Dynamic Boards in Pot Limit Omaha

In Pot Limit Omaha, a vast amount of your decisions will be made on the flop. This is no secret. Two of the types of flop textures you will encounter in PLO include lockdown boards, and dynamic boards. We will go over the latter in this pot limit omaha strategy article.

A dynamic board by definition is one that is very wet. It could contain a lot of possibilities both for drawing hands, and semi-drawing hands. An example is a board like aqq. Here, a lot of possible PLO hands can continue with semi draws, huge draws, made hands, and semi-bluffs.

It is the direct opposite of a locked down board, like 2kk. In this case, besides exactly KKxx and 22xx, and the random 2Kxx, there are not a whole lot of possibilities for strong hands. In turn the latter board can be attacked more, but let's save that for another article and get back to focusing on the dynamic board.

Let's take a look at some examples

Example A: Hero - 9j10a (button)

$1/2 6max game.

SB - 400usd 

BB - 400usd

UTG - 400 usd

MID - 400 usd

CO - 400 usd

(HERO) BUT - 400 usd

• UTG opens to 7usd, MID calls, CO calls, Hero calls on BUT with 9j10a, BB completes.

Dynamic Board (Flop): aq9(36usd)

• UTG bets 27usd, all folds to hero ??

Here we are faced with a conundrum, on this very wet board we flopped top and bottom pair, open ended straight draw, and a flush draw to boot. We can easily raise for value here, but our hand is an underdog against the exact hand our villain is representing, namely AAxx. So I suggest generally calling and seeing how the hand develops on further streets, we will acquire more information on BB and UTG's idea of their hand strength.

Now lets look at the same scenario if we were in the SB.

Example B: Hero -9j10a (small blind)

$1/2 6max game.

(HERO) SB - 400usd

BB - 400usd

UTG - 400 usd

MID - 400 usd

CO - 400 usd

BUT - 400 usd 

• UTG opens to 7usd, MID calls, CO calls, Hero calls in SB with 9j10a, BB completes.

Dynamic Board (Flop): aq9 (36usd)

• UTG bets 27usd, all folds to hero ??

In this situation it is our turn to act, and then the big blinds'. No matter what we do here, the UTG player is going to have the last action on this street and the subsequent streets. He will get to see how we and the BB react to his bet before making his decision. He is in a comfortable predicament. We in turn, are not.

It is also of note here that we will just not be able to get a lot of money in the middle of the pot. Our is decently strong, yet any if we go with the standard check/check small blind line, there is just no way we will be able to shovel money in quick enough. There are other options for us like check/raising here or leading right away on the flop. The problem with potting it right now is we quite often run into the two bigger sets and a few other really big hands that are better then ours.

The reason we won't be able to get a lot of money in the pot here is because the regular check/call, check turn line runs into a check back on the turn and now we can only get one more bet in on the river when we make our hand for value. Essentially our hands are tied in the SB and we cannot go for anything but a check/raise with a hand as strong as ours where as in the first example we retained our option of calling or raising the UTG cbettor.

The idea behind playing dynamic boards correctly stems from mixing up your play, but generally staying aggressive. This could be done most easily when you are playing the pot in the best positional spots, namely the button and cutoff. The summary here is play good hands from the button and cutoff and play them often, and you will be feared on dynamic boards!

If some terms of this article sounded hard or unkown you should also check our Omaha Rules and Strategy Tips. Knowing the rules is always 90% of every good strategy.