A Hand at Pot Limit Omaha part two
The big blind checks and my hand is vulnerable so I must protect it as I cannot afford to give a free card here. I am in the middle and that is not ideal but I must bet and I make a near pot size bet of £60 which is a decent poker strategy.
The player to my left folds but the big blind calls me. What could they possibly have? I was not taking them for a higher set because they would have surely check raised or bet out here as they would have feared the drawing hands. I figured myself for the best hand at this stage and thought that my opponent either had some straight draw or was playing two pair very cautiously.
The turn card brought the 4s which brought an open ended straight draw for me but it still didn’t put any possible straight out there apart from the wheel and I still felt that I had the best hand with a set of fives. My opponent checked to me again and I bet the pot again on the turn and my opponent called again. The river card was the Kh making a final board of Ah-9c-5s-4s-Kh. Now unless they had a wheel or a higher set then my set of fives was the best hand.
Not many players raise without the nuts in Pot Limit Omaha or close to it on the river or at least they didn’t in this game. So now I have to decide if I merely want to check this down after my opponent or try and extract some value from the best hand. But doing that runs the risk of a bluff raise but as I have just stated, that type of play wasn’t the norm in a game like this.
I would like to report that I made a great value bet and extracted the absolute maximum but unfortunately I wimped out and checked after my opponent checked to me one more time. When I declared a set of fives, they mucked their hand and I don’t ask to see a mans cards in that situation although I know some that do so I cannot report on what they had.
I would just like to point out here that we played numerous hands of hold’em in this session but I have decided to omit those hands simply because no limit hold’em is discussed in the last chapter and the similarities between PL and NL hold’em are close enough for me not to waste valuable space talking about it here. The main difference between PL and NL play is knowing when you overbet the pot in NL and when to move all in.
This can help you to bust players in no limit player whereas in PLH, you wouldn’t be able to set them all in as easily. You can also offset a positional disadvantage much better in NLH as well because of the ability to move all in or overbet the pot.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”
Come and see the bwin poker blog for news, gossip and info.
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