Pot-Limit Omaha has never been as popular in poker as it is today. As a consequence, the format is flooded with new players, and this presents great opportunities for players who have already mastered the game. If you are a PLO player looking to step forward in the game at a pace that outstrips your opponents, then educating yourself is the only way to go. Thankfully for you, Fernando Habegger – also known as ‘JNandez’ – has put together a brand new 376-page guide to crushing PLO and we’ve had an exclusive look at it.
100 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha, is a massive a volume that gives anyone with a passing interest in Pot-Limit Omaha the chance to turn their aptitude for the four-card game into a profitable track record of success. Written by the former PokerStars SuperNova Elite professional, the book draws on his experience as a PLO Mastermind owner and trainer. Over the past eight years, his site has become a go-to bible for PLO training and all of his know-how has been poured into the book, set to be released at the end of October via D&B Poker and costing $34.95.
As well as taking a trip through Fernando’s PLO knowledge by reading the book, we also spoke with him to find out what he thinks are the most important tips to pick up and how players can advance in their PLO training with the book.
The Growth of the Four-Card Game
Fernando Habegger’s crucial book on PLO tips seems destined to be a poker bestseller.
There’s no doubt that over the past few years, the GTO (Game Theory Optimal) era has been a benefit to Pot-Limit Omaha as it has been to the detriment of No Limit Hold’em. While some say that solvers have taken away from the appeal of NLHE, PLO has flourished. Seemingly unsolvable in the same way, knowledge truly is power in the four-card game and Fernando believes that necessity has been the mother of growth in the game.
“No Limit games got tougher and drier, which meant recreational players were losing their money fast and that’s not a lot of fun,” he says. “At the same time, plenty of professionals saw their win rates shrink and had to look elsewhere. That’s exactly what happened to me as early as 2010 or 2011. Even back then, No Limit was getting more difficult, while PLO was at an earlier stage and far less solved. The edges were bigger, and there was genuine uncertainty about what playing well even meant.”
If that inspired people to take on Pot-Limit Omaha, keeping them there was the ability to grow within the game, to improve their skills and become winning players.
“The reason PLO stays popular today comes down to the feedback mechanism. In Hold’em, if you get it all in preflop with a bad hand like eight-seven offsuit, you’ll lose at such a rate that you learn very quickly it’s a bad play. In PLO, because preflop equities run so close together, you can get away with playing bad hands for a very long time before realising what is the right play.”
What Brings People Back to PLO?
PLO has become one of the most popular variants of poker played by anyone in recent years and is now well clear of every other variant than NLHE. Even Daniel Negreanu eulogised about PLO after winning his most recent WSOP bracelet in the format in the summer.
“PLO has more variance, and higher variance means recreational players win more often in the short term,” says Fernando. “Winning sometimes is what keeps people coming back.”
The background behind Fernando’s knowledge in the book is extensive. He has been playing PLO since 2010 and that standing in the game came about when he found No Limit Hold’em getting tougher.
“I made the switch. Back then, the PLO study material was very sparse, and there were obviously no solvers, so it was genuinely difficult to figure out what the best strategy actually was. You had to lean on a lot of analogies from No Limit Hold’em, which only got you so far.”
Because of this, Fernando made plenty of early mistakes, ones he hopes to correct for other players by them reading his book. I asked Fernando for some examples of these wrongs he managed to right.
“Definitely playing too many hands and playing too passively,” he says. “When you switch from two cards to four, two things happen: first, a lot of hands suddenly look really good preflop, and second, you start assuming everyone has the nuts postflop. Both lead to completely incorrect conclusions.”
Fernando Habegger has crushed in the four-game since learning it in 2010.
Typical PLO Mistakes
As Fernando identifies early in 1o0 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha, playing far more hands than you should because you ‘haven’t developed an eye for quality yet’ means that you don’t understand which hands do well in which contexts.
“Postflop, because you’re convinced everyone always has the nuts, you fold too much and don’t bluff nearly enough. The reality is the opposite: since most people give their opponents credit for strong hands, bluffing is actually very profitable, while calling down usually isn’t. People are simply scared to bluff into what looks like a strong range.”
The lesson to Fernando was clear, and it is one he reinforces in his book. Play tighter preflop, but play more aggressively postflop, especially when you’re in the driver’s seat. In PLO, hero calling and calling down is not a profitable strategy.
The post-flop nature of the game appeals to many players who have become frustrated with the partly solved pre-flop element of No Limit Hold’em. Even though the first PLO solver arrived in 2017, the difference is scale.
“In Hold’em you have 1,326 possible starting hand combinations,” says Fernando. “In PLO, that number jumps to 270,725. Go up to 5-Card PLO and you’re at roughly 2.5 million combos, and in 6-Card PLO around 20 million. Every card you add to your hand multiplies the complexity enormously.”
Fernando Habegger playing high stakes PLO in the PokerGO Studio.
The Power of PLO
Winning at Pot-Limit Omaha can be addictive, and success in the game draws players away from No Limit Hold’em, leaving some never wanting to return. Fernando puts some of this down to solvers and how they impact NLHE, an easier game to solve.
“Games don’t get solved in practice just because a solver exists, they get solved because people memorize the outputs. In Hold’em, that’s somewhat achievable, especially preflop. In PLO, with all the combinatorics layered on top of different positions, stack sizes, and board textures, memorizing solver outputs postflop is essentially impossible.”
If solvers pushed NLHE toward what Fernando calls ‘a more rigid, memorized game’, then those who love an unsolvable game will naturally come to PLO. What Fernando says is its unique appeal is far deeper.
“PLO gives you a partial answer at best,” he says. “There’s still enormous room for creativity and exploits. That’s what keeps the game interesting, both for players escaping Hold’em and for those of us who’ve been in it for years.”
The book, which covers 100 tips designed to improve any player at PLO, covers several key topics. With stack size, position, equity, polarization and exploitation among them, Fernando aims to bring players into the game of PLO and then educate them on the optimal ways of winning.
As Fernando tells you in the book, PLO is a complex game. It is action-packed and fun for all. But most importantly of all, it is beatable. If you study PLO in the right way, then you can develop an edge over players who make repeated errors that can be exploited. Easy-to-read tips aligned with handy graphics that break down key spots explain the principles of the game and test you on what you’ve learned. The consequences of the right or wrong decisions in each spot are explored too, leaving you clued up on the game theory but also in the know about the overall picture of commonly played hands, and how board textures should affect your decisions at the hand proceeds, step-by-step.
I’d thoroughly recommend that you purchase 100 Essential Tips to Master Pot-Limit Omaha by Fernando Habegger when it is released in October. Costing just $34.95, the tips within will put you in a position to win more money playing the fastest growing format in poker.
About The Author
