general PLO question

[Paul2432]

Let's say you are in late position with a borderline hand and call after several limpers and the button or one of the blinds raises and a couple of limpers call.

Given the fairly close value of Omaha hands is there any hand that you would fold here?

I generally automatically call in this situation and I am conerned it may be a leak.

Paul

[sherbert]

Overtime, calling with poor hands, raise or no raise is a leak. But the worst nature of this leak is not (just) the money you dribble away preflop. It is, as you fear, calling raises from much better hands; and even more devastating to your bankroll, subsequently becoming involved in a flop where you have way the worst of it. Good preflop starting standards feed through to better results at all points in a hand.

Back to your question, the answer is still fairly situation dependent. Let's take the case of a raise out of the blinds. Assuming it's a pot sized raise - a min. raise here is unbelievably foolish - then you have to put the player on a good hand. However, online or b&m, bad players make bad raises. If this is a bad player, I want to see the flop, almost regardless of my hand. Is s/he on tilt - even more reason to see the flop. What's their line of play been so far? After a big raise, do they ever check the flop, or do they have the auto-bet switch on? If it's checked around, do they autobet the turn? And you have position - not to be underestimated.

Next off, how tight is the player? Tight, out of the blinds or on the button spells a better hand. But tight players are less likely to autobet the flop unless they've picked up a piece of it.

If you call preflop, folding to one raise is nearly always bad - why call in the first place? Make sure you play hands that can withstand a raise. But if you are attracted to playing speculative hands the key is to have a plan. If that includes being willing to lay it down to a raise - so be it. However, you're likely to get a bunch of callers with this raise giving you value to call along.

It sounds to me you might be worried about getting into a situation where with the pot large, any subsequent action on the flop will put your entire stack at risk. That however, is the nature of the game. If you feel uncomfortable with this, step down in limits a little.

Bottom line, if the hand is weak - you should NOT have played it in the first place. If you are in doubt, post a few of the hands. I'd also strongly recommend you obtain Janne Raevaara's Poker Calculator and see how the hands you're worried about perform against different numbers of players and decent hands. That will give you a line to build preflop starting standards.