I reckon I’ve got this Pot Limit Omaha thing cracked.

The other day I sat down to play some heads-up PLO. It was a 1-2 game and my opponent, who I knew to be a decent sort, sat down with the same $200 that I did.

On the very first hand I was dealt any four cards. I pretended to look at them, as you do, then saw the $3 in the pot.

Poker is a game of skill and my own edge comes from a solid grasp of the arithmetic of poker. Here I knew that my own any four cards had a 50% chance of beating my opponent’s any four cards, so folding was out of the question. I immediately realised that if I bet the maximum, raising it to $6, I have two ways to win. He might make the mistake of folding his any four cards, in which case I win $3 immediately. Or he may call, in which case I will lose $5 half the time but win $7 the other half of the time, average gain $1.

Nice.

Easy game, easy raise. So now there is $8 in the pot and $4 for him to call.

I’m not a mind-reader, but I don’t need to be. Oppo must have worked out that folding now is an obvious error with $8 in the pot, given that his any four cards have a 50% chance against my any four cards. Calling is obviously possible, getting 2 to 1 on an even money bet, average gain $2. But surely raising is better, he would have thought. He thought right: raising gives the added chance that opener (me) might fold; even if I call he will lose $16 half the time but win $20 the other half of the time, average gain $2.

With the action back on me, it took no more than the blink of an eye for my calculations to work out that with my any four cards having an even money chance against his any four cards, folding would be an egregious error.

Using the already familiar calculations it took us no time at all to bet the maximum a couple more times each. Before you could say “any four cards will do”, all the money was in the middle with both of us having the better of it, which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill.

So with the pot at $400 minus a tiny rake, it was time for me to look at my cards.

It was then that the alarm went off and I woke up.