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Value Betting Without The Nuts In PLO

If you are not value betting enough with good holdings (not nuts), when you know you hold the better hand, you are giving away tons of value. Like checking back 2/3rd nuts or always checking intending to check raise out of position with great holdings on the river etc. The benefit of value betting is two-fold.  Say you hit a middling flush on the river, if you check to the villain, he might check back or bet out. He was betting out like he had it every street and a backdoor flush got there, and he checks, and you hold the Jack high flush. Should you value bet? Will you get snapped off with a queen high flush? Will you get check raise jammed by villain having the ace blocker and you will be in a terrible spot?

Let’s break this up into two parts

When do you value bet in PLO?

• How fishy is your opponent? Some players are calling stations, they have a high showdown metric, play too many hands with them you can put more value bets
• Titled players – The players who are tilted are usually more likely not to have a better hand and can be taken to value town.
• Sometimes serves as a block bet against players who will raise always should they have it.
• The problem with small block bets – You are susceptible to a big raise with nut blockers, inflating pot sizes, when you check, you give way to players either making a play when they have it or when they rep it. When you check with 2-4th nuts, you have to then decide if you should call given that you under-repped your hand be checking.
• You can check the player profile to know if you call there or not. Not accounting for player profiling while making a decision is a common mistake made in PLO 6.

ALSO READ: PLO 5- How Committed Are You To The Pot? Stack To Pot Ratio

When not to value bet in PLO?

• Players exhibiting tight behaviour: Don’t go for thin value with very tight players. They will call with stronger holdings, and you almost have zero merit in value betting.
• Too thin: Don’t value bet when you do not know where you are at in the hand and have no idea about the profile of the other player. Remember, you should know what you are trying to achieve via the value bet.

Tight player only bets / raises the nuts or calls with the second nuts, it makes little sense to put in the value bet (with a hand below say 2nd / 3rd nuts) as you wouldn’t get any value. He wouldn’t call. Value betting works best with players who are okay with making hero calls or are overly curious to see what you’ve got. Obviously, a good player will sniff out value bets and exploit you by raising occasionally when he doesn’t have it. For that, you must mix in your value bets without the nuts with similar bets when you have the nuts to balance your range.

Learnings

• Value bet your hands against loose and on tilt players.
• Look for opposition stats like PFR, steals, WTSD to get a sense of player type if cannot gauge from table play.
• Do not value bet against tight players who wouldn’t give you value if they have a middling hand.

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