In Pot Limit Omaha, hand values tend to run close, which means that people often do not fold to re-raises. Consequently, a lot of players will never reraise without Aces, and any time you do re-raise, your thinking opponents will put you on Aces. By occasionally re-raising with other hands, however, you can confuse your opponents, both inducing mistakes now and protecting your future reraises when you do have Aces:
Poker Stars
Pot Limit Omaha Ring game
Blinds: $2/$4
4 players
Converter
Pre-flop: (4 players) Foucault is SB with :qc :9h :jd :th
UTG raises to $14, Button folds, Foucault raises to $46, BB folds, UTG calls.
Flop: :7h :8d :6d ($96, 2 players)
Foucault bets $70, UTG raises to $304, Foucault raises all-in $350, UTG calls.
Turn: :7d ($796, 1 player + 1 all-in – Main pot: $796)
River: :2d ($796, 1 player + 1 all-in – Main pot: $796)
Results:
Final pot: $796
Ugh, the converter didn’t capture my opponent’s hand here, and I only sort of recall it from memory, but it was something trashy, I want to say TT86 without diamonds (ie I won). I know that he got it in on this flop with top and bottom pair, which is always questionable in PLO and especially on a board this coordinated. The only possible justification for it is that he put me on Aces. Granted there are a lot of bad players who will just re-raise Aces, pot any flop, and get the money in, but against someone competent, they are at least going to have the nut flush draw if they get it in with Aces on this flop. So even there I hate his play. But I do think it’s a good example of how I got an opponent to make two bad calls by re-raising with something other than Aces.
There are a few reasons why I chose this hand to reraise. For one, it’s a monster, one of the best in PLO, meanings that I figure to be in good shape against my opponent’s range. It’s also a hand that plays well in multiway pots, because of its ability to flop the nuts with re-draws, but in this case there was only one player who could potentially get in on the fun anyway. Lastly, there will be a lot of flops that I like, so I will rarely be giving up after putting a lot of money in pre-flop.