Pot-Limit Omaha is often called a game of draws, and often this is true, especially compared to other poker games such as Hold’em. So, it’s quite important to know your pot-equity whenever you picked up a nice drawing hand (or what at least looks like one).

Calculating your equity is harder than in Hold’em. This is because your opponents can have blockers against your hand or re-draws. Blockers are cards that your opponent might be holding that you need to complete your hand. For example, if your drawing to the nut-flush but your opponent is holding two cards of that suit too, that’ll cost you two outs. Re-draws on the other hand mean that although you might hit your hand, your opponent still has a chance to improve and beat your made hand. For example, if your opponent flopped top-set, you made the nut-flush on the turn, he can still make a full-house on the river. Such a re-draw to a full house cuts your equity by 20%.

On the other hand, your hand can sometimes be stronger than you might expect at first, this is because back-door outs. On a rainbow flop, for example Ah Kd 3s, a hand like Jh Th 9d 8d has two back-door flush draws. A back-door flush draw usually improves your hand by 5%, and like in the case of this example your hand even improves by 10%.

This all might sound complicated, but actually there is an easy and quick way to calculate your equity when holding a drawing hand. You take your total number of outs and multiply them by 4 on the flop and 2 on the turn. However, we’ve just seen that because of re-draws and blocking cards that number can signigicantly drop. Because of this a nut-flush draw can drop from 45% to 25%. But, if you have some backdoor-outs that number can again increase to 30%.

So, determining your equity in PLO isn’t all that easy. It’s important to consider what your opponent might be holding and how that affects your outs and chance of winning the pot.

I never read a poker book on Pot-Limit Omaha, but I came across this new book on Amazon today. It’s called Secrets of Short-handed Pot-limit Omaha: How to Beat PLO Games with Six or Fewer Players and is written by Rolf Slotboom and Rob Hollink.

It’s description is quite interesting:

D&B Publishing present the PLO Dream Team. Rolf Slotboom and Rob Hollink join forces to produce the definitive guide, short-handed Pot-Limit Omaha (tables with six or fewer players). Do you know Pot-Limit Omaha is one of the fastest growing forms of poker? Do you know that the biggest games online (in money) are Short-Handed Pot-Limit Omaha? Rolf and Rob will tell you how to: gauge the optimum size of the buy-in; decide whether to check-raise or bet into the raiser; represent big hands; misrepresent hands in order to get paid off; get your opponents off good, but non-nut hands; and, judge when to raise with drawing hands. The team – Rolf Slotboom – author of the classic “Secrets of Professional Pot Limit Omaha”. In his first attempt in 2007 on the World Series of Poker he cashed four times, including the main $10,000 event. Rob Hollink has been a leading player for over 20 years and has won both a European tour title and, in 2008, a World Series bracelet.

I’m going to buy and review it for you all. Check back later!