How would you play this hand?

Pot limit Omaha. 25-25 blinds. You are dealt AA73 four different suits in the first blind. Everyone folds to middle position who brings it in for 100. All fold to you. You call 75 more. Big blind makes it 400. All of you have 8000 in chips. Opponents play well. Original raiser calls. How do you play from this point?

This is probably the naive answer, but I say raise the pot. Right now you're the nut. Assuming BB calls (or better yet he raises), middle stands a reasonable chance of folding, which would be perfect.


The only other plausible answer I can see is to fold, if you believe both of them have very strong draws. A simple call would leave you in a terrible position on the flop, and unless the flop is rags you would have to fear at least one of them having you beat already, so you'd be handcuffed and probably have to check and fold anyway.

You clearly cannot raise because you will be marked with aces and out of position when there is still a lot of money. My rule of thumb: only re-raise with aces before the flop if you can get half your money in.


You could call and hope to catch a well-concealed set of aces which would quite likely get paid.


Or you could reason that a raiser and a re-raiser who both play well (stipulated in the problem) are highly likely to have at least one ace between them (re-raiser could well even have both), which makes your price to flop a set really pretty bad. So you could fold. No one will ever know you folded aces. And the rest of your hand is horrible.


In the real world I would call unless I knew the big blind well enough to say with a high degree of likelihood that he had aces himself, in which case I would fold.


Oh no!! Not again!

Max raise.


I have the big blind beat. I want the middle position guy, who could crack my aces, to know I have aces. That way, when I jack it up, and then the big blind jacks it up, middle player is forced to fold, because he expects me to jack it up again. Or, the big blind folds?


I have never played pot limit, or Omaha, and I don't even know if Omaha has a "flop." But it seems the key factors are that 1) you can't "get all your money in there while you have the best of it" because later rounds will rise proportional to this round, and 2) I bet aces crack real easy in Omaha.


eLROY

I would call (and I have almost never played this game). Hand is too good to muck without seeing the flop, yet the chips are so deep it could be a serious mistake to re-raise (especially out of position). If the worst case has occurred and the raiser also holds AA then his sidecards are almost surely much better than mine. Even if he holds a very good hand that cannot beat Aces, such as QQJT with a suit or two, I'm not sure if I'm much of a favorite, and the playing difficulties later in the hand probably weigh more heavily. Even assuming he doesn't have AA since it is so unlikely, the real problems come on the Flop and beyond. Without spiking the third Ace, there are relatively few flops I can like much versus two (no guarantee a massive reraise will remove either of them) opponents who surely hold well-coordinated hands. Being out of position here with so much money left to be bet is, IMO, very bad. However the chance of spiking the Ace makes seeing the Flop at the relatively modest price of $400 worthwhile. I wonder at what stack size simply re-raising would be best (probably all-in). Just pulling numbers out of the air here, I feel that if I had $1200 in front of me instead of $8000, I would go all-in.

And therefore if I had a bit more than $1200 in front of me I would probably do the same since a few more hundred going in on the Flop would be virtually the same thing, and I have gained if I cause one or both opponents to fold pre-flop. So I will further guess that a maximum reraise is best up to a stack size of, say, $2200. Just a ballpark feeling.

With no suits, nut straight draws or flush draws, the only positive feature that I see is two aces; facing strong players, I should be looking at aces double-suited. It's doubtful that the BB, being a tough player, would reraise with kings from up front, leaving himself open to a pot- sized reraise before the flop, and being out of position if he doesn't win the pot straight away. There are better places to invest one's money, and more cards to be dealt in a few seconds- muck this one!!


perfidious

Actually, there is perhaps something of a contradiction in this question, since the big blind is probably making a mistake re-raising more or less whatever his hand is, yet the question stipulates that he plays well.


Oh no!! Not again!

eLROY,


Omaha has five cards come down, the same way

hold'em does, but that's about the only similarity.


The split (hi-lo) version is a terrific draw- out game, and could drive you out of your mind (of course, there are those who would argue that you must be nuts to play it!). With four cards in one's hand, there are a lot more hands that seem playable. This can deceive a new player into thinking that any four cards have a shot; then again, these are likely the same people who line your pockets by playing any two in hold'em!!


perfidious