Is PLO The Future of Online Poker?

Texas Holdem became mainstream after Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 World Series of Poker main event. From a $40 investment he turned it into $2.5 million which is pretty good for five days work! Everyone started to buy into the poker dream and poker rooms received thousands of new players onto the virtual table’s everyday for a long period of time.

Professional online poker players nostalgically remember 2004 to 2006 where there were lots of weak new players often playing medium staked games such as $5 – $10 and profit opportunities were abundant. It was not uncommon for even the mediocre players to make life changing sums of money in a relatively short space of time, despite not having all the skills of a full time professional.

Fast forward to mid 2009 and the climate for Holdem players is a lot different. Because of the economic downturn there has been a universal reduction in spending and entertainment spending like poker has been stopped by many of the players who lost money during the golden years of 2004 to 2006. Some of the bad players will have learned how to play properly and those who failed to learn will have grown tired of losing money and stopped playing.

Poker office, poker tracker, poker usher, SNG Wizard, these are just some of the software programmes available on the market to help poker plays use optimal strategy. All of these factors have dramatically reduced the number of weaker players on the Texas Holdem tables. Players who found the higher stakes tables more difficult have flooded the lower stakes games; often multi tabling up to twelve tables and thus making the lower stakes tables much tougher to beat also. Things are no longer so rosy for a budding Texas Holdem player, so where do you go for poker profits today?

The answer, according to many poker commentators and article writers, is PLO (Pot Limit Omaha). PLO is very similar to Texas Holdem, but you receive four hole cards instead of two. You use any two of your hole cards along with three from the community cards to construct a winning poker hand. The betting structure and blinds are the same, but there are two fundamental differences.

The first is the Pot Limit nature meaning different strategies need to be used to build the pot, particularly pre-flop. Because you have more cards in the hole better hands win the pot most of the time. It is definitely a game where drawing to the nuts becomes more common.

There are not many Omaha books on the market and this is where the masses tend to learn therefore it has been said that online PLO is the future of poker and the standard of PLO currently even at the higher stakes is where Texas Holdem was in 2004. The advantages of PLO are that Holdem players will often use normal Texas Holdem strategies when playing PLO where the value of hands drops significantly.

As more Holdem players become disillusioned with the increasing standard of play on the tables, more players are migrating to other games such as PLO and Stud to find weaker players. However, as many players have not yet grasped the concepts, strategies and mathematics of the game their standard of play is not as high (even if they think it is) playing PLO for a period of time whilst they learn the game.

The current trend in Holdem suggests that there is going to be no major influx of new players in the near future, so by learning PLO you can take advantage of the general weaker standard of play. Omaha games are going to play a much more prominent part of online pokers future so it is wise to get in early and make the most of it, like Holdem players did three years ago.

By Malcolm Clarke

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