Advanced Pot Limit Omaha – Preflop All-in Equity

Advanced Pot Limit Omaha: Preflop All-in Equity

In my article on short-stack Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) strategy, I emphasized the importance of preflop all-in equity. With a short stack the goal is often to get all-in before the flop, so it’s important that one understand which hands have the best value in those situations. I ran a number of simulations of various preflop all-in situations. I will summarize those results and analyze what they mean for your short-stack strategy. However, I encourage you to look quite closely at the results themselves, don’t just skip to my summary.

Vs. a random hand

The following table gives you the equity (chance of winning, adjusted for the chance of a tie) against a random holding. This would apply in a situation against extremely loose players, or where you’re so short-stacked that an opponent virtually must call. Think of this as the baseline value of various hands. A * represents a random card. So AA** is any hand with a pair of aces in it.

All-in Vs. Random Hand

AA**	65.64%	AKQJ	57.93%
KK**	62.52%	AKQ*	56.55%
QQ**	60.33%	JT98	52.70%
TT99	60.17%	JT98	55.69%
AAQJ	69.79%	3456	40.87%

Summary: Against a random hand, it’s clear that large pairs and high cards are very important. Four-card rundowns like JT98, which are great deep-stacked, are hardly above average. Even the best hand (AAQJ double suited) is only a 7:3 favorite over a random hand. Also, having a flush combination adds about 3%. For instance, JT98 (not in table above) is only 49.62%, the same hand double suited is 55.69%.

Vs. the top 20%

This table will summarize how well the hands do against the top 20% of hands. This is an important adjustment because our opponents will generally only call with a pretty decent holding. Now we’re asking the question, what hands do best against the types of opponent hands that will actually call?

All-in Vs. Top 20%

AA**	64.88%	AKQJ	51.11%
KK**	54.88%	AKQ*	49.51%
QQ**	48.99%	JT98	42.11%
TT99	47.86%	JT98	45.36%
AAQJ	70.48%	3456	39.50%

Summary: Aces remain equally powerful against good hands. That’s because often the other good hand will include an ace. A pair of kings drops off in value, mostly because they’re in trouble when they run into aces: AA** vs. KK** is 70% equity vs. 30% equity. QQ** really plummets, all the way below 50%. That’s important to keep in mind. In general, the lower pairs (below KK) are generally underdogs in preflop all-in confrontations. High card combinations do OK (about 50/50), while medium rundowns suffer a lot. What do we take from all this? Aces, and to a lesser extent, kings and high cards (including an ace), are key to preflop all-ins, and therefore key to successful short-stack play. Remember though, it’s only true if you can get it all-in preflop. If stacks are deep, hand values cannot be computed or evaluated this way.