Five Lies That Are Costing You Money

PLO attracts a certain kind of mythology. Because the game is more volatile than Hold'em and the equities run closer, players latch onto half-truths and use them as excuses for bad play. Some of these myths sound reasonable on the surface. All of them are wrong, and believing them is actively costing you money at the table.

Myth 1: "Any Four Cards Can Win"

This is the single most expensive belief in PLO. Yes, technically, any four cards can make a winning hand on any given deal. But poker is not a single deal. It is thousands of deals, and over thousands of deals, hand quality dominates.

A hand like K♠Q♠J♦T♥ and a hand like 9♦6♣4♥2♠ will both occasionally flop monsters. But K♠Q♠J♦T♥ makes the nuts far more often, makes stronger draws, and avoids the dominated situations that quietly drain your stack.

Compare: a premium rundown vs. random disconnected trash

Run these two hands against each other a thousand times. The premium rundown wins comfortably heads-up. Now add two more random hands to the pot and the quality gap still matters, because stronger hands make the nuts more often in multiway situations.

Starting hand quality matters enormously. "Any four cards can win" is what losing players say to justify playing any four cards.

Myth 2: "AAxx Is Automatically a 3-Bet"

Aces are the best starting hand class in PLO -- sometimes. A♠A♥K♠Q♥ (double-suited, with connected Broadway cards) is a monster. A♠A♥7♦2♣ (rainbow, disconnected) is a trap.

The problem with weak aces is what happens after the flop. They miss too many boards cleanly, and when they do, you are often left with a bare overpair and very few productive turn cards. In a deep 3-bet pot, that is a bad place to be. The pot is bloated, your hand is easy to pressure, and your improvement paths are limited.

Strong aces have backup plans. A♠A♦K♠T♦ can flop a set, a nut flush draw, or a Broadway straight draw. Weak aces have exactly one plan: hope nobody connects with the board. That is not a strategy.

3-bet your strong aces aggressively. With weak aces like A♠A♥8♦3♣, consider just calling -- especially out of position, where the postflop disadvantage amplifies every weakness.

See the difference: strong aces vs. weak aces against a caller

Myth 3: "PLO Is All About Luck"

If PLO were all about luck, the same players would not win year after year. But they do. The reason is simple: while the edge per individual hand is smaller in PLO than in Hold'em, the cumulative edge over volume is enormous.

PLO variance is high enough that real skill edges take longer to show up cleanly. That tricks people into thinking the game is more luck-based than it is. It is not. The skill component is huge: position, hand selection, draw evaluation, blocker usage, bet sizing, and player reading all compound over time.

The real difference is that PLO punishes bad play more quietly. In Hold'em, if you play K-2 offsuit, you obviously lose. In PLO, if you play Q♥9♦5♣3♠, you lose slowly -- you flop just enough marginal hands to convince yourself you are playing well while bleeding money across hundreds of sessions.

Myth 4: "You Should Always Pot It"

"Pot-Limit" does not mean "Always Pot." This myth comes from the idea that since PLO is a big-bet game with close equities, you should always deny draws the odds to call. The logic is backwards.

Good bet sizing in PLO depends on:

  • Board texture. On a dry K♥7♦2♣ board, a half-pot c-bet achieves the same thing as a full-pot bet -- it gets folds from air and calls from hands that are drawing thin. Why risk more?
  • Stack depth and SPR. With 200bb stacks, potting every street can create an awkward stack-to-pot ratio on the river. Sometimes a smaller bet on the flop sets up better turn and river decisions.
  • Your range. If you c-bet 100% of your range for pot, observant opponents will realize your bets are too wide and start raising light. Mixing sizes and frequencies keeps your range balanced.

The best PLO players use multiple sizings. They pot it when they want to build a big pot with a strong hand or a strong draw. They use smaller and medium sizes when they want to bet wider without committing too many chips. They overbet in specific river spots where polarization is correct.

Size matters. Always potting is lazy, not strategic.

Myth 5: "Position Doesn't Matter as Much in PLO"

This one might be the most dangerous myth on this list. Position matters more in PLO than in Hold'em, not less.

In Hold'em, you have two hole cards and the decision trees are relatively simple. You can sometimes get away with playing good hands out of position because the number of possible outcomes is manageable. In PLO, with four hole cards and dramatically more board interactions, the information advantage of acting last is massive.

When you are in position, you see what your opponent does before you act on every street. In a game where draws are everywhere and board textures change dramatically on the turn and river, that information is worth a fortune.

The data backs this up. Track your win rate by position for a month. You will almost certainly find that you are a significant winner from the button and cutoff and a significant loser from the blinds and early position. The gap is wider in PLO than in any other form of poker.

Read more about why position is so powerful in PLO.

The Bonus Myth: "PLO Is Just Gambling, So Bankroll Doesn't Matter"

This is a cousin of Myth 3, and it is equally destructive. Because PLO has higher variance than Hold'em, your bankroll requirements are actually larger, not smaller. A 20-buy-in bankroll that might work for Hold'em cash games will get you crushed in PLO through variance alone.

Conservative bankroll rules matter in PLO. Many players use something like 30 buy-ins online as a starting point and adjust upward from there, especially when taking shots or playing tougher games. Treat that as a baseline heuristic, not a universal number. If your bankroll cannot absorb large downswings, your edge may never have time to materialize.

FAQ

Which myth costs players the most money? Myth 1 -- "any four cards can win." It is the root cause of the most common and most expensive PLO leak: playing too many hands. A player who believes this will enter far too many pots and bleed money at a rate that no amount of postflop skill can overcome.

Are there any situations where you should always pot it? When you are short-stacked and effectively committed, potting often simplifies the hand and makes sense. In full-stacked play, though, using a single bet size for every situation is leaving money on the table.

How do I convince a friend that PLO is skill-based? Track your results over a large sample and show them. Better yet, compare the long-run results of strong and weak players in the same environment. Single sessions prove nothing; large samples are where skill shows up.

Think for Yourself

Every myth on this list persists because it contains a grain of truth wrapped in a blanket of lazy thinking. Any four cards can win -- but they usually do not. AAxx is strong -- but not always. PLO does have variance -- but variance is not luck.

The next time someone at your table repeats one of these myths, smile. They are telling you exactly how they play -- and exactly how you can beat them.