand with a SPR of 4. My hunch is that your target should be 0, 1 or 13. 0 means your all in preflop and get to showdown without any further tricky decisions, 1 means you have one pot sized bet let that may chase away some weak drawing hands since there is no implied odds for them it they hit, of course if you figure that your pot equity is abysmal you don’t have to put the rest of your chips in. With 13 you are looking to flop a set or some other very strong hand then get all your chips in with three bets.

You may argue that 9 or 18 is better for a speculative hand but my main point is that since we are playing pot limit you can not expect to river the nuts and get 99 bb into a 3 bb pot against the second nuts as in NL but instead you have to start planning for a large pot preflop with your good hands. At the same time a poorly planned raise preflop has little hope of picking up the pot because of the pot limit giving everyone who has entered the pot good odds to call and may leave you in a bloated pot in poor position but still with plenty of chips behind.

For an example of why a SPR of 4 is bad for a AAxx type hand lets say you pick up one in the blinds and the button who has been relentless in stealing your blinds raises, you repot and button calls, pot is 20 bb with 80 bb behind and you see a flop of T 7 3 twotone. Now a C bet only has to be successful a little more than 50% of the times to be immediately profitable and if called you may improve or get to showdown cheaply and win, with a single opponent and this flop you will probably pick up the pot two thirds of the time. At the same time the button knows quite well what your holding and may play perfectly, fold when he has no pair and no draw and re-raise you all in with his twopair or better hands, his strong draws and also with marginal hands like one pair + gutshot that are a coinflip against your actual holding. You need better than 33% equity to call and if you decide that you only have 25% and fold you will have forfeited you 25% chare of 60bb or 15bb. Maybe your sidecards are so good that you figure that your equity actually is 40% against villains range and you call correctly. But this means that while you have played the hand correctly you got 9bb in as a 60-40 favorite and 80bb as a 40-60 dog and that is not profitable poker.

So to answer your question Guys, that with a speculative hand in poor position you want to set up the pot so that if you hit the flop hard you can win a large pot. A miniraise from the blinds preflop only costs 1 bb but if this means that the pot becomes 8 bb instead of 4 you have opened up the possibility for you to get 104 bb in the final pot with 3 PSB. Now if you have the same hand in great position, you may want aim for a lower SPR because you will often pick up the pot with a c-bet and then you want it to contain some chips.

I’ll try to post a hand late where I think this type of analysis helped me play correctly and win a large pot.



Chris